It’s a stupid tactic. The only thing it “works” at is making them sound like they don’t know what they’re talking about. The idea that muslims are going to take cues from Obama about who is and who is not a muslim is about on par with the idea that Obama IS a muslim.
You might be right, or you might not be. From my interactions with Muslims (mostly African Muslims), they absolutely take what Obama says pretty seriously on most things.
But that isn’t the question. It was someone saying he isn’t one of them,not saying he isn’t one of us. Very big difference.
[quote=“iiandyiiii, post:22, topic:709629”]
You might be right, or you might not be.
[quote]
I disagree. 
As well they should. On most things that Obama talks about, his opinion matters. On matters of who should and who should not be called a muslim… not so much.
Well, if Barack Obama (who is no more Catholic than he is Muslim) declared that Shanley and Geoghan aren’t Catholic, THAT would be absurd, too.
Numerous Mafiosi considered themselves devout Catholics. I can’t deny that, and neither can even well-meaning non-Catholics. We can say that Carlo Gambino was a terrible Catholic, that he was an evil Catholic, but Howard Dean or Barack Obama would be foolish and/or dishonest if he said “Gambino wasn’t Catholic.”
I believe Torquemada was evil, but I CAN’T deny he was a Catholic, nor can I deny that he carried out his worst crimes in the name of the religion he and I share. He was a HORRIBLE Catholic, but he wasn’t a non-Catholic. I can’t excommunicate him, and neither can Howard Dean or Barack Obama.
We Catholics CAN’T wash our hands of people who’ve done evil in our name, and NOBODY should pretend those people weren’t really Catholic.
Osam Bin Laden did what he did in the name of his faith. So did Torquemada. We can’t make excuses for them, nor can we play “No True Scotsman” games and pretend they weren’t motivated by their faith. Evil Muslims exist. NOBODY, least of all a non-Muslim, can wave his hand and declare they’re not true Muslims
As near as I can tell, you’re agreeing with me. Again, “if you sincerely call yourself Muslim, or gay, or Libertarian, I’m probably going to believe you.” That is, if you sincerely “claim…that that definition accurately describes” you, I’m probably going to believe you.
Yes, it’s possible that someone describes herself as gay based on a severe misunderstanding of the word (“I kissed a girl and I liked it–I must be a lesbian!”), and in rare cases I might disagree with someone’s self-assessment (“You also kissed a boy and you liked it, and you have a boyfriend, and you’re not especially interested in dating or having sex with women, I don’t think you’re gay.”) But, as I said, probably I’m going to go with someone’s self-assessment, unless I see a very good reason not to.
One thing that really bothers me in discussions on this subject is when excommunication is brought up; excommunication is conceived of in theory as a medicinal punishment in most Christian traditions that use it. It places people out of communion but does not say that they are no longer Christians, since baptism as a sacrament cannot be effaced. Equating it with takfir is totally incorrect, the terms come from different conceptual backgrounds and approaches.
Takfir proceeds from the responsibilities implied in the Shahada, the Muslim statement of faith. Consequently, declaring someone to not really be Muslim has historically had severe social and practical repercussions. For this reason, it is heavily discouraged even by the branches of scholarship that are more obsessive about defining what exactly is a Muslim. The general thrust of classical Shariah law is to preserve communal law and order and at times this means keeping your mouth shut even if you thinks someone else is really messing up.
Many Muslim writers (and non-Muslims) who write about Islam and politics for a more western-focused audience, including many activists and professors, walk a difficult tightrope between wanting to emphasize the heterogenity of believers and wanting to claim that violence is objectively unIslamic, acting as if a claim that isn’t objectively provable is arbitrary and therefore invalid. Unfortunately, treating particular interpretations of a text as objectively true, rather than historical or reasonable, is a major source of oppression. It remains a problem in the discourse on and within Islam.
Ever talk to a pro-lifer about the people who kill doctors and bomb clinics? “Well, they were not a pro-lifer.”
Speaking as a Catholic pro-lifer, I say “Let’s run with that.”
If “Sean Flanagan,” a devout Catholic, set off a bomb outside a Planned Parenthood office and said the Rosary while he waited for the detonation, would you take me seriously if I tried to say he wasn’t a true Catholic?
Would you take Barack Obama seriously if he tried to state that Flanagan was a lone wolf whose actions had nothing to do with his faith?
Of COURSE you wouldn’t. No liberal would.
So, why buy similar reasoning when it comes to Muslims? If a hypothetical Muslim named Abdullah Haddad kills infidels while screaming “Allahu akbar,” why deny the obvious and pretend he wasn’t acting from his deepest Islamic beliefs?
We already KNOW most pro-life Catholics would never kill anybody. We already KNOW most Muslims would never kill anybody. There’s no need to lie to protect the innocent.
But we *really *actually don’t, when it comes to the latter. That’s kind of the issue, and what drives people (myself included) to take the “side” of Islam and remind people that, hey. Hey. HEY ! Perspective, dude. And quit with the hyperbole. And leave the broad brush for when you’re renovating your living room. And Sikhs aren’t Muslims you ignorant twat. And… yeah.
Plus there’s the fact that, in France at least, criticism and debate over Islam is extremely mired in racial issues, and social issues, and generally religious issues (e.g. the general public sides with the pro-secularism crowd when it comes to Islam, but tends to go la-la-la when Christian symbols are brought up)
So, yeah, I’ll freely admit that I’m hastier defending Muslims (and immigrants in general) over various questions than I am defending others. Because they’re attacked more often, and usually for more dubious or despicable reasons.
For example, you make it a point to ask, and I paraphrase : “why try to elucidate the exact grievances of a guy named Abdullah Haddad” ? Because, for real, he might be screaming “Allahu Akbar”, but his motives might just not be 100% religious. And they might have at least a tangential connection to the fact that people are othering him. Because his name is Abdullah Haddad.
You are right to have this attitude. Completely right, morally, practically, everything. So right that I don’t even want to say but, but…this outlook, especially when arrayed with others who might not be able to see as many nuances as you (not every ignorant twat is an NF ignorant twat), does have side effects and consequences. When defensiveness becomes a reflexive reaction to criticism it can become a shield for the unsavory aspects of Islam and get in the way of reformation. I mean, I know: bring up slavery and Islam, total dog whistle. I get it. But at the same time the ideology is being enacted on multiple continents, resulting in actual real world slaves, who’s well being deserves to included in your calculations. Not only that, but some of the people enacting this ideology come from your country, from the same communities as the people you are shielding from abuse/criticism, in fact. And when you add the largely successful repeated attempts to enforce, by violence, the Islamic code against criticizing the prophet, who’s behavior it is that is mimicked when these atrocities are carried out and blessed, we come to a situation that is serious enough that you might need to help out in other ways. Don’t let go of your rope, but grab this one too, all hands on deck, as it were. If only to reduce the proportion of racist dullards among those expressing concern over aspects of Islam.
Isn’t more like, 10-15% of Christians belong to Phelps’ church, or a majority of Christians support Phelpsist ideology? Wouldn’t that be a problem? I think it would definitely change the US’s character.
I think we’re sidestepping the issue a bit. The question isn’t whether or not the terrorists are good Muslims - the question is whether or not there is something about Islam as practiced today that is helping to make these terrorists.
Imagine if Christian dogma said that adulters should be stoned, that homosexuals should be jailed or executed, that apostasy should be punishable by death, that satiric images of Christ were a grave offence against the religion that should result in punishment for the satirist, etc. In that environment, I would expect there would be Christian terrorists who simply follow those ideas to their logical conclusion. Imagine also that a handful of popular ‘radical’ Christian leaders are justifying the terror or at least excusing it as understandable.
At this point, it wouldn’t matter if the majority of Christians are against terrorism, or how many other leaders spoke out against it. We’d say that Christianity has a problem in that it’s breeding intolerance and hatred, regardless of whether the actual terrorists are ‘true’ Christians or not.
That’s the state of Islam today. No, most Muslims are not supportive of terrorism. But shockingly large percentages of them believe that apostasy should be a crime, that women should be beaten, jailed, or killed for adultery, that homosexuality should be punished, that offence against the profit should be punished and information should be censored to protect the religion, etc.
This is the point Bill Maher has been making repeatedly, and I agree with it. Let’s forget about terrorism for a minute, and focus what’s actually going on in ‘mainstream’ Islam.
This Pew Survey of Muslim attitudes towards civil rights, equality for women and other civil matters is enlightening.
For example, when asked “Must a women always obey her husband”, the ‘yes’ vote ranged from 43% in eastern Europe to 93% in east asia. Large percentages of Muslims in every country support the imposition of Sharia Law, which is oppressive to women.
The notion that sons and daughter should have equal inheritance rights is opposed by anywhere from 30% to 69% of all Muslims.
Majorities of Muslims in South Asia, North and East Africa and Southeast Asia would deny women the right to divorce.
29% of Muslims in Egypt believe that suicide bombing is sometimes or often justified. This view is shared by 15% of Muslims in Jordan and Turkey, 18% of Muslims in Malaysia, 26% in Bangladesh, 40% in the Palestinian territories.
In Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen homosexuality is punishable by death. In many other Muslim countries it is a crime but with lesser punishments.
20 countries in the world have criminalized Apostasy. All of them are Muslim countries.
And it goes on. According to this CBS news report, almost one in four Muslims in the U.K. believed the London terror attack was justified.
78% of British Muslims supported punishing cartoonists for drawing pictures of the Prophet.
68% of British Muslims support the arrest and punishment of anyone who ‘insults Islam’.
For civil libertarians, this is extremely troubling. These are not small percentages - these are widespread beliefs in the population. Is it that surprising that you would get more people turning to terrorism within the faith when the mainstream believes such things? And what does it say about the future of religious freedom and civil rights as Muslim populations grow in Europe and elsewhere?
ETA : @Hans Beecher
I’m not shielding anybody from abuse or criticism. I’ll call a cunt a cunt.
But I do feel moved to make sure that the criticism is actually *about *what is being criticized, and generally speaking my country’s past and present *ambiance *tends to make me… circumspect. Or paranoid perhaps. Fair accusation.
But really, I don’t think that it’s fair to throw Pakistani misogyny, or Saudi floggings, or other expressions of fundie, theocratic nonsense in the face of e.g. French or American Muslims.
Because Christian theocraties and communities aren’t and weren’t much better (see: gays and witches in Africa). Because, like, I don’t know Cherif Kouachi from Adam, but I’m pretty sure he’d have freaked out had he been sent to live according to Saudi standards, or according to the rural Pakistani guidelines. He might have been a Muslim, but he was also very French, according to people who knew him. And a misguided idiot, yes, but that goes without saying. I don’t feel like I have to speak to *that *aspect of his. Not here.
I write what I know.
My own philosophy is hodge-podge and sui generis, and in many cases is just defined by “being against” this or that, but in all things I instinctively feel moved to stand for the little guy, or at least to stand between the little guy and the big guy and telling both of them they’re fukken idiots. If I lived in Pakistan, and the big guy was Islamic fundamentalism, and the little guy was Western philosophy then I’d fight and speak for the latter and write lengthy scathing posts on Muslim victimism, and Western plot theory, and the dangers of fundamentalism, and just shut up about the Jews, and abject misoginy and so on.
But on these boards I’m a French guy talking to (mostly) Americans and Europeans. So I stand against their particular brand of cuntitude. And maybe that makes me a useful idiot. But I’m OK with that. At least I am that for (what I think are) the right reasons.
You’re encountering a different group of pro-lifers than I have had the misfortune to encounter. Those I’ve run into see those killers as some kind of heroes.
I find that extremely hard to believe.
So do I - I have never spoken with any pro-lifer (and I suspect I know a lot more pro-lifers than the average Doper) who said either that abortion-clinic bombers were not pro-life, or saw them as heroes in any sense.
Regards,
Shodan
Confirmation bias taken to hyperbole.