Do you have a cite from the CIA or FBI on the threat from alligators or bees? Or are they traitorously downplaying the threat by giving them a pass?
Regards,
Shodan
From Wikipedia:
What is unclear about this? How is not reasonable to speak of a Muslim world? I note that the term Muslim world turns up more than 3,600,000 references on Google. Oviously a great many people find the term useful and meaningful. On what grounds do you challenge the use of the term?
Perhaps because they execute them?
I’ve never understood these debates. They seem as predictable as gravity and never really address the point.
It always starts with someone perceiving a threat to their lifestyle from Muslim beliefs and actions. They see what is happening to people of their group in Saudi and Iran and other places with a Moslem majority and become concerned. They might be gay, women who don’t don’t think they’d enjoy being legal(!) second class citizens, devout Christians, Jews or just people that really really like the idea of the separation of church and state, whatever.
Then, what I think of as the “Kumbaya Crowd” jumps in and says; “Well, Christians have also oppressed group X.”
Yes, Christians have oppressed a lot of different groups but that has little-to-nothing to do with whether Islam is a threat to a specific group. We, the West, fixed that problem by separation of church and state and as long as we are vigilant in maintaining it, the fangs of the Christian fundys are pulled. Islam does not believe in SOCAS. Quite the opposite, Moslems are enjoined to push for Shariah to be the law of the land.
Then someone points out the atrocities that various Muslim-majority countries commit against their citizens (hanging, stoning, flogging, etc) for such crimes as adultery(for women), premarital sex (for women) apostasy, blasphemy, proselytizing for other religions, being gay, and other things that are essentially private and the response of the Kumbaya Crowd is; “Well, that’s a cultural thing and not really required by the religion.”
Well, the freakin’ culture is based on Islam. Go to Saudi sometime and ask them what their culture is based on. I could offer a reward for every Saudi that didn’t say “Islam.” As an aside, I have always suspected that a lot of Islam is based on the pre-Islamic culture of the region that got written down as Islamic rules and regs.
Again, good Moslems should be pushing for Shariya whenever they have sufficient political clout to do so. A few of them jump the gun and try it too early (Jamaican man mentioned above, various Canadian groups, some in the UK.)
Someone else points out that polls in Muslim countries show that anything from a substantial minority to an absolute majority believe that terrorism is justified and the Kumabaya Crowd just handwaves it away like the Muslims didn’t really mean it or something. And there’s the ever ready response that no one can show that every Moslem everywhere doesn’t want to bomb you so you can’t condemn Islam.
There are guys telling you that they don’t like your lifestyle, will attack you if they get the chance, and are actively recruiting people to join them. They have a substantial population base that is willing to attack anything Western and have done so several times. So, what’s it gonna take?
So yeah, in my not so humble opinion, Islam, radical or not, is a threat to people’s civil liberties. There are the type that will just flat out shoot you, and the ones that simply push to get their religious laws legally enshrined. Fast or slow, they are both threats. Yes, the ones that don’t take Islam at all seriously are not much of a threat but how do you determine which ones those are and how do you make sure that doesn’t change? If I were female, GLBT, or God forbid, Jewish, I’d have a lot of concern about anything that even looked Islamic.
Testy
The start of this Muslim World issue began with post#3. In it, broad generalizations were made about 1.3+ billion people based on self-identification as Muslim. There are problems with making these kinds of generalizations.
To start, look at the contrast between making broad generalizations and the most appropriate use of the term Muslim World. Pew does a regular poll of opinion in the Muslim World. They poll a subset of those countries that are inhabited by people who predominantly identify as Muslims. They are saying they are interested in measuring attitudes on a wide variety of issues in countries that share this one feature. They find huge variation in people’s responses and these responses can be better understood by subdividing among ethnic groups and nationalities. For example, a sampling of results from the latest survey..
Although the news articles will attempt to generalize with the exciting headline that the Muslim World shows decreased support for extremists, Pew researchers would not make such broad generalizations in attempting to make sense of the data.
It almost makes sense to identify a Muslim World if you are seeking some piece of information based on that specific characteristic. The results of such a goal can be most easily described as massive variation. To measure this variation and then attempt to make generalizations about all Muslims across the entirety of the terrain inhabited by such people (not to mention the changes in opinion over time) is useless. From my experience, generalizations of such a broad group of people do serve a purpose for fear-mongering politicians, the xenophobic, the xenoanxious, and the ignorant. To be fair, I am open to suggestion about the proper use of generalizations for 1.3+ billion plus people.
So where in the Bible is the push for separation of church and state? You are mixing up a religion with types of government. Turkey is roughly 99% Muslim and has a degree of separation of religion and state that would probably make most people uncomfortable. On the other hand, there are certainly Turkish Muslims who would like that to end. For example, the Turkish government rounded up 100+ Al Qaeda members a couple of months ago. There are also American Christians who would love a little less separation of church and state.
So you are saying that Turkic cultures = Arab cultures = Persian cultures = Kurdish cultures = Pakistani cultures (I am probably missing dozens to hundreds more). Interesting. I wouldn’t even see the same culture for Turkish-Americans, Turkish-Germans, Turkic Chinese, and the Turks in Turkey.
It makes sense that fundamentalists push for representation of their religion in the government of democratic societies. Is that really a threat to you? These movements do not have legs.
Nobody argued that the people polled in those surveys didn’t mean what they said. It’s just useless information. The image you paint is of crazy people strapping bombs to themselves for no reason other than to spread Islam. Your interpretation of the poll doesn’t even address the question that was asked of the participants. Further, if the % of people supporting suicide bombing in a country like Turkey is less than 5%, what do you think the % is in all the other Western countries?
For the just-flat-out-shoot-you Muslims there are laws on the books for murder and hate crimes. They are the only threat to being alive and my entire life has shown me that responsible governments take active measures to rid their population of these people. For all the other Muslims (I am saying that tongue-in-cheek) there is democracy. They are no worse a threat than fundie Christians who want to turn government into their personal toy.
Well here we go. There is no SOCAS in the Bible, obviously. And no, I am not mixing church and state. That is exactly my point. Islam, radical or otherwise, mixes these two things with abandon. Also, the cry of “Christians do it too!” doesn’t have much bearing on whether Islam is a threat to civil liberties.
The SOCAS in Turkey does NOT make me uncomfortable and I am very pleased that they rounded up a bunch of AQ types. More power to them. Yes, I know that some Christians would also like their particular doctrines to be enshrined as law. Again, what Christians would like has zero bearing on whether Islam is a threat to civil liberties.
Nope, not saying that at all. What I am saying is that Islamic culture is generally intolerant and seeks to change Western values. Sometimes through a sort of creeping change and sometimes at gunpoint.
Yes, I understand that fundamentalists will certainly push for their religion to have a greater say in the laws and I don’t blame them for trying. OTOH, I don’t have to like it and I don’t intend to sit idly by while others try. Yes, it is a threat to me. I enjoy Western culture and laws and do not care for people that try to roll them back to the 7th century. Nor do I want something in the middle. When you say these movements do not have legs, I wish I shared your complacency.
Sorry, if X% of a group say they don’t really mind if someone from their group kills civilians in terror attacks, how is that useless information? I would think it was pretty damn important. I’m not sure what the rest of this quote is about. Yes, that leaves 100% - X% that don’t think it’s OK to kill me. Not intending to be flippant, but is it supposed be comforting that a majority of some group doesn’t think it’s OK to kill me? And how about those others that actually show a majority that think it is OK for me to be killed?
Yes, responsible governments do this. OTOH, if a government is based on Sharia, I have doubts as to how responsible the government will be.
Again, yes, I agree. Fundy Christians are a threat. That has zero to do with whether Moslems are a threat. Why does everyone seem to do this? Just because fundy Christians are a threat, is that supposed to make it OK for the Moslems to be one as well? What is your point with this?
MM
Really, I don’t want to come across like a maniac on these issues but I do see them as a threat, one way or another, to the civil liberties we enjoy in the Western world.
Regards
Testy
Muslims aren’t a threat to civil liberties. There is little correlation between the religion and an absence of civil liberties.
How about the 55+ million Muslims in Turkey, a country currently run by an Islamist party, that is currently expanding its civil liberties? Does this make you think, even for a second, that maybe some other factors other than Islam might be important in a government protecting the civil liberties we value?
Provide even one example of how they are creeping up on us in the West.
Then vote. I’m not complacent, I’m just not getting excited and making a hobby of posting on message boards with ignorant claims about what Muslims do and not think. I am particular not excited about reducing the individual who happens to identify with Islam to a bunch of negative stereotypes.
So how come everybody who uses those surveys to feel threat never points out the questions ask about their behavior in defense of Islam? Would you be upset about potentially killing civilians if your country was under attack?
My point is that I really don’t care about people’s beliefs until they break the law. I have no problem with people expressing those beliefs politically. I’m not going to sit around and look for imaginary threats when there are those that need attention and action. I don’t care if some political party wants Sharia Law enacted in their country as long as they go about doing this legally. I also have little faith that their policies will make any kind of change in how liberal democracies view civil liberties.
Agreed, and I am about as good as you at determining which of them is actually a threat to civil liberties in the Western world. I only know that the term Muslim isn’t enough to single people out with any kind of accuracy.
I disagree on this. I’ve lived for twenty-some-odd years in Saudi Arabia. The legal system is heavily based on Sharia and it does indeed restrict civil liberties. If Valteron was to go there with his partner they would be subject to immediate arrest. As they are foreigners, they probably wouldn’t have anything worse than a few nights in jail followed by deportation. Locals and third country nationals would be looking at something much more grim. I am certainly not saying that all places that restrict basic civil liberties are Moslem, but many many of the Moslem-dominated countries have this issue.
As I pointed out in a previous post, an observant Moslem should be pushing for Sharia wherever he lives. It is, after all, decreed by God as being the way people should interact.
I think Turkey is somewhat unique in that the army, the one with at least most of the guns, is relentlessly secular and has been since Ataturk. As far as me thinking “even for a second etc.,” I am not so foolish as to believe that Islam is the only thing that affects civil liberties. As I mentioned above, not all restrictive countries are Islamic. My position is that Islam restricts the freedom of the individual. It is not the only thing and yes, there are worse things that can happen.
OK, there was the movement for Sharia law in Canada in 2004/2005. Yes, it was killed by their political process. Still, it was taken at least semi-seriously.
There was and is a movement for “legal pluralism” in the UK right now. Quite a few things, and not only civil matters, are being decided in Sharia courts in the UK. Whether these have the force of law, I have no idea, but it is more than a couple of people agreeing to settle out of court.
I do vote. I try to pick those that I believe will prevent restrictions on my civil liberties although that is very difficult these days. As far as the “excited” part, what’s that all about? Don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not excited about something on a message board.
And no, I believe I would be the last person to reduce Moslems to a stereotype. I’ve lived with them for waaaay too long to believe they are all alike. While we’re on that topic, I’ve also had a kid’s blood all over my pants from a terrorist bomb, sat up all night with a loaded AK expecting some emissaries from the “religion of Peace” to visit me. Hauled people to the hospital after their windows were blown in from a truck bomb, lots of things like that. I also have some serious friends that follow Islam, although not too strictly.
Well, my own personal reason for not being concerned about the “defense of Islam” part of that is that “defense of Islam” can be almost anything. Mr. Van Gogh was killed in defense of Islam, and the Danish cartoonist is being guarded against people “defending Islam.” If we had some kind of standard definition of what Islam needed defending from, then maybe I would consider that clause to be important.
Well, what we’re talking about is someone’s beliefs becoming the law. No laws are broken, just changed. I’m a big believer in freedom of speech, sexual preference, female equality, etc. These things should be a given and I’ve lived where they are not. And the justification for those stupid and intrusive restrictions, was Islam.
I agree that it doesn’t work to single out individuals. After all, I know some gay Moslems, and some alcoholics as well although a lot of Moslems would say that these guys who flout such fundamental laws “aren’t really Moslems.” Nor am I concerned about the actions or statements of individuals. OTOH, mass movements are something that alarms and concerns me.
Regards
Testy
And you think that one extraordinary case that you pick is somehow the norm?
Yes, Testy, it is all about culture. There is no monolithic Islam. Islam, however, does exist in a set of cultures that are overwhelmingly patriarchal, and such cultures almost always have present problems. An excelent example of the problem is honour killings, which are not restricted to or predicted by religion.
Abe
Well, a lot of cultures do some horrible things. And yes, Islam doesn’t have any ultimate authority like a Pope or the like. On the other hand, a lot of the more horrible/repressive things, like those that worry Voltaron, are written explicitly in what is reasonably close to a living language for any Arabic speaker to read. I don’t think Islam can get a pass by simply saying the horrors they practice are due to culture. Further, many of those repressive societies will tell you that their society is founded on Islam.
I don’t really think you can split culture from religion when it comes to Islam. The religion controls the culture.
Testy
I don’t get this. Are you arguing that horrible/repressive things explicitly written in the Bible are not available in living languages for its present-day adherents to read? Do you imagine that the barbaric stuff in non-Islamic scriptures is somehow concealed from their readers?
The whole point is that there isn’t any one “the” religion of Islam producing any one set of cultural effects. The Muslim culture of modern Turkey, for example, maintains a secular governmental and legal structure where homosexuality is not criminalized. The Muslim culture of modern Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, maintains a repressive theocratic government following harsh fundamentalist interpretations of shari’a where homosexuality is criminalized, along with just about anything else that women or minorities might want to do. And there’s a whole spectrum of Muslim cultures in between and on either side of those examples.
The only way to make sense of such differences, in your reductionist interpretation of “Islam”, is to claim that some of these cultures count as “Islamic” while others don’t. Besides being a fallacious True Scotsman argument, this approach is, as I keep saying, really counterproductive from the point of view of resisting the particular militant fundamentalist versions of Islam that are repressive and dangerous.
And I don’t get this.
You seem to be saying that Christian threats to our civil liberties should not be fought? Why the comparison?
Of course Christians need to be kept in check too, they too have violence bred into the system.
You are objecting to yet another game of “my terrorist is better than yours” or “my religion is better than yours”. I agree fully with you and neither I nor Kimstu are interested in playing that particular game.
Christianity is a reference that the average poster will recognize and understand much more readily than Islam. Ditto with Western culture in general, since the majority of posters here obviously have limited knowledge of cultures where Islam is dominant. Such discussions usually involve showing how various expressions of Islam and Christianity both share many fundamental similarities (and problems), current and historical. These counterpoints are not some sort of competition.
The point is to provide better context to people who are convinced that there is something heinously wrong with Islam. It’s very easy to criticize something outside your frame of reference (Islam in this case) and jump to facile conclusions. This is what has been happening throughout this thread. Showing how that same something wrong in Islam also exists in almost identical forms in your own religions and cultures is intended to make you take a second look at your conclusions (metaphorical use of “you”). The intent is to demystify this demonic (and fictional) population of oppressors that some people are panicking about.
How much good has ever come out of mob mentality such as we have seen people try to incite here? How productive is it to fan the flames?
Reviling a religion is a simplistic approach that strengthens positions in that religion’s extreme fringe, which means you are empowering those people who pursue their political goals using methods of violence, aggression, coercion, and confrontation. This is not what you want.
Although I agree with what you are saying about using Christians as a frame of reference, it doesn’t seem to be working. People will make more allowances for those perceived as part of their own group. I think it makes more sense to pile up evidence that actually reflects the variation seen among that group of people who call themselves Muslim. With enough information and actual experience with Muslims, people will begin to make the Christian-Muslim comparisons themselves.
Kimstu
Sorry, let me try to be more clear. No, Leviticus is still around and still recommends stoning for eating shellfish or sodomy or whatever. No shortage of Bronze Age Barbarism there. OTOH, most (not all!) Christians no longer take such things seriously. The Jack Chicks and Fred Phelpses of the Christian world are rightly mocked and generally ignored as being loons. This doesn’t happen nearly as often in the Islamic world.
As far as the “living Language” portion of my post, it is simply pointing out that Arabic is still spoken widely as opposed to Aramaic or Koine Greek. This allows a lot less wiggle room on the laws and regs.
I am well aware that there is not any single version of Islam. They have fought several wars over that very point. As I mentioned in a previous post, they also have no Pope or equivalent to give any kind of final word on what is and isn’t Islamic. This allows any half-baked Immam with a hard-on for the West or simply a desire for secular power to justify about anything he wishes to do.
What I was pointing out is that it is the duty of any observing Moslem to try and live under Sharia, to push to make it the law of the land if they can. Sharia is not really subject to a lot of interpretation in certain areas. Marriages, divorces, inheritance, various criminal punishments; these are all there in black and white for anyone to try and implement if they can.
Sorry you find my interpretation “reductionist.” Having been a “dhimmi” for a couple of decades and seen what numerous Islamic societies are like, I tend to see such things in a very black & white manner and don’t care the idea of such things spreading.
Testy
MM
I understand your point but disagree that people will automatically cut Christianity more slack because it is more known and has been a part of Western society since forever. I’ve read a lot of criticism on this board and in a lot of other places when Christians (some well-meaning and some just looking for secular power) try to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. Kansas school boards, young earth creationists, Jack Chick, Fred Phelps, and all the rest of the aggressive Christians have come under fire for attempting to push their warped worldviews on the rest of us.
Most of the people here rightly condemn such activities and resist them as much as possible.
In an Islamic, Sharia-observing society, you don’t get to have such conversations.
Regards
Testy
The first part of your post would make for an interesting debate by itself, but as part of my new noncomparison policy I will refrain from commenting.
As for your last statement, the subject of the thread is xenophobia. More specifically, fear of Muslim immigrants. The chance of turning any country with a history of liberal democracy and Christianity as the dominant religion into an Islamic, Sharia-observing society is slim. I would be more worried about getting attacked by a Great White shark, hit by lightning, and having the accelerator pedal stick on my Toyota all in the same hour than I would worry about the US turning into Saudi Arabia. So fear or even anxiety over Muslim immigration seems irrational to me. Millions of Koran-thumping Muslim would have to immigrate simultaneously and wipe-out a country’s population in order to even come close to doing so. Shit, now that I think about, this is a lot like group selection in evolutionary studies, a hypothesis which has never survived a single test of it.
MM
Well, we obviously worry about different things as well as estimating their likelyhood differently. My concerns may be completely unfounded but having lived in countries where Islam was the dominant religion, I don’t wish to have any part of it.
Regards
Testy
Now this strikes me as pretty odd. Whether a scriptural language survives as a spoken language or not doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference to how adherents of that scripture determine the amount of permissible “wiggle room” in interpreting its laws.
For example, a large percentage of Jews today speak a form of Hebrew which isn’t all that different from Biblical Hebrew. But are Jews monolithic in their views of the “wiggle room on the laws and regs”? On the contrary, Jewish interpretations of what Jewish law requires of them cover an extremely broad spectrum, and this is true for Hebrew-speaking and non-Hebrew-speaking Jews alike.
So I remain completely unconvinced by your claim that Islam is somehow forced to be at least somewhat more monolithic than other religions simply because its scriptural language (or one form of it) is still spoken today.
Very true.
(Emphasis added.) Bzzzzt! There you go again falling back into the “monolithic Islam” idea, with your uncritical acceptance of specific fundamentalist-Muslim interpretations of concepts like “duty” and “observance” as being universally applicable to all Muslims.
The rules of shari’a are not somehow uniquely rigid, as religious laws go. They’re no more inflexible than the halachic rules in the Old Testament, for example. The Book of Deuteronomy lays down the law not only about marriages and divorces but about how you kill livestock, how you use latrines, the gender and kin-degree of people you’re allowed to fornicate with, the types of clothing you’re allowed to wear, and zillions of other minutiae.
The fact that these laws are dictated in their holy scriptures doesn’t prevent millions of Jews and Christians from having an alternative interpretation of their religion that lets them ignore or modify the stated restrictions, without any feeling of transgression or backsliding or inauthenticity in their Judaism or Christianity.
Similarly, millions of Muslims worldwide have alternative interpretations of their religion that lets them ignore or modify various shari’a restrictions without lessening their identification as Muslims. It is not only discriminatory but, as I keep saying, counterproductive to argue that those millions of people are somehow not “real Muslims” or are in some way failing in their duty as Muslims.
The whole point is that, as you yourself have acknowledged, there’s no one source of authority about what it is the duty of Muslims to do or believe on issues such as marriage, divorce, the role of women, homosexuality, and so on and so forth. Sure, there are lots of sources that claim unique authority on such matters, but that doesn’t mean we have to take them at face value.
I’m completely in agreement with you about not wanting fundamentalist and repressive interpretations of Islam to spread. So let’s not play into the hands of their fundamentalist repressive advocates by letting them dictate our beliefs about what the duties and convictions of Muslims in Muslim societies are required to be.