How many more attacks before the West has to consider the previously unthinkable?

The BBQ Pit
761

Actually many of the saints that were declared to be that became so thanks to them dying in the crusades, so they did commit many atrocities. (Before you reply, it was your idea to go back in time to mention Muslim martyrdom where they also killed “infidels”) More recently I do remember many places in Latin America where priests constantly forgave the murderers of many peasants, teachers and worker leaders. While the civil wars and other unrest were going on in those nations.

It became so shameful that when Monsignor Romero in El Salvador demanded the end of the repression he was killed by those Christians too. He is on the way of becoming a saint now thanks to his martyrdom for opposing the killing of so many innocents.

You can bet however that the priests that were in cahoots with the military thugs are not rescinding the forgiving of the sins of his murderers and that they continue to tell them and their families that they will go to heaven.

762

Two points need to be made here:

  1. BigT made a claim and didn’t provide evidence. It is incumbent on him to provide evidence when asked. If he is unable to provide said evidence, he should retract the claim. That’s how debate works.

  2. Being called a bigot by you is a compliment. I consider it a badge of honour to be called a bigot by you. If you - fatuous, disingenuous, agenda-driven atrocity apologist that you are - weren’t calling me a bigot, I’d be doing something wrong. So you can call me a bigot all the live-long day. It means nothing. At this point, being called a bigot by you is a bit like being called a nigger-lover by the Grand Dragon of the Ku-Klux-Klan. You are prejudiced, ignorant, and wilfully dishonest. All you do is distract and dissemble. Instead of answers, you offer insults and misrepresentations. You are a thoroughly worthless poster, an unrepentant enemy of honest conversation, and a spiteful, malicious, and deeply unpleasant person. So yeah. Call me a bigot as much as you like. I wouldn’t want your approval if it cured cancer.

763

How soon they forget! Christian saints were martyred by the hundreds.

Sure there is. Listen to any funeral oration for a fallen soldier or policeman. Christian Heaven is a great reward for people who have lain down their lives for their society.

Islam is less death-fixated than Christianity (but more than Judaism, which, of the three, is definitely the most life-affirming.)

764

Oh the wonderful lessons of the froth at the mouth

Et

This is the Pit. It is not a “debate” no matter how sterile.

Of course my observation is the frothy at the mouth bigots will not respond to anything except to make ad hoc excuses and to deny their bigotry and hateful prejudice are what they are, instead they try to legitimate.

As one can see with the silences over hate speech here even.

I am sure BigT as he seems to have no end of appetite for punishing himself will in a week or two respond when he has the time and I am sure the reaction will be mathematically predictable according to the pre-existing prejudices, making the entire effort sterile.

Excellent, how nice that you see yourself in the mirror.

I

I do like the typical hatefal prejudice bigot game of associating any person of the hated minority with

'Atrocity apologist…" excellent that a hateful prejudiced bigot says that about me, the sly implications and lies to try to imply that I defend the entities and the actors like the DAESH and the other killers. Rather than merely contradict with fact and evidence his hate speech.

You are a liar, and a bigot, and of course have not any factual thing to say, only the waiving of the arms around with the smears of implied association.

765

So why do these people kill?
Are you sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Islam?

766

It has a lot to do with their interpretation. Nothing to do with the interpretation of most American Muslims, or other peaceful Muslims.

767

Ít’s not an inerpretation.
They are following the literal commandments.
The difference between them and ‘most American Muslims, or other peaceful Muslims’ is that the latter are Muslims that do not want to follow these commandments. They are better people than their religion orders them to be.

Just like there are many, many Christians that pick-and-choose what literal commandments they don’t want to follow, or don’t even know of.

Still, it is in the texts and if you are a believer it leaves you open to ‘reminders’ that you are not being a good Muslim.

While there are many good people that are Muslim, the seed of evil still lies in their religion.

768

There is no “following the literal commandments”. All religion and religious texts require interpretation, and they all have apparent contradictions. There is no way to resolve these apparent contradictions, which exist in the Bible and the Quran and probably every other religious text, without interpretation. A violent interpretation is no more “true” or “literal” than a non-violent interpretation.

Peaceful Muslims point to verses in the Quran which appear to mandate peaceful behavior and say that violent Muslims are violating the Quran; violent Muslims point to verses in the Quran which appear to mandate violent behavior and say that peaceful Muslims are violating the Quran. Neither is reading the Quran “literally”, and both are interpreting those verses to serve their agenda.

769

Here are just a handful of verses from the Quran that peaceful Muslims say that ISIL and other violent Muslims routinely violate:

“There is no compulsion where the religion is concerned.” (Holy Quran: 2/ 256)

"Say to the disbelievers [that is, atheists, or polytheists, namely those who reject God] “To you, your beliefs, to me, mine” (109:1-6)

“If thou dost stretch thy hand against me to slay me, it is not for me to stretch my hand against thee to slay thee: for I do fear Allah” (Al-Ma’ida 5:28)

“Do not be people without minds of your own, saying that if others treat you well - you will treat them well, and that if they do wrong - you will do wrong. Instead, accustom yourselves to do good if people do good and not to do wrong if they do evil.” [Al-Tirmidhi #1325]

“Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabeaans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness–their wage waits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow.” (5:69)

“The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills - let him believe; and whoever wills - let him disbelieve.” (18:29)

“So if they remove themselves from you and do not fight you and offer you peace, then Allah has not made for you a cause [for fighting] against them.” (4:90)

“And serve God and do not set up anything with Him, and be kind to the parents, and the relatives, and the needy, and the neighbour who is of kin, and the neighbour next door, and the friend far away, and the traveller, and those who are still dependent. God does not like the arrogant, the boastful.” (4:36)

“The true servants of the Gracious One are those who walk upon the earth with humility and when they are addressed by the ignorant ones, their response is, Peace;” (25:63)

“He does not forbid you to deal kindly and justly with anyone who has not fought you on account of your faith or driven you out of your homes: God loves the just.”(60:8)

I reject any assertion that the interpretation of ISIL and other violent extremists is more valid, accurate, literal, or true to the Quran than the interpretation of peaceful Muslims. All religious texts can be interpreted in a way to support violence, and all can be interpreted in a way to support peace. The Quran is no different than the Bible in this respect. I believe that discrepancies in the statistics of violence and acceptance of violence are due to factors other than religious texts, just as they were in the periods of history in which the Muslim world was generally more peaceful and tolerant than the Christian world.

To be clear, I’m not saying a peaceful interpretation of the Quran (or the Bible, for that matter) is more true or valid than a violent interpretation. I’m just making the point that every reading requires interpretation, and that there are apparent contradictions in both texts, and in this sense there is no difference between them.

770

I am sure that absolute simplistic statements are absolutely simplistically stupid idiotic things to make.

Why do the Americans have the world largest number of the public shooting death incidents around the schools? Are you absolutely sure it has nothing to do with the American culture?

What a profound and useful question to ask, it is not simplistically assuming stupid things at all.

[quote=“Latro, post:767, topic:759950”]

Ít’s not an inerpretation. [\quote]

Of course it is.

Of course I am sure that Wiki-hate-site theological scholarship engaged in will say otherwise, but there is nothing in that sterile idiocy.

.

No, in fact not. In fact in the standard tradition that has generally been the dominate, and certainly is the longer and more rooted one than the new one of the Salafiste takfiri like Al Qaeda and the DAESH we look at the sequence of the revelations and the overall spirit. The chaotic ad hoc approach of the DAESH and their violation of the normes even going back to the classical period of the respect of the treaties, of the inviolability of the pacific citizens non muslim etc has no support in the Islamic thought, it is indeed this that saw the large body of the muslim religious scholars conservative and not rebuking the DAESH.

this is the false argument of the Takfiri and the Islamophobic bigots who adopt the view that the Takfiri are correct.

This is simply the religious bigotry.

The see of evil is in the humanity - beni adam beni adam.

It is not merely pointing to the verses mandating non-aggressive behavior, it is the double tradition of the order and spirit, that even those not ‘pacifist’ normally dislike the Al Qaeda and the DAESH as violating the tradition against allowing the chaotic violence, that it is forbidden for anyone but a well established authority to declare acceptable violence.

The assertion that those who are not following the path of al Qaeda or the DAESH are “ignoring” literal commandments is nothing more than unlearned nonsense. The dominant reading of the theological framing has long rejected their types of readings.

Of course beni adam beni adam and people can always find ways to justify their desired conclusions.

771

Thank you! Those are lovely, and helpful, and certainly serve to rebut the outré claims made that Islam is somehow (magically?) poisonous, where no other religion suffers from the same absolutism.

The fact is that all religions are subject to interpretation, and have contradictions inherent in their scripture. There have actually been violent fundamentalist Buddhists, and that ought not even be possible!

772

I don’t know this guy. I Googled, and found a film director and actor. What are his conclusions?

(I’m not a Beni Adam; I think I might be a Beni Samson.)

(Or possibly Ben Adhem…)

773

The Bible is actually much more clear and explicit in mandating appalling acts of violence including literal genocide. So the texts themselves are somewhat beside the point.

774

Spawn of Lilith, then?

(the expression more-or-less means “people are people”, BTW.)

775

I heard something on a podcast (TTBOOK) today that made me reconsider my perspective on some of this a bit. However, this might be a case of going from the frying pan to the fire.

The expert they were interviewing (an evolutionary psychologist, I guess?) was talking about how you find extremely puritanical codes of sexuality in places where parasites, disease, and other kinds of pestilence have historically been more of a problem. So this, obviously, would be closer to the equator. And indeed, if we think about the societies where gay rights are most strongly protected, they tend to be populated mostly by people whose ancestry hails from more northerly latitudes. This would also help explain why, as noted upthread, there are many parts of equatorial Africa that are extremely intolerant of sexual deviance from the norm (e.g., homosexuality, transsexuality) despite being predominantly Christian or “other” rather than Muslim.

But then when you stop and think about what this means, is where you get more into the “fire”. The sexually tolerant people whose ancestors hail from the northerly regions are fair-skinned, while the intolerant ones whose ancestors come from equatorial regions are dark-skinned. (And this even holds up in our political experience in, for instance, California–where African Americans who normally are rock solid for liberal Democrats voted to outlaw same sex marriage.)

So that’s kind of a…yikes. I felt much better about denouncing Islam as an ideology anyone could leave behind rather than going down that path, ironically, of what people like Ben Affleck have accused us of: being against brown people.

776

Actually, while blacks in the U.S. tend to prefer Democrat policies over Republican policies, the black community, (particularly that part most closely aligned with the various Christian churches), tends to be quite socially conservative. Had the Republicans not chosen to engage in the Southern Strategy and spent so much effort catering to those whites who preferred segregation, (de jure in the South and de facto in the North), there is a good chance that blacks would be more closely aligned with Republicans, today.

That said, I am not sure how far I would follow an “evolutionary psychologist” down any of these paths. There has not been a a geographic issue regarding “parasites, disease, and other kinds of pestilence” in this country for a very long time, (unless he is proposing, oddly, that such conditions create a genetic mind-set that is passed down through generations). His claims do not explain the situations in India or Polynesia which tended to have more bugs and fewer sexual restrictions than Northern Europe.

I suspect that this particular bit of speculation is not very relevant to the discussion.

777

That would not be an odd proposition for an evolutionary psychologist. It would be precisely what one would expect.

Not sure where you are getting the idea that Indians are not puritanical about sex:

778

True, but evolutionary psychology is basically bullshit. Even regular psychology has some tests that work. Evolutionary psychology doesn’t have that. Sure, they may come up with ideas that sound plausible, but without any testing we can’t know if they are remotely correct. They are at most interesting theories without proof.

And I say this even though your belief in it seems to actually be softening your Islamophobia. You can see I never try to obscure the truth for an agenda.

I would argue that you are on the right track in realizing you can’t just walk away from your religion, though. Not in places where the religion and culture are basically the same thing. You don’t need some evopsych reason for that.

779

Actually, I have never seen any indication that an evolutionary psychologist believed that a trait could be passed into the genes in such a way that a person removed at birth from the environments that led to the trait would continue to display that trait. The levels of danger from parasitic attack have been consistent for all populations in the U.S. for several centuries, yet you appear to be proposing that some sort of “Puritan gene” exists in one population and not others…

An article that identifies increasing government censorship over a few decades hardly demonstrates a cultural leaning toward Puritanism. As the article also said:

There is also the question as to whether such censorship arises from the culture or is something handed down from the period of British colonialism, (much like the censorship of American films was the direct product of specific religious interventions, particularly as enforced by the will of specific persons).
Using modern cinematic censorship to make a claim for a “Puritanical” India that gave rise to the Vatsyayana Kamasutram and many similar works along with explicit artwork on many major buildings is a rather poor attempt at cherry picking.

780

You seem to be overlooking the fact that India is the world’s largest democracy. Puritanical censorship out of step with the common practice in the rest of the world’s most successful cinema would not survive decades without widespread support from the people.