Apropos of not very much, I keep looking at the thread title and imagining a local weatherman in front of a city map, indicating a circle around the theater district: “Tonight, we will have a 75% chance of Muslims…”
Islam is not an abstract noun it is a real world entity that has many forms from theologies to legal systems to terrorist ideologies. Your position is just sophistry. Religions are what they do in the real world via the actions of men. All the rest is bullshit, which as an atheist you would agree.
most of the rest of this rant is not aimed at you - it’s aimed at the same kind of ‘useful idiots’ that touted the virtues of Stalin and Mao. People who’s ideals and good nature did not let them see what the actual reality of the practice of their ‘noble’ ideas were.
The people parse hadiths, parse the Koran and spin out these fantasies that somehow Islam is going to develop a face that doesn’t think the cure for homosexuality is a good stoning or that women have an equal role to play in society or that if only you take this verse here, take this phrase from that hadith, excise the bit you don’t like and voila - the concept of jihad will turn into giving people a good hard friggin’ frown.
Rubbish. Shia and Sunni Islam have existed for hundreds of years and each have a massive, massive weight of history and legal/social baggage and they aren’t going away.
We can see how they manifest themselves as governments and legal systems. We can see people under their sway riot and rant when ‘Islam’ is ‘insulted’. They are no more going to sprout a face acceptable to liberal secular societies than the Catholic Church becoming Unitarian. And look - hundreds of years after the Rennaisance, after the Reformation, after the Inquisition - what a backward, destructive, cesspit of irrationality that remains. Willing to kill millions with its attitudes to contraception etc etc etc.
Meanwhile, The Religion of Peace strikes again
Merciless warlord and mass-murderer - both entirely defensible propositions from the words of the Koran and the hadiths recording the examplary life of M.
And meanwhile in Egypt, favourite son recipient of massive western aid, an oldie but goodie.
'The rights of God. Give me a friggin break. As far as i’m concerned we should not be giving one inch to this sort of lunacy and this is precisely what liberal apologists are doing when they convince themselves that there is any possibility of either of the major versions of Islam changing enough to be compatible with western values.
In the real world Islamic societies and sharia law are oppressive and intolerant. In the real world French teachers and Egyptian scholars who don’t self censor hide in fear of their lives. In the real world many Muslims are blowing the shit out of people.
Meanwhile, also in the real world.
Pew poll: warning pdf
Only 64% of French Muslims agree that violence against civilians in defence of Islam can never be justified. In my own UK it is 70% of the estimated 1.6 million Muslims. Leaving me feeling totally happy that only 480,000 of them think it can be justified.
And this is a poll generally toted as good news.
This is the real world - a world where any nutter with access to the internet and a university lab could kill thousands. A world where humanity can no longer allow itself the indulgence of subscribing to irrational fantasies. And at the moment, in the real world, it is one particular fantasy that is the breeding ground for murderers.
Whether their particular version of the fairy tale is ‘correct’ is irrelevant.
No, religions are ideas and tools.
If someone is a good person (by my standard of good) and also a Muslim, they aren’t tarnished by “the religion” doing something. That’s why I take issue with the way you phrased your sarcastic statement. Some adherents to Islam would, do, will use violence. Some won’t. When you snarkily say that people think that the religion would never consider violence, what are you doing with the rest of the Muslims?
I grew up Catholic in a heavily Catholic family in a heavily Christian part of a heavily Christian country. I know how monolithic Christianity isn’t, so I can’t fall into that trap. The Westboro Baptists don’t speak for my relatives. Why should the terrorists speak for anyone but themselves?
I post that and remember that I really don’t want to have that discussion in this thread. Like I said, happy to talk elsewhere, but not in here, where the title is misleading and this isn’t so much a hijacking as a non sequitur fandango.