Islam and violence

Great Debates
41

Exactly.

Here’s a related question: Even if most Arab states are not practicing ‘true’ Islam, should they still be treated as Allies? I mean these are almost universally dictatorships and repressive monarchies. They have extremely poor human rights records. Even our biggest Ally, Saudi Arabia, has religious police that will arrest people for practicing ‘improper’ religion, oppresses women, homosexuals, and other groups, has a history of supporting and carrying out violence, etc.

When the Soviet Union fell, some historians declared it was ‘The End of History’, meaning that the struggle for the heart of civilization that had been going on for thousands of years was finally over.

Now, with the events of late, I’m wondering if there isn’t a new struggle brewing, between the Muslim world and the Western Democracies. Any thoughts?

42

Just tossing out a verse or two of the Quran really doesn’t help much in a situation where someone wishes to find out what the Quran, in its entirety, says about some large issue. Perhaps one of the Muslim posters could expound on the concept of Abrogation of Verses for the rest of us. What I recall of it is that a verse may be valid for a time and then after a certain event passes, that verse no longer applies.

43

And most Bible Literalists I’ve encountered right here in the gool old USofA are shocked (horrified) to hear that hte Bible sanctions killing someone for the crime of disrespect. Got any other comments about a faith’s holy book or just got it in for Islam’s scripture?

44

I have this funny feeling that you are going tell me that you mean only New Testament, which I admit to a lack of scriptural familiarity with. But the rest of the Bible has lots of harsh sides. Joshua and the detstruction of Jericho. What happened to those who had worshipped the golden calf? The destruction of all of Shechem in retribution for one man’s rape of Dinah.

Exodus 21 v 17 “He who insults his father or his mother shall be put to death”

Deut 13 v 13-16 “If you hear it said, of one of the towns that the Lord your God is giving you to dwell in, that some scoundrels from among you have gone and subverted the inhabitants of their town, saying ‘Come let us worship other gods’ -whom you have not experienced- you shall investigate and interrogate throughly. If it is true, the fact is established - that abhorrent thing was perpetrated in your midst- put the inhabitants of the town to the sword and put its cattle to the sword. Doom it and all that is in it to destruction”

I won’t even go into Leviticus.

Judiaism answers by having “oral Law” (Talmud) which tells us what is “really” meant. Christianity has the New Testament with Paul saying that only faith really matters so forget about those old laws. But the conflicting threads are there, and the verses are there. And this is just with a quick skim of random pages.

But unlike you, I care more about actions than words. How have the religious leaders spun these words through the years, to what ends?

45

Islam itself began in a furver of Arabic nationalistic pride when Mohammed started preaching a word of god which fused the traditional nomad warrior-conqurer ideology with the newly developed mercantile trade economy. After his family was ousted from their former position as powerful Meccan traiders, he traveled to Medina where he quickly gained support and began raiding Meccan caravans. His movement grew and finally conquered his home city of Mecca, quickly spreading throughout the Arabian penninsula. Because of it’s decisive, militaristic birth, Islam never had the chance to seperate political and religious spheres, the way that Christianity, Hinduism, Buddihsm, and the other major world religions did.

Just thought I’d throw in a little sociology.

46

Mirage that’s very interesting. I’ve never heard that aspect of it.

47

DSeid, thanks for laughing hysterically at my attempt to give Sam Stone the benefit of the doubt. I haven’t read the Bible cover to cover and I haven’t read the Quran cover to cover either. So I can’t start pulling verses out of my sleeve, but I wanted to dispute the notion that “countries which practice Islam” are more violent than countries which practice… what? Christianity? Which countries are responsible for the Crusades? The Inquisition? The Holocaust??

And when you say “even our biggest ally, Saudi Arabia”, Sam, you are talking about the country which practices the most rigorous and fundamentalist form of Islamic government in the world, with maybe the exception of the Taliban. In fact it was one of the only two Arab nations which recognised the Taliban. So I guess if America is on a mission to promote democracy and human rights around the world, it might seem rather hypocritical to have Saudi Arabia as an ally. But in the event of a “new struggle between the Muslim world and the Western Democracies”, won’t it prove useful?

48

Setting aside the Qu’ran, which as an archaic political text is probably filled with as many inconsistencies as the Bible, Samuel Huntington in an article in Foreign Policy published in the early 90s referred to “Islam’s bloody borders” and was attacked for his views. In his book The Clash of Civilisations and the Re-making of the World Order (which unfortunately I don’t have to hand), he defends this statement, citing empirical evidence that Islamic countries and adherents of Islam are much more prone to enter into cultural conflicts with other peoples, than any other group or culture in the world. I will bring it with me tomorrow when I am here, and will post some stats.

The sad fact is that, for all of the moderate Muslims out there, the Islamic fundamentalists cause a hell of a lot of trouble.

49

verse?

50

One side point:

Compare early Christianity to early Islam and you will see the most drastic differences.

Compare the actions of the Apostles to that of Mohammed and his followers. Christianity spread by words and witnesses. Islam spread by the sword. The early Christians were slaughtered wholesale yet did not fight back. The early Muslims slaughtered.

If you were unfortunate enough to be invaded by the Muslims you either had to convert to Islam, pay a “fee” to keep your religion, or die. (As is sanctioned in the Koran).

Though many have used Christ’s name as justification of violence, there is no verse in the Bible that sanctions this thinking.

51

Mambo,

You ignore the verses proferred and distort the history of Christianity. Muslims have done some forced conversion, yup. Definite themes of intolerance and violence in the mix. But they were amatuers compared to the history of the Church.

52

Exodus 21:17.

Then there’s the lovely requirement to chop off a wife’s hand for the atrocious crime of defending her husband.

53

This is one of the best Great Debates threads I’ve read on the boards. Civil, eloquent, and informative.

**Mambo, Kalt, Sam Stone -

Why is it so important to you to prove that Islam is inherently more violent than any other religion?**

You can find examples from the Koran, the Bible, and the Torah promoting violence against non-believers. You can find opinions of clerics throughout the ages on what these passages mean. And you can find examples throughout human history of supposedly very religious people carrying out acts of horrific barbarism. Would the the slaves of Africa and the native peoples of the Americas call Christianity a religion of peace? How many wars did Christians in Europe fight with each other over differences of opinion and beliefs?

Humans are rotten, selfish, and violent. Humans are noble, loving, and giving. We have always had the capacity for both good and evil within us. Religion, politics, economics, culture, science - all are born out of human striving and human failings.

So why this effort to cast one religion as more violent than another? Looking to the Koran to justify or explain the horrific attacks of September 11 is like looking to the Bible to justify Cortez’s Conquest of New Spain. You’ll only see what you want to see.

I’m familiar with Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, predicting a cultural battle between the West and Islam (and also the West and China). He argues that the cultures and values are so diametrically opposed that massive armed and cultural conflict is almost inevitable.

I don’t want him to be right. He doesn’t HAVE to be right. There is nothing in the Koran or the Bible or the writings of Confucius that necessarily make him right. Only human ignorance can make him right - ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, hatred leads to violence.

That’s why I asked why you were so intent on showing that Islam is inherently violent. Some evil people have used it to justify violence and terrorism. It had a violent beginning as Mohammed consolidated his state on the Arabian peninsula. It contains none of the comforting “turn the other cheek and bless those that hate you” sentiments of the Bible. So what? How many times have
Christian nations ever turned the other cheek?

Does it mean that it’s okay to fear Muslims now? That it’s okay to paint them as somehow inferior to Christians? That we can say true understanding between Muslims and others is impossible because “they are just more violent?” Do you really accept that? Mambo, are you looking for some kind of confirmation that Christians are superior?

I ask because I fear the kind of thinking that would make Huntington right.

54

Boy, is this statement due for a shredding… Or can we simply say that you conveniently forgot the Inquisition and the Crusades because you were dropped on your head frequently as a small child?

(Really, I know the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are traumatic, but do we really need more ignorant misinformed Islam-bashing junk? The battle against ignorance has just ratcheted up another seven or eight degrees…)

55

originally posted by Mambo

originally posted by rjung

Not so fast rjung,

While Mambo may be oversimplifying, there is a kernal of truth in his/her statement. Read Tamlerane’s response to a similar comment I made here. Don’t forget that the Inquistition and the Crusades occured well after Christianity became the dominant religion throughout Europe. The EARLY Christian Church experienced periods when its members were persecuted and didn’t abate until it was sanctioned as the official religion by the Roman Empire.
Islam, on the other hand, did not experience a comparable period of persecution of its members (to be sure, there was a short period of persecution - most notably when Mohammed fled Mecca for Medina - but it wasn’t as long lasting as that experienced by the early Christians).

Islam evolved under much different circumstances. As I pointed out in the linked thread above, one probably needs to account for the historical circumstances involved in the development of the two religions. And from its inception, it appears that the early adherents of Islam abided in a much more militant interpretation of their religion, allowing it to spread rather quickly throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

To be sure, I am convinced that Islam is not inherently violent. But one needs to be mindful of the history of how the religion sprang into being and evolved to be able to better understand the mindset of those who do espouse violence in the name of Islam.

56

I only asked the question, I am not out to prove anything about Islam.

I’m being bombarded with two opposed viewpoints of Islam:

  1. It really is more violent - look at the Koran quotes, terrorist actions/Jihads, and the perpetual violence in the middle east Muslim countries. Islam is based on violence, and violent people (i.e. prisoners) are attracted to it.

  2. No, no, no - Islam really is about peace, and it is only a few extremist zealots who pervert it (just like zealots of every other religion do) for violent goals. Most Muslims are peaceful, loving, caring people who value human life as much as anybody.

Now, #2 is obviously the politically-correct POV, but that doesn’t make it the right one. I readily admit that I do not know much about Islam. So, I’m finding this thread very informative.

Just wanted to make it clear that I am not out to destroy Islam or make it look bad.

57

Eponymous: Well I will say that Mambo’s words were inaccurate in one significant respect. While the geographical reach of Islam was expanded ( in the early days - later it was largely by proselytizing - in SE Asia and Bengal particularly and Africa partially ) by the sword, Islam per se was not.

Forced conversion, although it occurred here and there ( infrequently enough I would consider them aberrations ), is actually remarkably rare in the history of Islam. For example Egypt was overwhelmingly Christian for a century or two after the Islamic conquest, with most of the Muslims being Arab immigrants concentrated in the garrison city of Fustat. Even well into the tenth century Christians consituited a majority of Egypt’s population. Repression there only became serious with the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim ( 996-1021 ), during a period when the Pax Islamica was just beginning to disintegrate everywhere.

The largest scale forced conversion that I can think of, took place in 16th century Persia when the Safavids ( a very heterodox Shi’ite Sufi order of Azerbaijani Turcoman origins ) slaughtered or expelled the Sunni “clergy” and invited in Imami Shi’ite “clergy” from southern Iraq to replace them - They then slowly converted the populace ( hence the dominance of Shi’ism in Iran today ).

So I’ve always disliked the phrase “conversion by the sword”, which seems rife for misinterpretation.

Islam was born in strife and that knowledge helps explain some of the language in the Koran. AS does, as several folks have pointed out, the intertwining of politics and religion. Which was complete and indivisible in early Islam, unlike early Christianity. But I think it is easy to overstate the case through carelessness. Qualifiers are our friends :slight_smile: .

  • Tamerlane
58

Kalt: As with most things, just two views are far too few to describe the full panoply of possibilities.

My view is close to #2. But I’d certainly be willing to amend that a bit to include the fact that Islam is militant, in theory for defensive reasons. But it is very easy to take the “best defense is a good offense” idea and run with it until Islam is perverted into a violent, oppressive force. Most ( all ) religions are vulnerable to this, but Islam may indeed be more so than most, simply because of its history and militancy ( but let’s not forgot current geopolitical complications, as well ).

But the evidence is just not there that violent people specifically seek Islam. Violent people seek violence. Certainly your prison example seems anecdotal and unconvincing to me ( not to mention contrary to my own anecdotal evidence ).

The record of violence and brutality in the developing world generally is quite extensive and horrific. Christian Latin America, Buddhist East Asia, Hindu South Asia, Christian-Muslim-Animist sub-Saharan Africa. None of them are out of the running when stacked against the Muslim Middle-East. Personally, I’d feel safer walking the streets in Muslim Morocco than ostensibly Christian Rwanda or Colombia. Before the civil war ( initiated by my un-lamented “kin” - Orthodox Christian Serbs, for reasons which they claimed, in part, religious justification ) ), Muslim-dominated Sarajevo was not appreciably different from Brussels, Nice, or any other European city in terms of violence. The repressive, outstandingly brutal government and rebel groups of Burma/Myanmar do not seem dissuaded by that nations’s overwhelming embrace of Hinayana Buddhism ( hell, Muslim Arakan may be one of the quieter parts of that country ). I could go on.

So iolence does not correlate positively with just Muslim countries and nowhere else. The answer is not that simple.

  • Tamerlane
59

Excuse me - “Spread by the Sword” is the phrase I dislike. “Conversion by the Sword” while largely inaccurate, it is at least unambiguously so :wink: .

  • Tamerlane
60

I do not disagree (although it was the RCC who did many of the things you are talking about). What I am saying is that Christians who forced conversions were not acting in accordance to the Bible. Muslims who forced conversions did, in fact, act in accordance to the Koran. That simple.

magdalene

This is not true. There are no verses in the Bible asking for Christians to strike non-believers. But, as you’ve seen, there are numerous verses in the Koran promoting the spreading of the religion by the sword.

You also asked why it is important for me to show Islam as a violent faith.

I am a Copt. The Copts are the descendants of the original Egyptians. When the Muslims invaded Egypt in the 7th century, Christianity was the dominant religion . The Muslims gave the Coptic Christian’s an ultimatum: Become Muslim, pay us, or die. The Copts now are only 6 percent of Egypt’s population. Basically I’m the descendant of someone who was able to pay to stay Christian. The Coptic Church has an unbelievably long list of martyrs. The sad thing, though, is that what the Muslims did to us is in complete accordance to the Koran. Even sadder is that the persecution still goes on (though not as badly as in other countries).

I clearly was comparing the Apostles to the Calyphs.

As he was being stoned, the first Christian martyr, Saint Stephen, said, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” He forgave his persecutors as he was taught. He did not ask God to torture them. The other Fathers of the Church did not mount a campaign of violence and vengence against their persecutors. Christianity is a religion of peace and forgiveness.

There is a famous incident that happened during the Crusades, although I cannot remember the people involved. One person asked how to differentiate the people from each other. The response was “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” (If anyone knows the participants in this exchange I would be much obliged). The Crusades, as students of history know, only used religion as a facade, and were not in accordance with the Bible. The real motives behind it were geo-political (trade routes and such).