While I do see your point and agree with it. I’ve seen an awful lot of people on this site getting jumped on in a big way for voicing dislike for political or philosophical ideology.
Hail Ants,
There are gangs of Muslim youth and Gangs of Christian youth rioting.
so is Christianity the religion of Peace?
Right. Likewise, it’s silly to say that violent people who label themselves as Muslims aren’t really Muslims because other self-described Muslims are peaceful.
For ninety-nine percent of people, religion or its absence are meaningless, because it is used only to justify what they want to do anyway (be it violent or peaceful.)
Yes, ToF, Christianity is the religion of peace. Jesus told his followers to “turn the other cheek” to “take up your cross, and follow me.” God said that “vengeance is mine…I will repay.” Thus, (and this is put very simply) it isn’t the Christian’s place to be aggressive.
As many have said, the misguided actions of a few should not be applied to the entire culture of people, though they do reflect poorly upon that sect.
However, Islam is all about the Jihad, not about peace. A few years ago I was listening to a former Muslim giving a lecture on something involving Islam, and he said that we(the US) were crazy for letting any Muslims into our country. Note the use of the word ANY. If any of you can’t make the logical connection, I’m sure the others can fill you in.
What exactly were his reasons for this?
Man, an Islamic Reformation is getting more needed by the day, IMHO.
Like it or not, Islam today is an unspoken byword for hateful intolerance in the popular mind. On the news we regularly see massacres, outrage, bloodshed, cruelty, and stupidity beyond belief - either in the name of Islam or as revenge for some perceived slight towards it.
Joe Public can do basic pattern recognition, and patronizing lectures on racism and/or bigotry will only make the problem worse. Ditto for the “Christians did it too 400 years ago!” statements.
I’m not saying that those who participated in the riots weren’t Muslims (at least nominally). Yes, Muslims are Violent. Christians are Violent, Jews, Atheists, Blacks, Straights, Gays, Dentists, Teachers, Clowns and Acrobats are violent. What’s your point?
I’m saying that violence against the innocent is not a part of Doctrinal Islam. The Quran forbids such a shameful display of unprovoked aggression, therefore if a group of Muslims in Nigeria behaved violently, they did so in spite of the teachings of Islam, not because of them. Islam is not inherently violent.
Just ask all those killed in Christian religious wars.
He also said he brought the Sword, and that his testimony would turn man against neighbor and brother against brother.
That is such a gross mis-characterization that you should be flogged for spreading such nonsense. Oh, and before you jump to conclusions, I’m not a Muslim.
Never trust a “former” anything. Every major lie I’ve ever heard about Catholicism, for instance (Mary worship, idolatry, blah blah blah) finds its source in a “former Catholic,” (or current Baptist, whichever). Never trust a former anything to give you the truth.
Would you go to a man’s ex-wife (who left him for another man, no less) for the up and up scoop on what that first man is like? Not if you have a shred of intellectual honesty in you, you wouldn’t.
Kirk
MG: Someone can stand up and state a strong dislike about a political or philosophical ideology without being called a bigot. State a strong dislike for a religious ideology and suddenly you’re a bigot.
But that’s not what the OP’s about; it’s about criticizing an entire religion based on the extremism and violence of some of its followers. It’s one thing to disagree with some religion’s theological principles, but it’s quite another to say “Well, this religion’s principles must be lousy because some of its followers do lousy things.” That is bigotry.
A few examples of religious-zeal-induced violence on the part of non-Muslims:
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Terrorist group Army of God (responsible for bombing abortion clinics and shooting abortion doctors) claims that Christian doctrine (“God’s Special Revelation in Holy Scripture”) entitles them to consider abortion as “the government declaring war on the unborn babies” and therefore to “continue to engage in terrorist actions”.
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Various Christian “theologies emphasizing separateness” are used to fan the flames of Protestant/Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland.
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Hindu extremists lynch five men accused of killing a cow (a violation of Hindu ethics). (Anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence by Hindu fundamentalists is also widespread.)
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Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka routinely oppresses evangelical Christian minority. “To date, over 200 pastors/Christian workers have been threatened; over 90 pastors have been assaulted and hospitalized; four pastors killed and no arrests have been made.” Meanwhile, fanatic members of Hindu Tamil minority have killed thousands of majority Buddhists.
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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish fanatics encourage terrorist acts against Arabs and Jewish leftists, saying “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail”, “[1994 Hebron massacre perpetrator] Baruch Goldstein was the greatest Jew alive”; they also “placed bombs inside the Manhattan offices of two liberal groups, the New Israel Fund and Americans for Peace Now.”
Let’s see, by the standards of the OP, that must mean that Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism are “uncivilized, barbaric, primitive cultures”. (And, as I mentioned earlier and MSU amplified, the atheists seem to be no better.) Hi Pot, this is Kettle, Kettle, Kettle, Kettle, and Kettle.
bb: However, Islam is all about the Jihad, not about peace.
That’s some people’s interpretation of it. Similarly, according to some people in the Army of God (see above), Christianity requires them to “defend the innocent children” by bombing abortion clinics. I’m not going to assume that Christianity as a whole is “all about terrorism” just because that’s how some violent fanatics interpret it.
Thus, (and this is put very simply) it isn’t the Christian’s place to be aggressive.
Well, plenty of Christians are aggressive, and have no trouble finding scriptural justification for their actions. All peaceful people of whatever religion believe that their own religion preaches peace, while all their co-religionists who want to be violent easily find religious justifications for violence. A plague on all our houses.
Reuben: *Like it or not, Islam today is an unspoken byword for hateful intolerance in the popular mind. On the news we regularly see massacres, outrage, bloodshed, cruelty, and stupidity beyond belief - either in the name of Islam or as revenge for some perceived slight towards it. *
Yeah. My point is that just because Muslim intolerance and violence makes the news doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of non-Muslim intolerance and violence out there too. Not just “400 years ago”: today.
Joe Public can do basic pattern recognition, and patronizing lectures on racism and/or bigotry will only make the problem worse.
Sorry if I seem patronizing, but I’m not going to refrain from calling racism and bigotry what they are just because some racists and bigots may be too muleheaded to recognize them.
Now, if you want to have an honest, open-minded discussion about what factors inspire religiously-motivated violence, how theological issues tie in with social ones in motivating violence, how those factors are operating in different societies today, and how such violence is portrayed in other societies—that would be a discussion well worth having, and racism and bigotry wouldn’t enter into it. Indeed, as has been mentioned, there have already been plenty of GD threads seriously exploring whether Islam is disproportionately used to promote violence, whether Islam is disproportionately portrayed as violent in non-Islamic societies, and a host of related issues.
However, deliberately collecting instances of atrocities on the part of adherents of one religion—while simultaneously ignoring similar actions on the part of adherents of other religions—in order to support a predetermined conclusion that that religion is intrinsically “uncivilized, barbaric, and primitive” or “hatefully intolerant” is not a step in the direction of an honest and fruitful discussion.
Reuben - yes, “Islam” has become synonymous with Violence and intolerance, and no I don’t like it. This is due to a lack of awareness of Islam’s basic tenets and teachings in the public mind. “Joe Public” is fed soundbites through the media and all he ever learns about Islam is what he sees on Fox or CNN. If someone would just open a Quran and the Hadith and read them before slandering an entire global religion, there would be a lot less ignorance and a lot less hurtful comments made. But such misconceptions can change and should change, and there are many people out there trying to do just that.
For example, how many born-again Christians know that Muslims believe in Jesus as the Messiah? Or that they believe in the Virgin Birth? If the media ever bothered to point out the similarities between faiths rather than just the differences, we’d all have a lot more understanding and respect for one another.
Once again, I have avoided saying that all Islamophobia is down to racism, because I believe that most of it is due to misinformation and lack of understanding, rather than deliberate, malicious hatred.
oh but wait, it’s only a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy, sliver of a scintilla of a small percentage of mooslims who are violent like this. The vast, vast majority are peace-loving, non-violent people who value human life with the upmost respect.
(anyone who actually believes that is a blind fucking moron)
Um Kalt there are a billion Muslims in the world. What percentage of those do you think participate in violent riots or terrorist activities like this? Less than 0.01% probably. So it’s quite accurate to say that most Muslims are peaceful for the most part.
By the way one thing that never fails to strike me is the incoherent rage in these Muslim-bashing threads. It’s always the same. Someone will bring up some incident involving violent Muslims somewhere. Someone will make an attempt at heavy sarcasm about the “religion of peace” and then make wild assertions about Islam. Posters like Kimstu will carefully rebut them. The Muslim-bashers can never answer back but continue to splutter in outrage before slinking out. What’s the point of these displays?
Kalt, out of curiosity, have you ever known a real, live Muslim personally? Read the Koran or any other text on Muslim theology or history that wasn’t a sound bite quoted by some anti-Muslim hate group? Try it sometime; it might be an eye-opener.
Oh and BTW, I’m Jewish, and by the logic of you and your ilk, I should fear and hate Muslims. I don’t. In fact, every single Muslim I’ve ever spoken to (and there have been quite a number, from all major regions of the globe inhabited by Muslims) was way more open-minded about Jews than my immediate family is about Muslims. I dated a Muslim for two and a half years (he grew up next door to Chechnya), and he a) knew more Hebrew than I do and b) had absolutely no problem with the fact that I was Jewish, nor did anyone in his family, including his parents, who were illiterate mountain people. His father, who was born before the Russian Revolution, spoke no Russian, and didn’t know how to read in any language, but knew the Koran by heart in Arabic, was more concerned by my American nationality than by my Jewish heritage.
Contrast that with my family, who, although they are all literate, educated, and usually quite open-minded people, all basically think that Muslim, Arab, fundamentalist, and terrorist are all synonyms, and no amount of reasonable debate will convince them otherwise. I hope we don’t have to stick you in that category.
What percentage of them support terrorist activities? I suspect it is far higher then many people care to admit.
Marc
Exactly. Remember the theme song for Billy Jack?
MG: What percentage of [Muslims] support terrorist activities? I suspect it is far higher then many people care to admit.
Your suspicions are your own business, but if you want to argue from them, you’ll need a cite.
Well said, CyberPundit, and extremely well said Kimstu. It’s often hard to maintain a cool head and a have a reasoned debate in the face of such bile and vitriol.
Banjoboy - Islam is not all about “Jihad”. It also preaches social responsibility, family duty, charity, piety, modesty, generosity, and sacrifice among other things. The five basic “pillars” of Islam are:
- Belief that there is only one God and that Mohammad is his Messenger
- Prayer five times a day facing Mecca
- Fasting during the holy month of Ramadhan
- Pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime
- Obligatory Charity given once a year to the needy
To assert that Islam is only about war and violence is to ignore every positive aspect and to reduce an entire faith to a single false assertion.
Kalt - I take it you believe that Islam preaches violence and that the majority of “Mooslims” are in fact intolerant and violent. Can you explain why you believe this and can you do so without resorting to profanity? Is there any point in us trying to convince you otherwise, or will you hold fast to your misconceptions regardless of any evidence we can provide? In short, are you here to spit and cuss, or do you actually want to discuss it?
Just because all the billions of muslims don’t all rise up and bomb/murder/rape/pillage/destroy/terrorize at the same time doesn’t mean it’s only a small minority doing it. To pick up the newspaper each and every day and read about how (only) a few hundred (out of the billions) of muslims went insane and killed innocent people and only focus on today’s small percentage is fallacious. Muslims - islam - are the ones causing all the trouble. After reading the Koran, I feel comfortable saying that any “muslim” who isn’t causing trouble is not a true muslim as he’s not following the teachings of mohammed. I like these fake muslims - they’re peaceful and civil… they fit into society just fine and dandy. It’s the real muslims (that being a vast majority of them) who are the problem.
Real muslims are most definitely not peaceful. True islam is quite far from a “religion of peace.” Sure, the liberalized, americanized “muslims” are just fine. They’re like the easter christians. Just fine. The thing is, with christianity a vast majority of christians are “easter christians” … whereas very few muslims (most of which are 2nd generation american consumers) fall into an analogous camp.
Oh. One more thing. If you believe it, you represent it. Don’t wanna represent it? Don’t believe in it. (Same goes for christians, jews, and all other religions).
I agree that there are more peaceful Muslims than there are violent Muslims. However, the violent Muslims are the ones who are following their scripture which clearly calls for the use of violence against non-believers. Non-practicing Muslims are more peaceful than practicing Muslims.
“Muslims - islam - are the ones causing all the trouble”
Have you even been reading the posts in this thread? This is simply not true. Why don’t you google for information on the Gujarat riots where extremist Hindus killed more than a thousand Mulims in a few weeks, many of them burnt alive. Or of the Serb massacres of Mulims in the former Yugoslavia in the last decade. Or of Jewish fanatics like Baruch Goldstein who have killed innocent Palestinians. Or the Tamil Tigers who have killed thousands of Sri Lankans sometimes with suicide bombs.
"The thing is, with christianity a vast majority of christians are “easter christians”
Actually this quite doubtful. The majority of practising Christians are probably in poor countries in Africa,Asia and Latin America and are not “Easter Christians”. Nor for that matter are many Christian conservatives in the US.