Ahh, the Ayatollah Khomeini, known and revered throughout the Muslim world as a moderate secular leader :rolleyes:
I can assure you, that he thinks he is a perfectly reasonable Muslim leader of a perfectly wonderful Islamic state. There are loads of Muslims who would agree with him…what about it?
You do know he’s dead, don’t you? I mean, I’d assume you do, but honestly, you might think he is jamming with Elvis and Buddy Holly somewhere in the Cayman Islands at the moment.
Thought…he was…yeah, he’s up there with Elvis and Boddy Holly and Hendrix and Morrison.
Here is an explanation I gave in another thread for Turkey.
[QUOTE=NCDane]
In my opinion Turkey’s low numbers are most likely the result
of its post WW1 revolution. The revolution removed Islam from
a position of authority even to the extent of abolishing the Caliphate,
an institution well over 1000 years old. Politics and education were
rigorously secularized, and even Muslim dress such as the fez were
discouraged or banned.
While similar impositions had been made by European colonial
powers throughout their empires, the Turkish case was critically
different in that revolution was imposed from within, and under
the leadership of the incomparable Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
a military and political genius of the highest order. Ataturk’s
ability and popularity so completely transcended all others that
he was never seriously challenged to the end of his life in 1938.
Not only that but he left his partisans strong enough to safeguard
his legacy. Unfortunately, signs of brittleness have developed in
that legacy in the last 10-20 years, speaking of poll results.
If every majority Muslim state had had an Ataturk to lead them
ca. 1920-1938 then not only might the poll numbers under review
in this thread be much lower, but Islam might not be the threat
to the international order which it undoubtedly is today. The reason
would lie not in various nebulous “cultural” factors, but in effective
separation of religion and state. Alas, such leaders as Ataturk are
all too rare.
[/QUOTE]
A positive reply to the poll questions does signify radical religious
fundamentalism, yes.
Although religious radicalization does not necessarily mean support
for suicide bombing and other forms of terrorism, I do think most
terrorist recruits come from the most religiously radical segment of
Muslim society. Since the terrorists operate in secrecy there is no way
of finding out for sure in most cases, Taliban/AQ in Afghnaistan being
a noteable exception.
Now, if it should prove that Muslim moderates are providing as much
support for terrorism as the radicals then that makes Muslim threat
worse, not better.
I am not sure that Lebanon does have more terrorists than Jordan.
The Wiki article on “suicide bombing” lists none there since the early 1980s.
I would be very suprised if Jordanian radicals have not been at work
since 2003 across the porous border in Iraq. As for the situation within
Jordan itself, although the Jordanian royal house has never produced
anything like an Ataturk, it may be that it commands some kind of special
reverence which protects the country from its own radicals.
The 50% and 30% positive responses in Nigeria and Indonesia
are not exactly grounds for rejoicing.
I thought the point you were making was that this sort of crap was something unique to Islam. If your point is that Islam ALSO has passages in its religious texts that don’t read well in the modern world, then sure.
I happen to be Christian myself and I gotta tell you, there isn’t a lot of love for any type of religion on this site so I don’t think anyone is defending islam on the basis of its religious beliefs so much as defending Islam against racist bigotry.
Well there was at least one post (the one I quote) that makes reference to 50% to signify that a majority of Muslims believe something.
Some Muslims are probably OK with fucking cats. So what? Some Christians, Athiests, Jews, etc would probably be OK with whipping a raped girl to death too. What is your point? You seem to want to paint the whole of the muslim faith with this one incident. If your point was not to connect muslims generaly with this event then why the title?
It’s quoting it incorrectly and out of context. The so called “infidels” in thos passages have a very particular and narrow definition. It does not mean “non-Muslims.” Perhaps you should actually try to speak to a real Muslim sometime. You’ve obviously never met one.
Who said it’s perfect. I’m an atheist. I think all religions are equally ridiculous. The Bible probably says more reprehensible things than thge Koran does, though.
So you don’t think there are any terrorists in Lebanon? I’m sure Hezbollah would be glad to hear that.
And what does that have to do with whether of not these countries would be fucked up with or without Islam?
The point is that Islam is not uniquely predisposed to terrorism. Catholics in Ireland and Jews in Palestine also engaged in terrorism, so I suppose we could say the same thing about radical Christians and radical Jews.
Did all the radical Catholics become moderates when the IRA stopped operating as a terrorist organization in Ireland or was it something else? Did all the radical Jews become moderates when Irgun started its transformation into the Likud party or did something else happen?
Infidel doesn’t include Christians and Jews IIRC.
If we had a contest where you cited one reprehensible or ridiculous bible passage for every ridiculous or reprehensible passage in the quran, we could go back and forth for 40 pages.
More **magellan01 **mracism. What a shock.
Just seconding this for added weight.
Uh oh. Now you’ve gone and done it.
Here, magellan01, let me save you a trip:
Since when is Muslim a race?
Now please go away. :rolleyes:
psssst. SFG. Next time try xenophobic provocativeness.
I did not say Lebanon had no terrorists or that Hezbollah
was not a terrorist organization. I said “I am not sure that
Lebanon does have more terrorists than Jordan”.
You specified ME countires, and Nigeria and Indonesia are not ME.
Irish Catholic terror was limited to the British Isles, and Jewish
terror was limited to Palestine. Islamic terrorism is the only form
of religious terrorism that I know of which has ever been so close
to world-wide in scope.
The Anarchists of apprx. 100 years ago were also nearly world-wide,
but they were not religious.
I did not follow events in Ireland close enough to know why the
IRA simmered down. It may be that whatever support they were
getting from other Catholics was eroding, and they decided to
make the best deal they could.
Likud became moderate when its goal of a Jewish state became
reality. On the other hand, a common desire of Muslims worldwide
is destruction of the Jewish state. This applies to Muslims who are
unrelated to any inhabitants of Israel/Palestine except by religion.
Yes and no.
The equivalent Arabic word would be Kaffir, or the plural* Kufr* which means “unbeliever”. In the Quran it’s supposed to mean people who don’t believe in the God of Abraham, so it clearly doesn’t apply to Christians or Jews including the passages cited by Ashenlady(not that this makes those passages more palatable to modern readers). That said, it should be noted there are a couple of passages where the concept of the holy Trinity and the divinity of Jesus is denounced in such a way as to imply that those who believe in them are unbelievers.
However, in actual practice, Muslims and Muslim theologians regularly used that word to describe Christians and more recently to refer to Jews. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it being used when it clearly didn’t refer to all non-Muslims and sometimes even those not seen as “true Muslims”.
“Infidels” don’t come across terribly well in any of the Abrahamic religions and calling any of them “religions of peace” or “religions of war” is grossly simplistic.
Those who actually use the word nowadays clearly are referring to Muslims and Jews when they use it.
(just proving that conventional line length can be achieved)
Nothing substantive to add, except: NCDane please knock it off with the unorthodox carriage returns. I don’t hate you for your views (although neither do I find them particularly persuasive or admirable. Nor am I continuing to read them, frankly), but I am very close to hating you for making my head hurt when I see your name on a post.
He’s posting on an Etch-A-Sketch. It has limitations.
<snerk>
Hey it’s only religion and are we here, so religous that every scintilla of religion needs close examination, as such?
All religions and I mean ALL religions have screwed up things about them. No one gets a pass, not any of them.
Whether it’s Pagan, or Jewish, Jain, or Zoroastrian, Islam, Christian…no religion is perfect because organized religion is quite probably a product of mankind, so imperfect are we all.
Doubt is as holy as faith, it helps protect us from the dreadful sins that arise from certainty.