I can think of some, but they certainly aren’t universal, even amongst westerners. Freedom of the press is embraced by every western muslim I know (which admittedly is a small number). I also know born-and-bred Americans who think the press “stirs the shit” by printing bad news. You’re painting with a broad brush and it simply doesn’t work with respect to muslims in America.
How about believing the revealed word of Allah, the beneficient, the merciful, as revealed to Mohammed (peace be unto him) in the Holy Koran?
Surah 4, verse 34: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and **scourge ** them.” (Emphasis added by this infidel, whose days shall be numbered once Islam is triumphant!)
Yesteryear, the Yellow Peril. Today, the Muslim Menace. History does repeat itself.
Wait, the US invaded a country in the name of “democracy premotion”, has cajoled begged, and threatened numerous other Arab countries to get them to allow some elections/freedom of speech/gender equality, millions of musliums watch western or western inspired media, learn english, eat at McDonalds and envy our lifestyles etc. and we’re supposed to believe that they’re ones imposing their values on us? I’d say it’s blatently the other way around, we don’t even make any sort of secret of it, spreading liberal methods of gov’t, western media and capitalism are stated goals of our govt (and are by and large, noble goals even if our methods need work).
Meanwhile, musliums in Europe and America don’t drop all of thier values and social mores instantly upon moving to the West, and that’s supposed to be evidence of some insidious plot to ruin baseball and American pie? Even amonst the most hardcore and proud musliums in the US, I’m willing to bet that they adapt far more of the culture of thier new homeland then the other way around.
Sounds rather like the Bible, actually.
(pssst Valteron is fearing for his homeland to the North of the U.S.–all except Windsor, Amherstburg, and Leamington that are actually South of the U.S.)
But your naive-literalist interpretation of the Qur’an, as tomndebb pointed out, is not the interpretation subscribed to by most actual German Muslims, according to the General Council that purports to represent them.
Your position is akin to arguing that Jews are opposed to Western values because they advocate the death penalty for blasphemy, based on a naive-literalist reading of Leviticus 24:18.
This is basically the “tu quoque” fallacy. Yes, the Old Testament and some of the new is exist, but the good part is that the west separates church and state, and hardly anyone in the west really takes the Bible that seriously except for religious nuts and fundies. Muslims have never heard of sepatating Church and State, believe the Koran is the Word of Allah, and believe they should kill anyone who is an apostate from the faith.
And even if the Bible does say similar revolting things, we are talkling about Islam in this thread. You want to start another about Chrsitianity, go ahead!
If by “south of the US” you mean that they lie directly south of the territory of United States, the same is true of the west coast of Canada.
Probably should have mentioned something about that in the OP, then.
So, up 'til now, the Dutch government wasn’t telling Muslim immigrants that they were going to have to follow Dutch law? You’re right, that’s really something they should have been more up-front about in their immigration procedures.
Doesn’t really help with the issue of what to do with all the Muslims that are already living in Western nations, though, which is really more what I was interested in. Given the tone of your OP, I figured, “Don’t let the bastards move here,” was kind of a given.
Are these gangs not currently be prosecuted? That sounds like a pretty fundamental problem with the Dutch and/or French justice system.
What would this education consist of, exactly? How do you think Westerners should treat Muslims already living in their countries?
Apparently, the problem is that you cannot identify our values, as you’ve pretty much failed to do so in that post, except for “freedom of the press.” I’m pretty sure I can, but I suspect there’d be some substantial differences between what I think are our core values, and what you think are our core values.
Also, Muslims aren’t nearly as unified in their concept of “Islamic values” as you seem to believe. You might have noticed, for example, that a great deal of the violence in Iraq stems from a conflict between Suni and Shiite Muslims? That’s because they don’t agree on the same value system, and that’s only looking at the violent extremist Muslims, not the hundreds of millions of Muslims who deplore violence committed in the name of Islam. Which, again, would be a pretty fundamental difference in value systems among Muslims.
Dude, just to remind you, this board is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, not disseminating it. What you are saying here is complete and utter bullshit. It is certainly true with regard to some theocratic extremist subsets of Muslim belief, but it is certainly not true about all Muslims.
Here again, the difference is that Jews have long ago dropped the idea of stoning people for blasphemy. But Surah 4, verse 34 is regularly used in Muslim societies as a justification for wife-beating. It is part of the jutification for the Arab proverb (admittedly not from the Koran, but indicative nonetheless) “Beat your wife. If you do not know why, she does!”
You have to join text and context and reality. When I see a society that believes women should not even exist as a distinct face outside the home, when I look at the position of Muslim women in Muslim countries, and when I compare it to provisio0ns of the Koran on women, it all adds up to the overall picture of a sexist, oppressive society and religion.
I don’t think that the melanin content of one’s skin determines whether or not one is an ethnic/religious bigot and/or a racist.
Really? Did they delete that from their holy book? If so, how on earth are people still able to find it?
Do Jewish men now go about freely shaking the hands of menstruating women? This is something I’ve been wondering for a while, and you seem to be an expert…
And there’s constant, strong pressure from the fundies to break down that wall, and the fundies, at least here in America, are not the trivial force you seem to think they are. If anybody kills or imprisions me for my liberalism or atheism, they’re almost certain to be the Christofundies, not Islamofundies.
And saying that “hardly anyone in the west really takes the Bible that seriously except for religious nuts and fundies” is like saying “hardly any men find other men sexually attractive, except for gays”. True, but rather meaningless. Also, there are a LOT of “religious nuts and fundies”; tens of millions in America. And far, far more of them in America are Christian, and I would expect the same in other Western countries.
If Islam is a threat to “western values”, it is kind of important when some of those “values” differ only in the brand name, not in thier essence.
And even if you are right that Islam is so much worse than Christianity ( and I do think it is presently worse, just not innately worse, or by the margin you think it is ), so what ? Even if they are all part of some vast plot to overthrow the West, they simply lack the power.
Muslims come from Mexico?!
I am sick and tired of hearing about the “silent majority” of Muslims who are harmless, kindly souls. My OP is about ISLAM and the millions who support its repressive policies, not about every single Muslim in the world.
Did the perpetrators of 9-11 need unanimous or even majority support in the Muslim world to pull off what was in fact, to give the devil his due, one of the most effective acts of terrorism in history?
For that matter, it is highly unlikely that every single one of the five million Germans who belonged to the Nazi party at the height of its power, or the estimated 80% of Germans who supported Hitler at some point or other in the 3rd Reich were racist, Jew-hating, warmongering, inhuman robots. In fact, it is almost impossible not to surmise that at least some of those millions of people were both Nazis AND wonderful people that you would instantly fall in love with. Sure SOME of them were, would you not agree? Perhaps millions of them?
But what does that prove? It is the movement and the philosophy of Naziism that almost submerged the western world in what Churchill called a “new dark age”, not the millions of loveable, decent, peace-loving people in Gerrmany.
By the way, wasn’t Churchill the guy they called a fanatic and hate-monger for warning the democracies about Naziism? I think I will do what he did and go off and paint and let Polyannas bask in their false sense of security until events wake them up. As far as I am concerned, this thread is over for me.
Meh, misogeny is the exception rather then the rule in human cultures though. Only in the last few decades has the equality of the sexs been a majority view even in the West (where the Bible was used to justify the view of women as subserviant, just as some Musliums now use the Koran). It’s spreading, and I imagine that woman will become more empowered in muslium societies just as they are doing in other parts of the world.
We can oppose this position without trying to pretend that all Muslim societies or Islam in general support it, which is simply false.
For instance, Indonesia, the largest Muslim society in the world, has a comprehensive Anti-Domestic Violence Law. (Indonesia, by the way, is also a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, which the USA has so far refused to sign on to.) Clearly, your naive-literalist reading of this particular statement in the Qur’an is not determining secular legal policy in the largest Muslim society in the world.
But when you make statements about “ISLAM” in general, as a monolithic undifferentiated entity, you ARE talking about every single Muslim in the world. And when the statements you make in that context are false, you’re going to get called on it.
If you’re sick and tired of being corrected when you make bad arguments, then you need to learn to make better arguments, or just stop trying to participate in debates.
That’s probably a wise decision. I hope for your sake that you’re better at painting than you seem to be at rational debate.
Why choose one? There’s nothing stopping you from getting outraged at both. And they’re both outrageous.