Yes. Look, Muslims believe the Quran is a holy book written by God, so they can’t change it, because if they change it, that would be them denying the holy nature and divine authorship of the book, which would call into question the entire truth of Islam. So they’re not going to do that.
But the more pertinent question isn’t what the Quran says. The question is what Muslims believe, and what Muslims believe is only partly influenced by what the Quran says. It’s also influenced by the society in which Muslims live, and there are a whole lot of Muslims who don’t think you should be killed or forcibly converted (although if you voluntarily convert, they’ll still be glad to have you).
It’s like how the Christian bible has all sorts of stuff in it about stoning adulterers to death, and how everyone who’s not Christian is damned, and how it’s ok to own slaves, but most modern Christians in America, even though they believe the Bible is the word of God and would never cut out those parts of the bible, don’t keep slaves or stone adulterers or run around saying that people are going to hell.
That’s how religions work. They ignore or reinterpret the parts of their holy books that no longer work in the society in which they exist. The problem with burning the Quran is that not only do you piss off the Muslims who think you should be killed or forcibly converted, you’ll also piss off all the Muslims who don’t think you should be killed or forcibly converted, because you’re destroying the book that they think is sacred too. And, do you really want to piss them off? Wouldn’t it be smarter to get them on your side against the people who think you should be forcibly converted or killed? The cause of freedom and tolerance has enough enemies that it doesn’t need to piss off its allies or people who could be its allies.
I’d tend to say that you could have the nicest possible holy book imaginable - “Free hugs and give lots of money to charity” and all that kind of thing - and people who wanted to cause violence and wanted a rationale would be perfectly able to conjure themselves up that rationale from that book.
As much as it might be nice for us to think “Ah, it is the book’s fault. Without the bad words, people will be unable to do bad things! Gotcha!” the desire to do bad things arises from us. There is no text so excellently written nor full of love and happiness and puppies that a motivated person cannot derive “Yes, you may go out and kill/rape/steal” from.
I mean, shit, look at us athiests. We don’t have any holy books at all. Yet we’ve managed to do all those unpleasant things. Humans don’t need encouragement, and will ignore chastisement. It’s what we do.
Why should I worry about what is in the Koran when the people in this thread can’t even read what I have written and parse it correctly.
I said the essentially the same thing part way through this thread. But it makes it easier when you know god wants you to kill others when you’re doing it, doesn’t it?
Finally, someone admits that the holy book in question CAN influence the behavior of its followers.
Why not? It gives everyone a chance to talk about free speech and why it is far, far more important than some questionable holy book that people seem to pick and choose from given the situation.
I can imagine if a single US president threatened to wipe another country off the map while discussing the second coming of Jesus it would make the papers.
Picking poverty as an identifying attribute may explain rioting for a day, or even a couple of days. It does not explain the year long riots in France. The reality that there is an Islamic connection can be seen in the The Union of French Islamic Organizations which issued a fatwa addressing the riots.
Because that’s not how conversations like that go, and I think you know that. When people are upset they don’t care about free speech. You burn a Quran, most Muslims aren’t going to think to themselves, “Oh, that person burned a Quran. Well, I guess in a liberal society, it’s important that the rights of someone to do something offensive be protected.” They’re going to think, “I can’t believe this person is burning a Quran. It just goes to show how much people hate Muslims.”
No. According to your link, Sarkozy was making vague claims–without providing any evidence–and the Islamic leaders issued a fatwah condemning the rioting to head off any more such silly claims.
Sarkozy is quite happy to play the scapgoat card–as he has done recently regarding the Roma–and until he provides actual evidence of his claims, you are simply repeating his evidence-free nonsense.
And this same person who thinks like this is going to differentiate between the context of when the Koran was written and society today as has been intimated in this thread? Well, which is it? Deep thinkers that can put things into historical context, or simpletons who don’t understand the importance of free speech?
So the Union of French Islamic Organizations has a fatwasa-for-silly-claims-department? Aside from pictures of a Monty Python skit you think they issued a religious edict based on false claims? Logically the fatwa was based on the premise that Muslims were involved.
Both. Neither. first of all, when people are offended, their understanding goes away and they don’t always think rationally. I believe in free speech, but when I see Fred Phelps protesting, my first reaction isn’t “Oh, isn’t it nice he’s exercising his rights.” I think, “I want to see him locked up, beaten up, and suffering.” It’s something visceral, not logical, and it’s not a failing of my intelligence. It’s a failing of my temper.
Second, go to your nearest church and ask the people there if they believe in slavery. I bet almost all of them will say no, even the ones who aren’t “deep thinkers”, who can put the bible in “historical context”. It’s not because they’re biblical scholars who can reconcile the bible’s approval of slavery. It’s because they’re raised in a society that says that slavery is wrong, and they’ve embraced the attitudes of their society. A Muslim born and raised in this country is probably going to have the same attitudes about their holy book. And as Muslims get more and more assimilated in American society, and as more and more imams are born and raised in the US with American culture, Islam in America is going to become more and more like Christianity or Judaism in America, just like Islam in the rest of the world is influenced by the other cultures where it exists.
The difference is that most people don’t care what Fred Phelps does at his church. He’s a monkey with a book that might as well be written in Klingon for all the good it does him. Nobody is going to riot or sentence him to death. In fact, nobody has harmed him at a funeral where he goes out of his way to emotionally yank people around.
I agree with this to most of the extent but unlike the ultra waco’s of the Christian church there is more of a problem when the concept of 6 degrees of separation are applied. Like all religions, people will believe in what they choose to believe. In the case of the Ft Hood Shooter, he followed an American educated Imam overseas via the internet. In an age where ideas travel at the speed of sound, location is not the insulator it once was. I suppose that works both ways. When you look at how cell phones and the internet are used in Iran by the younger generation it is a powerful force. I suspect Kim Jong Il understands this.
No. The Union of French Islamic Organizations feels the need to defend against ridiculous charges from demogogue politicians that will result in more of the sort of harrassment that was already going on in France.
Certainly some Muslims were involved. Beyond that, many of the kids who were rioting were children of Muslims, even though they were not, themselves, observant, which put pressure on the Muslim adults to distance themselves from the lies of Sarkozy and other politicians.
I also notice that the news story dated to the second week of the riots. If the issue was so clearly “Muslim,” the riots should have stopped as soon as the fatwah was issued. This did not happen, indicating that there was a clear separation between the Muslim religious leaders and the rioters, not that “Islam” was responsibe for the riots.
I don’t think i’m saying what you’re saying. I’m saying people will read anything they want to read into something. That includes “god wants me to kill others”. You could remove all mentions of god from a book, have it be simply “No killing” written thirty thousand times in a row, and people would still hold it up and say it proves god’s will is to go out and murder, because, alas, that’s what we do. Having a helpful book with exactly what you want to read in it does not help, because all books are that book, to the particular reader.
Sure it is. It’s not solely a matter of them thinking it silly, but of others thinking it silly. If someone spread around a rumour about me, which I know to be nonsense and untrue, my knowledge of that fact does not avail me if other people believe the rumour. I may well consider a rumour about me silly, but if others believe it, I am forced to take it seriously. Likewise, the Union in this case may well feel the charges are ridiculous, but if there are those who would take the charges seriously then it is perfectly reasonable for them to take a more serious view themselves.
As tomndebb suggests, if they have reason to believe the charges will result in harassment of Muslims, then the fact they think they’re silly charges doesn’t mean they shouldn’t act.
So, words mean nothing except what someone wants them to mean? You have never read anything that had convinced you to do a certain action or change your thinking on a particular subject?
You presume that I have never wanted to change my mind on an issue, or wanted to be open to new ideas. Perhaps I was looking for my mind to be changed on an issue, and grabbed onto something I could twist to my liking.
Yes, I would argue words mean nothing except what someone wants them to mean.
Really? No U.S. justice has ever taken a stand against teaching Creationism in school? That is silly, yet the courts have ruled on it. The notion that the King James Version of the bible is, in some way, “more true” than the Douay-Reims and Douay-Challoner bibles, is silly, yet the American Catholic Bishops went so far as to found an entirely separate school system in which they could be used so as to avoid the harrassment and persecution that people inflicted on Catholic students for declining to use the KJV.
That a politician promotes a silly idea does not preclude that idea from being harmful or dangerous and the French Islamic Organizations responded to that danger.
I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. You deny the riots had any Islamic association yet I showed you that a federation of Islamic groups addressed the situation. Everything after that is pure psychic ability on your part regarding WHY they addressed the riots.
