You can take a strict view like my mother does. You have to cover your hair, although covering the face is more a cultural thing. In 12th grade though, the teacher in charge of religious studies interpreted the passage as saying dress modestly, so not necessarily cover the hair. In this case, the covering the whole body thing was a holdover from pre-Islamic times.
Aren't all religions culturally influenced? unless you actually believe in a specific holy book, reason says all the other books/religions you do not believe in have risen from cultural traditions (Which includes other religions as sources as well).
There's a lot of cultural influences on religion it does seem. See Jesus casting out the demon "leigon" into pigs, which then threw themselves off a cliff. I think that's how that bit goes. And while Muslims agree that christ will return, for all have to die, and Jesus hadn't yet, there does seem to be an idea floating around that there might not be an anti-christ, with that side arguing it's a Christian influence. So yeah.
Kinda why I don't think people should judge a religion solely by it's holy books, since the cultures you know less of and which follow a different religion get hurt the worst by this interpretation. It's also a less than useful predictor of behavior.
All Muslims are encouraged to get educated though, so I've always found the Taliban to be jerks, to put it very lightly.
Interesting, Does the religion specify what type of education/knowledge muslims are encouraged to receive? is it a religious knowledge? scientific knowledge?
I can't recall a specific Aya(verse), but the first verse in Islam states Iqra bismi rubbika alathy khalaq. (Okay, chronologically the first, Quraniq order is weird, since it's generally reverse chronological. Generally, so this one isn't the last either.). This
translates into "read in the name of the Lord that created". (In Arabic, read and recite are the same word, so yeah. Welcome to translating holy books to English). Anyway, a big focus in Islam early on was literacy, getting people to read was also going to open up people to writing things down and reading things, making knowledge easier to transfer and facilitate collective learning. Since a lot of scholars tie this bit, and the next hadith or two I have down there, with the rise of Islamic science and mathematics, into one of God's first commands to Muslims as to learn.
Anyway, the other Hadith has Mohammed stating that one should look for knowledge, even if he has to go to China (China being one of the farthest places known at the time). I also can't recall if it was a hadith or not, but it was often repeated to me that a mujahid in the name of knowledge got the highest of honors, compared to a mujahid by the sword.
So that leads to my beliefs as a Muslim that all knowledge was effectively spiritual. Not sure if it's a common view, but hey, I was a good student, so learning was helping my standing. Though the current dominant schools all draw from the Asharii school nowadays. It focuses on spiriutal knowledge over worldly knowledge. There was a time when there was the Mu'tazilites, who were closer to greek rationalists. The school has been very stagnant. I really don't know of anyone that adopts it still, but I would identify as one if I was still a Muslim.
(Sorry if I've been posting walls of texts, or too often here. I worry I might be dominating the thread.)
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