I always marvel at the American obsession with race. It’s aproduct of US history to view racism as somehow uniquely bad - perhaps the bad - attitude.
Really, racism is merely a subset of bigotry, which comes in all flavours. Racism is that form of bigotry particular to racial differences. Other forms of bigotry concern religious differences.
Bigotry, in turn, is merely a subset of a much larger category - ignorant generalizations and stereotypes. Bigotry concerns ignorant generalizations and stereotypes concerning people. It is also, of course, possible to have ignorant generalizations and stereotypes concerning ideas.
It is indeed possible for a person to hold ignorant generalizations and sterotypes concerning ideas, without being bigoted against the people that hold them; it is possible to be bigoted against people, without being bigoted against them because of their race.
But in the end, these differences, while they exist, tend not to matter very much. People who hold ignorant generalizations and stereotypes concering a group’s ideas usually (but not always) also hold hold ignorant generalizations and stereotypes about the group’s individuals. How could this not be so? If I was (say) of the opinion that a group’s ideas that they hold dear were truly hateful (say, “Christianity teaches people to be bigots”), how could I not find the members of the group distasteful? After all, the members of the group hold those ideas! (or so I think).
Really, what we end up arguing is the precise flavour of ignorance at work. The more significant argument is whether a view is based on reasoned critique, or on false generalizations and stereotypes.
I think the percent for “Christian” would be at least 50% since that would include the US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, NZ. South and Central America might not be too enticing, but much of it is pretty good. Eastern Europe not so great. Africa might be problematic.
I agree. Islam needs to go through some kind of reformation, and that is probably tied to the geopolitical situation which ain’t too good.
Consider this for a moment: Religions are huge collections of holy books, doctrines, philosophies, hierarchies, etc. They have all sorts of parables, rules, and all sorts of nuance and complication (though usually contradictory). What are the odds that any two religions are exactly in terms of values like how much they encourage violence towards nonbelievers or subjugation of women? It’s astronomically unlikely.
But “everything is equal” is a comforting, easy, worthless point of view that’s easy to adhere to. It requires no nuance, no analysis, and no contradiction by unpleasant facts.
I don’t really see alot of insult here, except the last part where I noted you were excusing the basic problem. I’m new around here though I have read the forum for about 3 years…this is the pit I believe so feel free to not waste bandwidth pointing out subtle jabs that actually should have been more aggressive. You are clueless but of course you are not alone, which enables this BS to continue instead of the world community having a real discussion about the basic problem here.
There are COUNTRIES that have sharia law and the basis of their government right fucking now. The ‘fanatics’ are given cover and strength in their conviction by this fact.
I also wrote that other religions have their own past, but they have evolved. You pointing out that the crusades happened, for example, has nothing to do with this discussion about the real time problem.
Why don’t you do some research like I suggested. The fact you say ‘there is nothing special about sharia law’ shows you don’t know WTF you are talking about. Maybe you should purchase a plane ticket to Saudi and hang out there for awhile, then report back how there is nothing special about Islam vs human rights and western democracy.
Religions are not unitary. Not all who are described under the umbrella of “muslim”, “jewish” or “christian” are the same.
Nor do religions operate in a vaccum devoid of cultural context. Rather, the believers of any religion exist in societies rooted in time and place.
Looking to the causes of why Muslim societies are, in general, so medieval and backwards, it is no doubt comforting to place the blame on a single factor - Islam. However, a view based on “nuance and analysis” may, just may, take notice of the fact that, some time around 1500 or so, European civilization (roughly, “Christendom”) overtook the “Dar al-Islam” in the civilization stakes - became more wealthy, more powerful, and (over time) developed more comprehensive and advanced ideas concerning human rights, the role of women, intellectual freedom, etc.
While many have argued why this happened, few these days seriously claim it happened because of the inherent superiority of Christianity over Islam as a religion (Max Weber aside). Indeed, it is likely that the change was based on factors having nothing to do with religion at all.
To provide but another example, Buddhism is often held out as a religion inspiring peace - and an example of this is the current Dalai Lama. However, that again is largely the result of historical contingencies - the Dalai Lama really has no choice but to be a peaceful figure, as he was forced out of Tibet by the Chinese, who have overwhelming military power.
Previous Dalai Lamas (really, in Tibetan ideology, the same Dalai Lama - he’s reincarnated) were hardly “peaceful”. They suppressed riuval Buddhist sects by force, and ruled Tibet as warlords.
You want to assert that a given body of texts and doctrines and philosophies will create different tendencies in people who follow them, wherever they would have been adopted or followed, and therefore that Islam can be said to be worse than Christianity (or other religions) because of those observed tendencies. But this approach is wrong for two independent reasons.
First, there is no universal agreement among Muslims about the doctrines, philosophies, or hierarchies that govern them, so labeling one of those sets as “Islam” is only doing the bidding of the Bin Ladens of the world.
And second, those doctrines, philosophies, and hierarchies are themselves the products of non-religious forces. If you plunk a Quranic verse down in a country with an oil economy during the colonial period, you’re going to get different interpretations of it than if you plunked it down in the heart of the industrial revolution.
Of course. However, it would also be disingenuous to not attribute any causality to the nature of the belief systems being compared. “Render unto Caesar” and all that…
As we all know from Jared Diamond’s best-selling book, Guns, Germs, Steel, and Certain Verses from Scripture that Made Us Better at Dominating the World.
Do you really feel that statement is factually incorrect?
I think it’s too simple to simply rule out the doctrine of a religion as a causitive factor in people’s behavior. We’re talking about the most important thing in their lives - their religious beliefs that they believe wholeheartedly and are more important to them than any other factor. And your assertion is that the actual nature of these beliefs and doctrines do not in any way affect the behavior of the people who dedicate their lives to them. This is extremely implausible.
However, even if I grant you this point, so what? What battle have you won? Then we go from “Islam is a shitty religion, and it makes people behave in a shitty way” to “the cultures that have adopted Islam are shitty cultures, and it makes people behave in a shitty way”
I would say that both are almost certainly true.
“Christianity was violent 1000 years ago, therefore all religions are equal and you can’t criticize Islam” may indeed shed some light on how much a culture affects a religion and vice versa, but it’s not actually useful for influencing my beliefs about people alive today. Yes, Christianity was shittier a millennium ago. Islam is shitty RIGHT NOW. The whole world was shittier a long time ago. Slavery was widespread. Women were subjugated and treated as property. Killing people for being the wrong religion was common. The western world has grown up tremendously in the past century - we’ve unshacked ourselves from those previously nearly ubiquitous flaws of civilization to advance a great amount. (And indeed, and this is a separate discussion - a big part of that growing up is that we’re much less religious.)
The Islam world has not. They revel in their barbarism, and see their horrific traditions threatened and this makes them want to lash out violently against the parts of the world that aren’t shitty. Christianity from a thousand years ago isn’t a problem today. Islamic-dominated states and cultures are.
Go to a fucking news site. What kind of asshole comes into a message board and tries to squash discussion?
Not quite. It goes to “the cultures that have adopted Islam are disproportionately located in poor regions which, particularly in the last 150 years, have been characterized by poverty, massive income inequality, imperialism and warfare. They also practice Islam.”
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the month (heck, by the end of the week) someone kills some random brown person “for being Muslim”. Of course, the victim will merely be brown, maybe even Christian.
Heck, we already have a few cases like that in the US. The one I recall, because it was recently in the news, was someone pushing a brown person in front of a train because–and I kid you not–the woman who committed the murder was upset that “Hindus and Muslims attacked the Twin Towers”.
I, sadly, foresee some “good Christians” perpetrating actual violence against others very soon because of this attack in Paris. By the way, isn’t Christianity also “the religion of peace”? Could’ve fooled me sometimes with the behavior of certain of its adherents recently.
Is it a universal quality of poor countries to subjugate women, stone them to death for being raped, throw acid in their face for learning to read or daring to let the the sun fall on their fucking nose, persecute people from other religions, often in a violent way, and a whole myriad of other things that are quite common amongst the Muslim world? Do you think that if we ran a comparison of the entire world, and matched countries up based on poverty, income inequality, and warfare, that we wouldn’t find anywhere that was less shitty?
I’m pretty sure I’d rather live anywhere in South America, Central America, or the Christian portions of the former Soviet Union than in any Muslim country. Probably with the exception of Kazakhstan and Bosnia.
Here’s the premise: Islam, as practiced in Saudi Arabia (and many other countries), has significantly contributed to Saudi Arabia being a shitty place for human rights in 2014. That premise is absolutely true. We can debate why Islam is practiced that way in Saudi Arabia (or, theoretically we could, if you knew anything about the history), but the basic premise is true.
What does not follow is that all Muslims believe women are bad. Or that Christianity has done more good in the world than Islam. Or that Saudi Arabia or any other country would be better on human rights if Islam had never existed. Or that there would be less terrorism in the world if Islam had never existed. All of that is, at most, dubious, if not transparently false. It certainly does not follow from the premise.
C’mon SB. It’s just a coincidence that Islam is the random religion intertwined into all of the modern terrorism and poverty infested backwards ass regions and countries. And Islam is just ‘misunderstood’ when women are beaten and stoned and treated like second class citizens. :rolleyes:
