You make odd claims about unknown groups of unknown sizes without actually pointing out specific statements that they have made or the relevance of such statements to the discussion.
It is, frankly, much like someone wandering into a discussion of homosexual issues and making grand pronouncements about the way that “gays” never want to address the issue of NAMBLA.
If you wish to address the specifics of what a specific group of Muslims has or has not done in a way that addresses the topic of the thread, feel free to do so. Dragging in broad-brush claims about “those people” that are not supported by facts is a non-starter. Since you have made no actual effort to demonstrate what percent of Muslims in which countries actually hold the opinions you have assigned to them–or, more significantly, have acted upon those views–it is appropriate to note that you are trying to introduce new (wild) claims that do not represent the actual course of this discussion.
I do not actually recall any Muslims in the MENA region being accused of hate-mongering for calling attention to the matters of al Qaida or ISIS.
If you are claiming that any Muslim group, (much less Islam, in general), is a “monstrous and aggressive ideology” that is actually threatening Europe, I am simply going to laugh at such an absurd claim. I have provided factual refutation of such nonsense on several occasions.
Reference to a fairly well-known essay. I was making fun of you for going in essence “oh I know bringing up the Nazis in a debate that does not involve them in any way whatsoever is a really terrible cliché that removes any sense of proportion, or sense whatsoever, out of a discussion ; but when **I **do it I have my reasons you see and…”. Yadda yadda.
As for respect, it’s earned. In part by holding respectable opinions and putting forward respectable arguments in cogent fashion. Strawman to Godwin in one ? Not quite that. Sport.
Once again the old moral equivalency routine. RIGHT NOW in the 21st century, 32 Muslim countries have some kind of penalty for apostasy, ranging from prison to death. PEW research found that over 80% of Egyptians and substantial numbers in other Muslim countries believe apostates should be killed.
Are you seriously going to tell me that a similar situation exists among (nominally) Christian, western countries???
If you have no respect for me, then don’t bother speaking to me. I will not bother you although I will not descend to name-calling.
Why don’t you actually read the exchange.
I made no comment regarding various laws against apostasy that I have not denied exist. You tried to make a point that burning people alive was part of Islam.
I noted that your source was in direct conflict with history and wondered if he could back it up.
Regarding laws against apostasy (that I was not addressing), they are bad.
Now, show evidence how many (if any) of the “32 countries” are actually enforcing the law. (And I would want to see where the official legal system imposed the penalty, not where some boondock village imam got his local villagers to join a lynching.) I realize that it does happen, but I also recognize that there are a lot of silly laws on the books that even mooslims do not actually enforce.
I’m sure you remember the case of Abdul Rahman, the man in Afghanistan who converted from Islam to Christianity and was sentenced to death for apostasy. After his case got worldwide attention, he narrowly escaped from Afghanistan alive, but others have not been so lucky. Freedom House documents actual enforcement of such laws in not just Afghanistan, but also Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, and Egypt. There’s also the case of Meriem Yehya Ibrahim in Sudan.
This Slate article talks about Obama’s narrative and strategy in dealing with ISIS and the like.
Oh I dunno John. If somebody told me that David Koresh (body count 75) or Jim Jones (body count 900) weren’t especially Christian, I wouldn’t think that my intelligence was being challenged. Though they did have a Christian background.
DAESH is to Islam as Jim Jones is to Christianity. I know they and some of the US’s resident fundamentalists and chickenhawks are gunning for a big holy war, but I say we should eschew drama and bleed them slow. (To be fair, I’m generally more hawkish than JM.)
You know, point the fourth hadn’t occurred to me, but it leads to an interesting reflection (if I do say so myself). Namely that the narrative where :
- Daesh is the “real Islam”
- Daesh speaks for all Muslims
- It represents what all Muslims everywhere want or should strive to be
- The cherrypicked bits of violent theology they use are the true essentials of the Koran
- They’re coming for you next !
- Therefore it’s a war against Islam and a clash of civilizations
is pretty much Daesh’s own PR. It’s how they sell themselves as - hell, even the word “caliphate” hints to that.
Which is funny because over there, they sell that crap to, yanno, *actual *Muslims who might have heard a muezzin call once in a while and are not buying it one bit. But bigoted islamophobes down here, who aren’t threatened by Daesh in the least and haven’t even seen a Mooselman on teevee, are totally hooked. Hell, it’s their dream come true.
And I gotta half-wonder whether that very islamophobic narrative playing out in our media isn’t actually part of what drives young, disenfranchised Western kids who cling to Islam as an identity thing but barely know it themselves to want to join up - like the brain trust that attacked Charlie in January. After all, if that’s really the true Islam and it’s so very powerful as to make America quake in its little booties… you know ?
I agree that might be an unintended consequence of the Islamophobe fear mongering. But I also think that, in this country at least (US), it plays perfectly into the rights 7 year long message of, Obama Is A Secret Muslim! Obama Sympathizes With Islam!
I say this because nearly every right wing pundit on TV, in print, anywhere, brings up the fact that he, “Won’t say Islam, won’t call them Muslims.”
O’Reilly had and entire show the other day dedicated to how Obama referred to the beheaded Egyptians as “Egyptian Citizens” instead of Christians.
There seem to me to be two extremes.
- ISIS is the only true Islam. This is the stance that ISIS takes, and that Valteron is pretty close to taking.
- ISIS is not Islamic at all. This is pretty close to, if not actually, the stance that Obama takes.
I think the truth is in the middle:
3) ISIS represents a take on Islam that at best has been deeply unpopular for centuries, and at worst is an entirely novel take on Islam. The movement is deeply religious, drawing on the worst religious traditions they can find, and has much more in common with other extremist movements such as Stalinism, Fascism, and Nazism than it has in common with everyday Muslims.
I’d rather the president take this middle view. It still draws a clear distinction between ISIS and most Muslims, but also isn’t patently wrong. If hardline Muslims, potential ISIS recruits, hear the president make this claim, it seems unlikely to alienate them with its obvious incorrectness.
Let us nor forget also the case of Palestinian Waleed al-Husseini (also spelled Walid Husayin) who spent a year of imprisonment and torture as a guest of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (you know, those poor Palestinians who are so persecuted by the evil Israelis just because they want to drive the Jews into the sea and destroy their state?) He has now taken refuge in Paris where he continues to fight for his right to be an atheist. But even in Paris, he could be gunned down like the Charlie Hebdo people were.
And although I have mentioned him several times on this thread, let us not forget Raif Badawi who is being tortured with 1000 lashes (he may die from it) and 10 years in prison for blogging and for apostasy. This is not the work of some backwoods Imam, but of the Sharia Law system of Saudi Arabia. As one wit remarked, if things that happen in Saudi Arabia have nothing to do with Islam, then things happening in the Vatican have nothing to do with Catholicism.
But, really, the key point is whether the Holy Books of those religions sanction the killing of apostates. Is there anything in the New Testament like that passage in the Koran-- i.e., signaling that apostates should be killed (by humans, not God)?
Well, not quite. Graeme Wood is careful to say:
Thank you for being so kind as to express my opinions for me, but I would rather do it myself.
Let me sum it up thusly: I am not saying that peaceful Muslims are not “true” Islam. But tell the politically correct brigade to stop pretending that ISIS and its actions are some “unreal” perversion of Islam when their actions are VERY WELL supported by Islamic scripture.
What I have been saying for friggin’ YEARS on this site is that Islam is not just a religion like any other. As Sam Harris points out, considering Islam and, say, Buddhism, Christianity or Jainism as being on an equal footing under the word “religion” is like grouping lawn bowling and extreme fighting under the heading of “sports.”
I am not saying that there are no peaceful Muslims, but the division of Muslims into simplistic “good” and “bad” categories is very misleading. Various polls have shown that millions of “peaceful” Muslims (i.e., ones who are not actually firing a gun) also agree in huge numbers with the killing of apostates, with the stoning of women, and with Sharia law.
What if a “peaceful” Muslim tells you (as some have told me) that the Charlie Hebdo massacre was unfortunate but that the cartoonists brought it on themselves; do they fit into the “good” or “bad” category?
This concept that the lads in ISIS are just wayward Muslims who cut Koran classes and somehow got a completely wrong idea that Islam allows or promotes violence, slavery, mutilation, etc. flies in the face of verse after verse and hadith after hadith that precisely promotes violence, torture and conquest.
Most people in the west have never cracked open a Koran and really read it (I have had a copy of it and read frequently for some 55 years now). So it is really easy to ask them to suppose that Islam is just a collection of pious Nostrums about loving God and being nice to others.
So when people like me start to criticise Islam, the politically correct can point out that since many Muslims are brown or black, criticism of Islam can only be motivated by racism, right?
I don’t think there is much in the NT that directly supports the burning of heretics (I stand to be corrected and if I am wrong, Tomndebb will be front and centre with a correction, I am sure:)). There is a quote by Jesus in which he says something about the bad branches being cut off a tree and put into the fire, and while it is unlikely Jesus had heretics in mind, that passage was heavily used by the Inquisition to justify itself.
But the key point you are missing is NOT that the Koran and the Bible promote cruel, violent and barbaric practices. For instance, the Old Testament says that homosexuals should be killed and that a girl who is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night is to be taken to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death.
The point is that NOBODY outside a few very marginalized nut jobs would approve such practices today. In Israel, where the Old Testament was written, homosexuality is legal. Anyone who killed a young girl because she has a ruptured hymen would be prosecuted for murder.
If the violent and inhuman parts of the Koran were similarly relegated to the status of a bad dream, if Muslim-majority countries practised separation of church and state, I would not be concerned with the growth and spread of Islam.
But the reality is that the violence and cruelty of the Koran are REAL and being practised EVERY DAY, and NOT just by ISIS. That organization is only the worst. The reality is that millions upon millions of Muslims agree with at least some of the inhuman cruelties and mutilations in Sharia law. Look up what is being done to peaceful religious dissidents in countries like Saudi Arabia or even the Palestinian Authority.
Look at how Islam has bloody borders and Muslims are fighting with their neighbours in almost every country. Israel, yes, but also the Philippines, Pakistan-India, Chechen, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, etc. etc. And then look at the Islam-inspired murder of cartoonists, the attack on the World Trade Centre, the killing of Canadian soldiers in Canada, and the list goes on. It would be alarmist to call it a world war, but it IS a world-wide conflict.
Well, then, a scholar such as yourself, thoroughly grounded in the classical Arabic dialect of the Koran…such a person would be well aware of the verses that seem to promote tolerance and mercy. Clearly, you regard them as suspect, if not actually fake. Perhaps you will favor us with a gloss, an explication of how they happen to be there?
I will not presume to point them out for you, being a boor of little brain, I am satisfied with your own testimony of expertise. But surely you are aware of them, and can explain them away? Certainty and clarity such as yours is rare and precious, and must not be withheld!
Please proceed, Valteron.
Nevertheless, it’s all true. Preach it to the Muslims. And preach it to the Christians twice as hard.
It doesn’t matter because:
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We can’t be at war with Islam. Nazism was a thing that could be defeated and then it just went away. Soviet Communism was a thing that could be defeated and then it just went away. Islam is not going away. It is to dozens of countries what Christianity is to Europe and cultures derived from Europe. Today, one human being in five is a Muslim. 100 years ago, one human being in five was a Muslim. No matter what we do today, 100 years from now, one human being in five will be a Muslim.
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We shouldn’t be at war with Islam. In modern times, peaceful coexistence between the Muslims and the infidel world has always been possible except when Islamist radicals make trouble. (Or when Barbary pirates raid Western shipping, or Algerian nationalists rebel against French rule, etc., but those were fundamentally different kinds of problems/wars.) Those radicals alone are our enemies, and they are enemies whom we cannot defeat without the help of Muslim allies.
That is why it makes sense for Obama to deny that ISIS is “Islamic” – all he means is that he perceives an important distinction between them and the mainstream of the Islamic community. That distinction is real, and an important one to draw, and to draw attention to.