Is it possible to hate what a person does or what happens within a person’s culture without hating the person?
Ooh, now that’s a big can of worms. I apologise to the OP if this leads to a hijack of his thread, but let me ask one question - which deaths are we going to count? Rather than confine this to just looking at death from extremists and terrorists, shouldn’t we be looking at all causes of violent deaths of civilians?
It’s just a lot of what we would classed as terrorists view themselves as soldiers fighting against extremely powerful armies. If we’re going to count civilian deaths caused by Islamic insurgents in the middle east, don’t we have to count civilian deaths from collateral damage? Particularly when the two armies involved come from countries with christianity as their state religion. If we’re going to start counting bodies, don’t we have to look at the ones we dropped too?
What do you mean, “or what happens within a person’s culture”? Again - 1.75 billion Muslims, most of whom are peaceful people and haven’t whipped any women. What that judge did is not representative of “Muslim culture” worldwide.
If you want to rail against that judge and against the whole Saudi monarchi, I’m right behind you. You want to hate them? O.K., I can even understand that.
What I’m talking about is blind hatred of a whole group. Doesn’t matter what group you hate: Muslims, gays, blacks, Jews… it’s wrong. What has hate ever accomplished?
No, I don’t want to start a hijack either. I am trying to formulate some questions and might open a GD thread. Probably shouldn’t have posted that in this thread.
Who said we hated Muslims (well, except you, of course)?
Heck, I’ll expand the alleged circle of “hate” even beyond Islam to religion in general any time said religion becomes entwined with civil law, with distaste for the rubes who tacitly or openly encourage such entanglement, edging toward hatred (or more accurately, eye-rolling contempt) of anyone who tries to create or expand such entanglements elsewhere.
I don’t really care if this is representative of Islam “worldwide”. It is representative of Islam when Islam gets to run things.
I’m against religious radicals being in charge of governments too. That premise is not what I object to at all.
You’re delirious. What I originally stated in post #29, and have stated repeatedly since, is that “you can condemn Christianity without condemning Islam as well; but not so the other way around”. That has jack shit to do with whatever it is you’re blabbering about — this defining that, and whatnot.
And again, so what. Why must you make any red herring comparison at all? An Islamic fuck up is not mitigated by a Christian one. Just condemn the fucking thing on its own merits, and stop acting like you have to apologize because you might be construed as vaguely racist or something by idiots who fret endlessly about such nonsense.
Lib, I believe Miller’s intention in making the comparison was to move the OP’s narrow point of view into a broader perspective. If you’re trying to get someone to think in new ways, you’ve got to provide a close enough analog for them to even have a chance of “getting it”. In this case, to combat the fallacy of drawing an overly broad conclusion from a narrow set of circumstances, Miller attempted to show why the same process would necessarily yield a similarly broad condemnation of a religion and culture better understood by the OP.
All the other back and forth between you two has been extraneous sniping. If you’re going to take shots at each other, try first understanding the other’s intent. You’ll have something true to aim at then.
Note, Lib, that I don’t have time this morning to explain your intent to anyone else. It’s not an omission based on preference, I just found your post more convenient for response, being at the bottom of the page like it was… 
Can of worms? Not even close. It’s rather clear cut. I thiink Klaatu’s point is exactly correct. If you think there is another religion more murderous, offer it up. Additionally, your “fighting against a larger army” is just noise offered up to cloud the issue; a desire to create a can of worms. We’ve had Bali, Spain, and ethnic cleansing in Northern Africa, etc… Please tell me about this scary Balinese army. Finally, trying to attribute collateral damage deaths to Christianity is ridiculous. First, the U.S. does not have a state religion, and among those that do, the killing of innocents is neither intentional nor done in the name of the religion. Two massive differences.
You see, this is the basic level of your discourse. There is nothing wrong with insults where merited, or for emphasis, but when they become the sole basis of an argument, they have a habit of rebounding on the user. It just comes across as very, very childish.
However, you have failed to answer my problem with my quotation being lumped in with the others. I made the comment that theocracies cause situations such as the Inquisition, virgins being sacrificed to the Sun God, and rape victims being flogged. Are you denying any of those three things as being real world outcomes of theocracies? If not, you should have just said “I agree.” If you are, then you really are a very ignorant individual.
45% of Dopers think hijacking a thread is justified always, sometimes or rarely.
Raise your hands if you’ve lived in a majority Islamic culture?
Anyone? Anyone?
I do.
I’ve had a lot of surprises since living here. The other day, my American friend was explaining to her Cameroonian friend that Osama Bin Laden was not our friend. She said “Yeah, he thinks to be a good Muslim you must kill Americans.”
They were shocked. They were like “You mean he thinks if I want to be a good Muslim, I should kill you?!?”
She said “Well yeah.”
They laughed and laughed and laughed because the very idea was the most absurd thing they’ve ever heard. I’ve personally explained to people that it was radical Muslims who took down the world trade center. To people here, OBL is kind of like Rambo. Who really know who Rambo was trying to kill? People like him because they think he is a badass.
I am sitting here now on International Women’s Day, taking a little break before I go drink a beer with my female collegues. Yes, this place has a long ways to go for women. But it’s not an all-out hell. Most of the problems are caused by poverty and most of the traditions that keep women down date from way before Muslims were on the scene, and are practiced by Christians and Animists allike. I know many polygamous Catholics. Please don’t act like every culture is the same.
I do, and have for the since 1993 (short leave back in the states for a couple years) After living in Saudi for 11 years, I find that I have defended Islam from time to time, especially after 9-11, to Western people. I am far from an Islamic scholar(or Christian on for that matter) But Islam does not have anything ‘new’ when it comes to religious interpetations. It is the year 1428 in the Hijjah calendar, think of how the Catholic church was back then.
It saddens and outrages me when these things as well as honor killings and rapists getting off with suspended sentences in Muslim countries. It’s not Islam but MEN’S interpretation of the Quran that makes these things ok.
It isn’t just a matter of numbers, though. Your position of wariness seems to be one of “Hey, thinking suicide bombings and violence against civilians is sometimes justified is highly correlated with being Muslim - we should be wary, since Muslims are more likely to do these things”. Problem being, this is not a poll of what people are themselves likely to do. If I did a poll in the U.S., asking if torture was sometimes justified, and 60% say “Yes, in some cases”, should I be wary that 60% of Americans are going to torture me? No, of course not. Because that 60% aren’t saying “Yes, it can be justified, and I would do it” - all they’re saying is that it can be justified.
Just as another example, I personally think that under certain circumstances, suicide bombing and violence against civilians would be justified. I would be in the “rarely” category had they asked me. Should you be wary that i’m going to attack you? No, that would be silly. Under certain circumstances i’m sure you’d be willing to kill someone - say, in self-defence. Should I be wary that you might kill me?
I suppose the most obvious problem with this data is that only Muslims were asked the question. We’re all sitting here assuming that, had other groups been asked, the response rate would be lower. But we don’t have any data to go on with that. How can we know that the response rate of Christians would be around the same level, or athiests, or Jews? I think that taking these data as gospel and then saying we don’t need data on other groups to say Muslims are a standout group is a bit hypocritical.
If you want to talk all out body counts of religions, then remember please some of the finer points of christian history - Constantine, Charlemagne, the crusades, the inquisition, the hundreds of thousands of catholics killed in protestant England and Germany for witchcraft and heresy, the catholic treatment of the Huguenot’s (100,000 killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre alone)…you know, I can do a pretty good list from the last 2000 years.
And no doubt, lackwit that you are, you’ll view this is an attempt to say that Christians are murderous. Let me try to make this very clear for you. It’s not. I do not believe that Christians are any more murderous than Muslims, who are no more murderous than Budhists, Hindus or Sikhs. Some humans are murderous scum, who will happily misrepresent the local belief system to present some sort of cause or justification for their evil. Most religions have been so abused. The crusades had very little to do with divine mission and an awful lot to do with filling church coffers.
What helps people do this, unfortunately, is idiots like you. So very keen to distinguish them and us, to pick any justification for attributing evil to some other group. God damn those murderous muslims. It’s all so easy to hate when you’re happy to make sweeping statements such as a religion being murderous, makes it so very nice and black and white.
You know, I really do wonder just how stupid you can be. If I’m being whooshed, then my congratulations to you for your spot on impression of burbling idiocy. To repeat myself
“a lot of what we would classed as terrorists view themselves as soldiers fighting against extremely powerful armies. If we’re going to count civilian deaths caused by Islamic insurgents in the middle east, don’t we have to count civilian deaths from collateral damage?”
No doubt you view the insurgents in Iraq as terrorists, right? Well funnily enough, they disagree and view themselves as soldiers fighting an invasion by the UK and the US. That means that to try to answer Klaatu’s question of “[are] more people are murdered by extremists and terrorists who claim to be of the Islamic faith, and say outright that they commit these acts in the name of the Islamic religion” then we have to first decide if the insurgents count as Islamic terrorists or not.
Unless, of course, this is being considered by an idiot, when it becomes a simple case of applying a them/us distinction. Ours are brave soldiers fighting heroic cause with unfortunate collateral damage, theirs are terrorist and murdering scum who kill indiscriminately.
Unfortunately, you’ve got me there. There’s all manner of reasons behind the rise of hardliners in Aceh, but none of them justify the laws that they’ve implemented there.
Please do consider that Aceh is a province that was in conflict with Jakarta, and what you’re seeing there is an attempt to end more nearly 30 years of civil war with pro-independance rebels. That is why the government has granted them autonomy in their legal system, and why they’re stepping so lightly in trying to turn things around.
This will sound like a massive cop-out, but Aceh really isn’t indicative of Indonesian culture. I doubt very much that I’ll be able to convince you that I’m not just saying that, but there you go.
Let me try to keep this simple
“Islam” the religion is not the same as “Islam” as some Muslims choose to practice it. Scripture and practice ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
If the Qur’an says “women must go to school” and the Taliban prohibit women from going to school, that is obviously a perversion of scripture. It is NOT an indication that “Islam” prevents women from getting an education. Tagos and Magellan would have us believe that the religion itself, the very scripture, is inherently “murderous” and mysoginistic. I say that by continuing to misrepresent an entire faith in this way, they are perpetuating the demonisation of Muslims and making easier for thugs and bigots to justify their vile attacks against them.
Tago and Magellan. Please take a moment to think about this. Muslim women are being spat on in the street, having their hijabs torn from their heads and having alcohol poured on them because of precisely the attitudes that you are espousing here. Every time people perpetuate the evil stereotype that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion and that Muslims are inherently dangerous, they are making attacks on Muslims more likely. Please try to realise that the majority of Muslims are normal, peace-loving people who just want to raise families and get on with their lives. They do not deserve to be treated with the suspicion and downright racism that they have had to endure as a result of the atrocious actions of a violent minority in their midst.
Maybe I’m misreading it, but didn’t the Saudi justice ministry overturn the rapists’ sentences, because “the rape could not be proved”? If that’s true, the rapists got no punishment*. The original blackmailer got punished only for being alone with the woman, not for blackmail.
*I started to write “Scot-free,” but they aren’t Scots.
No, it would not. You’ve got a better chance of being struck by lightning than you do of being crushed by a meteor. That doesn’t mean it makes sense to go around terrified of thunder storms.
And my position is that you can acknowledge that Islamic fundamentalism is a problem without treating all Muslims like rabid dogs. The problem I have with your position is that you don’t actually acknowledge that all Muslims aren’t terrorists. Sure, you say it, but then you go right along and advocate that they be treated differently than everyone else, because maybe almost a third of them can think of some sort of circumstance in which terrorism is justified.
I don’t have a problem judging a group by characteristics that are actually held by most of the group. The problem is, the larger the group, the harder it is to find characteristics that are common across the entire group. If you take a cult, like the Heaven’s Gate wierdos who killed themselves several years back, I think it’s fair to say that the Heaven’s Gate “religion” was made up of suicidal whack-jobs, because we can actually look at each individual member, examine their lives, and say, “Yep. Suicidal whack-job.” But once you start getting up into the tens of millions, you simply can’t make those kinds of judgements in a really meaningful way.
In the case of this thread, I wouldn’t object to people condemning Wahabbism, or the Saudi monarchy, because those groups are small enough and homogenous enough to make accurate generalizations. When you’re talking about Islam as a whole, it’s simply not possible.
Keith Ellison argues against the constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Ellison writes about the importance of gay rights in a magazine for the children of LGBT people.
Ellison argues in favor of gay rights, trans rights, and the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Most of these links were posted in the original Ellison thread.
I’m not talking about what you said in post #29. I’m refering to the post where you wrote:
Because I’m trying to make the point that Islam is no better or worse than any other mainstream religion. It has it’s share of murderers and madmen, but so does Christianity, and if it’s not fair to criticize all of Christianity because of the actions of its lunatic fringe, then it’s equally unfair to criticize Islam because of the actions of its lunatic fringe. What’s funny is, I’m pretty sure you actually agree with me on this point, and if you’d get over your kneejerk outrage over the fact that someone dared say something that could possibly be construed as critical of Christianity and actually read what I’m writing here, you’d realize that.
Well said. I was beginning to think there were no sane people left here.