I’m not sure why medieval Islam is relevant to this discussion. Certainly if Christians said, “We may be anti-gay now, but we were gay-tolerant in the past”(if, hypothetically, that were true,) it wouldn’t be considered an acceptable argument on the Dope.
Nope. Jains consider suicide the highest form of himsa (violence). It isn’t permitted under any circumstances. Any Jain who carries out a suicide attack for any reason is doing Jainism wrong and that’s all there is to it.
No. They’d condemn your reasoning, because it’s utterly spurious and betrays a complete unfamiliarity with even the most basic tenets of their faith.
What percentage of Quakers are not trinitarians? More importantly, how do they justify their beliefs? The idea that one can read the New Testament honestly and not conclude that Jesus was (or, at least, believed himself to be) the son of God is simply ridiculous. You’d have to ignore pretty much all of it.
The quotes around “mainstream” and “don’t count” are a nice touch, but they can’t disguise the fact that it’s possible to be wrong about what a scripture teaches. Some “interpretations” are, for want of a better word, bullshit. If I read the Koran and come away believing it to be an unequivocal endorsement of Christianity, that’s not an “interpretation”. That’s me getting it wrong. Similarly, the Koran, the hadith, and centuries of Islamic scholarship are very clear on the question of whether or not homosexuality is morally permissible. Spoiler alert: It isn’t, and anyone who says otherwise just isn’t being honest.
I did read it. It was a load of eye-rolling sophistry, noticeably bereft of scriptural substantiation. It was very nice, but it wasn’t very honest. For example, it says:
“No. After the Prophet Muhammad(PBUH) died, his companions once discussed whether to punish a person for homosexuality. If the Prophet had ever done so, his companions would have simply referred to his decision. Since they didn’t know what to do, we know that the Prophet gave them no example to follow.”
This ignores (among many others) Abu Dawad 38:4447 “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.”
The author’s “defence” of the story of Lot is so hilariously misguided I almost didn’t bother finishing it. Suffice it to say that when the author writes:
“Some scholars interpret the “transgressions” in the story of Lut to refer to male homosexuality. Yet the word “transgressions” in the Qur’an can mean something sexual or something non-sexual.”
He is ignoring a hell of a lot. Perhaps most pertinently, he’s ignoring Al-A’raf [7] 80-84:
"“And (We sent) Lot when he said to his people: What! do you commit an indecency which any one in the world has not done before you? Most surely you come to males in lust besides females; nay you are an extravagant people. And the answer of his people was no other than that they said: Turn them out of your town, surely they are a people who seek to purify (themselves). So We delivered him and his followers, except his wife; she was of those who remained behind. And We rained upon them a rain; consider then what was the end of the guilty.”
He’s also ignoring the fact that there is no question that Mohammed’s contemporaries definitely did interpret the story of Lot as a condemnation of homosexuality. Indeed, the Arabic words for homosexual behaviour (liwat) and a person who engages in homosexual behaviour (luti) both derive from the name Lot.
But then, that’s the beauty of post-modern readings of religious texts. You can give yourself free rein to believe anything can mean anything.
Good, because I’m going to keep doing it. I honestly believe that, past a certain point, interpretation becomes flat-out lying.
You know, we could save ourselves a lot of time if you just agreed to interpret my use of the word “lying” to mean “wholehearted agreement” 
That’s not what I’m saying. I wasn’t saying the disparities in tolerance are entirely explained by scripture. I was saying that modern Islamic intolerance for homosexuality is entirely explained by scripture. Similarly, medieval Christian intolerance for homosexuality is also entirely explained by scripture. However, the modern disparity between how gays are treated in the West and how gays are treated nearly everywhere in the Islamic world is explained by the relative looseness of Christian scripture which renders it more vulnerable to secular critique. Bottom line: I have no doubt that if Jesus had finished the Sermon on the Mount by saying “Kill homosexuals wherever you find them”, gays in the West today would be treated every bit as badly as they are in Iran or Afghanistan. But he didn’t.
Actually, there are. The only denunciations of homosexuality in the New Testament come from St. Paul in his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians. Jesus didn’t mention it at all, not even obliquely. Moreover, the notion that Levitical prohibitions against homosexuality (and everything else, for that matter) are superseded by Jesus’ teachings is a mainstream Christian belief. That’s kinda what the whole New Covenant deal was all about.
Now, don’t get me wrong. You still have to do a fair bit of work to hammer out a gay-friendly interpretation of the New Testament. But you have to work much harder to get around exhortations to “Kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done”, especially when you consider that this is a direct instruction from Mohammed himself.
Because some people are saying that Islamic scripture somehow makes it harder to not want to kill gays than other scriptures. If that were true, then it would have always been true. Now isn’t special, when it comes to the “true nature” of any religion, and past circumstances say just as much about the influence and quality of a religion’s source material as today.
The claim put forth by those who wish to make this an “Islamic” issue claim that the words of Mohammed are mandatory, unchanging, and all powerful. The claim is that all Muslims who are devout Muslims are being this way because Mohammed told them to be that way.
The problem with that argument is that there are hundreds of years in multiple regions of the world where the current Wahhabist teachings and ISIS actions were not being carried out by Muslims, generally. What the proponents of “it’s Mohammed’s fault” are desperately trying to do is ignore or deny several hundred years of history where Muslims were not promoting those beliefs. They have an attitude toward Islam that parallels Jack Chick’s attitude of Christianity, in which the “real church” went underground in 325 and did not pop up again until the Protestant Reformation.
If Islam is homophobic because Mohammed told Muslims to be homophobic, (as opposed to because a particular sect of Islam decided on that interpretation in the nineteenth century), then one has to explain several hundred years of Islam not being particularly homophobic. Instead of explanations, we get claims that it does not matter (because it does not fit the story that the anti-Islam people want to tell, not for any evidence based logic).
Nope. Just use different interpretations. What does “Son of God” mean? Genesis refers to the “sons of God” in the plural. Doesit make Jesus divine? Or a demi-god? Or just a holy man? There are statements where Jesus refers to himself along with the father and a couple of lines in which he mentions the Holy Spirit, but there is no place in any canonical Gospel where Jesus said I am God and the Father is God and the Spirit is God and the three of us are all One.
However, it is not a direct quote from Mohammed. It does not appear in the Qur’an, (leaving aside the issue that the Qur’an was not actually penned by Mohammed, but by his followers in conflicting editions after his death). It appears attributed to him by an author writing 200 years after his death.
Then you really haven’t been paying attention. As iiandyiiii and tomndebb explained (not for the first, or fifteenth, time), medieval Islam is relevant because it’s a counterexample disproving the various ignorant and naive “essentialist” attempts to explain homophobia in modern Islam by appealing to ancient Islamic scripture.
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Nope. Jains consider suicide the highest form of himsa (violence).
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That’s a Wikipedia soundbite which ignores (or more likely, is completely unaware of) the history of attempts in Jain doctrine to distinguish traditional Jain ritual suicide/euthanasia or santhara from forms of suicide which were until recently criminalized in Indian law.
In any case, a soldier rushing to certain death in an attempt to take out an enemy (which is one of the things that servicemembers, including Jain members of the Indian armed services, are obliged to do when ordered) is not committing suicide. And terrorists often rationalize suicide attacks by equating them to just that sort of deeds of war.
Again, it’s all about interpretation. Your naive attempts to disqualify unlikely or eccentric interpretations as somehow literally impossible just reveal how simplistic your ideas of religion are.
Careful, your double standard is showing. When modern Judaism or Christianity offers a non-homophobic reinterpretation of anti-gay scriptural statements which is very unlike the way that most ancient Jewish or Christian scriptural commentators understood the text, you commend those as convenient “loopholes” or “work-arounds” for “ignoring barbarism”. When modern Islam offers a non-homophobic reinterpretation of anti-gay scriptural statements which is very unlike the way that most ancient Muslim scriptural commentators understood the text, you complain that it’s “eye-rolling sophistry” without “substantiation”. It’s almost as though you don’t want Muslims to interpret Muslim scripture with compassion and tolerance toward gay people. :dubious:
I get the point that you really, really, really want Islam to be somehow innately and intrinsically more homophobic and less reconcilable to gay rights than other religions are. But you can’t defend that position without completely disregarding many centuries of religious and cultural history, and at this point your desperation to continue disregarding them in the teeth of all evidence is really starting to show.
Funny thing how so many medieval Muslims, according to a bunch of detailed cites provided in this thread which you so resolutely insist on ignoring, managed to get around such exhortations and espouse a gay-friendly or gay-tolerant interpretation of their faith while so many medieval Christians failed miserably to achieve anything even approaching that level of tolerance.
Are you ever going to acknowledge that crucial flaw in your obstinate attempts to paint Islam as somehow intrinsically, essentially, necessarily more homophobic than Christianity, or are you just going to go on forever ignoring it?
The peaceful edicts of Islam cannot, by default, extend to sinners. Unless you some twisted logic that says killing the sinner is a peaceful act.
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.
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It boggles my mind that you insist the specific laws set for Mohammad are not part of the religion and are superseded by general edicts of social behavior.
for the same reason there was a Spanish Inquisition. They’ve subverted the religion. There are no quotes from Jesus demanding this. It’s the opposite with Islam. Mohammad specifically declared this a sin. It wasn’t implied by any followers, it was specific. This is why there is so much violence associated with it to this day. You keep saying it’s the religion of peace but hundreds of millions of Muslims still believe Mohammad’s words are law.
No idea what you’re talking about here. There are (at least!) two contradictory mandates from Muhammad (paraphrased) – kill the gays and treat people kindly and peacefully. Any reading of both of these necessarily requires interpretation to resolve the contradiction. What part of this do you disagree with?
Why would I want to choose ISIS’s intepretation? What possible reason could I have to place “kill the gays” as a higher or more important mandate than “treat people kindly and peacefully”, when they are both very clear instructions?
And what possible reason do you have to do so? Why do you believe that “kill the gays” is more important than “treat people kindly and peacefully”? Why are the Muslims who value the second more than the first somehow less Muslim, when the 2nd is a very clear instruction in the Quran? Why do you believe that ISIS is somehow more “pure” in Islam for valuing the first and disregarding the 2nd?
There are very specific quotes from God demanding this. And oddly enough, those quotes are from the Old Testament. And yet Jews are more accepting and less violent towards gays than Christians.
Why is that?
God specifically said the same thing in the Bible. Why are God’s instructions different?
When have I said “it’s the religion of peace”? I don’t believe there exists such a religion.
But the violence associated with it today is explained by other factors, not scripture. If scripture explained it, then there wouldn’t have been many times in the past in which Muslim societies were far safer place to be gay than Christian societies. If scripture explained it, then Jews would be more violent towards gays than Christians, when the opposite is true.
But I don’t believe that scripture explains why Muslims and Christians are far more violent against gay people than Jews (especially when there are specific edicts in all three scriptures that mandate killing gay people). I think there are other factors at play.
It’s so easy to interpret the Quran differently than the way ISIS does it. Why do you want to tell Muslims that ISIS is correct?
So many errors in so few lines.
The explicit condemnation of homosexuality “by Mohammed” is not actually in his writings, (since he did not actually write the Qur’an), and the most harsh condemnations ocur only in Hadiths that were not written until 200 years after his death.
And, as has been noted multiple times in the last page, or so, your “to this day” line is misleading nonsense since it implies a continuous condemnation and oppression for the last 1400 years when the evidence indicates that throughout a long period of that time, it was often pretty much ignored.
And, of course, your “religion of peace” accusation is nothing more than you mocking George W. Bush, who introduced it to the world when no one else was making such a claim.
As a moderator you should know better than to make declarative statements of what people think. Nowhere have I made such as statement that only Islam can have problems. Clearly the focus as been on Christianity’s demons as a counter argument and it’s history has been well documented.
As for Moses and Paul they are not Jesus. He’s the person that the religion is based upon and not them. It’s so much easier to point to him in arguments about how to treat people than it is with Mohammad. The closer you get to the core ideas of Jesus it’s about self sacrifice. The closer you get to Mohammad the closer you get to a warlord who killed people in the name of the religion.
It’s logical that a substantial number of Muslims don’t want to follow his example verbatim because it’s not particularly peaceful lifestyle. that’s human nature. It’s also logical that the most fanatical followers rely on Mohammad’s words/deeds as an example and that is what we see today with the high number of Islamic terrorist groups and continuous attacks. They’re not basing this on vague interpretations they’re following his instructions. As I cited before there are over 300 million Muslims who believe it appropriate to punish people severely for leaving the religion. This is not a small number of people. This is not a peaceful mentality. They approve of killing people who try to leave the “religion of peace”. That is the same mentality behind the fanatical behavior of all the terrorist groups.
The reason why it’s important to acknowledge that it’s the religion driving this is because it can only be fixed through the religion.
I’ll add the newest terrorist attack in Baghdad to the list. These acts are committed in the name of Islam.
For some reason you refuse to accept that the violent Muslims are also rejecting Muhammad’s teachings – specifically the “treat people with kindness and peacefulness” instructions.
Why is this so hard for you to admit? What do you lose by accepting that Muhammad really did say this, according to Muslim texts?
You say that “it can only be fixed through the religion”, but then you refuse to accept that that’s exactly the argument that we’re making – that the solution is to help the peaceful Muslims persuade all other Muslims that Muhammad’s instructions to treat people with kindness and peace are the most important and most valid instructions to follow. When you insist that the peaceful Muslims are wrong (or less authentically Muslim, or whatever), then you’re making the problem much harder to fix.
Kimstu, before we waste any more time talking past each other, may I just ask, do you believe it’s physically possible for someone to be honestly wrong in their interpretation of a religious text?
I’ll volunteer to answer: I don’t know what “physically” means in this case, but I don’t believe that any interpretation of a religious text is more “right” or “wrong” than any other. I think there is no such thing as a “literal” interpretation – that’s just another choice that some readers/interpreters make, but it’s just as much of an interpretation as readers and followers who see the stories as allegory and metaphor.
But I’m not religious – I don’t believe that any religious texts are anything more than collected writings and myths, mixed with some questionable and less questionable history, written by many people through the ages with no divine or supernatural guidance or influence.
Okay, let me pick an extreme example just to make my point. If I read the Koran and conclude that its “true” message (that is to say, it’s intended message) is that Jesus Christ is the one true Son of God, that Mohammed was a fraud and a liar, that usury is a great way to make a living and that bacon is a sacrament, would you call my interpretation wrong?
I don’t think I’m quite knowledgeable enough about the Quran to make such a sweeping judgment. But based on my existing knowledge I’d be very surprised, and if I were inclined for a long talk and actually believed you were being honest then I’d ask a lot of questions, but the most I’d be willing to say is “I’ve never heard of such an interpretation of the Quran” and “I’m skeptical that you came to that conclusion honestly”.
Your argument gains no ground when you deliberately misread what I have posted. I did not claim that you said that only Islam can have problems. I responded to your claim, reiterated constantly, that the problems of Islam are directly traceable to the fact that Mohammed had a violent history. You do say that, constantly. You also deliberately ignore the fact that you often quote hadiths written long after Mohammed died when claiming that Mohammed “said” something and you deliberately ignore the many years that Islam was less hateful than other religions, pretending that the hatred we see, today, (that originates with the interpretations of a specific sect within Islam, and not with its scripture), is inherent in the religion in order to incorrectly claim that the display of hatred has always been an aspect of Islam.
Religion of peace -
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Warning for drive-by thread shitting. Don’t do it again.