Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on January 10, 2010, 07:19:23 pm
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'nuff said (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8450713.stm)
There have been more attacks on churches in Malaysia, in a growing dispute over the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims.
The police say petrol bombs were thrown at a church and a convent school in the state of Perak, and at a church in Sarawak on the island of Borneo.
Another church in the south of the country was daubed with black paint.
The attacks come days after four churches near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, were hit by petrol bombs.
Religious tensions in Malaysia have increased since a court ruled last month that a Roman Catholic newspaper could use the word Allah in its Malay-language edition to describe the Christian god.
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This doesn't seem to speak to Islam at large, only Islam in Malaysia.
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It's just the latest example. Here's a previous example if you forgot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoMeUcC_M20
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4684652.stm
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I disagree with the topic title as this is just rubberneck reflex. Also the WHOLE religion didn't bomb the church. A more appropriate title would be no place for zealous asshats in this century.
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Dude, based on your evidence... Islam and Christianity both. Muslims kill because somebody drew a picture of Muhammed, Christians kill because some men like it in the butt. I don't see how one is less horrific/retarded than the other.
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Given the strong tendencies for Islam to encourage this type of behavior as well as values that are centuries out of date, how can we expect anything else over something so trivial?
Christians kill because some men like it in the butt
In modern christian dominated countries (the "west") that is a hate crime, but in most Islamic countries they will either throw you in jail or have you executed for having it in the arse. And killing a homosexual? I seriously doubt they would seriously punish anyone who did.
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I mostly agree with Dekker's sentiments. This most certainly doesn't follow for all followers of Islam, and I would say that there is becoming less and less room for violent intolerance period. People can be as intolerant as they like as long as they're not doing bad to anyone. But how often does that happen with people? Regrettably, essentially never because intolerance by its very nature nearly necessitates that badness.
Anyways, I certainly didn't expect to see a thread of such an intolerant topic condemning an entire faith on what I thought was a fair-minded and level-headed forum.
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Certainly.
Islam in America does about as well as Christianity in America (arguably a bit better.)
You seem to be confusing the religion with the conditions in which the religion exists.
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Dearest Kosh, I'm sure I can come up with dozens of examples of Christans being much, much worse than Muslims in probably every catagory possible, and only a bit of that has to do with Christanity being around longer. But I won't because I don't want to waste the energy on it.
So I suggest you drop this subject, you'll only make yourself look worse if you continue.
I request this thread be locked now before things get out of hand, and they will.
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How does Islam abroad NOT encourage intolerance?
I request this thread be locked now before things get out of hand, and they will.
It's certainly easier to shutdown anything that isn't PC isnt it?
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I am probably not the only one who hates it when some people think that all muslims or Arabs are terrorists and that kind of silly stuff, like many here in USA probably think. It seems that the USA goes through certain phases on who they go to war with. In the 1900's, they had a thing for fighting orientals (Japan, Vietnam, Korea), and now the fad is war against Arabs and Arab countries :rolleyes: What's next? Africans? Latin countries?
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In modern christian dominated countries (the "west") that is a hate crime, but in most Islamic countries they will either throw you in jail or have you executed for having it in the arse. And killing a homosexual? I seriously doubt they would seriously punish anyone who did.
Uhm, just because our (supposed) secular government punishes Christians who kill gays doesn't make up for the fact that Christians (modern 1st world born-and-raised Christians, at that!) murder people for being gay. Or looking gay, as the case may be. If the Malaysian government punished Muslims who killed over depictions of Muhammed, would that change anyone's mind about Islam?
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And the funny thing about it is murder goes against Christanity, thus making them hypocrites.
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The whole thread seems to be a case of misattribution. While Islam may encourage radicalism, we have no way of knowing if it does so more than any other religion. The effects of Islam on radicalization cannot be disentangled from the secular economic, political, and cultural environments in which Islam exists. Islam may simply be a middleman between the actual causes and the effects.
Kosh is guilty of oversimplification. We cannot quantify the contribution of the Islam variable with any precision.
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I am probably not the only one who hates it when some people think that all muslims or Arabs are terrorists and that kind of silly stuff, like many here in USA probably think. It seems that the USA goes through certain phases on who they go to war with. In the 1900's, they had a thing for fighting orientals (Japan, Vietnam, Korea), and now the fad is war against Arabs and Arab countries :rolleyes: What's next? Africans? Latin countries?
Wow what an amazing summarization of history, your analysis of foreign policy and military conflict is staggering.
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Fundamentalists for both religions don't belong in this century, or the next. Period.
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Uhm, just because our (supposed) secular government punishes Christians who kill gays doesn't make up for the fact that Christians (modern 1st world born-and-raised Christians, at that!) murder people for being gay.
I never said they didn't, but those views are fringe, not mainstream. In Islamic countries homophobia is the mainstream.
You seem to be confusing the religion with the conditions in which the religion exists.
And if religious fundementalism created those conditions, then what? Do we ignore this because it isn't convenient?
The whole thread seems to be a case of misattribution. While Islam may encourage radicalism, we have no way of knowing if it does so more than any other religion.
At this point in time it is. The fact is, Islam is how Christianity USED to be. Whenever I look into what their mainstream views are, it is what christian mainstream views used to be decades, and in some cases centuries ago. Maybe it will someday modernize itself, but you know what? That day hasn't come yet.
Anyways, I certainly didn't expect to see a thread of such an intolerant topic condemning an entire faith on what I thought was a fair-minded and level-headed forum.
Pointing out the intolerance of others is intolerant? Wow. :p
I did find something (http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/EDL/forum/topics/hate-on-the-state-how-british?xg_source=activity) interesting:
British libraries are funded by the UK taxpayer to educate and entertain the British
public. Their range of books reflects the breadth of interests of the nation. However
a number of public libraries in the UK stock substantial quantities of literature
preaching violent jihad in the most heavily Muslim areas of the country.
Although this problem exists in numerous public libraries, in Waltham Forest,
Birmingham and Blackburn, the following report mainly focuses on one such library
service – that of Tower Hamlets in east London which has the largest Muslim
population of any London borough. Tower Hamlets’ eight lending libraries contain
several hundred books and audiotapes by radical Islamists, stocking the works and
words of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami, many senior
Wahhabi clerics and even preachers who have been convicted in the UK of incitement
to murder.
Many of these books stocked in the Islam section of libraries:
• Glorify acts of terrorism against followers of other religions
• Incite violence against anyone who rejects jihadist ideologies
• Endorse violence and discrimination against women
There's a pdf somewhere in that link with a full report.
EDIT:
I'll also throw in this nice map about homosexuality laws around the world I found in wikipedia:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/World_homosexuality_laws.svg/500px-World_homosexuality_laws.svg.png)
Purple means legal same sex marriages, light blue means legal partnerships, grey means no recognition (but no prohitibition), orange means significant penalties, maroon means death or life in jail. Certainly puts things into perspective.
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Pointing out the intolerance of others is intolerant? Wow. :p
The thread title speaks for itself:
Why Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century
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Kosh, seriously.
You are making the assumption that Islam = intolerance.
When for all we know, bad environment = intolerance, and it so happens that countries with bad environments also tend to be countries with a lot of Islam due to an underlying variable (Islam being popular in Third World nations, Christianity in First World.) Again, Islam may simply be a mediating factor, or an avenue by which tension expresses itself, rather than a source of tension.
You should know better than to tar all Muslims with the same ugly brush. There are happy, tolerant, fair-minded Muslims on this very board. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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Ironically, I was watching an episode of Anthony Bordain No Reservations on the travel channel today, and Anthony was in Egypt with Muslims and he got along with them just fine and spent the night in the desert with them and talked and ate a nice meal.
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Seriously. It's a shame to see Kosh succumbing to the same hysteria he so recently condemned.
The fact is that most of the world's Muslims are not significantly more radical than most of the world's anything elses. Were Islam even ten times as likely to produce radicals as any other religion, the vast majority would still be normal, healthy people.
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Modded +1 Flamebait.
Oh, this isn't Slashdot? Lock this puppy, I don't see any reasonable discussion coming out of this. I don't really have any more to say, since I pretty much agree 100% with Battuta.
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Islam in the Middle East as it stands doesn't belong in this century.
Same goes for Baptists from Kansas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church)
The religion itself isn't a problem. Demagogues exploiting a poverty-stricken downtrodden people through their dearly-beloved religion to carry out evil acts don't belong in this or any century.
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I'm not Islamic, but I can tell you that any decent Moslem (or Christian, for that matter) will tell you that violent acts against one's neighbor is unacceptable in most every case. The title of this thread is really friggin' poor. Anyone looking at this thread will most likely be immediately prompted to shoot you down, Kosh. I can't say I disagree...
Now, if you cite something like "Doctrinal Issues in Fanatical Islam" as a subject to name your thread, you might be able to carry on this discussion in a civilized manner. As that didn't happen, well... :doubt:
Now you, Zack: watch your generalizations and blaming specific groups. Last time I checked, homosexuality wasn't well recieved by ANY culture until recently... Ancient Greece and Rome have long since passed. This sort of behavior is going to take a while to be accepted, and will concievably never be accepted in certain regions, regardless of the group doing the wrong.
Doctrines in religions, governments, and societies ALL have a way of enforcing patterns of thought or conduct - no one here is free from that effect for better or worse. Religious fanatics have a great way of emphasizing one part of their teaching while disregarding others - this is flawed doctrine of the worst order. Even worse with regard to the bad, religion tends to maintain a degree of coherency throughout its body, so the poor aspects of a cult or docrine in the body may linger about for quite a while. I feel this happening in the Islamic community, especially in poorer regions. That's bloody obvious, of course, but there you go. Until the surrounding populace takes a strong stand by thinking for themselves and determining that violence is not the way, a good deal of these problems will continue to spread. Again, obvious...
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Now you, Zack: watch your generalizations and blaming specific groups.
Guess I wasn't clear enough. I was mostly just pointing out that Islam isn't the only major religion that produces hoards of violent, evil people who kill over silly things, so Kosh's statement can be applied to Christianity just as well. The homosexuality thing was just a random example that came to mind.
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The only difference between Christianity and Islam is that in western countries, secular authorities are held in higher regard than religious authorities. On both governmental and popular level, on average.
There are islamic countries where secular governmental power is in theory above the religious/ideological authorities, but if the religious authorities decide to cause problems a large percentage of the people will follow.
This is mainly caused by lousy educational levels which are often highly correlating with religious tendencies and - more importantly - the tendency to blindly follow figures of authority as a group without question, just because everyone else does. That is caused by the fact that the majority of approved schools are Quran schools which apart from being largely a tool of indoctrination, don't as a rule allow female pupils who thus are left without even that meager dose of schooling, which of course leaves them handily dependant of the males in the society.
Of course, the religious authorities in these countries aren't dumb. They know that they will only stay in the upper echelons of power as long as the population remains ignorant and unequal.
It's not religions by large that are "bad" or don't belong to 21st century, it's the people in positions of power that have a tremendous temptation and possibility to misuse their authority for their own gain.
Where religions don't belong is in the legislative, judicial and executive branches of power in any government or comparative organization. If any of these main branches of power are controlled by religious authorities or any other "always right" ideology, then it is very probable that in a very short time, the regime will stop representing what is best for the people. In Adama's immortal words... police and the military both have a duty to protect the people from the enemies of the state, but when the military becomes the police, the people tend to become enemies of the state. Not exact analogy, but you get the picture.
In other words, religions with excessive authority have historically been rather bad for those who happen to disagree.
Note that same can be said about any other regime with a totalitarian form of government. Which quite well showcases the fact that it's not the message of the religion/ideology/[insert noun here] that is bad as a rule, it's the people in charge of said organization and how they manage it.
Of course I personally disagree to any religion or ideology being indoctrinated into young children practically from birth, but each religion and ideology has their fundamentalists. There are christian fundamentalists who are, in ideology, as bad as islamic fundamentalists, it's just that it's not acceptable for them to act on their ideas, whereas in many islamic countries - especially the backwater areas - the religious authorities condone of such activities or points of views, if not outright encourage them.
Which brings us back to the point on how to prevent it. Make developing countries invest on their education beyond those damned Quran schools, and make them educate the females.
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Islam in the Middle East as it stands doesn't belong in this century.
Same goes for Baptists from Kansas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church)
But I think the kicker here is that the state of Kansas does not view such actions as generally tolerable or acceptable, and prosecutes said actions as hate crimes when they are taken to extremes. In contrast, certain countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia have enshrined the intolerance and bloodshed of Sharia as the sovereign law of the land, with all that that entails. Evil actions can be undertaken in the name of any institution under the sun by its constituent fanatics, but fundamental Islam represents a unique area of concern due to its thorough intermingling with the secular in many unstable portions of the globe.
No, I don't agree with Kosh's phrasing in the thread title. Yes, Christianity has committed far more than its share of institutionalized injustices throughout the past two millennia, and yes, injustices are still committed in the name of "Christianity" today. And as Battuta said, there are certainly socioeconomic factors at play in particular regions of the world, and it's a safe bet that there are a whole lot of people out there paying lip service to Islam as a means of achieving their own ends. But all of that having been said, there is a significant fraction of Islam as it is practiced today that is far out-of-line with the generally-accepted principles of civilized life in the 21st century, and there are notable members of the most prominent of Muslim clerics preaching a doctrine of hate and murder who are looked upon as being infallible by their followers. While it may have been a far more likely circumstance several centuries ago, in this day and age, you won't find the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury advocating a flat-out holy war against the Jewish people...sadly, one cannot say the same for the clerics of Iran.
No, Islam as a whole is not at fault, and the majority of the world's Muslims are just as decent human beings (if not more so) than any one of us here. But we can't hide our heads in the sand and deny that not-insignificant portions of institutionalized Islam need to do a few centuries' worth of evolving before large portions of the globe can have a feasible shot at living in peace.
Edit: Also, what Herra said, particularly about keeping any sort of religious doctrine out of the scope of civil authority.
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The fact remains that the 'problems with Islam' could as easily be 'problems with Christianity' or 'problems with Judaism' were, say, Islam the dominant religion of the prosperous, technologically advanced First World, and some other religion predominant in tribal, honor-based, backwards, underdeveloped, intolerant areas.
Radical Islam could as easily be a symptom as a cause.
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Thing is Christianity was designed to be a part of the government just like Islam. After the Middle Ages and centuries of religious wars in Europe, countries started realizing that church and state need to be separate. Higher standards of living and reasonable economic stability have only helped.
Maybe after Middle Eastern Islam goes through a similar transformation...
Radical Islam could as easily be a symptom as a cause.
Exactly.
Unequal distribution of wealth in Saudi Arabia-->general hatred of the West-->breeding ground for radical Islam.
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Thing is Christianity was designed to be a part of the government just like Islam. After the Middle Ages and centuries of religious wars in Europe, countries started realizing that church and state need to be separate. Higher standards of living and reasonable economic stability have only helped.
Maybe after Middle Eastern Islam goes through a similar transformation...
:wtf:
Be careful with statements like that. The early Church was pursecuted to a terrible extent by the governments in power. If necessary, go and find some early Church history. Same for Islam. If you want to make a reasonable argument, know your facts.
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Consider the example of Uganda. They’re on the verge of passing severe anti-gay legislation, including penalties of death or life imprisonment, and are predominantly Christian. What’s more, they’ve appropriated a fair portion of their anti-gay rhetoric from American evangelical Christians.
Or Jamaica, where sex between two men is punishable by lengthy prison sentences. Also predominantly Christian.
I’m sure there are more examples.
Considering this, is anyone here going to say that modern Christianity is fundamentally intolerant and incompatible with modern society? I kind of doubt it. No religion with such a long history is going to be entirely free of hold-overs from less rational and tolerant times, but the vast majority of its followers can still be rational, tolerant, benevolent members of society.
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Extremist assholes of any sort are terrible human beings.
Don't be one.
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Be careful with statements like that. The early Church was pursecuted to a terrible extent by the governments in power. If necessary, go and find some early Church history. Same for Islam. If you want to make a reasonable argument, know your facts.
I'm well aware of the early persecution by the Romans.
I'm talking about specific excerpts from the New Testament that essentially told its readers to submit to the government and do what they tell you to do. When the Word of God itself tells you to do what the guy on the throne wants you to do, you better do it.
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The early Church was pursecuted to a terrible extent by the governments in power.
The early Church bears little similarity to Christianity these days.
How many people do you see wearing fishes for instance?
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Be careful with statements like that. The early Church was pursecuted to a terrible extent by the governments in power. If necessary, go and find some early Church history. Same for Islam. If you want to make a reasonable argument, know your facts.
I'm well aware of the early persecution by the Romans.
I'm talking about specific excerpts from the New Testament that essentially told its readers to submit to the government and do what they tell you to do. When the Word of God itself tells you to do what the guy on the throne wants you to do, you better do it.
I think you're taking that WAY out of context. The issue there is moreso to not make a problem of yourself due to your beliefs.
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You are making the assumption that Islam = intolerance.
I think you could make a pretty good argument for that via extension from Sharia Law = Intolerance.
Since Islam defines itself as obeyance of God's Law, and Sharia Law defines itself as God's Law...yeah.
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How many people do you see wearing fishes for instance?
Bumper stickers.
Nuff said.
I think you're taking that WAY out of context. The issue there is moreso to not make a problem of yourself due to your beliefs.
No.
Powerplay by the Church to keep Europe in line. Believe it or not, the Church was fairly corrupt. Corrupt to the point that they even went in and selected which individual books warranted inclusion into the Bible.
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Isn't Islam expanding rapidly still? I don't see them going away anytime soon.
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How many people do you see wearing fishes for instance?
Crosses would be a better example, and the answer is 'more than you think' and you see the symbol of the fish on cars too. I don't know about London though. Of course if people are going to call themselves a certain faith and wear crosses, they best live like it or they shouldn't call themselves part of the religion. I hate when people call themselves a member of a religion and don't act like it because it is hypocrisy.
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How many people do you see wearing fishes for instance?
Bumper stickers.
Nuff said.
I think you're taking that WAY out of context. The issue there is moreso to not make a problem of yourself due to your beliefs.
No.
Powerplay by the Church to keep Europe in line. Believe it or not, the Church was fairly corrupt. Corrupt to the point that they even went in and selected which individual books warranted inclusion into the Bible.
Yeah. Tell us something new. Doctrine. The problem you're citing is man's doctrine. You'll notice such things as the Reformation (also imperfect due to doctrine) did a lot to combat that said corruption...
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Why Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century
'nuff said (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8450713.stm)
:wtf:
This is an article about a bunch of insecure nutjobs whose actions are condemned by a government with a policy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Malaysia) of emphasising racial and religious tolerance and harmony.
What does this have to do with Islam belonging in this century?
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Consider the example of Uganda. They’re on the verge of passing severe anti-gay legislation, including penalties of death or life imprisonment, and are predominantly Christian. What’s more, they’ve appropriated a fair portion of their anti-gay rhetoric from American evangelical Christians.
Or Jamaica, where sex between two men is punishable by lengthy prison sentences. Also predominantly Christian.
I’m sure there are more examples.
Considering this, is anyone here going to say that modern Christianity is fundamentally intolerant and incompatible with modern society? I kind of doubt it. No religion with such a long history is going to be entirely free of hold-overs from less rational and tolerant times, but the vast majority of its followers can still be rational, tolerant, benevolent members of society.
Thing is Christianity was designed to be a part of the government just like Islam. After the Middle Ages and centuries of religious wars in Europe, countries started realizing that church and state need to be separate. Higher standards of living and reasonable economic stability have only helped.
Maybe after Middle Eastern Islam goes through a similar transformation...
Radical Islam could as easily be a symptom as a cause.
Exactly.
Unequal distribution of wealth in Saudi Arabia-->general hatred of the West-->breeding ground for radical Islam.
These two posts make me happy.
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I hate when people call themselves a member of a religion and don't act like it because it is hypocrisy.
Or live up to whatever their interpretation of it is.
And to a disturbing number of people, Jesus probably drove an SUV, gave the bread and fish to the rich, and turned water into Coors Light.
Yeah. Tell us something new. Doctrine. The problem you're citing is man's doctrine. You'll notice such things as the Reformation (also imperfect due to doctrine) did a lot to combat that said corruption...
It's still in there. Bible corrupted and manipulated by the Church. Lutherans aren't a whole lot better. They're essentially Catholics with fewer Sacraments and no Saint worship. And the only reason Lutheranism kicked off is because the German princes used it as a foundation to attack the Catholic Church. If it weren't for them, the Protestant movement would've died out.
And while the Catholic church has gotten fairly more progressive and liberal, Lutherans in the States (as well as a fair number of other Protestant denominations) remain in the Martin Luther era. I speak from experience here.
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Powerplay by the Church to keep Europe in line. Believe it or not, the Church was fairly corrupt. Corrupt to the point that they even went in and selected which individual books warranted inclusion into the Bible.
So the Council of Nicea is corrupt? Back up here, you're treading on Mormon territory. Furthermore, without knowing what was rejected, you can't honestly call it corrupt. Do you know, have you read, the rejected books?
I mean, I've seen some of Acts that didn't make the cut. It can be pretty ****ing scary. Girls dying just before being raped being said to be better for them, but more importantly their relatives? Do you really want that be in doctrine?
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I'm just saying when any religious body makes an interpretation of a teaching and then squashes any opposing opinions violently, it's wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_religion#Islamic_countries)
I'm all for letting people choose for themselves. That's all I can say.
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Honor killing rape victims made it into the bible, so why not that?
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How many people do you see wearing fishes for instance?
On their car bumpers? Plenty. :p
The fact remains that the 'problems with Islam' could as easily be 'problems with Christianity' or 'problems with Judaism' were, say, Islam the dominant religion of the prosperous, technologically advanced First World, and some other religion predominant in tribal, honor-based, backwards, underdeveloped, intolerant areas.
Radical Islam could as easily be a symptom as a cause.
I do agree that symptom-vs-cause can probably be debated to great length, but the manifestation of radical Islam as symptom and/or cause is what generally concerns the West from a practical standpoint. At this present time, the vast majority of international terrorist incidents with an apparent religious motive are being conducted by those who profess to believe in a radical variant of Islam, not Christianity or Judaism. As you said, the roles could have potentially been reversed had circumstances transpired differently (and indeed, they were reversed during the glory days of the Islamic Empire in the Middle Ages), but this is the present reality that we're confronted with.
Thing is Christianity was designed to be a part of the government just like Islam. After the Middle Ages and centuries of religious wars in Europe, countries started realizing that church and state need to be separate. Higher standards of living and reasonable economic stability have only helped.
Maybe after Middle Eastern Islam goes through a similar transformation...
Again, that's the real kicker, and I think that was the point Koth was trying to make. Christianity constructed very similar situations in various venues throughout history, but the West managed to largely move past said situations by a few centuries ago. Radical Islam, unfortunately, apparently hasn't made it to that point yet, and it's still anybody's guess as to exactly how that transformation will be achieved.
And yes, I don't deny that there are largely-Christian nations out there pulling some deplorable stunts of their own. Pretty much the only leg up they have over state-sponsored radical Islam at this present time is that they generally aren't exporting said stunsin the form of terrorist actions, though who knows what the future may bring, I guess.
Aaaaand this has careened wildly off-course just in the time I was writing this, and I seem to have been beaten to my one point at least twice over. Just another day in GD, right? :p
(Note to self: don't get suckered into the Reformation sinkhole again. In that way lies pain. But for the umpteenth time, it's not saint worship. :p)
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Honor killing rape victims made it into the bible, so why not that?
Y'know I'm gonna want chapter and verse on that one, and I'm an atheist. I've seen a lot of crap cited from Leviticus but that's a new one.
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I think she's misinterpreting something you said up-thread.
I mean, I've seen some of Acts that didn't make the cut. It can be pretty ****ing scary. Girls dying just before being raped being said to be better for them, but more importantly their relatives? Do you really want that be in doctrine?
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You are making the assumption that Islam = intolerance.
It's not an assumption, it is an observation based on available literature as well as personal experiences (and the annecdotes of others). It openly expouses all kinds of massive intolerance and their society has not evolved past it. This is a real problem (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/04/comment.religion)
You should know better than to tar all Muslims
I'm not taring all muslims, and when I criticize christianity am I taring all christians? Of course not, and to say such nonsense is to distract from the real issue with PC propaganda.
There are happy, tolerant, fair-minded Muslims on this very board.
Yeah, as though this board represents everyone in the world. :rolleyes: I never said they don't exist.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
I find your obsessive post modernism disturbing.
When for all we know, bad environment = intolerance, and it so happens that countries with bad environments also tend to be countries with a lot of Islam due to an underlying variable (Islam being popular in Third World nations, Christianity in First World.)
I'll re-iterate, in many of these countries Islam and government go hand in hand, and the religion's fundemental values is the state enforced ideology. So once again, how is religion not creating a bad environment in those states?
Maybe after Middle Eastern Islam goes through a similar transformation...
Yes, but the point I was trying to make was that is still HASN'T transformed.
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Congratulations everyone who mentioned bumper stickers on completely missing the point I was making. :rolleyes:
The cross was not an early symbol of Christianity yet it is now the one that everyone wears. My point was that it is a simple, very obvious example of the fact that modern Christianity is very different from early Christianity.
Oh and while we're at it. Fish bumper stickers are an American thing. They're much, much rarer in the UK for instance.
Honor killing rape victims made it into the bible, so why not that?
Y'know I'm gonna want chapter and verse on that one, and I'm an atheist. I've seen a lot of crap cited from Leviticus but that's a new one.
Deuteronomy Chapter 22.
22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
22:24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
22:25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.
22:26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:
22:27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.
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Wow, that's screwed up. I was going to suggest that the first part doesn't necessarily suggest rape, but by contrast with the second, it clearly does.
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The cross was not an early symbol of Christianity
Really? Jesus died on the cross, and that was the beginning of the new testament (Christianity was born after Jesus died and Judeism is the old testament) plus the cross predated Christanity, I think, like crucifiction predated Christianity. Something about that on the history channel.
By the way, Islam and Christianity are said to have similar origins and originate around the same geographical area.
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I'm not targeting this at karajorma at all, since all he did was dig up the passage in question, but I've always been amused by the insinuation that any particular verse from Deuteronomy has direct bearing on life in modern society just because of its inclusion in the Bible as a whole. Yes, the ancient Israelites were held to that particular set of laws, and yes, said laws sucked ass from a modern perspective...but human society as a whole sucked ass back then from a modern perspective, and said laws were perfectly in keeping with the norms of societal order of that time. Dictates about stoning victims of rape hold no more sway over us today than the declaration of the value of pi as exactly three.
To put it more simply and/or theologically, Christ himself stated that he represented a "new covenant" with humanity, in place of the old strictures of Jewish law that he called out the Pharisees as hypocrites for strictly obeying. And the fundamental principles of said covenant? Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as you would yourself. The core of the Christian life is as simple as that.
(whee, veering ever off-topic)
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Why Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century
'nuff said (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8450713.stm)
:wtf:
This is an article about a bunch of insecure nutjobs whose actions are condemned by a government with a policy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Malaysia) of emphasising racial and religious tolerance and harmony.
What does this have to do with Islam belonging in this century?
You're talking about a country that throws people in jail for turning away from Islam and has Saudi style religious police. Even if they have no authority over non muslims, it's still medeival, and creates a breeding ground for intolerance.
Seriously. It's a shame to see Kosh succumbing to the same hysteria he so recently condemned.
It's a shame to see you so completely miss my point and accuse me being hysterical.
I’m sure there are more examples.
Both of them were former British colonies, and actually the non muslim countries that have problems with it are usually commonwealth countries. But once again, bringing this up is irrelevant to the topic. There's plenty of other things to bash christianity about that can be saved for a different discussion.
Considering this, is anyone here going to say that modern Christianity is fundamentally intolerant and incompatible with modern society? I kind of doubt it.
I will. Everyone who says "oh yeah but christianity is......" proceeds from the assumption that I am prefering christianity over islam, which I am not. I'm an atheist, and frankly I don't have any special love for it and hold it with great disdain.
(whee, veering ever off-topic)
Bringing up christianity when critiquing any non-christian belief is a common post modernist ploy to avoid an honest look at real problems. We've seen this before. Anyway, back ontopic.
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Dearest Kosh, I'm sure I can come up with dozens of examples of Christans being much, much worse than Muslims in probably every catagory possible, and only a bit of that has to do with Christanity being around longer.
Here's one. :P
(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6786/motivationaldarkages1.jpg)
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ITT the Inquisition killed Star Trek :D
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Kosh, could you please address any of the number of points that have been made to counter your argument rather than selectively avoiding them?
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Considering this, is anyone here going to say that modern Christianity is fundamentally intolerant and incompatible with modern society? I kind of doubt it.
I will. Everyone who says "oh yeah but christianity is......" proceeds from the assumption that I am prefering christianity over islam, which I am not. I'm an atheist, and frankly I don't have any special love for it and hold it with great disdain.
Y'know, I was considering adding a nod to radical atheists to that argument, especially as I’m an atheist myself. But I find your statement that you’re not preferring Christianity over Islam kind of disingenuous, since the thread clearly singles out Islam as opposed to criticizing religion in general. My post attempted to counter the point that Islam is necessarily more intolerant than other major religions, nothing more.
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I still think it remarkable that the same kind of hysterical fear which drove so much post-9/11 policy is now popping up here, from the fingers of someone who was a clear opponent of that policy.
Understanding why things actually happen in the world is the best way to help solve them. Whatever force created 'radical Islam' could as easily have created 'radical Christianity' or 'radical Buddhism'. The important point is to identify that underlying force. In all likelihood it's a complex of nationalism, anti-colonial backlash, internal strife in the Muslim world, and general failure to modernize on a political and economic level.
Vilifying all practitioners of a religion will do nothing to help solve the problem. If anything, it will exacerbate it.
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I'm not targeting this at karajorma at all, since all he did was dig up the passage in question, but I've always been amused by the insinuation that any particular verse from Deuteronomy has direct bearing on life in modern society just because of its inclusion in the Bible as a whole.
When did I say it had any direct bearing on modern society?
My point was that you can't say "Oh the Koran is so barbaric. It has stuff in it that is so terrible" without acknowledging that the Bible has equally horrible stuff in it.
Yes, the ancient Israelites were held to that particular set of laws, and yes, said laws sucked ass from a modern perspective...but human society as a whole sucked ass back then from a modern perspective, and said laws were perfectly in keeping with the norms of societal order of that time. Dictates about stoning victims of rape hold no more sway over us today than the declaration of the value of pi as exactly three.
To put it more simply and/or theologically, Christ himself stated that he represented a "new covenant" with humanity, in place of the old strictures of Jewish law that he called out the Pharisees as hypocrites for strictly obeying. And the fundamental principles of said covenant? Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as you would yourself. The core of the Christian life is as simple as that.
However those laws came directly from God. You can't simply say that they look barbaric from a modern point of view because the entity who supposedly set those rules and put that barbarism in play is supposedly omniscient. If God had wanted less barbaric rules he could have made less barbaric rules and smacked down anyone who acted in a more extreme manner.
Secondly, you can't really blame the Jews for following them as we've got countless examples in the Bible of exactly what God did to people who didn't obey his laws. :p
While you can argue that those laws no longer need to be followed due to the new covenant with Jesus you can't deny their original source was divine unless you are willing to admit that there are parts of the Bible that are complete perversions of what God actually intended.
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Similarly, the argument that sharia on its own is problematic seems null and void, because Christians under similar circumstances are behaving in the same way (doing barbaric things to people due to religious law.) It is clearly the situations surrounding the religion that matter.
If Islam were transplanted into the First World it would not, I think, be problematic. Thus Kosh's point seems silly.
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Kosh, could you please address any of the number of points that have been made to counter your argument rather than selectively avoiding them?
I've addressed most of the points against me. I selectively quote because many posts often have many points. Because many of the posts are just backslapping I didn't feel it was necessary to repeat myself. Also, even though I went pretty far out of my way to cover most of the stuff you said, I've seen little to no retorts coming from you against any of the points brought against you. Instead you've just been repeating yourself.
I still think it remarkable that the same kind of hysterical fear which drove so much post-9/11 policy is now popping up here,from the fingers of someone who was a clear opponent of that policy.
I've already addressed this point. You've accused me if ignoring posts when you yourself ignore anything that doesn't fit your post modernist paradigm.
Similarly, the argument that sharia on its own is problematic seems null and void, because Christians under similar circumstances are behaving in the same way (doing barbaric things to people due to religious law.)
And I've addressed this point as well.
If Islam were transplanted into the First World it would not, I think, be problematic.
Do you actually read any of my posts? I've given two examples that prove that it does and you've said nothing.
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I'm going to take this to a new level and suggest that any religious sect that uses its religion to incite violence and intolerance does not belong in this century, or any century here after.
When I see doctors being killed for abortions, people killed for being gay and for believing something different, I cannot help but see religion as a psychotic delusion that anyone can interpret to serve their own interests. And its interpretations often cause harm, ranging anywhere from assault to genocide. And the rub is most religious dogmas do not even make logical sense. Many religions, even at their best, serve to deter advancement and free thought, being cluttered with "Do this or suffer extreme punishment" threats.
One thing religion does well is motivate people. It unifies gargantuan masses for a common purpose, and gives humanity an opportunity to do great things. But great is not always good, and more often than not, this great thing has been destructive and violent.
The way I see it, criminalizing religious sects that preach violence and intolerance will be a giant leap forward for mankind. Such an act cuts out the venom of religion, and paves way for cooperation, compassion and brotherhood.
Unfortunately, there are many regions of the world where life is so hard and anger runs so deep that simply outlawing violent religions will not work. You can never fight fire with a fire--the whole world burns only faster. The best way to undo extremism is to provide education and opportunity to its followers.
It is unfortunate that the world's ideologies are so vehemently divided. It is sad to see violence on one side responded to with violence on the other. If people really were interested in spreading the peace many of their religions call them to, they should pay more attention to what their holy doctrines say about loving their neighbors.
Though, responding with compassion and aid seems like surrendering, giving in to intimidation. I understand people feel that when attacked you must crush your enemy in battle. This is not the case. It has long been a taught in my family that when someone tries to taunt you or incite you to violence, the moment you turn violent you have lost. It is by staying true to our values and our compassion that we defeat aggression. If you can hold your composure, you have triumphed over your enemy--they failed to distract you from your purpose, they failed to unsettle you and enrage you. You have shown them their violence will gain them nothing. You can still crush an enemy without ever resorting to combat.
In the case of extremist groups, this aid does not help them--education and opportunities weaken them by providing their followers with alternative opportunities, education and knowledge that undermines their leaders, undoing those leaders' influence.
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Do you actually read any of my posts? I've given two examples that prove that it does and you've said nothing.
I haven't seen any such examples - just further instances of you confusing cause and effect. Your claim that you've 'proven' an incredibly complicated historical scenario indicates a problematic degree of cognitive overconfidence. It's a peculiar truth of psychology that only the incompetent are highly confident: one hallmark of expertise in any domain is a tendency towards hedging and probabilistic rather than certain assessments of accuracy.
Please refute the following two arguments, neither of which you have yet touched in spite of your claims to have:
Radical Islam does not produce itself. It is a product of a complex of geopolitical factors which could have had a similar effect on any religion. Radical Islam is only a symptom of an underlying problem.
Even if Islam produces radicals at a higher rate than other religions, most Muslims are normal citizens, and therefore tarring all Muslims with a same brush is a shameful generalization - in the same way that saying Black people do not belong in America is a shameful generalization, even if Black people do statistically have a lower average income and a greater crime rate. Talking about 'postmodernism' is nonsensical - what does that even mean? You think I'm expressing "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions"?
You are guilty of using anecdotes in the place of population statistics. I wish you had a better background in science.
I also think it's funny how people on both ends of the political spectrum complain about being silenced on these boards. Apparently we've got a crippling moderate bias around here. :rolleyes: I'll lock this if Kosh turns farther from civilized argument and deeper into simple trolling. As it is he's dangerously close to hate speech.
Ironically if he'd made a post rather like the one Esarai just did (which I imagine he'd agree with, as do - for the most part - I) I doubt we'd be here right now ganging up on him. If the post had been 'radical religion doesn't belong in this century', sure. But saying that an entire religion doesn't belong in this century conveys such incredible misunderstanding and fear that it can only be met with disbelief and condemnation. The psychology of Kosh's behavior is simple, but unfortunately the solutions aren't, since we've got an entire neoconservative movement here in the US which basically thinks the same way.
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I found this really interesting. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10kristof.html)
It makes some of the same points esarai is making, but points out that religion can be as much a part of the solution to global intolerance and injustice as it is of the problem, a progressive force instead of a regressive one.
There is of course plenty of fodder, in both the Koran and the Bible, for those who seek a theology of discrimination.
The New Testament quotes St. Paul (I Timothy 2) as saying that women “must be silent.” Deuteronomy declares that if a woman does not bleed on her wedding night, “the men of her town shall stone her to death.” An Orthodox Jewish prayer thanks God, “who hast not made me a woman.” The Koran stipulates that a woman shall inherit less than a man, and that a woman’s testimony counts for half a man’s.
In fairness, many scholars believe that Paul did not in fact write the passages calling on women to be silent. Islam started out as socially progressive for women — banning female infanticide and limiting polygamy — but did not continue to advance.
But religious leaders sanctified existing social structures, instead of pushing for justice. In Africa, it would help enormously if religious figures spoke up for widows disenfranchised by unjust inheritance traditions — or for rape victims, or for schoolgirls facing sexual demands from their teachers. Instead, in Uganda, the influence of conservative Christians is found in a grotesque push to execute gays.
Yet paradoxically, the churches in Africa that have done the most to empower women have been conservative ones led by evangelicals and especially Pentecostals. In particular, Pentecostals encourage women to take leadership roles, and for many women this is the first time they have been trusted with authority and found their opinions respected. In rural Africa, Pentecostal churches are becoming a significant force to emancipate women.
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Wow, rereading Kosh's post, this is a little sickening. "Their society has not evolved past it." So the HLP Muslims reading this thread, they haven't evolved past it? Because they are a part of this 'their society' you're making generalizations about. So are all the completely normal, peaceful Muslims out there (which make up the bulk of the religion.)
You could have averted all of this by titling the thread 'Why Radical Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century', or better yet 'radical religion'. But you had to go and make claims to understand every Muslim everywhere. None of them, according to your claim, believe in a religion which belongs in this century.
Let me quote myself here:
Understanding why things actually happen in the world is the best way to help solve them. Whatever force created 'radical Islam' could as easily have created and perpetuated 'radical Christianity' or 'radical Buddhism'. The important point is to identify that underlying force. In all likelihood it's a complex of nationalism, anti-colonial backlash, internal strife in the Muslim world, and general failure to modernize on a political and economic level.
Vilifying all practitioners of a religion will do nothing to help solve the problem. If anything, it will exacerbate it.
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ITT Kosh says all Muslims are evil and Christians are good. lol
fun being on the other side of this isn't it?
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Wow, rereading Kosh's post, this is a little sickening. "Their society has not evolved past it." So the HLP Muslims reading this thread, they haven't evolved past it? Because they are a part of this 'their society' you're making generalizations about. So are all the completely normal, peaceful Muslims out there (which make up the bulk of the religion.)
lol cause that's what he's ****ing talking about. :lol:
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That's what he said. Do you have a way to interpret it differently?
You are making the assumption that Islam = intolerance.
It's not an assumption, it is an observation based on available literature as well as personal experiences (and the annecdotes of others). It openly expouses all kinds of massive intolerance and their society has not evolved past it.
He made a claim to unqualified knowledge about an entire religion. Note that this is explicitly unqualified: 'it', the religion, 'their society' - the society of practitioners. He did not, as others have, limit it to 'Islam in the Middle East' or 'Radical Islam' or anything of the sort. He made a claim about 'the society of Muslims'. He has established a hostile outgroup and is now producing generalizations about it.
In fact he went so far as to endorse the statement 'Islam = intolerance.' That direct. No mediating factors, no underlying variables, just black and white Baptist preacher material.
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I guess Kosh thinks that the west is superior in everyway, and if other societies do not follow the western thought process and aren't so-called modernized, then they should be changed into the west, but I do not think it has to go so far. It isn't right to erase cultures or religions and it isn't up to him or anyone to enforce that on other countries. How would western countries like it if eastern countries erased their culture? It works both ways. In certain ways, the older traditions have good qualities, but in some ways, they don't. The same for too much westernization. For one, as you see too much westernization taking place in certain countries, old healthier foods and recipes seem to be replaced with too much fast food and too much processing of the food, making it almost impossible to avoid the chemical enriched fake food. That is awful when it goes too far. Moderation and balance seems like the best solution to almost everything in life and gives the most pros with the least cons.
It seems that the only truly peaceful religion without so much negative that I know about, though not truly a religion but more a lifestyle, would be Buddhism. It seems more peaceful and doesn't seem to involve killing non-believers, and has many good teachings like many religions, like self discipline, being honest, etc, but seems to add more self improvement to the equation, as well as being pro-environmental and preserving nature.
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The simple fact is that if you raise a devout Muslim in a middle-class American family he or she probably has no more a chance of turning into a radical than a devout Christian. Let alone a merely 'practicing' member of either faith. This suggests that the faith itself is basically irrelevant and the conditions are what matter. The only reason we get more radicals out of Islam is because Islam occupies portions of the globe where conditions are comparatively bad.
Kosh's last argument against this assertion was two-part.
First, he asserted that Islam insinuates itself into political structures, perpetuating the issue. Yet it is apparent that other religions can do so as well. Clearly, we cannot predict that Islam is somehow particularly virulent in this respect due to some trait of its tenets and doctrine rather than due to the environment it exists in. (Kosh would have a fair argument if, like NGTM-1R, he had pursued the issue of sharia law, which is specifically problematic; yet sharia law is not widely obeyed by Muslim citizens in First World countries, suggesting it too is an environmental factor.)
Second, he asserted that the kerfuffle over political cartoons was evidence against this. Yet that outrage occurred primarily amongst recent immigrants and in Muslim countries in poor circumstances.
None of these arguments can address the fact that there are vast, stable, non-radical populations of Muslims who are as healthy and calm as any Christian, Buddhist, or Atheist. And that statistically inassailable fact means that we cannot assign blame to the tenets of Islam as a faith rather than to the conditions in which Islam exists.
If we wrote an alternate history novel (as Iain Banks once did) in which Islam was the religion of the modern world and Rastafarianism the religion of the Third World, we would see alternate-Kosh posting a thread on alternate-HLP about how Rastafarianism has no place in this century, given the virulent outbreaks of homicidal reefer madness currently devouring the globe. It would, of course, ignore all the happy Jamaicans and what-nots going about their lives in peace.
Singling out a single religion as one that 'does not belong in the century' is a claim that requires extraordinary proof. It requires proof that the religion on its own, taken separately from geopolitical factors conflated with the analysis, breeds intolerance. Kosh has made this claim: he endorsed the simple equation "Islam = intolerance." He has been so far unable to substantiate this claim.
Making such a claim about religion in general would be more defensible, but even then, probably incorrect; ingroup like and outgroup dislike is a fundamental trait of human psychology, and it has always, ALWAYS been exacerbated by issues of resource distribution.
I do think it's important to recognize one point in Kosh's favor: that poverty and bad education alone are not what makes a terrorist; many are middle-class, well-educated, and motivated by religious philosophy they picked up online or from friends. But the fundamental systems that establish this cycle of religious radicalization are not driven by tenets of the faith itself; rather they are rooted in the geopolitical realities of an entire band of the world which was essentially pieced together, Frankenstein-style, from colonial remnants while undergoing a massive post-colonial backlash. We have no way of knowing if Islam is peculiarly prone to radicalization (which is the claim being made here.)
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Although I am someone completely unreligous, I can appreciate peoples passion in this discussion.
Just for some clarity in this matter, to see how silly the whole conflicting jeff christ vs alan someone view is. Substitute Christianity for manchester united and Islam for the St Louis Cardinals.
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ok I'm going to not bother reading the last wall of text cause I'm tired and I don't think it pertains to me.
No he is talking about the culture centred in the mid east that has been exported through the rest of the world. yeah if you want to be anal about it using the religion as the determining factor isn't absolutely 100% accurate description, but said culture is obsessed with said religion so that'll only be a problem if you run into some ass hats who are more interested in showing how 'tolerant' and 'progresive' they are and reacting to what they have been trained to recognise as hostile rhetorical markers than thinking and discussing a point.... oh... yeah...
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You know galloping like this is not a good strategy. Actually it's often used by creationists to push their nonsense.
I'll lock this if Kosh turns farther from civilized argument and deeper into simple trolling.
You are the one has been trolling, you come at me with huge walls of text making it rather time consuming to respond to all of them, and even when I do you often totally ignore what I said, instead inserting your own often irrelevant comparisons, straw mans, and no doubt many other fallacies. If it didn't take so much time to reply to said galloping I would go through and point them out.
ITT Kosh says all Muslims are evil and Christians are good. lol
fun being on the other side of this isn't it?
For the simple minded here: That is not what I said. Not once did I ever mention the word "christian" unless it was in responce to someone elses pointless reference.
The simple fact is that if you raise a devout Muslim in a middle-class American family he or she probably has no more a chance of turning into a radical than a devout Christian.
Your average middle class american family is not muslim.
In fact he went so far as to endorse the statement 'Islam = intolerance.'
I'll tell you what, when mainstream imams in muslim dominated countries stop preaching intolerance, I'll withdraw that statement. People have died for criticizing Islam, and others have been forced into police protection because of credible threats.
So the HLP Muslims reading this thread, they haven't evolved past it?
I never said they didn't. Take a good look at the societies of Islamic countries, and compare them with how western societies used to be decades or centuries ago. Notice all the similairities. I can't make it any simpler than that. This is what my point was to begin with.
Radical Islam does not produce itself. It is a product of a complex of geopolitical factors which could have had a similar effect on any religion. Radical Islam is only a symptom of an underlying problem.
That is true to a point, but considering that Islam is in a Dark Age of sorts, so wound up with their religion that little has come out of the middle east for centuries.
I haven't seen any such examples
You must be blind (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/04/comment.religion). You said there would be no problem if islam was transported into western societies, this shows you're wrong to at least some degree. Nothing to do with cause and effect.
You could have averted all of this by titling the thread 'Why Radical Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century', or better yet 'radical religion'. But you had to go and make claims to understand every Muslim everywhere.
Maybe you must have missed the religious police and other common features of muslim countries.
Even if Islam produces radicals at a higher rate than other religions, most Muslims are normal citizens,
That maybe so, but what about their values? Muslims in america != muslims in muslim dominated countries.
That's all I have time to reply to for now. I'll be back later for more.
No he is talking about the culture centred in the mid east that has been exported through the rest of the world. yeah if you want to be anal about it using the religion as the determining factor isn't absolutely 100% accurate description, but said culture is obsessed with said religion so that'll only be a problem if you run into some ass hats who are more interested in showing how 'tolerant' and 'progresive' they are and reacting to what they have been trained to recognise as hostile rhetorical markers than thinking and discussing a point.... oh... yeah...
Bingo, someone got it.
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I'll lock this if Kosh turns farther from civilized argument and deeper into simple trolling.
oh, it's awesome when the authorities disagree with you, they can just be all 'u iz troling' and lock the thread/monkey you to make you stop spewing your 'hate speech' (i.e. things they don't feel like hearing/having other people hear), and they can edit your posts and modify the titles of your threads. oh so loverly.
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Christianity is far superior to Islam, and I can prove it: In Islam, your 'Go to heaven free' card is to give your life to blow someone into little pieces; in Christianity, 'go to heaven free' by laying doen your life trying to save someone elses.
Politically incorrect query: Does it say anywhere in the Quran that the 70-odd virgins they are to receive are female? How about a bunch of 18-year old virgin homosexuals? What a pain! :D
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Christianity is far superior to Islam, and I can prove it: In Islam, your 'Go to heaven free' card is to give your life to blow someone into little pieces; in Christianity, 'go to heaven free' by laying doen your life trying to save someone elses.
Politically incorrect query: Does it say anywhere in the Quran that the 70-odd virgins they are to receive are female? How about a bunch of 18-year old virgin homosexuals? What a pain! :D
the blow yourself up thing is a twisting of the faith by extremists who are using the religion for their own ends (whether it be political power, hatred of a certain group or any other reason).
Islam as a whole like with Christianity and its origin Judaism scorn taking your own life no matter what the reason
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Christians are superior and I have my little Dark Ages graph one page back. :P
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The problem, to my mind, is organised, hierarchical religion systems, they are what causes the danger, there's a reason that the Lord's prayer sounds acoustically similar to 'We are the Borg, You will be assimilated, Resistance is Futile'.
Religion stopped being about Gods and started being about power a long, long time ago.
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Why does every second thread end up being about bashing religion or pro religion?
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Because it's all nonsence, all it ever does is cause confrontation.
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Christianity is far superior to Islam, and I can prove it: In Islam, your 'Go to heaven free' card is to give your life to blow someone into little pieces; in Christianity, 'go to heaven free' by laying doen your life trying to save someone elses.
Chapter and verse? Because I thought Christianity's "go to heaven free" card was simply believing that someone else laid down his life for you.
And don't distort it. The Church for hundreds of years said that heaven was guaranteed to anyone who went to the Holy Land to slaughter the infidels, or that salvation was guaranteed for you and your relatives if you donated money (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgences#Abuses) to the Church.
Urban II's own letter to the Flemish confirms that he granted "remission of all their sins" to those undertaking a "military enterprise" to "liberate the eastern churches."
Politically incorrect query: Does it say anywhere in the Quran that the 70-odd virgins they are to receive are female? How about a bunch of 18-year old virgin homosexuals? What a pain! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwtDrRWHgr0
:p
Also at 4:32 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAZisTrw5FU&feature=related
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IIRC Islam's 'Go to heaven free' card is 'submission to the will of Allah'. yeah, there's no way that could be misused by a religious leader with political ambitions
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Depends which Christianity you're talking about. Lutherans believe everyone is going to heaven. Baptists believe only the baptized are going to heaven. Jehovah's Witnesses believe 144,000 people are going to heaven. WBC believes only WBC is going to heaven. Etc.
Where's Turambar, I'm sure he can clear this all up.
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it's all fairytales and bull****. humans are capable of morality on their own, and thus religion has no place in this world in general.
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Good enough for me.
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ok I'm going to not bother reading the last wall of text cause I'm tired and I don't think it pertains to me.
No he is talking about the culture centred in the mid east that has been exported through the rest of the world. yeah if you want to be anal about it using the religion as the determining factor isn't absolutely 100% accurate description, but said culture is obsessed with said religion so that'll only be a problem if you run into some ass hats who are more interested in showing how 'tolerant' and 'progresive' they are and reacting to what they have been trained to recognise as hostile rhetorical markers than thinking and discussing a point.... oh... yeah...
That's not what Kosh said. If he had said that he might have had some ground to stand on. But nowhere in this thread has he parametrized his arguments down to that group.
He is unable to substantiate his points. Instead, he claims that my posts are too long and complicated for him to understand (god forbid that a nuanced argument is required to tackle such a complicated issue.) Meanwhile, in the face of overwhelming opposition, he claims that he is being silenced.
There's not a single counter-argument made in his last post, merely blind assertion that 'I am right'.
I'll lock this if Kosh turns farther from civilized argument and deeper into simple trolling.
oh, it's awesome when the authorities disagree with you, they can just be all 'u iz troling' and lock the thread/monkey you to make you stop spewing your 'hate speech' (i.e. things they don't feel like hearing/having other people hear), and they can edit your posts and modify the titles of your threads. oh so loverly.
Funny, we've had multiple requests to lock this thread from members of the community so far, and yet nobody has locked it. That seems to suggest remarkable restraint on the part of the authorities, doesn't it?
Haven't edited anybody's posts or modified anybody's threads.
That maybe so, but what about their values? Muslims in america != muslims in muslim dominated countries.
Only here is Kosh beginning to show some sense - he recognizes that environment is what matters, not religion.
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Ok, wading deeper into the general's statements:
But saying that an entire religion doesn't belong in this century conveys such incredible misunderstanding and fear that it can only be met with disbelief and condemnation.
Actually your position is the one that doesn't make any sense. You're defending a culture where preaching intolerance and hate is the mainstream by calling the person who called them out intolerant. Does that make any sense? Of course not. I'm not preaching they should be wiped out, I'm not preaching that they are inferior, I'm not saying "OMG Teh brown people are coming lulz!!", I'm not saying any of that. What I said was the values that most of them choose to hold onto doesn't belong in this century, and there's a fair number of reasons why. But it's just easier to call it "hate speech" and label me a troll for bringing up what is politically inconvenient and respond with a flood of illogical kneejerk arguments. And frankly this isn't the only religion that doesn't belong in this century, but that I didn't bring that up because it is 100% irrelevant to this discussion.
Talking about 'postmodernism' is nonsensical - what does that even mean?
Post modernist thinking is basically "almost everything is equal".
The psychology of Kosh's behavior is simple, but unfortunately the solutions aren't, since we've got an entire neoconservative movement here in the US which basically thinks the same way.
Simple only to those who don't understand it. You think my views are based on fear and ignorance, but that not the case. I'm not a neo-con.
You are guilty of using anecdotes in the place of population statistics. I wish you had a better background in science.
If you actually looked at what I said, I said I use available evidence AND annecdotes (my own as well as others). It's funny how you latch onto the last half of that statement and completely ignored the first half, then accuse me of trolling for disagreeing with you. That is massive intellectual dishonesty.
None of them, according to your claim, believe in a religion which belongs in this century.
There is no religion that belongs in this century, but that is a seperate issue.
If we wrote an alternate history novel (as Iain Banks once did) in which Islam was the religion of the modern world and Rastafarianism the religion of the Third World, we would see alternate-Kosh posting a thread on alternate-HLP about how Rastafarianism has no place in this century, given the virulent outbreaks of homicidal reefer madness currently devouring the globe.
Straw man, because in such a hypothetical situation while I might go after the Rastafarianism on an occation like this I would also have no qualms about going after Islam (or whatever the dominant religion is), either because of its backwardness or just because it is simply superstitious nonsense.
Kosh has made this claim: he endorsed the simple equation "Islam = intolerance." He has been so far unable to substantiate this claim.
Yes (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/04/comment.religion) I did, (http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/EDL/forum/topics/hate-on-the-state-how-british?xg_source=activity) and that was just a quick 1 minute search, if I looked more I would without a doubt turn up even more.
Second, he asserted that the kerfuffle over political cartoons was evidence against this. Yet that outrage occurred primarily amongst recent immigrants and in Muslim countries in poor circumstances.
That was only one piece of evidence, and the outrage was a lot more widespread than muslim immigrants to western europe. There were large scale protests (in Pakistan these protests had tens of thousands of people) in many islamic countries, the danish embasies in syria, iran, and lebanon were firebombed, and about 100 people DIED. That video I posted earlier was just a small taste of what actually happened in the world.
Source 1 (http://web.archive.org/web/20060326071135/http://www.cartoonbodycount.com/) source 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_cartoons)
All of this over cartoons.
Why does every second thread end up being about bashing religion or pro religion?
Because there's so much to bash about it and so many brainwashed followers combined with apologists to defend it. :p
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Christianity is far superior to Islam, and I can prove it: In Islam, your 'Go to heaven free' card is to give your life to blow someone into little pieces; in Christianity, 'go to heaven free' by laying doen your life trying to save someone elses.
Politically incorrect query: Does it say anywhere in the Quran that the 70-odd virgins they are to receive are female? How about a bunch of 18-year old virgin homosexuals? What a pain! :D
Tell me what the five pillars of Islam are and the difference between lesser and greater Jihad.
That maybe so, but what about their values? Muslims in america != muslims in muslim dominated countries.
Now you're beginning to get it. You understand that the environment is what produces extremism, not the religion itself.
In spite of the links in your last post you have yet to produce any evidence that Islam is specially predisposed to extremism. You cannot disentangle the tenets of Islam from the situation in which it exists. Nor have you shown any evidence of even understanding the argument. You posted information in response to my last post that directly confirmed what I said: that outrage about the cartoons was largely confined to immigrants to Western countries and to Muslim countries in poor circumstances.
Your claims that there is no religion that belongs in this century are far more defensible than claims that Islam doesn't belong in this century. The basic problem in this thread is your failure to parametrize your argument to a specific group. You continue to talk about 'all Muslims', while citing articles about radical Islam, without any apparent understanding of how radical Islam relates to mainstream Islam.
]If you actually looked at what I said, I said I use available evidence AND annecdotes (my own as well as others). It's funny how you latch onto the last half of that statement and completely ignored the first half, then accuse me of trolling for disagreeing with you. That is massive intellectual dishonesty.
You have not yet presented a single population statistic or piece of data. You have presented opinion columns, singular incidents, and the general trappings of a conspiracy theory. Your inabillity to engage with thoughtful argument or to present anything more in-depth than a sentence or two suggests either trolling or a sad lack of thought.
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Post updated, re-read.
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He is unable to substantiate his points.
I've substantiated my points several times, but you have ignored it eachtime.
Meanwhile, in the face of overwhelming opposition, he claims that he is being silenced.
I never said that I actually was, it was in responce to suggestions that this thread should be locked which actually would be silencing me. So far lockage hasn't happened. The "overwhelming opposition" was just kneejerk PC reactions about how intolerant and bad I am, etc, etc.
and complicated for him to understand
That's a lie, I said they were long because they were long. Largely you've just been repeating the same tired script over and over again.
(god forbid that a nuanced argument is required to tackle such a complicated issue.)
Ad-hom
There's not a single counter-argument made in his last post, merely blind assertion that 'I am right'.
If you seriously believe that then either you didn't read my post or you didn't understand what I said.
That seems to suggest remarkable restraint on the part of the authorities, doesn't it?
Surprisingly yes.
Haven't edited anybody's posts or modified anybody's threads.
That also is not totally true, the title of the thread was altered by someone other than myself.
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You understand that the environment is what produces extremism, not the religion itself.
I will admit it is a factor, but there's a lot more going on that just that.
Time for bed.
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Well I didn't edit your post.
In the mean time. You have yet to even touch the following claim. Your arguments regarding it - although I read them carefully - were circuitous and inadequate.
Islam is not more predisposed to radicalism than any other religion. Islam exists in areas of the world that are predisposed to radicalism due to geopolitical factors. Thus, Islam is disproportionately involved in the results. When Islam is radicalized and conflated with politics, it does so in a way that is not mechanistically different from any other religion. If there is a problem here, it is the tendency of religion to become radicalized, rather than a specific issue with Islam itself.
In the mean time, Muslims raised in modern environments (and most Muslims raised in problematic environments as well) are as peaceful as members of any other religion. Disproving this will require an income/education-locked ANOVA at t > .01. Thus we conclude that Islam itself is not the problem.
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That's not what Kosh said. If he had said that he might have had some ground to stand on. But nowhere in this thread has he parametrized his arguments down to that group.
He is unable to substantiate his points. Instead, he claims that my posts are too long and complicated for him to understand (god forbid that a nuanced argument is required to tackle such a complicated issue.) Meanwhile, in the face of overwhelming opposition, he claims that he is being silenced.
There's not a single counter-argument made in his last post, merely blind assertion that 'I am right'.
funny, that's how I interpreted his position to be from the first post, and he has said thats what he was intending, unless you are suggesting you know what he was thinking better than he does, maybe it has something to do with me not intentionally trying to misrepresent everything he says because he didn't say it exactly the way you wanted it to be said.
Now you're beginning to get it. You understand that the environment is what produces extremism, not the religion itself.
no, now YOU are beginning to get it. this has been his position from the beginning, he just didn't bother saying things he thought would be obvious.
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No, those aren't the positions he endorsed.
As I said earlier, he directly endorsed the unqualified statement "Islam = extremism." That his been his position from the first post, where he said 'Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century', presented a single example, and then said 'nuff said'.
Wanting the more nuanced take to be his position does not change the fact that he has yet to actually make that his position.
On that note, a big thanks to the Muslims reading this thread for their relative restraint and kindness. If only we could get this kind of turn-the-other-cheek acceptance in all our religious debates on HLP.
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yeah, thanks to the people he wasn't talking about for not getting offended.
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From what I can tell, American born-and-raised Muslims tend to be much less violent than Christians of the same. Maybe it's because there are more Christians. The only counter I can think of off the top of my head is that one Muslim dude on that army base, but I can't remember what his deal was. But then off the top of my head also I can think of Brandon Teena, Matthew Shepard, Dr. Tiller, etc. Seems like Christians in America are constantly killing in the name of their religion. They don't even have the excuses that Muslims in 3rd world countries do (poverty, war, etc).
I just don't get why anyone would ever differentiate Islam and Christianity when talking about religion not belonging in this century.
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yeah, thanks to the people he wasn't talking about for not getting offended.
Again, his statements were about all of Islam and he made remarks about 'their community', i.e. all Muslims.
I dissected all this in an earlier post. I'll get you a link.
Furthermore your assumption that they're not offended is pretty bad. They may just be kind, gentle people who prefer not to get sucked into arguments. Rather putting the lie to Kosh's point. :rolleyes:
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whatever. I was raised muslim, i've visited my millions of cousins in Algeria, they're all fine. Also, by the time I went to Algeria, I was an atheist. I didn't go out of my way to mention it, but i certainly didn't pray and nobody seemed to care.
I did learn that pretty much wherever you go, people are the same. They go to work, they have families, some are religious, some are not, some are nice, some are assholes. whatever. if Algeria was full of christians, the only thing that'd be different is that there wouldnt be a call to prayer waking me up at 5am, and the bars wouldnt have to be all hush-hush.
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Right. And you can bet your socks that if, in some bizarre flip-flop, that part of the world was Christian and ours was Muslim, then we'd be dealing with Christian suicide bombing cartoon hating extremists to the exact same degree.
Which is why Kosh's decision to single out a particular religion and make simplistic statements like "Islam = intolerance" (therefore all Muslims are intolerant?) is so absurd.
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if this was 500 years ago would it be inaccurate to say Christianity was intolerant/violent?
(irregardless about how you feel about today)
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In many ways, yes. Of course, governments were much less tolerant and very violent indeed.
...Keep that in mind before you propogate the "all evil stems from religion" thing, as it's just not true.
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no, that's not where I'm going
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if this was 500 years ago would it be inaccurate to say Christianity was intolerant/violent?
(irregardless about how you feel about today)
I think it would be accurate to say that some Christians were intolerant and violent, yeah, and that the intolerance and violence of these power-holders turned into a major problem in many areas of the globe. But that problem arose because of geopolitical factors that compromised Christianity, not because of the faith itself. Islam today isn't even in the same position; in some places (Saudi Arabia) it really is as bad as Christianity 500 years ago, whereas in others (America, Australia, probably a large part of Saudi Arabia and other examples I could give for that first case) it's as inoffensive as any other major religion.
Islam, like any religion, is colored by the environment it exists in, and it in turn shapes that environment. In some places Islam is genuinely problematic, for example the Shi'a-Sunni divide in Iraq. But these problematic areas occur because people in general are intolerant assholes under certain conditions, no matter what faith they belong to.
If you're going to claim that Islam is particularly problematic than you have to cite some element of its doctrine which universally promotes this problem behavior. And the fact is, like Turambar pointed out, most Muslims are as human as the rest of us, and they really don't give a **** about all this ideological conflict any more than we care about the Westboro Baptist Church.
The problem is that we - including Kosh - have so few positive Muslim exemplars in our life that our prototype of Islam is largely informed by negative events that are widely reported. Kosh needs some quality exposure to real Muslims.
I would happily agree that Christianity 500 years ago played a role in a very negative system. But I don't think it was the root cause of that system. As always the root cause is resource allocation and human psychology. And so it is today. Any ideology can be rendered virulent.
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Most governments around that time were religion-centric anyway, that was part of the focus of protestantism, that the King was the direct link to God, rather than the Pope.
As I said before, the moment something like this creates a hierarchical structure, then power becomes more of a concern than goodwill, justice, understanding or peace. There's nothing wrong with having a faith, there's nothing wrong with believing homosexuality is 'wrong', but there is something wrong when a single man, be he Priest, Immam, Ayatollah, Prophet, Sage or any other title, feels that he is entitled to interpret the 'word of God' and dictate it to the group, because this is not interpretation, it is indoctrination, and just because one person does not like homosexuality, does not give him the right to form a group based on that hatred, for example.
Religion and power do not mix any better than anything else and power, it will always be subject to the whims, interpretations and prejudices of those who do the 'interpreting', much in the same way as 'what the founding fathers intended' is frequently re-interpreted depending on the position of the person doing the interpretation.
Take Evolution as an example, when Darwin announced Evolution, the Church was fine with it, the Catholic church has accepted Evolution as a given, after all, who is to say that isn't exactly what God intended, but there is power in Denial, money to be earned from those who are fearful or ignorant, and, sadly, ignorance and prejudice are some of the main leverage tools of religion, especially in poorer, more deprived areas of the world. Creationism was never about 'proving science wrong', it was about creating a power base for a 'new' style of religion, purely for the benefit of those at the top. Scientology is the Prime example of it in many ways, that's why it's hated so vehemently by other religions, because it displays the worst side of Hierarchical religion without all the stained glass windows and Gothic architecture to get in the way.
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Right.
I'd be happy to join Kosh in condemning radical imams all day long. But assuming that these guys represent even a majority of Islam is the product of a cognitive fallacy.
As Flipside said the issue here is power (I've been calling it resource allocation); religion is just a tool.
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so you are saying that 500 years ago all Christian were intolerant and violent, you are aware of the fact that there were many groups of Christians that did not participate in the crusades, right, you are taking the actions of the Catholic hierarchy and generalizing it onto the rest of the greater Christian.
much like how in the 1500s you had monarchs who used the Church to try and gain political advantage today in the Shiite and Sunni communities are manipulated by individuals with earthly ambitions. the collective actions of these people has unfortunately caused an environment, much like in Europe of 500 years ago, where people can be very easily manipulated via their religion. not every Muslim is brought up in this environment but in the centers of Islam this is pervasive. to say that Islam doesn't belong in this century is referring to this, the fact that what is generally referred to as the Islamic world, is dominated by the same problems that plagued Christianity centuries ago is a problem and needs to be addressed. you keep getting hung up on thinking that we are saying that all Muslims are evil, when we are talking about the cultural issues surrounding the Islam dominated parts of the world, your semantical requirements are absurd, quit trying to turn this into a sensitivity training session, we all watched sesame street when we were kids we ****ing get it now try and talk about things like an adult.
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What? No, I said exactly the opposite of that. I said that 500 years ago not all Christians were intolerant and violent.
If you'll reread my last post you'll see that my analysis is essentially the same as yours.
I agree with your assessment of the problems Islam faces in certain areas of the world. Had Kosh framed his argument as being about Islam in those areas of the world (this including the geopolitical factors) he wouldn't have drawn this response.
But, my friend, he didn't.
His argument was simply "Islam = intolerance." There were no geopolitical factors included. He did not, as you claim, specify certain parts of the world or certain elements of the population.
Here:
You are making the assumption that Islam = intolerance.
It's not an assumption, it is an observation based on available literature as well as personal experiences (and the annecdotes of others). It openly expouses all kinds of massive intolerance and their society has not evolved past it.
He made a claim to unqualified knowledge about an entire religion. Note that this is explicitly unqualified: 'it', the religion, 'their society' - the society of practitioners. He did not, as others have, limit it to 'Islam in the Middle East' or 'Radical Islam' or anything of the sort. He made a claim about 'the society of Muslims'. He has established a hostile outgroup and is now producing generalizations about it.
In fact he went so far as to endorse the statement 'Islam = intolerance.' That direct. No mediating factors, no underlying variables, just black and white Baptist preacher material.
Ironically you could probably make the claim that radical Christianity has done about the same amount of damage in the last ten years, and you could come up with just as much evidence as Kosh has. Which makes singling out a particular religion even more illogical.
I think your argument is fine. Kosh's wasn't. He now seems to be trying to distance himself from it, which is wise. With luck he'll take some lessons away from this whole kerfuffle.
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ok, well I'm going to wait for Kosh to comment on what I've said. I think you just misunderstood what he was trying to say.
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He may have intended something different, but what he said was taken the same way by every poster on the first two pages of this thread. He should have known to qualify and parametrize his statement into something like the kind of reasonable, cogent analysis you just produced.
When he started agreeing with statements as simple as 'Islam = intolerance' he torpedoed himself. What he needed to do was specify that the toxic conflation of radical conservative Islam, the post-colonial Islamist movement, and political structures in the Middle East led to problematic radicalization. Instead he made a statement that covered the incredibly friendly Muslim guy who runs my local eyeglass store and the cute Lebanese computer science major down the hall.
He then went on in his first few posts to actively defend the position that single incidents (the Malaysia thing, the cartoon debacle) characterized the religion as a whole, rather than the religion taken in the context of the environment it existed in. As Ziame put it on IRC, it's like saying that the Catholics are a bunch of terrorists because of the IRA.
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your problem is when you hear 'Islam' you assume someone is meaning the religion not the primary culture surrounding it. and the person saying it probably doesn't realize you are making this error even when you say it point blank because they are immediately put on the defensive when fifty people start screaming 'hate-monger' at them.
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Well, those fifty people also made the same assumption. We've all made it clear that if he had specified 'radical Islam' or 'radical Islam in the Middle East', or taken the step to place the religion in a geopolitical context, it would've been less of an issue.
As it went, he was making claims that equated Islam on its own - the Five Pillars, basically - with radical behavior.
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Thing is, wear a 'Gay Pride' badge in certain parts of Alabama, and you'll certainly see that intolerance and violence are not merely the realm of the Middle Eastern cultures, there are cultures in the US that breed exactly the same kind of hatred. Yes, there are areas of Islam that still live in Middle-Aged intolerance, but if Islam doesn't belong in this century, then there are certainly several areas of Christianity that suffer from the same problem, only the Media isn't quite so eager to 'expose' those, because of the influence that they hold on home soil.
We complain about people being stoned for being Gay, or having out-of marriage relationships, and yet how is that different to the Top Gear team getting stones thrown at them in Alabama for having 'Man-Love rules' written on the side of their cars? It's the same attitude 'We don't like it, therefore it should not exist', it seems to me that mentality is rife on both sides of the divide.
As one comedian once put it, why is that, whenever an 'Islamic' point of view is needed, the News corps seek out the most radical, outspoken proponent of Islam they can find, in the UK it was captain Hook, who most certainly didn't represent most of Islam in the UK, but he was a 'show', and the Media loved him.
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As it went, he was making claims that equated Islam on its own - the Five Pillars, basically - with radical behavior.
now I just finished rereading every post Kosh made in this thread, I noticed him say words like 'culture', 'societies' a lot, he is clearly not referring to the religion proper. you are putting words in his mouth.
there are certainly several areas of Christianity that suffer from the same problem,
who said there wasn't?
the difference between what happens in Alabama and what happens in Malaysia is that in Alabama it takes a friking parade for the gays to have rocks thrown at them where as in many Islamic countries it only takes an acusation of being gay to have you put to death. I think as much as it stands to improve Alabama is actually coming out quite far ahead relatively in this comparison.
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I quoted it above. Here. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67446.msg1333138#msg1333138)
"Their society" applies to all Muslims. It was not parametrized.
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And that is because it is legal in those countries, the religious sect has too firm a grip on the Government, if it was legal to stone someone to death in Alabama, then it would happen far more often. The reason for that is the seperation of Church and State.
I'm not disagreeing that a lot of the culture surrounding Islam in the Middle East is somewhat thin on the ground as far as Human Rights are concerned, but it's only that seperation in the US that prevents it from happening, just as it's the same seperation that has prevented the WBC from being gunned down in a drive-by.
The fact is that the deliberate seperation of Religion and Government is what prevents it from happening, the religion itself in those areas would quite happily do it, were it not for a non-religious law system.
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I'll happily agree that Islam causes problems in the Middle East due to its insinuation into political structures.
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actualy you said that (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67446.msg1332882#msg1332882)
he only went about making a case for what you proposed. and note the use of the word 'society' in said case, he was talking about the culture not the religion.
and then he goes on to talk about how he's not saying 'all Muslims' and how the problem is the governments that use the religion as a tool of control. but I guess you had more important things to do than read what he was saying.
You are making the assumption that Islam = intolerance.
It's not an assumption, it is an observation based on available literature as well as personal experiences (and the annecdotes of others). It openly expouses all kinds of massive intolerance and their society has not evolved past it. This is a real problem (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/04/comment.religion)
You should know better than to tar all Muslims
I'm not taring all muslims, and when I criticize christianity am I taring all christians? Of course not, and to say such nonsense is to distract from the real issue with PC propaganda.
There are happy, tolerant, fair-minded Muslims on this very board.
Yeah, as though this board represents everyone in the world. :rolleyes: I never said they don't exist.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
I find your obsessive post modernism disturbing.
When for all we know, bad environment = intolerance, and it so happens that countries with bad environments also tend to be countries with a lot of Islam due to an underlying variable (Islam being popular in Third World nations, Christianity in First World.)
I'll re-iterate, in many of these countries Islam and government go hand in hand, and the religion's fundemental values is the state enforced ideology. So once again, how is religion not creating a bad environment in those states?
Maybe after Middle Eastern Islam goes through a similar transformation...
Yes, but the point I was trying to make was that is still HASN'T transformed.
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While he's started to back down towards a more sane point there - and yes, of course I read it, reading posts is not difficult for me - he's still hung up on the idea that Islam creates these problems.
Again, if he'd been making the point that separation of church and state is a good thing, sure, but his first few posts were blatant flamebait and he endorsed some views that are truly asinine in their simplicity. He's guilty of making his argument too specific to Islam, endorsing what Holocaust scholars call a 'special path' analysis.
It's good that he's started to recognize what he was doing wrong in the earlier posts, but he isn't all the way there yet, as you can see from the continued discussion after that post.
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he hasn't changed his position, in fact his position is almost exactly what your last two postwere all about, except he quantified the problem.
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No, he started to parametrize his statements to specific geopolitical situations, and to recognize the state/religion interaction rather than simply endorsing (again, I have it in quotes multiple times) 'Islam = intolerance'.
Let's just stop. This is going nowhere. Kosh can say something when he wakes up, this thread can flame itself until it dies out, and then we can move on.
In the future I'll be sure to just lock this on page 1 as requested.
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I haven't read the whole thread, but I thought I'd put my two coppers in.
I think the radical Muslims are the only ones treating their religion with the respect that it deserves.
Seriously. If you believed that your religion, was in the service of GOD. Creator of the entire universe and everything in it. Judge of your immortal soul, FOREVER. As in, what you do during your lifetime will determine how happy you are hundreds, millions, trilions of years from now.
After human civilization has fallen, the sun has gone nova, the galaxies have drifted apart, the stars have burnt out, and the very atomic building blocks of matter have decayed and the universe undergoes heat death, YOU personally will be either sitting on golden steps sipping tea with your favorite grandma, or tormented in a lake of fire, depending on what you did during those few decades on Earth.
It's a sobering thought. What possible reason would you NOT have for instantly and totally committing yourself to the worship and service of your deity, and going to any lengths to defend it? I place the fault squarely on those clerics that support violent interpretation of the religion, and none at all on the practitioners of those sects.
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Exactly, once the system defines itself as a Hierarchy, there has to be people at the top, there's no point being at the top if you don't get certain benefits from it, and staying at the top requires providing people with a constant reason to need spritiual guidance. The people responsible for that guidance are the source of the problem because they think more often, in my opinion, about what they want the religion to be than what their god wanted it to be.
Nothing wrong with religion, I consider myself religious, though many other religions would define me as 'agnostic' or 'spiritual' or even 'heathenistic', but that is their interpretation, not mine, and it's mine that counts for me personally.
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he tried to explain himself when it became apparent you misunderstood him. if you would have locked it page one then you never would have realized the mistake you and a bunch of other people made.
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He hasn't done any better at explaining himself since then. He dug the hole deeper.
If you're right and we're all just misunderstanding him, then he's criminally bad at explaining himself and needs to work on his posting style.
If everyone else is right and his original posts were actually sadly simplistic and hateful generalizations about an entire religion, well then, that's a problem too.
Either way nobody - except him - is actually defending his original point (Islam = intolerance), which is telling.
A poster like Sushi or Flipside could have cleared this up on his second post in the thread (then gone back and edited post 1 to make it more than blatant trolling.)
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that wasn't his point, that was the words you put in his mouth in this post right here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67446.msg1332882#msg1332882), you've been repeating that line over and over again and he never said it.
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You are having an argument over an argument. That's stupid.
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I agree.
Bobbau, again, here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67446.msg1332979#msg1332979). An unqualified endorsement about all of Islam. "[Islam] openly espouses all kinds of massive intolerance and their society has not evolved past it."
There are no geographic, political, or cultural qualifiers there. That statement applies to Mr. Mohammed the eyeglass store owner as thoroughly as it does to Osama bin Laden.
If you want you can go back to post 1 where Kosh strings together the subject line "Why Islam as it stands doesn't belong in this century" - all of Islam, mind, not Islam in the Middle East or radical Islam - with a specific incident in one country that does not even reflect on all the Muslims of that country or even its governmental policy.
There you go.
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You are having an argument over an argument. That's stupid.
Redundancy is redundant. :D
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in response to you saying that, he said
"It openly expouses all kinds of massive intolerance and their society has not evolved past it."
he is talking about society.
Christianity had the same problem, we moved past is a while ago, the major Islamic culture(s) have not. that is his point.
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Reread previous post.
And no, while that may have been the point he intended, that is not the point he made. He did not qualify it to 'major Muslim culture(s)' (even that would be wrong since the majority of Muslims are statistically non-radical.) He made a point about ALL OF ISLAM.
Ironically the points that you are making are largely about Islam in the Middle East which is not the major Muslim society.
The referent of 'it' is Islam. Not Islam in complex with geopolitical factors. Just Islam.
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Sorry, post edited.
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And just to drive the point home how thouroughly absurd it is to discuss 'problems with Islam' when referring to the Middle East, the Mideast contains 20% of the world's Muslims. That's it.
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so you are going to wage a 7 page flame war against him because he didn't qualify a single retort properly, and then didn't clarify it as he began to think you were being willful in your misinterpretation of him?
seriously, look at the guys posting history, what do you really think he was trying to say?
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Mideast is the spiritual home of Islam, pretty much all major Islamic societies are tied to the culture there.
yes I know Indonesia is the most populous Islamic nation.
and I have to go drive 100 miles now, I'll see you later after Kosh has had an opportunity to comment again.
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You are having an argument over an argument. That's stupid.
I would disagree with this, but that would be having an argument over an argument over an argument. And even stupider. :p
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This conversation has become circular.
<sheldon big bang theory quote>
I give you one page to sell it to me. :)
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so you are going to wage a 7 page flame war against him because he didn't qualify a single retort properly, and then didn't clarify it as he began to think you were being willful in your misinterpretation of him?
seriously, look at the guys posting history, what do you really think he was trying to say?
I'm not here to draw any dispositional conclusions about Kosh. I think he's a perfectly intelligent, reasonable person.
But his framing of this topic, from the very first post, was inflammatory. Worse yet, it ignored the actual complexity of the issue. Saying 'Islam causes radicalism' is like saying 'wood causes fire'. The issue here is geopolitical, not religious.
He should have added qualifiers to his very first post, parametrizing his remarks to a specific region and context. He should have changed his subject line. He should have taken steps to avoid hurting the Muslims reading this thread.
Furthermore, I'm concerned that Kosh's Islam prototype is based on what he reads in the news. A lot of Kosh's opinions seem to be based on the availability heuristic: when pressed for evidence, he provides single anecdotal incidents via news articles (useless), rather than population statistics. This concerns me, because it's inaccurate. This is bolstered by the fact that you'd say things like 'pretty much all major Islamic societies are tied to the culture there'. This is untrue. With 60% of the world's Muslim population in the Asia-Pacific region, you can damn well bet that pretty much all major Islamic societies are tied to the culture in the Asia-Pacific region. A once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca is not the grounds to assume that Asian-Pacific cultures are all somehow linked, in the worst way, to the Mideast.
The reason people think this way about Islam is because most of what they hear about Islam is linked to the Mideast. Again, availability heuristic.
What Kosh could've done to work around this is to point out that states that are uniformly Muslim are problematic. And he'd be right there. The Mideast may only have 20% of the world's Muslims, but something like 90% of the people in that region are Muslim, and so are the countries. That monoculture is definitely problematic.
But he didn't. He failed to include any geopolitical parameters or qualifiers. He failed to point out that his argument applied to radicals, rather than to the guy running my local eyeglasses store, or to the Muslims here on HLP.
If Kosh had focused his arguments on that hotbed of radicalism, he would have been on safe ground. But he made a sweeping generalization that included the 60% of the world's Muslims who live in cosmopolitan, multi-religious societies where they make up only 24% of the population. That betrays bad research, bad understanding, and misguided intent.
In retrospect what should have been done is an immediate lock and a suggestion to try again, but with a better-framed first post and subject line. As it stands it's just absurdly clumsy. Kosh's responses in this thread have done nothing to help him.
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Some people here, need to seriously go out and get laid!
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Some people here, need to seriously go out and get laid!
QFT
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...
This has gone way beyond silly and into Drama.
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Whew!
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This doesn't bode well for the topic. . . .
Tesla makes sense.