Justice in 3rd world countries (not just islamic) is an unreliable thing. My point was to let the law handle it or not - either way your method is wrong. My point above still stands - that you are punishing the full set of muslims x (by offending them) for the actions of a few y.
And redrawing cartoons that have already been done once does not (IMO) constitute “solidarity”. To my mind there are enough proper problems in the muslim world that need to be dealt with without manufacturing new childish ones.
As you say there are issues with justice in places like Saudi and with womens rights and other things. I just see this whole cartoon business as - dull. It advances the cause of freedom not one bit. If anything it hampers it. If you want to draw something challenging then draw something new.
You’re both vigilantes (in a sense). But anyway, you do what you feel you have to.
intention, pay very careful attention, because I think you are so excited about finding trees that you are missing the forest.
One of your strident claims against Islam–not any particular sect or faction, but all of Islam–is that Islam demands that anyone who abandons the faith should be put to death.
I have pointed out that no Muslim nation has actively pursued that particular command in a long time.
Your response has been to discover a series of incidents within one nation, Iran, in which a minority religion is being persecuted and in which the charge of apostasy is often (falsely) invoked against them. If Islam demanded that all apostates be killed, Iran is certainly shirking its religious duties by not exterminating the 350,000 Baha’i that live within its borders.
Beyond that, you have found a very small number of incidents in various countries in which the trumped up charge of apostasy has been leveled against political dissidents and against other persons in the public eye whom the theocrats (or angry family members) have decided to persecute.
You are not providing any evidence that any Muslim nation is sending the police out across the land seeking and punishing anyone who has abandoned Islam.
I have made no claim that the worst of the theocrats are not, in fact, the worst of people: vengeful, murderous, irrational, implacable in their hatreds. I agree that such people exist and are a real threat to their own lands and even to world peace.
I will not make any claim that such theocrats will not, indeed, take their countries into the realm of hunting down and killing apostates in the future, perhaps even in the near future.
I have made the claim–and you have shown no evidence to dispute my position–that no Muslim state is actively pursuing apostates for the purposes of apprehending and killing them.
tomndebb, pay very careful attention, because I think you are so excited about finding the forest that you are missing the trees.
One of my strident claims against Islam–not any particular sect or faction, but all of Islam–is that Islam demands that anyone who abandons the faith should be punished, up to and including death. We have already discussed the fact that the Koran is not real specific about the punishment, but that many Muslim jurists and scholars say death.
You have claimed that no Muslim nation has actively enforced these laws against apostasy in a long time, viz:
My response has been to cite a series of people whose lives have been ruined (which you trivialize by calling “incidents”) or ended, within a variety of nations, including Iran, by the apostasy laws.
In Iran the Baha’i, which Muslims consider to be a breakaway sect of Islam, are being persecuted and the charge of apostasy is often (and accurately, since they did leave Islam and they do believe in the Prophet) invoked against them. You cling to the fact that Baha’i is a separate religion to ignore the Iranian use of the apostasy laws to punish and in some cases execute Baha’i … but my friend, that does not change the fact that Iran is actively enforcing the apostasy laws. (And I do hope you have given up your idiotic claim that the Muslims do not consider the Baha’i to be apostates.)
Beyond that, I have cited a number of incidents in various countries in which the charge of apostasy has been leveled against political dissidents and against other persons in the public eye whom the theocrats (or angry family members) have decided to persecute. In some bizarre fashion, you take this to mean that the laws against apostasy are not being enforced … all that means is that sometimes the apostasy laws are enforced for the wrong reason.
Finally, I have cited a number of incidents where people were tried for apostasy but received a lesser punishment than death.
You have made the claim that no Muslim state is actively enforcing the laws against apostasy. I have shown your claim to be false, as evidenced by the number of apostates who have been tried for the crime. How do you think that apostates have been tried under those laws, if the Muslim states are not enforcing them? Why do you think that Iran overruled its own Supreme Court in order to execute someone for apostasy, if they’re not actively pursuing apostates?
Finally, you seem to think that as long as no one is executed for apostasy, that the law is not being actively enforced. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the fact that people are getting tried for apostasy in a host of Muslim states proves that the law is still being enforced. All you have shown is that the punishment for apostasy varies … but we knew that already, we already discussed the Suras and the Hadiths of it.
I brought all of this up, you may recall, as evidence that Islam has a schizophrenic relationship with violence. On the one hand, the Koran says “there is no compulsion in religion”. On the other hand, it says “try to leave the religion, and we will punish you and maybe even kill you.”
Rather than deal with the ugly sight of a religion actively punishing those who try to leave it, you keep trying to bring the discussion to some very legalistic plane where as long as nobody is actually executed for trying to leave Islam, this means that the law is not being enforced and everything is just fine. And of course when I show that yes, people are still getting executed under the apostasy laws, you say they were executed for the wrong reason, so everything’s still just fine …
While that may make you feel good, it ignores the reality of the destruction caused even if there is no execution. It ignores the long stays in prison, the endless trials, the cost, the damage to the families involved, and all the rest. If the laws against apostasy are not being enforced as you so fatuously claim, then why are the nations bringing charges of apostasy and holding trials for apostasy?
Whether a law is enforced doesn’t depend on what exact punishment is meted out at the end of the day. Heck, the accused might even be found innocent. But whether the accused is found innocent or guilty, or whether the death penalty is being imposed or not, if people are still being tried for the crime, then the law is still being enforced. And clearly, this is the case with the Muslim apostasy laws.
Finally, you keep dodging the question about when the most recent execution or trial for apostasy occurred in the Western world. I have shown both a host of trials for apostasy, and a few executions for apostasy, in the Muslim world in the recent past. You claimed that the Muslim record regarding apostasy was not much different from the Western record on apostasy. If you have any citations to back your claim up, now is the time to produce them. Otherwise, I’ll have to assume that you were just trying to blow smoke up our … forests and trees.
Punishing them all? I’M PUNISHING THEM ALL? Wow, that’s way cool, my cartoons have given me superpowers. From my tiny apartment in the South Pacific I’m now able to punish all of the Muslims in the world, merely with my pen and my rapier wit … that’s awesome. Do I get to have acolytes? All the cool supervillains have acolytes. And do I get to say “BWA-HA-HA” while I’m punishing the Muslims, I’ve always wanted to say that?
mutantmoose, I’m not punishing anybody, and neither were the original cartoons. They were published in another country, in another language, and Muslims were under no compunction to read them. The ones that claimed to be offended were a bunch of nasty, pusillanimous snowflakes, complaining that someone somewhere is abusing them and punishing them by saying mean things about them in Danish, a language that virtually none of them understand.
And I’m punishing them all, all “x” of them, the whole billion plus, by means of my evil dastardly cartoons? My friend, I fear you have finally lost it. My cartoons are social commentary. They don’t punish anyone. They might offend some Muslims, but then so do good looking women in bikinis. If you fear they will offend you, DON’T READ THEM. And if you read them and are offended, don’t come crying to me, don’t set fire to the Danish Embassy, you have no one to blame but yourself.
You know what? You are losing it. It is a very stupid thing to accuse an artist of “redrawing” someone else’s work, it is not wise to tell an artist that his work has “already been done once”. You are accusing me of plagiarism and imitation, and you can stuff those accusations right up your ass. Sideways.
I couldn’t agree more … but the Muslims still insist on getting upset by something as childish as a cartoon. And I agree that they should stop manufacturing childish controversies, over cartoons, or piggy banks on someone’s desk, or anything else.
But you want to blame this self-destructive Muslim streak on me? … gosh, mutantmoose, I know my cartoons make me super-humanly strong, but even my cartoony super-powers don’t extend that far. Sorry, my friend, you can piss on my boots, but you can’t convince me it’s raining … the problems with the Muslims were not caused by the cartoons, no matter how many times you repeat it. The problems with the cartoons were caused by the Muslims, in particular the Danish Imams who went to the Middle East specifically to fan the fires, inflame credulous Muslims, and cause trouble.
Look, mutantmoose, if there’s still room in your ass, you can stuff your accusations that I’m a vigilante right up there as well. Muslims killed and stabbed and burnt Embassies and beat people and took the law into their own hands … I drew cartoons. If you can’t tell which of those might be a vigilante then my best advice would be to keep your electronic pen firmly capped, because there are people out here who actually have noticed the difference between drawing cartoons and killing people, it just makes you look foolish and pisses me off.
And yes, I know tomndebb may well strap on his moderators dildo and tell me to bend over, all because you want to accuse me of punishing people I’ve never met, because I tell you to put your vile insults where sunlight rarely ventures, and I tell you to cap your electronic pen instead of going out of your way to insult me by calling me a plagiarist and a vigilante. Fine, tom do your worst.
And mutantmoose, for a man who claims to be on the side of peace, you sure have done your very best to piss me off royally, that’s a real blow struck for peace … next time you want to make baseless accusations of plagiarism and vigilantism, how about you point them at tomndebb? He won’t be upset by your nasty accusations, he’s the perfect dhimmi, peaceful to the point of accepting anything the Muslims do, he’ll explain it all to you – how everything is all perfect in this best of all possible worlds, how there’s no problem with people losing years of their lives to groundless Muslim prosecution for an imaginary crime, because no one has been killed for that particular non-crime for a decade or two. You two can commiserate about my cruel mean punishment of the world’s Muslims and celebrate the pure, untrammeled dhimmi life …
w.
PS - The other European newspaper editors who reprinted the Danish cartoons said that they did so in solidarity with the Danish editors, to show that they would not be intimidated and extorted into taking orders from religious fanatics … but it seems you don’t understand what “solidarity” means. I drew my 12 cartoons in honor of the 12 Danish cartoonists for the same reason, to express my solidarity. You see it, however, as merely re-provoking the Muslims, you don’t seem to grasp the concept of “solidarity” at all. Some time on Google would not go amiss, because it seems I am not able to explain solidarity to you.
Now, you may come out of that exercise still thinking that it was wrong to express solidarity in that way, you may disagree with solidarity as a tactic, that’s fine … but at least you will no longer be laboring under the illusion that I, or the European editors, were just trying to piss people off.
Moderator’s Warning:Intention, this is way out of line. Cool it or take it to the Pit, but this is not appropriate for Great Debates.
Discussions of board moderation go in ATMB; flames of moderators (like flames of anyone else) go in the Pit. Neither discussion of nor ranting about the moderators should take place in the middle of a Great Debates thread.
Nothing is trivialized by using the word incident to identify an event unless you think the author of the following statements is attempting to trivialize them.
= = =
Actually, you have merely demonstrated that a rather short list of people have been persecuted for various activities, sometimes political, sometimes simply embarrassing to various officials in power, in a rather tiny number of predominantly Muslim countries in which the charge of apostasy has been thrown onto the pyre to make the flames higher.
During the 1970s, many states stopped rigorously enforcing laws against smoking marijuana. After the Reagans whipped up some harsher Federal penalties during their “Just Say No” campaign, those states began a tougher enforcement of the laws on their books. Despite that difference, there were generally the same laws on the books before and after the crackdown. The difference was that before the crackdown, those states were not actively enforcing those laws.
At any rate, this discussion is probably over as you do not seem to be able to carry on a discussion without snide remarks and sarcasm and my participation has not been intended to persuade you (an apparent True Believer), but simply to show the thinness of your claims to those readers who might care to examine them. So I will bow out at this point.
The first modern suicide bomber was Polish (Ignacy Hryniewiecki) who blew himself to bits while assassinating Tsar Alexander II of Russia.in 1881. Suicide bombing was “perfected” in the 1980s by the Tamil Tigers who are a more or less secular organisation.
Aren’t you the guy who earlier in this thread tried to argue that female genital mutilation was a part of Christianity by citing a Wikipedia article that mentioned a single book from 1938 saying that “a slight operation may be necessary” to relieve clitoral irritation? (That same article stated, “FGC has never been part of Christianity as a faith system,” but you didn’t mention that.) If intention’s arguments are weak tea, yours are plain water.
Thank you sir, duly noted. I got upset by someone calling me a plagiarist, an artistic imitator, and claiming that I was punishing the world’s Muslims.
Won’t happen again. Apologies to anyone I insulted.
I’m not sure what sort of pretzel logic you needed to arrive at that description of my earlier post, but I am quite willing to correct your error.
Tamerlane observed in passing that FGM was erroneously described as a Muslim practice, noting that it was also practiced by other religions. Aquila Be demanded a citation that any other Abrahamitic religion had included people who had practiced it. I provided two citations from Wikipedia (both footnoted as to their sources) that indicated that some adherents of Christianity and Judaism had practiced it. The Wikipedia link (if one bothered to follow it) made it quite clear that it was a cultural practice that did not originate from or find wide acceptance among any of the Abrahamitic religions. As part of my post, I quoted parts of the sections to which I linked.
I made no “argument” that FGM was in any way Christian. My exact statement was
Since no one pursued the silly claim that it was really Muslim in nature, I did not bother to make a big deal about it, although I confess to having noted that an American crackpot in the 20th century had endorsed it, as I found that event to be worthy of a raised eyebrow.
I have given you a long list of people who have been put in jail, tried, convicted, sometimes sentenced to death, sometimes given jail terms, and occasionally executed for the crime of apostasy. The charge against them was apostasy, the court examination and trial was for the purpose of determining whether they were apostates, and if found guilty, they were convicted of apostasy. (And if they were found not guilty, they were found not guilty of apostasy.)
I fail to see how that long list (I can make it much longer) from a variety of Muslim countries (I can make it wider) shows that the apostasy laws are not being enforced. I gave you citations of people tried for apostasy in (from memory) Kuwait, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia. Oh, and Afghanistan. And Sudan. How many do you want?
Yes, you claim (without citation) that the apostasy laws may be enforced for the wrong reasons, or against the wrong people, and I admit that may be so … but so what? They are still being enforced.
Look, tomndebb, if a man is arrested under some law, thrown into jail under that law, is accused under that law, tried under that law, convicted under that law, and sentenced under that law … can you explain to me how that law is not being enforced? It may be just “thrown onto the pyre” (although in most cases, contrary to your claim, it was the only charge), but it is still being enforced either way.
You are 100% correct, that is certainly true. But here’s the interesting question.
During that time, how do we know they weren’t actively enforcing those laws?
Simple. Its easy to tell if a law is not being enforced … we knew the laws were not being enforced because people were not being arrested, or tried, or convicted, or sentenced under those laws. That’s how we know a law is not being enforced, because we don’t see any of those things.
Now explain to me how a law under which a number of people in a number of countries are being arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced, right up until today can be said to be a law which is not currently enforced?
Yeah, you’re right, I let my temper get the best of me. My bad. I apologized to everyone above, and I personally apologize to you. And yes, we can let the readers decide whose claims are thin …
However, I suspect your leaving has more to do with the fact that I have shown that far too many people are currently being tried and convicted and sentenced for a law you say hasn’t been enforced in hundreds of years, than it does with my (admittedly wrong) actions.
If you do decide to stay, however, you could start by explaining how even one person in one country can be arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death (whether or not the sentence is commuted) under a law that you claim hasn’t been enforced for centuries. We know that is happening right up to the present:
This is the “most revered cleric” in Saudi Arabia, and he obviously does not think that the apostasy law is a dead letter.
But wait, that was from way back in March. Not recent enough? Here’s one from yesterday …
This one is particularly notable because Iran does not have the death penalty for apostasy, and because it involves a second generation apostate (the first generation is unfortunately no longer with us, having been hanged in 1990 for apostasy under a law you claim hasn’t been enforced for centuries).
… but hey, they doan gotta’ show you no steenking badges, the prosecutor is asking for the death penalty anyway. Still want to claim that the apostasy law isn’t being enforced? My friend, yesterday’s news says they are trying to impose the death penalty for apostasy when it isn’t even in the law. That’s what I’d call enforcing a law with a vengeance! Perhaps you could explain to us exactly how that particular apostasy law is not being enforced?
Or, you could just do what I do … admit it when I’m wrong …
Your choice.
w.
PS - cruising the web for this posting, I found Ibn Warraq (an ex-Muslim) who talks about the dichotomy I have been pointing out, the Islamic ambivalence towards violence, in much lovelier language than I could hope to attain:
I note he also comments on the early Koran/late Koran difference in the violence of the tone and contents.
He also writes:
(While you’re at it, tomndebb, you could be polite enough to note that I was right and you were 100% wrong as to whether Islam considers Baha’is as apostates, and also why they consider them apostates … but I digress.)
PPS - Finally tomndebb, you say I am a “True Believer”, which obviously means something very negative in your book, but which means nothing to me unless you say what it is that you think I Truly Believe.
Look, I have no bone to pick with Islam. It’s the most intolerant of a bad lot in my book, but my theory is that the problem is not religious intolerance … it’s tolerance of religion. I believe that religious wars and religious battles and religious schisms and religious killings and religious disputes have been a pernicious bane throughout the history of the world. I say a pox on all their tight-assed intolerant nastiness, the whole bunch of them.
I have lived and/or worked in countries with a Muslim majority (Morocco, Senegal, the Gambia) and with substantial Muslim minorities (Togo, Fiji, Liberia). I have worked with dozens of Muslims during that time, and I have met many more either socially or in a work context. By and large, the 80-20 rule applies with them just as it applies everywhere - 80% of them are friendly, polite, reasonable human beings in a social context, and 20% are not. I have met Muslims I liked, Muslims I didn’t like, and Muslims I admired greatly. Overall, they’re like all of us (or 80% of us), a bunch of poor fools trying to do the right thing.
But when the topic turns to religion, by and large you’ve never met a bunch of more touchy, opinionated, quick-to-anger, violent, hide-bound, narrow-minded, opinionated, righteous bunch of folks in all your days … as we saw in the Cartoon War. Once again, religion rides in to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory … are we surprised?
I believe that Islam is two religions in one, a modern peaceful religion and a violent 7th century religion. I believe that Islam as a result has a split down the middle that can be very dangerous for anyone who is their neighbor. The split is perfectly exemplified by the verses in the Koran which say (paraphrased) “there is no compulsion in religion”, and in another, later verse “except if you try to leave, in which case we’ll be compelled to kill you or punish you severely”.
And because of the penalties for apostasy, Islam can be very dangerous for anyone who wants to leave the religion. These penalties are by no means restricted to the legal strictures we have been discussing. When the state does not enforce the death penalty, all too often it is meted out by the offender’s co-religionists. (I won’t bother to cite this, as there are lots and lots examples … and because no matter how many I posted, you’d likely say it wasn’t enough. Look it up if you are interested. There’s a case in England right now where a young woman is under police protection because she has received death threats for leaving Islam.
Not Islamic enough for you, you say?
OK, the death threats are from her father … that’s some “Religion of Peace” they have got there, all right.)
Does that make me a “True Believer”? Sounds more like a “True Unbeliever” to me.
But I would be curious what you think I believe.
And to return to the OP, I find these poll results from Britain:
To me, both of these figures are amazing. These are not shepherds living in an Arab village, they are residents or citizens of the UK. One in three of the younger folks support killing the poor girl who is now in hiding … Religion of Peace, that you can only leave in pieces …
And are we supposed to be reassured that “only” one in five British Muslims over fifty five supports killing people who leave the faith?
Like I said, the question of apostasy cuts deep to the violent part of Islam …
In countries containing millions of people, you have shown a dozen or so who were charged with apostasy in connection with other events. I simply do not see that as Muslim nations actively enforcing that law.
Well, first I will note that you are mischaracterizing my statement.
I have not said that it was never enforced.
As to my explanation, perhaps you missed the analogy earlier. (I admit that I did not lay it out in words of one syllable, but I did not think I would have to.)
Throughout the late 1970s, a number of states did not actively enforce the laws against the use of marijuana. This did not mean that no one was charged. Every once in a while someone would be discovered growing an acre of the stuff in the back woods or someone would get picked up on a drunk and disorderly and then resist arrest, only to have the police find some weed on him, and in those cases the laws would be enforced. Nevertheless, it was possible in many places to smoke a joint with no serious fear that the police were going to hunt one down. (I knew of a couple of places where the cops would simply nod at the smokers and ignore them as long as they smokers were not being a public nuisance.)
Now the laws are being actively enforced and smoking is done much more furtively in the manner of smoking in the '60s.
That is how one can find various incidents of persecution in which apostasy is invoked without coming to the conclusion that any nation is actively pursuing it.
Since the origin of the discussion was the condemnation of Islam for having a law that encouraged killing anyone who left it, I find the relatively small number of problematic cases to be evidence that “Islam” is not keeping all its adherents under the threat of death. YMMV (obviously).
It’s not a question of small numbers executed, tomndebb. It’s lives ripped apart. It’s people’s hope stolen. It’s my friend’s father, executed in Iran as an apostate. It’s the girl in Britain whose father and brother have threatened to kill her. I don’t buy “it’s only a few”, it is human life.
To me, the issue of whether Muslim nations “actively enforce”, or “inactively enforce”, or “turn a blind eye to” the altogether too frequent use of the legal system to imprison and try and convict people who were only guilty of wanting to leave Islam is not the point.
The point is that there should never be a penalty for leaving a religion. No one should be threatened or attacked or beaten, much less hauled into court and jailed, for wanting to change their religion. If that’s happening, to me, that’s not a religion, that’s a cult.
The point is that this all-too-common pattern of Muslim attacks of all types on people who want to leave Islam, ranging from verbal abuse to threats to menacing to fathers threatening or killing their daughters to mob violence to state-ignored murder to legal threats to trials and all the way to the occasional execution, happening in the houses and the streets and the courtrooms, happening even in Britain, is not the sign of a humane, compassionate society. Attacking and killing and beating and trying and jailing people whose only crime is wanting to leave Islam is a sickness, a twisted, ugly sickness that extends from the bottom to the top of the violent part of Islam, that extends from the family to the mosque to the state, a sickness that has absolutely no place in the modern world.
And that was my point about Islam, it is split. That’s the violent underbelly of Islam, the flip side of the compassionate Koran verses about how “there is no compulsion in religion” and “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.” And until Islam is able to heal that split, until the day when the Muslim world deciphers how to abjure the violent part of Islam, until persecuting someone who simply wants to leave Islam is so rare as to commend attention in a Muslim country, until that day, the violent part of the Koran and the violent part of the Hadiths and the violent part of Islam will continue to be a force for discord in the world.
And you haven’t shown us how many people have converted away from Islam in Muslim countries *without *being charged with apostasy. A law is enforced not be putting people in jail, but by convincing people not to break it out of fear of going to jail. Maybe the examples **intention **brought constituted 100% of all ex-Muslin converts; everyone else tempted to do so was too afraid to try.
Maybe, if the laws didn’t exist, we’d see millions of apostates a year. So long as they’re in place, we’ll never know.
No, Aquila Be said, “Do you mean to imply that FGM is also a feature of the other “Abrahamic” religions, such as Judaism or Christianity?” You are mischaracterizing what he asked. He asked whether it was a feature of the other religions. Asking whether some Jew or Christian somewhere, sometime may have practiced FGM would have been silly and irrelevant.
You replied, “Sorry, there are more than one source for such statements” and proceeded to provide one link that said FGM wasn’t Islamic and one that said a Christian wrote a book in 1938 saying “a slight operation might be necessary”.
You appear to have a double standard of proof. You expect us to take a “eyebrow raising” book from 1938 as evidence that FGM is somehow linked to Christians, while in contrast, intention’s personal knowledge of someone who was executed at least on the pretext of being an apostate does not count against Islam. With that kind of reasoning, no wonder you can’t accept the link between Islam and violence.
Most Muslims have politics in common as well as religion, probably because Islam is a total belief system that encompasses politics in addition to what we would regard as religion. If Muslim violence is motivated by politics rather than religion, as you claim, what of it? It’s still a Muslim problem.
She, I believe ( my apologies if I’m incorrect on that ). Her question was adequately answered IMHO. She implied FGM was a feature of Islam ( the “also” quoted above ) and challenged the assertion that it was of any other Abrahamic religion, then asked for a single reliable source if this is what I meant.
The answer ( which I had thought was clear ) : IMHO it is not a feature of any Abrahamic religion, unless by feature you mean it is practiced by members of all of them. If that is your definition of feature, then yes it is a feature and my cite at least ( to a State Department survey of nations and peoples who practiced it ) should suffice as the one reliable cite she asked for.
However that is not my definition of feature, as no part of any scriptural writing in the Old Testament, New Testament or Qur’an call for it. Other sources outside those core scriptures are poorly supported at best. The fact that the great majority of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the world don’t practice it speaks to that. The fact that the great majority of Muslims, Christians and even Jews in certain geographically circumscribed regions do practice it ( I’m thinking of the overlap in Egypt and the Horn of Africa, where members of all three faiths universally embraced FGM ) and have done so since before there were any Abrahamic religions in the area ( running back to the writings of Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. ), indicates to me that it is a local cultural accretion that has been grafted ad hoc onto the various religions.
You have raised a valid point. I had made no effort, to this point, to determine how many conversion there might have been.
Of course, the numbers are pretty hard to find from serious sources.
I would not ever trust the wackoes on the Islam Watch site to produce real numbers, but even deciding that their claims are inflated by orders of magnitude, I wonder if they are wholly imaginary when they discuss millions of Muslim to Christian conversions?
Apparently, some Muslims believe some of those numbers as reported on an al-Jazeera interview. (This is, admittedly, a reference mostly to portions of Africa that are distant from the Middle East.)
So it is possible that your assessment is correct and that the lack of large-scale, active enforcement of the prohibition against apostasy in many/most Muslim countries is simpy a result of there being few apostates to prosecute/persecute.
Actually, it is very much a matter of numbers in this discussion. The whole point of this thread was whether the fanatics of the Wahabbist Muslims were actually representative of all of Islam. As terrible and tragic as your individual incidents are, unless they demonstrated a significant movement among all Muslims, they did not support the assertion that “Islam” was responsible for those injustices.
You have still failed to persuade me that it is “Islam” (as opposed to specific cultural traits of individual countries) that has created those tragedies, but in the light of Alessan’s question I concede that I have not demonstrated the opposite in this thread.
Hyperelastic, you are simply acting silly. My response to Aquila Be was directly to the challenge “Cite?” I have already reposted my actual link in which I simply noted that some adherents of all the Abrahamitic religions have engaged in the practice. I have also reposted my explicit statement that FGM is a cultural phenomenon that is not tied to any religion, so trying to twist my post around to say something that I have not said is simply a waste of electrons. (I notice, for example, that you keep harping on the information about the single doctor while ignoring both the text that states that “some” evangelical preachers (that is plural) supported the practice and ignoring, entirely, the statement, also quoted, that it was a practice that continued aamong “many” groups because Christian missionaries had failed to eradicate it.)
Well, for those who think the Cartoon Wars are over and I’m just raving about the ancient past, and for those who think that the cartoonists started the Cartoon Wars, consider the following article. I suspect that some resident dhimmi or other will show up soon to reassure me that this is another law that won’t be actively enforced, or to pacify us with some clever meaningless claim designed to float us off to lotusland, where everyone loves everyone … but it is a piece of jackbooted Muslim filth nonetheless:
So, the Jordanian Muslim assholes with legs masquerading as human beings have passed a law that makes my cartoons illegal in Jordan, despite the fact that nobody from Jordan has likely ever seen them … and despite the fact that they are protected free speech in the civilized world. (I must confess that for me, that is a tautology, because the “civilized world” is defined as places where, among other things, such free speech is protected.)
But as I said, someone will likely show up very quickly to affirm that everything’s perfectly fine, that Muslims are all wonderful people, that all religions are one, that Islam is just Christianity in eccentric headgear, that most Muslims don’t believe in this action, there is nothing to fear from this attempt to spread the perverted legal actions that the Muslims call justice. I’m not sure what their reasons will be, we’ll have to wait and see what excuses are raised this time.
For me, it’s just one more example of the violent half of the Muslim world view. What is the possible point of them charging the Danish editors after all this time? Even those who think the cartoons should not have been originally published should stand up and condemn those motherfuckers for trying to re-inflame Muslims and re-ignite the Cartoon Wars by threatening cartoonists and editors halfway across the planet for things they have done in their own country two years ago.
I swear, I am sick in my soul from reading tomndebb and the rest of the world’s Muslim apologists’ craven excuses for Muslim violence. It’s a good thing I’m a reformed cowboy, because I’ve needed all my bronco-busting skills to stay on the back of their words, as they twist and spin and dodge and buck to try to avoid looking at the facts about Islam. They will do or say anything, grab any excuse, to avoid noticing that ISLAM HAS A VERY VIOLENT SIDE, a side I do not see in any other major religion.
The other religions have their faults, I’m no fan of any of them, as I have said before. But when is the last time a Methodist put a bomb in a watermelon truck and drove it to the nearby Baptist village to blow up their women and children? When is the last time a Christian or Buddhist or Hindu nation jailed and tried someone for apostasy? When is the last time a Buddhist father killed his daughter because she wanted to leave the religion?
And to complete the circle, when is the last time anybody but a Muslim rioted and burned Embassies and killed innocent people over a God damned cartoon … and then came back two years later to start the war again?!?
Because of their propensity for fighting and killing and spreading Islam by the sword, the Muslims have long been both hated and feared by their neighbors. And given their history, up to and including these most recent Jordanian actions, by a Muslim country that is considered one of the more enlightened, I would say that they were hated and feared with good reason.
Me, I do not hate the Muslims. I do both fear and despise anyone, however, who passes laws designed to punish me for doing something that is legal not only in my own country but across the civilized world. Used to be that only their neighbors had to fear the Muslims … but now, through the magic of the intarwebs, the Jordanian scumbags have extended their perverted sick intolerance of other people’s views all the way round the world.
Not a good sign for our resident dhimmis … but like I said, I’m sure they’ll come by soon and explain how Muslims are really just sheep in wolves’ clothing. The only good news is, on this Board, they can’t just legislate the debate out of existence as the Jordanian pricks are trying to do.
w.
PS – I note that the charges against the editors and artists include “demeaning Muslim feelings” … demeaning their feelings? What the fuck kind of crime is the crime of “demeaning someone’s feelings”? I must admit, at this time my point of view is slowly shifting towards “fuck the violent Muslims feelings, and fuck the feelings of their silent Muslim accomplices as well”. I don’t like it, but I find myself heading towards the point where I don’t care if people insult and revile Muslims. I used to, but after the Cartoon Wars, and the endless string of beatings and murders and trials of apostates, after endless suicide murderers, and now this slime oozing out of Jordan, for my money every Muslim that does not take a stand against the inhumane fascistic violent part of Islam can all go get fucked with a wire brush. It is time and past time for the peaceful Muslims (I’m sure there are some) to take a stand, this lunacy has gone on for fourteen centuries.
And me, I find myself asking again the same question I asked throughout the Cartoon Wars … where is the moderate Muslim response? Where are the mullahs and the imams denouncing this kind of action from the steps of the local mosques? If this doesn’t represent Islam, that’s good news … but if it doesn’t represent Islam, is the rest of Islam in hiding, or asleep, or OD’d on kif, or what? If this kind of pond scum is only a minority that’s good news … but if that’s the case, where is the fucking Muslim majority when we need them?
Me, I’ll believe radical Islam is a minority only when the Mythical Muslim Majority comes out of its centuries-long hiding place and starts telling us, and more importantly, starts telling the violent Muslims, what that Mythical Majority actually thinks.
And until then, until the day when the MMM grow a pair and speak up against violence, they can get fucked with the wire brush for hiding from the fight. Instead of the Jordanians keeping their own vicious, murderous minority in cages, they have decided make them lawyers and politicians and judges? … fine, fuck them all.
Now, in the past, people have said “Oh, intention, don’t be an idiot, the majority voice is out there, you just haven’t heard it” … OK, let’s find out if this is really the case.
Readers of this thread, I invite you to post or cite on this thread any statements that appear anywhere, on the intarweb or in print, from Muslims who condemn this Jordanian action declaring me as a criminal … and you as well, quite possibly. After all, how do you know whose feelings you have demeaned? Do you even know what “demeaned” means in this Muslim context? Because in many Mythical Mainstream Muslim circles, “demeaning Muslim feelings” could mean posting explicit photos of women exposing their …
hair.
I suspect, however, that the new server software is not going to die under the volume of postings … here’s why:
So the lawsuit is supported by the Jordanian legal system, the media, professional groups, and political parties, plus the 10,000 signatories … and idiots are still trying to decide if radicalism is in the minority in Jordan?
So what we’ll likely get is some mullah in London or Los Angeles wringing his hands and saying “Islam’s not like that, Allah said to love everyone, Muslims are nice guys” or something. But we’ll see how it plays in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and Indonesia and Pakistan and Iran … if this really is a minority view, if Muslims are nice guys, I’m sure the residents of those countries will stand up and let us know …
However, I just looked through about 25 news reports from the US and Denmark and Malaysia and China and a host of other countries … care to guess how many Mythical Moderate Muslims I encountered on my trawl through the news of the Jordanian action?
That’s right.
And of course Al Jazeera, the supposed voice of the Mythical Muslim Majority, was all over the issue. Here’s everything I could find on their English language site regarding the Jordanian action … the spoiler is to avoid “demeaning Muslim feelings”.
… did you really expect them to cover this? Maybe tomorrow, it’s only been going on since June …
Or maybe there just wasn’t space for the news from the MMM … however, in my search, I found that Al Jazeera did find space for this advertisement for underpaid Muslims who wanted to make some spare change over the 2007 Ramadan holiday …
Yeah, that’s the ticket, Al Jazeera … advertise the bounty, make sure you include any detailed information that might let people earn extra money for bonus cruelty, and let people know where to go to collect it, and call it “reporting the news” … that’s the voice of the MMM at work.
So let me see if I understand your claim, tomndebb.
Your claim is that when we observe Islamic people from wide range of Islamic traditions, both Shiites and Sunnis along with a host of minority sects, “Fivers” and “Twelvers” and the like, living in a range of Islamic countries from Nigeria and the Sudan to Pakistan and Iran and Indonesia, speaking a host of different languages and living in different cultures, and in virtually all of those Islamic groups we observe far too many Muslims who are (to various degrees and using their varying locally favorite physical and legal and psychological instruments of human destruction) beating and persecuting and threatening and killing and legally trying and jailing and occasionally even executing people for the “crime” of wanting to leave Islam, a so-called “crime” which is clearly defined in the Islamic holy books, a totally bogus so-called “crime” which in modern times exists only inside the Islamic legal and social system and and nowhere else, the logical conclusion you want us to draw from observing all those different Islamic folks persecuting Islamic apostates in different languages and countries and cultures all over the world is that …
Islam has nothing to do with it, it’s just a tragic coincidence, it could happen to any religion?
Well … um … er … I … uh … thanks for sharing that, tomndebb. I’m sure people will treat your logic with every bit of the respect that it warrants.
w.
PS - Please don’t try to slip in a re-definition of the discussion as being about the Wahabbist fanatics, that’s not in the OP anywhere. Nice try, and very clever, but we are discussing radical Islam, much of which is not Wahabi … unless, perhaps, you think beating someone up for trying to leave their religion is not a “radical” act in 2008 …