In case you missed it earlier, Ryan:
Where so you get your information from, Reza Aslan, or something?
WTF? You are actually being serious, aren’t you?
Indonesia: ‘Virginity Tests’ for Female Police
How, again, is Indonesia a “counter example to all the stereotypes about Islam”?
Indonesians have a great deal of Islamist terrorism to worry about. The two main reasons they don’t export as many terrorists are 1) those so inclined have plenty of opportunity to engage in jihad without leaving the country, and 2) those inclined towards engaging in jihad have less resources to travel abroad than many of their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.
Some people seem desperate for this to be true, and the mantra certainly gets repeated often enough. But to say Islam has nothing to do with ISIS or the global Islamist insurgency currently underway is not just wrong, but Orwellian, in a “War is Peace” sense. You might as well say that the KKK has nothing to do with race or that the Nazis rise to power wasn’t influenced by Mein Kampf.
This narrative that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorismcontributes greatly to the problem:
Here’s the thing- the narrative that **Chihuahua **talks about paints Islam as being entirely infested and crawling with terrorists and radicals, and that the majority of other Muslims are at least tacitly approving of this behavior, with only a few speaking out against it. It’s an almost wholly negative perception and narrative, with little else to counteract the actions of the terrorists, genital mutilators, lunatics who get murderously bent out of shape about mere cartoons, etc…
Even though it’s a problem that’s somewhat exacerbated by Western news agencies to be sensationalist, it’s Islam’s problem, not the West’s to reform that image. The West doesn’t care, and doesn’t have to- it doesn’t hurt us to have a distorted picture of Islam nearly as much as it hurts Islam.
The problem is, in fact, that western media is deliberately distorting that image because it plays better to domestic audiences to paint Muslims as some sort of terrifying other. Which is not to say that Islam, as a whole, doesn’t have a problem with radicalism - but the perception of non-radical Islam as largely quiet or “tacitly approving” the violence is predicated on a lie, and a deliberate one, at that.
Not, to be clear, that I’m accusing you, personally, of lying. Only of being gullible enough to fall for one.
Boards such as this do not display the diplomacy of governments, what you are hearing is the voice of ordinary people that is not chained to the god of political correctness. We know that there is a massive problem within Islam and the resistance towards Islam will only increase until Muslims themselves turn against the terrorists within Islam. What does not help is turning on none Muslims who are not a part of Islam’s problems. To put it into plain language. When you move into some ones house you are expected to respect both their way of life and customs, if you do not agree you move on, you do not become belligerent and demand that they change their way of life to fit in with Islam. It would be far better to educate your fellow Muslims on the importance of integrating with the community than to attack us voicing opinions that are legitimate
One of the major problems in the U.K. was the failure of the media to report on what was happening within Islam and any reports were always slanted in favour of Islam in the name of racial and political cohesion. It was not until the advent of the EDL that the problems with Islam in some parts of the U.K. became apparent. Far from the media distorting the image of Islam we are now seeing honest reporting, the fact that Muslims dislike some of the reports does not mean they are not true. Thankfully the U.K. media has moved away from reporting from the comfort of their office and using library photos and are now reporting in many cases live from the scene.
This is the most bizarre thing.
The issue for pretty much the entire world is the USA - I live in mainstream western capital and society and there is no one I know who does not think the rough nation is the USA. If the USA stops interfering, attacking and invading, people will just get on with their lives. People just want to raise families.
Sure there is the fundamentalist meathead Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia, but they are the USAs great partner in the middle east.
Internationally, there is very little in this world that isn’t fucked up because of US policy.
And now there’s Donald Trump.
I would add onto that that slavery and polygamy is still practiced in Muslim nations and we hear stories in the US of Muslim immigrants even bringing their slaves and extra wives when they move here. They call them cousins or aunts.
Now I remember years ago Hollywood would glamourize some Muslim sheik having his harem but that isnt so popular now.
Do you not see this is infantile? You can demonise any group of people - Christians, Jews - you know how that goes.
It takes five seconds to find the same stuff about Christianity - Google, in literally five seconds:
9 Truly Evil Things Right-Wing Christians Do
You’re a mature adult right? What are you doing here?
What is to dislike is the prejudice and the ignorance in repeating half-truths and lies, that support and promote the religious prejudices and bigotry through ignorance and distortions… endlessly corrected and ignored of course.
a ‘religion’ does not ‘desire’ anything, as it is an abstraction… but since we do not have a ‘church’ and there is no concept of formal institutional religious hierarchies in the Islam, this ignorant criticism starts with a false precept built on ignorance and a bad, ignorant, understanding of both the religion and the various Islamic concepts of state and history - never mind the different streams of thought that now are in existence.
this of course is anyway mistaking the American concept of Secularism and this seperation as a universal one (it is not of course) and engaging in hypocritically blind criticism.
Of course since I recall the naive and gross errors and truly wrong and blind claims about the Iraq and the self-deception about the Iraq and that war of aggression, it is not a surprise…
Et encore, the Protocols of Zion type distortions…
Of course female circumcision as has been shown many times on this board is Not an Islamic precept in the origin and is mostly unknown outside of the** sub-Saharan Africa **and Egypt - while simultaneously being heavily practiced by the Christians and others in the sub-Saharan africa in the same regions that the Muslims (wrongly) practice it, most expansively in the East / north east… Not Islamic in origin, not supported or practiced in the vast majority of the Islamic world (indeed unknown and to use the example, for the Maghrebine a weird, foreign concept immediately rejected)…
But oh, it is a useful pretext for the haters and the prejudiced to attack and smear broadly,promoting religious bigotry through half truths. And repeated again and again despite the repeated factual corrections over the years,… the reasons of repetition of course are clear enough.
The “honor” killings are also nothing specifically Islamic and are indeed 100% against the standard Quranic precepts of justice, the classic shariah concepts if you will - they are indeed something that is tribal and of course cultural, not Islamic… and indeed in the areas where they are truly a problem are indeed practiced by also the non-Muslims from the same roots of a culture (as in India, etc), but for the prejudiced this provides of course another point for slurring blindly and distortingly.
ETC.
I do not speak to who promotes falsehoods and prejudices, but of course to be critical of the Takfiri concept and the movement is in no way to declare takfir. This is a falsehood and a gross, willful, distortion.
***Takfir ***is the declaration that a muslim is not a muslim. Not the person is a bad muslim or a bad practicer - no, it is that they are in Kufr, that they are not-muslim, period. Saying someone’s ideas are wrong and oppressive has NO relationship to Takfir. It is the opposite in fact, it is in the tradition of the dialogue and in the long-standing tradition amongst the muslims until recently that it is for God to know and not for other humans to say someone claiming belief is in fact lying.
but so is the typical slurs by persons afflicted by the deep prejudice and hatred.
In any case it is pointless really. Enough of wasting time, the repeaters of hatreds will do so, there is no correction.
In Islam they desperate the boys/girls men/women so much, so how do young Muslim men and women learn to act around each other? Their are Muslims in my kids school. They get along great with everyone. However in Muslim countries they are separate from each other so much so how do they learn to interact with each other? How do they learn to flirt? When young Muslim men come to the US to go to college they are freaked out because here, women make eye contact.
This cannot be healthy.
And what the extreme opposite of that - teen abortions, teen porn, Britney Spears dressed as a schoolgirl grind in videos?
This is not a mature adult conversation.
NO THEY ARE NOT SEPARATE. SAUDI ARABIA =/= Islamic World.
It is NOT common or standard practice, this Saudi idea.
What is unhealthy is people making ignorant conclusions based on false ideas taken from ignorant stereotype images…
As you say… JESUS CHRIST the ignorance.
I’m not even saying that the narrative is true; merely that distorted or not, it’s really Islam’s problem, not the West’s, as Islam has a lot more to lose than the West does from that distortion.
You have raised a very good point. It has been found that single sex schools in the U.K. delays the social growth (none sexual) of young people and this can effect how people react to the opposite sex in later life. An important skill for a young man to learn is how to relate to a young woman as a person and not a sex object.
yes, but no one seems willing to say the obvious – most of today’s atrocities begin as religious differences. The world would, in fact, benefit from condemnation of all religions who use their ‘faith’ as justification for any sort of discrimination or subjugation of other people.
Religious leaders in all religions constantly extol their flocks to live ever more closely to the texts of their founding documents – and, at base, those precepts are “anyone who doesn’t believe exactly as we do should be exterminated”
these days, the Pope of Rome seems to be a good example of tolerance. Few others.
Really?
I’m being specific to the Islamic world.
So believe Islam is different than other religions in terms of it’s adherent’s tendencies to not reflect similar demographics to other religious populations?
This apologetic nonsense has been addressed time after time, yet here it is again.
[Female genital mutilation Type I and IV is prevalent in Indonesia; 97.5% of the surveyed females from Muslim families (Muslim females are at least 85% of females in Indonesia) are mutilated by age 18
Historical records suggest female circumcision in Indonesia started and became prevalent with the arrival of Islam in the 13th century as part of its drive to convert people to Islam. In islands of Indonesia, where partial populations converted to Islam in the 17th century, FGM has been prevalent in Muslim females only.
Indonesian Ulema Council ruled that it favors FGM, stating that although it is not mandatory, it is still “morally recommended”.](Prevalence of female genital mutilation - Wikipedia)
Indonesian Ulema Council is Indonesia’s top Muslim clerical body.
FGM is not* entirely* an Islamic problem, and I don’t see where anyone has claimed that it is, so I don’t know what your point is here.
Chopping off heads for apostasy, killing people for being homosexual, and stoning people for adultery are not Islamic in origin either. So what?
Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Indonesian Ulema Council support it, and use Islamic source texts to justify it’s continuance.
There is no hatred here, no bigotry. You are, as always, weilding these terms as a shield to protect Islam from criticism.
You seem more concerned with the image of Islam than with the mutilation of girls. This disgusting prioritization is common among Muslims, and it is a big part of why Islam has a bad image.
According to your interpretation. The fact is, honor killing are supported by a majority of Muslims in Palestinian territories, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Tajikistan. And they are supported by large minorities in many more places. Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen were not surveyed.
Yes they are Islamic. They are supported by hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who justify the belief using Islamic texts and traditions.
No willful distortion here, Ramira. Your accusation is false. I will take you at your word that you are not accusing them of being non-Muslim, but instead are accusing them of practicing an evil distortion of Islam. I get that this is a meaningful distinction in many contexts. But it doesn’t really affect the point I was making much, which is this: the narrative that you are pushing here is a dangerous one. For if there is a true version of Islam alongside evil distortions, what is stopping the jihadists from claiming to follow the true version and claiming that all others are evil distortions? Nothing, as we can see from their success at using this technique for propaganda and recruitment.
As a non-Muslim, magnifying this distinction does not seem terribly logical. Accusing someone of following an evil distortion of Islam seems very similar to declaring them non-Muslim. But I do understand the importance of the distinction to Muslims, and I hear what you are saying here: that you have not crossed the line into takfir. So I will not accuse you of it in the future, unless you explicitly label as kufr someone who self-identifies as Muslim.
Again, you are making false accusations. Criticizing Islam is not equivalent to hating Muslims.