Posted by fschmidt on
URL: https://mikraite.arkian.net/Thoughts-on-the-Five-Pillars-of-Islam-tp1247p1259.html

I thought more about this since the last meeting.  My concern is that our list is getting long, and I think I see a better way to handle this.  Right now in the top forum, we have a list requirements followed by threads that are just discussions or at most suggestions.  We have no concept of rules that are less than requirements, things that are expected of members but are not strictly required.  In religions like Islam and Judaism, most rules fall into this category.  So my suggestion is to have a short list of requirements, and a potentially long list of expected behavior.  The requirements should be things that reflect our core values.

A good example is the Attend Religious Service rule.  This is something that I expect members to do, but it won't make any sense to a visitor to this site, so it doesn't belong in the list of requirements.  I think the same is true of a rule to read one Old Testament chapter a week.  On the other hand, a rule help each other is core to what we are about, so it makes sense to include this in the list of requirements.

I would like to keep the list to 5 items.  To do this and add "help each other", we would need to combine "dress modestly" and "have no tattoos".  I would like to discuss this again.  Here is the history of this topic:

http://www.mikraite.org/2-Dress-Modestly-and-Have-No-Tattoos-tp196.html
http://www.mikraite.org/split-rule-2-tp368.html

So in fact we had these combined and I wanted them separated when we had a very short list.  Now, with a longer list, I would like to combine them again.

The rules that are expected but not required could be pinned under the list of requirements.