It has the concept of “holy war” or bellum sacrum, which serves pretty much the same purpose.
[QUOTE=nachtmusick]
and Islam does not have the concept of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
[/quote]
Sure it does. Paying your taxes is just as mandatory in Islam as in Christianity.
Now, you may be choosing to interpret “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” in some more abstract way to suggest a general principle of separation of church and state, or similar. But that’s not what the literal words say. (And it’s certainly not supported by most of the history of Christianity, which exhibits very tightly entangled church and state.)
[QUOTE=nachtmusick]
The doctrines are, in short, that Jesus was a hippy and Mohammed was a conqueror.
[/quote]
All that tells us is how you choose to interpret the doctrines, not how they must be interpreted nor even how they historically have been interpreted. For the vast majority of its historical existence, Christianity has manifested overwhelmingly as a state-theocratic social system fundamentally dependent on, and identifying with, military power. Such systems in no way represent what we now think of as “hippy” ideals.
In fact, if you want to see the embodiment of “conqueror”, check out Milton’s Jesus in the great Christian epic poem Paradise Lost:
It certainly does, if you’re equating “belief” or “doctrine” with “what their scriptures say”. I already quoted an explicit example of Moses decreeing a death sentence for blasphemy back in post #315, from Leviticus 24:10-23:
Nobody here is in any way disagreeing with the position that the “radical Islam” sects espousing violent oppressive interpretations of Islamic doctrines want people to understand those doctrines “in the very worst way”.
What we’re saying is simply that you can’t equate those sects and interpretations with “Islam” overall and unqualified.
Christians and Jews are ignoring that instruction. If you read the Torah and the Bible cover to cover you don’t find more reasons to accept gay people. The Bible and the Torah have literally nothing good to say about homosexuality. God does indeed “hate fags”.
So why, relatively speaking, is homosexuality uniquely persecuted in the Islamic world? Why is it that, of the ten countries in the world which still have the death penalty for homosexuality, all ten are Islamic? Why is it that, of the 5 main schools of Islamic jurisprudence, one (Hanafi) recommends homosexuals be flogged (with optional execution depending on the will of the judge) while the other four (Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Ja’fari) all recommend execution? Why do 52% of British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal? What’s the difference that makes the difference?
Well, the difference is that Judaism and Christianity have loopholes that Islam simply doesn’t have. For example, a Jew who doesn’t want to persecute homosexuals can simply ignore the Levitical prohibitions on homosexuality on the grounds that there isn’t a universally recognised Sanhedrin. A Christian who doesn’t want to persecute homosexuals can just hand wave away the Old Testament altogether by arguing that its teachings are superseded by those of Jesus (although that does also mean ignoring Matthew 5:18). What is a Muslim supposed to do? Homosexuality is strongly, specifically, and repeatedly condemned in the Koran and the punishments for it are spelled out in in various hadith. Where’s the work-around? Where’s the loophole?
This isn’t a rhetorical question, by the way. I’d be very interested to see if anyone could make a scriptural case for Islamic tolerance towards gay people.
As part of their interpretation of their faith. I don’t care if you and Magiver want to call a particular kind of re-interpretation “ignoring”, but it doesn’t exist independently of one’s interpretation of one’s faith as a whole.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
So why, relatively speaking, is homosexuality uniquely persecuted in the Islamic world?
[/quote]
Persecution of homosexuals certainly isn’t “unique” to the Islamic world, although its prevalence and severity are currently (but not always in former times) much higher in the Islamic world than elsewhere.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
What’s the difference that makes the difference?
[/quote]
There are a lot of “differences that make the difference”, all with complicated political/cultural/historical roots. None of them is fundamentally dependent on scriptural differences per se, as we can infer from the fact that Islamic societies historically have not always been harsher towards homosexuality than Jewish or Christian ones.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
Well, the difference is that Judaism and Christianity have loopholes that Islam simply doesn’t have.
[/quote]
But that’s got to be sheer horseshit, because otherwise we wouldn’t have all those historically attested situations where Islamic cultures were more tolerant of homosexuality than contemporary Jewish or Christian ones. The “scriptural-difference” explanation doesn’t work if it can’t account for these different historical outcomes in different periods and cultures.
FFS folks, how often do we have to keep pointing out that same crucially important fact before you start taking it into account when discussing this issue?
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
What is a Muslim supposed to do? Homosexuality is strongly, specifically, and repeatedly condemned in the Koran and the punishments for it are spelled out in in various hadith. Where’s the work-around? Where’s the loophole?
This isn’t a rhetorical question, by the way. I’d be very interested to see if anyone could make a scriptural case for Islamic tolerance towards gay people.
[/QUOTE]
I’m glad that you’re interested in knowing about this, but I’m baffled that it still seems so mysterious and unlikely to you. I’ve already mentioned Muslims for Progressive Values what, three or four times in this thread?, and IIRC other posters have cited specific liberal Muslim theological positions on homosexuality. But never mind, here you go:
Yes, of course. I don’t think that’s really debatable.
Well, first of all, the thing about holy texts in religions (and really text in general), is that you can’t look at a text in isolation. The text is read and understood by believers, and those believers bring their own personal and cultural/societal biases into their reading and understanding of the text. So every reading of the text, and what’s prohibited/allowed by the text, comes through the lens of the reader.
That being said, I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that disapproval of homosexuality is stronger right now in the Muslim World (which I’m defining here as the global community of Muslims) than the Christian World (defined as the global community of Christians).
Now, to go back to what I said before, there could be multiple reasons for that. First, the prohibition of homosexuality in Islam might be textually stronger than the prohibition of homosexuality in Christianity. I don’t know enough about Islamic holy texts to be able to comment on that.
I feel a little more confident to comment on the second reason, which deals with the understanding of the text being shaped by the cultural lens of the believer. And I think some of the reason for the difference in levels of disapproval has to do with modernity, secularism, and colonialism/post colonialism. If you look at the Muslim world, much of it, from the 18th/19th centuries until the middle of the 20th century, was under colonial rule. This was true for much of the Christian world too, but certainly by no means all of it (and if you look at the difference between attitudes about homosexuality today in the United States, for instance, vs Uganda, both Christian countries, you can see the difference). Now, the actual mechanism of how the one contributes to the other is probably worth a book in itself, and not really something I want to get into right now, but can we agree it had an effect?
Additionally to that, if you look at seculariation efforts in a lot of Muslim countries, especially in the middle east, they tended to be top down and fundamentally anti-liberal (See, for instance, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt), which tainted secularism in the eyes of a lot of people, and made Muslim fundamentalism, much of which is built around the deliberate rejection of secularism, “western values” and religious liberalism popular.
I think there are other factors too, with older roots, in differing approaches Muslim vs Christian theologians took toward methods of interpretation of the text, like Christian theologians in the late middle ages trying to reconcile Christian belief with classical philosophy, and Sunni rejection of individual interpretation of texts, but I think those are secondary to the whole question of secularism and approaches towards modernity.
In regards to violence, that’s a whole other question, although I do think that the Qu’ran and Hadith are more comfortable with religious violence than the New Testament (although maybe not the Old Testament, which is notoriously bloody). A lot of that, of course, has to do with the fact that when the New Testament was written, Christianity was an underground movement under fear of persecution, while, when the Qu’ran and Hadith were written, Islam was an expanding religio-political movement that was fighting wars of expansion and trying to govern its own state. But that’s another issue and not one to get into at this hour.
If you can manage to get Magiver to understand that, I’ll be deeply grateful to you.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
And I think some of the reason for the difference in levels of disapproval has to do with modernity, secularism, and colonialism/post colonialism. If you look at the Muslim world, much of it, from the 18th/19th centuries until the middle of the 20th century, was under colonial rule. This was true for much of the Christian world too, but certainly by no means all of it (and if you look at the difference between attitudes about homosexuality today in the United States, for instance, vs Uganda, both Christian countries, you can see the difference). Now, the actual mechanism of how the one contributes to the other is probably worth a book in itself, and not really something I want to get into right now, but can we agree it had an effect?
[/quote]
I have no problem agreeing that modernity, secularism, and colonialism/postcolonialism had a significant effect on this phenomenon. Some other people, though, seem to think that means you’re a communist who’s “blaming” western imperialism for the crimes of modern terrorists.
The doctrines are not identical, but there are parallels on each of these issues – the aforementioned crusades and other “holy wars”, for example, and various verses in Muslim texts that mandate the paying of taxes.
The doctrines can be interpreted in many different ways, including to tolerate homosexuality and promote peace and democracy.
Or that Jesus came not to bring peace, but rather the sword, while Mohammed advocated peace… depending on the interpretation.
Christian text has plenty of praise for martyrs. As to the rest of this paragraph, it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with what I’ve said. I’ve never said “they don’t believe”, or tried to “whitewash” the despicable motives of terrorists.
I’m all for criticism of radical ideologies, including those within Islam. But I’m not for painting with broad brushes – which is not only inaccurate, but is exactly what our enemies desire. They want all Muslims to see the world in black and white – that every non-Muslim is their enemy, and that their only hope is to ally with extremists. Much wiser, IMO, to use nuance, and recognize that Muslims are compatible with modern society and peace, and peaceful Muslims are welcomed with open arms, and the terrorists’ interpretation of scripture is no more valid than that of peaceful Muslims.
You can only stretch the word ‘interpretation’ so far before it becomes utterly meaningless. You can’t interpret Jainism to allow for suicidal violence. You can’t interpret Christianity to allow that Jesus wasn’t the son of God. You can’t interpret Islam to allow that Muhammed wasn’t a homophobe. At a certain point it stops being interpretation and just becomes lying about what the books say.
Of course, I wholeheartedly endorse lying about what the books say because the books are full of life-destroying gibberish.
And for reasons which are entirely explained by scripture.
You’re missing the point. The reason these loopholes are important is that they give believers ways to ignore the barbarism in their scriptures when modernity forces them to choose between tolerance and fundamentalism. In the middle-ages, there was no need to choose and so there was nothing holding the fundamentalists back. As such, tolerance towards gay people is easier to justify for Jews and Christians if they have to than it is for Muslims.
Scripture explains why homosexuals and Jews were far more welcome in various Muslim societies than Christian Europe at certain times in the past? Do tell!
There are plenty of such loopholes, including all those verses already quoted. Any Muslim who wants to treat all people, including homosexuals, with dignity and decency and respect can do so simply by abiding by the various verses in the Quran that say “treat people with decency and kindness” as their most important guidance.
Forgive me if this has already been cited in this massive thread, but do you have any cites for just how gay-friendly medieval Islamic societies actually were?
I fully encourage all Muslims to do exactly that, but they also have to ignore:
Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant! 27:55
And (remember) Lut: behold, he said to his people: "Ye do commit lewdness, such as no people in Creation (ever) committed before you. 29:28
We rained down on them a shower (of brimstone): and evil was the shower on those who were admonished (but heeded not)! 26:173
If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful. 4:16
Plus numerous denunciations in the hadith and an enormous number of legal rulings from generations of scholars. I repeat, every single one of the 5 schools of Islamic jurisprudence prohibits homosexuality, and four consider it a capital offence.
It’s not medieval, but the Ottoman Empire decriminalized homosexuality in 1858. That’s a lot better than most (if not all) of its contemporaries in Europe.
Historically the same was true of Christian societies, in terms of what all the major sects and schools of thought taught, until very recently. Yet somehow, societies like the Ottomans were more open and tolerant of homosexuality. And there were many more. Considering all these, I don’t believe at all that it’s harder to “ignore” these anti-gay in Muslim texts than in Christian texts.
The article has restated what I’ve been saying all along:
“It is a commonly held belief that Islamic law dictates the death penalty as an absolute punishment for apostasy. However, this reading of the Islamic Tradition relies on restricting the role of the Prophet Muhammad to that of a religious figure issuing timeless decrees. Such a restriction of the Prophet’s role will undoubtedly give rise to numerous paradoxes, as it will decontextualise all his statements and actions in a way that not only makes Islam incoherent as a religion, but also incompatible with certain societal developments.”
Post 508:
No, I do not accept it’s a function of interpretation. Islamic terrorists are following the express instructions of Mohammad. At best it’s a function of the less violent ignoring specific laws. Mohammad isn’t some schmuck in the Old Testament. He’s the main character in the religion and he codified the word of God
I then went on to cite Pew research data showing over 300 million Muslims believe in the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy. This isn’t a handful of people it’s a huge number of people and they’re following the prophet who created it. This isn’t going away anytime soon when the religion is based on a daily prayer that includes the line: “I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah” (repeated twice).
I’ve stated before that as you get closer to the core of the religion (Mohammad) the higher the level of violence. There is no question that his words and laws are the basis for the violence. This is a huge hurdle to cross. It requires altering the belief that Mohammad’s words/laws are absolute and that is a dangerous thing to do.
Peaceful Muslims say the exact same thing – they say that Muhammad’s words and laws are the basis for their peacefulness and tolerance. And they have Quranic verses to “prove” this.
I don’t accept that ISIS’s interpretation is somehow better or more accurate than theirs. A “literal” reading of Muhammad’s instructions finds dozens or hundreds of direct contradictions (just like a “literal” reading of the Bible). That means that, just like Christians and Jews and the Bible, every single reader is interpreting the text in some way to resolve these contradictions.
There’s no scriptural reason that I can come up with that Jews are so much more tolerant of homosexuality than Christians, and yet Jews really are much, much more tolerant of homosexuality than Christians. Why do you think this is?
You completely ignored the cite given or the point I’ve made and you continue to mis-use the word “interpretation”. Mohammad’s words and law specifically outlaw and punish homosexuals. They have to be ignored outright. That’s not an interpretation of what he said.
It is the reason why Christianity is more tolerant of homosexuality. Jesus never codified this. He never killed people for their sins. The whole religious mythology is based on his sacrificing himself.
It was this core religious construct that made it possible for one person to deconstruct the political nightmare that the religion had turned into. That mechanism doesn’t exist in Islam and that’s why it’s so much harder to fix. It’s not a handful of people who believe Mohammad’s laws it’s hundreds of millions.
His words also specifically mandate that Muslims treat people (and homosexuals are people!) with kindness and peacefulness. That’s not an interpretation, that’s exactly what he said.
And that, read literally, directly conflicts with mandates to punish homosexuals.
You’ve consistently completely ignored this, just because it’s important to you (for some reason) that peaceful Muslims not have a legitimate interpretation that favors their peacefulness.
But they do, no matter what ISIS (or you) says.
Then why are Jews so much more tolerant of homosexuals than Christians? What is it about Christianity that makes its followers so much more anti-gay than Jews?
You can’t include gay people in any writings when they’re specifically called out as sinners. So your logic is flawed. There are no mandates calling for kindness to them. The mandates are for their demise.
When did Jews start marrying gay people? You’re premise is again flawed. Why are Muslims killing gay people?
I don’t say anything. Those are Mohammad’s words not mine. It’s not up for debate that he said them or meant them. Your continued misuse of the word “interpretation” is intellectual dishonesty. That some Muslims ignore Mohammad’s specific words/laws does not nullify the existence or meaning of those words/laws.
You can’t “interpret” Islam or the Qur’an to permit suicidal violence, either, yet there are extremists influenced by the Wahhabist sect who have borrowed suicide bombings from the non-Islamic Tamils.
(And there are Islamophobes who insist that those interpretations are actually in Islamic teachings.)
There are teachings in the Torah, the New testament, and the Qur’an that have been used to condemn homosexuality since the earliest days of each religion. It makes no sense to claim that it is merely the book or the dogma that sets apart the religions when the evidence clearly indicates that attitudes are shaped by the cultures in which they arise. Attitudes regarding apostasy and homosexuality have begun changing within Muslim communities removed from the centers of Wahhabist influence and a claim that the attitudes are carved in stone, based on earlier writings, have no basis in fact.
And Moses and Paul said the same hurtful things. Your insistence that only Islam can have problems based on your attitudes toward Mohammed are no more intellectually honest than your opponents.
Yes you can, unless you choose not to. You’re insisting that they must choose to interpret it a certain way, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Logic doesn’t demand that one be ignored and the other be followed – it’s impossible to “literally” follow both. Mandating treating all people with decency and kindness includes all people, it doesn’t specifically carve out gay people as exceptions.
This is a choice you’re making. Logic doesn’t demand it. And Muslims are free to interpret it as you and ISIS do, or as peaceful Muslims do. I have no idea why anyone would want to tell peaceful Muslims that they aren’t following the Quran when there are such verses that conflict.
Are you kidding? Why are Christians (some, not all) killing gay people? Why are Uganda and many other very religious Christian countries so violently anti-gay? Why are they so much more violent and anti-gay than Jews and Buddhists and atheists?
That ISIS and other anti-gay Muslims ignore Mohammad’s specific words/laws about treating all people with kindness and peacefulness does not nullify the existence or meaning of those words/laws. Those are Mohammad’s words, not mine. It’s not up for debate that he said them or meant them.
It boggles my mind why you’re insisting that ISIS is right about Islam and the peaceful Muslims are wrong. Do you really believe that “treat all people with kindness and peace” doesn’t conflict with “kill gays”? A “literal” reading shows them in direct conflict.
You can pretend that there are no such conflicts, but I won’t. There’s no way to read them without interpretation.
Oh horseshit, of course you can. Jain scriptures acknowledge militarism and the social necessity of armed violence; plenty of Jains serve in the Indian armed forces. Interpret your purpose as a necessary defense of Jainism and/or beings that Jains should protect, and bingo, there’s your Jain suicide attack all neatly justified.
Of course, most other Jains would doubtless condemn your reasoning as a distortion of Jain doctrine, but then most Muslims condemn suicide attacks as a distortion of Muslim doctrine too. It’s all about interpretation.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
You can’t interpret Christianity to allow that Jesus wasn’t the son of God.
[/quote]
? You’ve never heard of Quakers? Many of them aren’t Trinitarians, but Quakers are generally regarded as an integral part of the Christian tradition. Sure, some other Christians hold that non-Trinitarian Quakers “don’t count” as Christians, but then some Christians hold that Mormons or Catholics “don’t count” as Christians either. It’s all about interpretation, and while some interpretations may be more “mainstream” than others, that doesn’t automatically disqualify the more “fringe” interpretations.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
You can’t interpret Islam to allow that Muhammed wasn’t a homophobe.
[/quote]
Well, if you bothered to read what I posted just a few posts ago in my previous reply to you, you’d see that you can.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
At a certain point it stops being interpretation and just becomes lying about what the books say.
[/quote]
If you want to describe some kinds of interpretation as “lying”, just as you want to describe some kinds of interpretation as “ignoring”, I don’t care. But you don’t get to pretend that it’s somehow different or separate from interpretation of a religion as a whole.
[QUOTE=Tithonus]
And for reasons which are entirely explained by scripture. […] The reason these loopholes are important is that they give believers ways to ignore the barbarism in their scriptures when modernity forces them to choose between tolerance and fundamentalism. In the middle-ages, there was no need to choose and so there was nothing holding the fundamentalists back.
[/quote]
This is migraine-inducing illogic on your part. You can’t say that modern disparities in tolerance between Islam and other religions are “entirely explained by scripture” while disregarding the reverse disparities in tolerance between pre-modern Islam and other religions when they were using the same scriptures that they use now.
But not because of anything intrinsic to their scripture: rather, because of differences in modern interpretations of their scripture.
Ancient Jewish and Christian scriptures are just as anti-gay as Muslim ones. Medieval Jewish and Christian societies were just as anti-gay, and in many cases more anti-gay, than Muslim ones. The reasons that modern Jewish and Christian societies are (mostly) less anti-gay than (most) Muslim ones are not owing to intrinsic scriptural differences.
:dubious: What you basically seem to mean is “I don’t actually know anything about medieval Islamic societies and I don’t want to give up my nice simplistic anachronistic scripture-based explanation of why the homophobia problem is worse in modern Islam than in other contemporary religions, so I’m hoping you might be wrong about the claim that the homophobia problem has sometimes been better in pre-modern Islam than in other contemporary religions.” :rolleyes:
Sorry to disappoint you, but yes, there’s lots of evidence of greater toleration of homosexuality in Muslim societies than in Christian ones before modern times. Yes, a bunch of it has been already cited in this thread, along with everything else that we’ve explained a dozen times over, but here’s another cite.