I’m not “corroborating” my opinion, I’m simply repeating my opinion that I stated earlier when the same question came up in a different thread. I cited it in a quote box because I think just cut-and-pasting the exact same words in two different threads without a quote can potentially be confusing.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
Second of all, your response is nonsensical. They aren’t using their faith to justify crimes
[/quote]
Sure they are. They publicly published a long statement about how everything they did is commanded as part of their religious duty, blah blah blah. They’re invoking their faith as a justification.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
their crimes come directly from their faith. Their faith that the Koran is 100% accurate (and to believe otherwise is apostasy).
[/quote]
Well, there are plenty of other Muslims who believe in Qur’anic infallibility, but they don’t support violence. What does it mean to say that crimes “come directly from their faith” when other people who identify as having the same faith—read the same scriptures, etc.—don’t commit or endorse the same crimes?
In what sense would that be “official”? After all, you’re not likely to get even the entirety of the NRA membership or the Republican Party to agree unanimously to reject any one statement they currently endorse. And even if you did, that wouldn’t be their “official” position until/unless the official endorsement was changed.
What do you mean by “accurate”? If you mean that the non-extremist Muslim world should believe that the Qur’an should not be interpreted exactly as ISIS radicals say it should, I think the vast majority of them already do. But they wouldn’t necessarily call it “inaccurate”: AFAICT they’re more likely to maintain that it’s the ISIS version that’s inaccurate.
How would that help, exactly? It’s extremist fanatics that are the problem, and the extremist fanatics already know that most non-extremist Muslims disagree with them about many religious issues.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
It would help if Islam had a Pope (or someone with an equally silly hat) that could wave his hands and say, hey, poof, turns out god just talked to me, and boy, we were way off! But, it doesn’t. So, there has to be some overarching reformation that happens.
[/quote]
Nothing about this sounds particularly “official”, though. And you said that there were “official positions” that you want reformed.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
But, it starts with admission that the Koran is inaccurate.
[/QUOTE]
Haykel is wrong and virtually lying here, if not actually lying. THis is at best a distorted understanding if not active deformation.
It is very easy to condemn slavery and believe in the Quran as revelation. There is no exception in the classical reading of the Quranic text that it is not considered a good thing to hold people in bondage and it is actively positive to free them. The Quranic injuctions against mistreatment and recognition contrary to the practices of the time, including the “civilied” romans, of slaves as having specific rights in law and limits on the master reinforces the idea
For any Muslim reading the Quran today and in the context of the urging for improvement, the understanding of continuous striving and the philosophical guidance to do better says that the modern world has gotten us to the point of being able to do away with an institution tolerated, and the rules of the Quran tell is that the path of mercy is the best, and the treaties undertaken to improve should be followed.
A same kind of analysis is held for punishments, there is no thing in our Quran that we read it that says we must choose the worst and the most cruel of a permitted option, but that we should strive to be better and in the end more merciful, more compassionate, these are the repeated phrases. That is the reading and the approach that has led to the real improvement and the real change, the rouhia, along the path of the tariqas.
We see not contradiction, we see following improvement in the fundamental spirit.
Haykel is engaged in lying to say what he says, and his “understanding” is like a certian kind of Protestant snidely telling the Catholic the only way of improvement of their Church is to renounce their basic precepts. A fundamentally dishonest pseudo-advice with a only barely hidden agenda, an agenda that wants to pretend that the narrow, the criminal path of the takfiri is the real one, and insinuate our path is apostasy.
That is correct, and the DAESH and the Islamophobics who utilize the DAESH do not get to tell us that the DAESH’s disgusting innovations in disorting both the letter and the spirit are Right.
You’re interpreting it that way, and it’s frankly pretty arrogant. Who are you to tell them how they are misinterpreting their own thoughts? I guarantee that these guys know their faith better than you or I, and if they state that their faith justifies their actions, I’m in no position to argue that the they are incorrect.
According the Pew Research Center citation, in many Muslim countries, it means that they are in the small minority.
I don’t understand how you think that relates to what I said. In what way did I suggest that they’re “misinterpreting their own thoughts”? I said that they’re basing their justification of their actions on their religious faith. Which they are: i.e., they’re saying, “we did this because our faith requires it of us”. I did not make any claims about the correctness of their justification.
I’m not sure how I can make this clearer.
You misunderstand. I’m asking you to clarify what you mean by saying that the terrorists’ crimes “come directly from their faith”, given that there are many other Muslims who self-identify as having the same faith who don’t commit or endorse the same crimes.
You seem to be in some sense agreeing that the Islam of the radical terrorist extremists is the only true or scripturally authentic version of Islam, but the demographics indicate that many Muslims disagree. So I don’t see how their crimes are literally or directly coming from their faith.
No, I’m saying that there is no true authentic version. Like all religions, the books were written vaguely and open to interpretation. The ISIS interpretation, which comes from a study of the Koran that you and I will never do, is just as valid or authentic as any other interpretation.
What’s more, I don’t give a damn what the authentic interpretation is even if there were one. Again, the authentic interpretation of the NRA was gun safety. I would have agreed with the NRA decades ago. Now, the interpretation of the NRA is gun nuttery. I no longer agree with them.
And, a widespread interpretation of Islam is one of violence. A central tenet of any worthwhile modern religion is that one should be able to opt out. But, over 80% of Muslims in some countries think that should be punishable by death. What percentage would that have to go up to before you would acknowledge that “Islam” as defined by the religion today, is violent in that country?
It’s your concept of “inherent” that I don’t give a damn about. All I care about is the current practice. When the vast majority of members believe in killing members who opt out, they have lost any legitimate claim to being considered non-violent. You asked what official thing Islam has to do in order to stop being considered violent earlier. If the Pew Research group redoes this survey and these numbers are down to, lets say, single digits (and I think that is setting the bar VERY low) then Islam is no longer “violent”.
No reasonable people would think that one billion Muslims want to murder them. One billion Muslims, for example, don’t think all Christians want to murder them, either.
The point of terrorism is to turn reasonable people into unreasonable people.
If you let ISIS scare you, then you’re doing what they want you to do, and you’re being manipulated. If you were really opposed to ISIS, you wouldn’t allow yourselves to be played like puppets on strings. Stop doing what they want. Stop feeding the trolls (I realize the irony in saying this to a bunch of the trolls posting here.)
I have yet to see anyone who’s afraid of ISIS advocate going after Qatar, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia. Gee, I wonder why that is.
This isn’t a holy war. This is politics, and nothing more.
Can you or can you not understand P(Violent | Muslim) != P(Muslim | Violent)?
I don’t give a crap about fundamentals, either. I care about basic logic, and understanding the world around me, and learning enough about the enemies of humanity to defeat them.
So, do you or do you not have an actual understanding of conditional probability?
Cross? What the fuck are you on about? Make sense or stop flapping your gums.
On the off chance you have a neuron, listen up: Even if I made the utterly imbecilic statement that P(Muslim | Violent) = 1, what is P(Violent | Muslim)? If you say 1, you prove yourself a complete buffoon.
Or do you need someone to wipe the drool off your face and explain the notation?
Actually, you’ve made my point for me, to the extent you’re incapable of understanding what I’m saying and are therefore one of the enemies of humanity.
Well, that escalated quickly. Maybe instead of making people who don’t get your point into “enemies of humanity”, you should just make your point more clearly. Or at all, in this case.
Wow, that’s quite a slippery slope you’ve got there. You went from “over 80% of Muslims in some countries” thinking that apostasy should be punished by death to “the vast majority of members” of Islam as a whole worldwide holding that view, which is not supported by the facts.
First, the survey asked Muslims in Muslim-majority countries (plus Russia and Thailand) whether they thought shari’a law should be the law of the land (or, in the case of Russia and Thailand, of the Muslim regions within the land). Note that that entirely excludes, for instance, the more than 10% of all the world’s Muslims who live in India.
Majorities in most of the countries surveyed agreed with making shari’a the law of the land. (However, among those who agreed, majorities in most countries said that shar’ia ought to apply only to the country’s Muslims, not to all its citizens.)
The survey then asked only the pro-shari’a respondents in each country whether they favored the death penalty for apostasy. Majorities of those respondents responded affirmatively in Malaysia (62%), Afghanistan (79%), Pakistan (76%), Egypt (86%), Jordan (82%), and the Palestinian territories (66%).
Now all we need is to do the math on those subsets of subsets.
Malaysia has about 1.1% of the world’s Muslims, of whom 86% are pro-shari’a, of whom 62% favor the death penalty for apostasy. Total: 0.6%.
Afghanistan has about 1.8% of the world’s Muslims, of whom 99% are pro-shari’a, of whom 79% favor the death penalty for apostasy. Total: 1.4%.
Pakistan has about 11% of the world’s Muslims, of whom 84% are pro-shari’a, of whom 76% favor the death penalty for apostasy. Total: 7.0%.
Egypt has about 5% of the world’s Muslims, of whom 74% are pro-shari’a, of whom 86% favor the death penalty for apostasy. Total: 3.2%.
Jordan has about 0.4% of the world’s Muslims, of whom 71% are pro-shari’a, of whom 82% favor the death penalty for apostasy. Total: 0.02%.
Palestine has about 0.3% of the world’s Muslims, of whom 89% are pro-shari’a, of whom 66% favor the death penalty for apostasy. Total: 0.02%.
So all these pro-death-penalty-supermajority countries, which apparently have got you so hysterical that you imagine them to represent “the vast majority of members” of Islam worldwide, actually turn out to represent less than 13% of all Muslims worldwide (and well over half of those are in Pakistan alone).
While I definitely agree that that number’s still way too high for the proper exercise of religious freedom and civil liberties, surely you must see how silly it makes you look to talk as though it implies that most Muslims support such positions.
I’m not “corroborating” my opinion, I’m simply repeating my opinion that I stated earlier when the same question came up in a different thread. I cited it in a quote box because I think just cut-and-pasting the exact same words in two different threads without a quote can potentially be confusing.