Islam isn’t just a religious belief system, it contains specific laws. They’re based on the teachings of Mohammad. There is no “modernization” involved beyond ignoring the law.
Narrated by Abdullah ibn Abbas: The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.
There are several methods by which sharia jurists have advocated the punishment of gays or lesbians who are sexually active. One form of execution involves an individual convicted of homosexual acts being stoned to death by a crowd of Muslims.[47][page needed] Other Muslim jurists have established ijma ruling that those committing homosexual acts be thrown from rooftops or high places,[48] and this is the perspective of most Salafists.[49]
It’s no accident that ISIS is tossing gay people off roofs. It’s based on sharia law. The father of the killer came from Afghanistan which has the death penalty for the crime of homosexuality. His son was raised in the US and should have been “Westernized” into whatever fantasy world you have about the religion. But when you strip away all the layers you’re left with Mohammad, his words, and his deeds. Even if 80% of all Muslims spend their waking hours petting fuzzy bunnies the remainder are so batshit crazy that they actually follow the words of their prophet.
Big fucking surprise a gay bar was attacked given the unending attacks over movies, cartoons and editorials.
So either Mohammad’s words are religious bullshit to be ignored or they mean something to his followers on some level and are acted on.
Given the number countries who have the death penalty based on sharia law for gay sex I don’t see how it’s possible to hand wave it away as a handful of Muslims.
You say that as though it were somehow unusual for a religious belief system to contain specific laws, but most religious belief systems do. Jewish law, for example, decrees the death penalty for homosexuality just as much as Islamic law does.
So whatever the reason(s) that Islam in the modern world has an unusually high level of support for capital punishment for homosexual acts compared to other religions, it can’t be merely because “it’s a specific law”, because that’s in no way unique to Islam.
So your argument is that because the 99% of the population that isn’t Muslim produced as many terrorists as the 1% that is, Islam is not a problem?
Even if we limit ourselves to Republicans rather than the population as a whole, Muslims still account for ten times as many terrorists and ten times as many casualties as they would if they were as inclined to terrorism as Republicans were.
This whole thing is simple. If there exist Muslims that are not homophobic, then Islam itself cannot be what’s making people homophobic, and therefore it make no sense to attack Islam itself for such. It only makes sense to attack the homophobic views that Muslims express.
Attacking Islam serves no purpose but to make people become more extremist–thinking they must defend their faith. There’s a reason why atheists don’t try to convince Creationists that god doesn’t exist–just that you can believe in God and in evolution.
You cannot attack someone’s entire belief system and expect them to change. You have to attack the individual beliefs. You have to give them ways to continue in their belief system but no longer hold the problematic beliefs.
It’s the same reason I continually point out that the Bible doesn’t actually condemn homosexuality, by pointing out that the most likely translation is against a type of pedophilia and not homosexual relations in and of themselves. That’s how I deal with homophobic Christians.
Not by giving them an out to call me a liberal commie atheist that they can just ignore. I adhere to their values, and then show how they are compatible with being pro-LGBT.
And this is the strategy that has worked. Why would you think Islam would be different?
Oh right, this is where you come in and enlighten me about how the US supported the Mujahideen and how it supports the House of Saud. I get that. It’s not relevant. It’s just not. So drop it. You’re not enlightening me. You’re not educating me.
This logic is flawed. It’s like saying, “If there exist babies without brain damage who were born to alcoholic mothers, then alcohol itself cannot be what’s causing fetal brain damage.”
We know Islam is different because, death penalty and stuff. Question is, why hasn’t it worked with Islam? Gays have made a lot of progress over the last 50 years by playing nice, but they haven’t made nearly that much progress in Islam. Muslims have been living in the US for generations, but the Muslim gay community is still very small. Why aren’t there more places of worship gay Muslims can feel safe enough to openly participate? Why did this guy in Florida decide to kill instead of talking to an imam? What would a typical imam have told him if he had?
And you waited until post #260 to say this, because . . . ??? There are millions of us, these last few days, who share Valteron’s feelings of being scared shitless. By your standards, the dead and wounded in Orlando also had “nothing to fear,” being safely protected in an oh-so-tolerant country. Yet instead they are now bloody bodies of rotting flesh. And each one of them could easily have been me or my husband or Valteron. So please excuse our “hand-wringing” and “over-the-top paranoia.” The target is on our backs, not yours.
I could point you in the direction of 20th century ideological organisations that espoused hateful, dangerous, murderous behaviour. Yet I can also point out to you people who were members of those organisations who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Yet I would still maintain that those ideologies should be criticised and condemned, I hope you would too.
Were the killers of Matthew Shepard Muslims? Your rant, and that’s all it is, as demonstrated clearly by your last sentence, does not compute. “In Islam” is pretty much meaningless unless you specify which branch or sect of Islam you’re discussing. But, then, that wouldn’t help your so-called point, would it, now?
Pretty much all of this was also true for Christianity and Christian countries until pretty recently. The very liberal attitudes of most Muslim Americans, who are friendlier on average to gay rights than American evangelical Christians, shows that this is not a necessary aspect is Islam any more than it is necessary for Christianity.
According to the Southren Poverty Law Center, there are 892 hate groups currently operating in the US. This is a 14% increase over the last two years.
Here is a map showing hate group activity -
Here’s a breakdown of the various groups -
SPLC keeps a list of right-wing hate group activity, starting with the Oklahoma City Bombing and going up to the idiot Bundyites who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge - it is a long list.
The list itself has not been updated following the events of this weekend. However, here is a recent report on the growing right-wing anti-goverment movement of extra-legal “constitutional sheriffs”, attempting to prevent what they see as “federal overreach”.
For further reading, Vox just published a piece on right-wing terrorism. It sheds more light on the fact the majority of terrorist attacks in the last fifteen years have come from home-grown Americans, not foreign terrorists.
It’s easy to talk about Islamic terrorism because it’s a problem caused by Others and it’s flashy with bombs and guns and lots of minutes from Wolf Blitzer. But the truth is, in America - the terrorism is coming from inside the house. It’s uncomfortable to talk about domestic right-wing terrorism. It’s so much easier to blame the foreigners. But that’s precisely why we have to face up to facts if we want to make a difference.
I think the Orlando shootings demonstrate an issue with conflating “right-wing” terrorism with domestic terrorism. The Orlando shooter was an American citizen, but he claimed allegiance to ISIL. Was he a right-winger?
You say that as though it were somehow unusual for a religious belief system to contain specific laws, but most religious belief systems do. Jewish law, for example, decrees the death penalty for homosexuality just as much as Islamic law does.