# The way to break the theocracy of Islam is to destroy Gods commands **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 28, 2016, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759 "2016-12-28T05:01:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/61 "2016-12-30T20:36:21Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > … > The list of countries with the highest [homicide rates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) is dominated by Christian countries, mostly in Latin America or the Caribbean. > > What’s the source for your claim that Muslims are “more murderous” than average? More murderous was too broad. I’ll amend the claim to more religiously motivated murder. The murder rate between gangs in Chicago might be higher than some middle eastern city, but the proximate cause is not their christian theology. When some Sunni muslim blows themselves up and takes out some shia muslim target, those murders are clearly religiously motivated. You don’t see much of that kind of murder in the Christian world or Jewish world. You see some in Burma with the Buddhists against the muslim population, but the counter examples do not hold a candle to what we see from the Islamic world. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/62 "2016-12-30T20:40:06Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > :rolleyes: Dude, could you please do that away from the keyboard? It’s a bit embarrassing to listen to the panting. > > Seriously, I think it’s kind of pathetic when self-proclaimed hardheaded rationalists make it so evident that what really excites them about their so-called defense of rationalism is the opportunities it provides for elaborate authority-defiance fantasies. > > Guys, just enjoy reading your superhero comic books and stop purpling up the prose in serious debates with imaginary heroic posturing before autocratic superhuman entities that all we atheists agree never actually existed anyway. You have to meet people where they are. Not everyone is going to assume there is no god, or stop believing in some creator that dictates what is and is not good. If they were then trying to undermine the legitimacy of a cosmic dictators moral commandments would be unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/63 "2016-12-30T21:21:09Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > More murderous was too broad. I’ll amend the claim to more religiously motivated murder. The murder rate between gangs in Chicago might be higher than some middle eastern city, but the proximate cause is not their christian theology. When some Sunni muslim blows themselves up and takes out some shia muslim target, those murders are clearly religiously motivated. > > You don’t see much of that kind of murder in the Christian world or Jewish world. You see some in Burma with the Buddhists against the muslim population, but the counter examples do not hold a candle to what we see from the Islamic world. How are you defining “religiously motivated [violence]”? ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/64 "2016-12-30T21:58:15Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > How are you defining “religiously motivated [violence]”? How about we classify someone shouting Allah u akbar before they blow themselves up as being at least somewhat religiously motivated, as if God sanctions their suicide bombing activities. Is that too much of a stretch for the people here? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/65 "2016-12-30T22:13:59Z")
And the paratroops who shouted “Geronimo” when dropping on enemy positions in WWII were redressing the wrongs done to Native Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/66 "2016-12-30T22:51:33Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > How about we classify someone shouting Allah u akbar before they blow themselves up as being at least somewhat religiously motivated, as if God sanctions their suicide bombing activities. > > Is that too much of a stretch for the people here? Does this mean you’re refusing to answer? ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/67 "2016-12-30T23:10:18Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > **Nowadays** that’s very true, and as I already pointed out, there’s nobody here who doesn’t readily admit that that’s very true. > > But it hasn’t always been true. Where you make your fundamental logical error is in assuming that because a certain characteristic is disproportionately prevalent among Muslims at one particular historical time, it must be caused by some **intrinsic fundamental and eternal** aspect of Islamic theology itself. > Wow, you really don’t keep up with the news, do you? Buddhist atrocities tend to be committed not against atheists [but against](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Myanmar) [Muslims and Christians](http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2016/09/muslim-minorities-peril-rise-buddhist-violence-asia-160908090547506.html): > :rolleyes: As **Mangetout** pointed out, this is just throwing around some sciencey-sounding terminology with no recognition of the fact that **you haven’t got anything like an actual scientific analysis of this phenomenon**. > > Studying the global historical sociological/political impacts of particular religious doctrines, and how they interact with all other global historical sociological/political factors, **is a tremendously complex issue**. > > When you pick a **specific** historical phenomenon such as 20th/21st-century radical-Islamist violence and try to ascribe it to **intrinsic eternal factors in Islamic theology _per se_** , you are **not** actually analyzing “correlation data” or “correlation evidence” or “signal to noise correlations” or any of your other loose statistical buzzwords. **All you are doing is jumping to conclusions and clinging to them because they give you a feeling of truthiness**. > > :dubious: The **last** thing we need in this situation is more closed-minded sloppy thinking and ill-informed irrationality of the sort constantly peddled by the late Christopher Hitchens. Need I remind you how credulously this self-described devotee of rationality and truth swallowed a bunch of neocon fables about the necessity for invading Iraq? A blunder that he never had the elementary honesty or clearheadedness to admit and apologize for? > > **Atheists are not intrinsically smarter or more rational than anyone else.** Stupid and arrogant arguments by atheists against religious belief won’t do jack-shit to ameliorate religious intolerance, even if (as I, a lifelong atheist, personally believe) they happen to be right about the ultimate invalidity of religious belief. Who cares if it’s intrinsic to Islam or not, it’s an epidemic that needs to be neutralized. And you all keep talking about the glory days of Islam, for all we know one of the reasons things have not advanced as much in the Muslim world is that most people being illiterate a thousand years ago was a benefit, now that Muslims can actually read the violent shit and example of their founding prophet and his blood soaked history, it turns out some actually follow through on the instruction manual on how to live a life. And behavioral observations are not meaningless and completely detached from reality just because they are not part of some scientific study. You keep asking for ever higher levels of scientific proof claims at the same time ignoring actual attitudinal evidence like that multi national pew poll of views from the Muslim world that clearly showed far stronger illiberal sentiments and impulses than any proper liberal should be comfortable with. I wish I had the same poll results from non Muslims living in the same country so we could directly see the differences with one religious variable altered. I wonder, if country after country consistently showed stronger illiberal attitudes among the Muslim population, even after controls for income and ethnicity where applicable, would That be enough for you and others to suspect that there was something about Islam that was more rotten and cancerous to the soul compared to other faiths? And if not then I ask you, what would it take? Because all I am hearing are dishonest dodges made in bad faith. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/68 "2016-12-30T23:15:35Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Does this mean you’re refusing to answer? I do not believe evidence exists that can convince you anything is religiously motivated. They have released magazines going into explicit detail their religious justifications for their actions. > **[In The Words Of The Islamic State: Understanding The Rationale Behind The...](https://www.memri.org/jttm/words-islamic-state-understanding-rationale-behind-november-13-paris-attacks)** But no doubt you will morph into some Robert Pape like monstrosity and reinterpret everything through the lens of everything other than religion. Because you all don’t believe in anything resembling religious conviction, no one else does either. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/69 "2016-12-30T23:33:29Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > I do not believe evidence exists that can convince you anything is religiously motivated. 😕 I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, so I don’t know what you’re getting at here. That you can’t answer the most basic of questions about your ideas is troubling, to say the least. > [@](#): > > They have released magazines going into explicit detail their religious justifications for their actions. > > [In The Words Of The Islamic State: Understanding The Rationale Behind The November 13 Paris Attacks | MEMRI](https://www.memri.org/jttm/words-islamic-state-understanding-rationale-behind-november-13-paris-attacks) > > But no doubt you will morph into some Robert Pape like monstrosity and reinterpret everything through the lens of everything other than religion. > > Because you all don’t believe in anything resembling religious conviction, no one else does either. Is this what you do when you’re worried about losing a debate, you frantically poison the well? If you want to talk about ISIS, we can talk about ISIS, but only if you’re prepared to be coherent, and only if you let me stake out my position instead of dismissing me based on what you think my position might be. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/70 "2016-12-30T23:52:49Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > 😕 I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, so I don’t know what you’re getting at here. That you can’t answer the most basic of questions about your ideas is troubling, to say the least. > > Is this what you do when you’re worried about losing a debate, you frantically poison the well? > > If you want to talk about ISIS, we can talk about ISIS, but only if you’re prepared to be coherent, and only if you let me stake out my position instead of dismissing me based on what you think my position might be. We have different standards of acceptable evidence on the ill effects of Islam. Mine takes into account observations around the world and the pew research poll of Muslim attitudes and, apparently controversially, what Jihadists say. When these are offered up you pretend they are meaningless and are still looking for an acceptable bit of evidence. You clearly have different standards of evidence than I do and frankly I have no idea what evidence you would consider valid. Is there any? I’m asking. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/71 "2016-12-31T00:00:43Z")
😕 Are you thinking of a different poster? I haven’t mentioned standard or evidence at all, I’m still trying to agree on some basic terms. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/72 "2016-12-31T00:12:49Z")
Salvor I think what you’re missing is the chicken-egg question. There is a ton of violence in the middle east at present, in nations that are predominantly muslim. I’ll agree with that statement, even though it will usually get one lectured on what is and isn’t the ME, and then we end up bickering because Lybia is in Africa… But come on, let me have the shorthand. Furthermore, many of those who perpetrate this violence do so in the name of Islam. However, we all know that holy books say a lot of stupid, violent, reprehensible shit. For a long time the Bible was used as justification for slavery and segregation. There’s some crazy shit in there about how to treat women and wearing of mixed cloth. One could easily engage in terrorism and find plenty of Biblical justification. The ME is in an immense amount of turmoil with lots of repressive governments that are only too happy to use religion as a means of control and influence over the populations. Sub-governmental Warlords and clerics often have similar motivations. In many of these nations the people are poor, uneducated, and have little hope. That makes them ripe for this kind of control. And that’s why we shouldn’t blame the religion- it’s full of crazy shit, just like all the rest of them. But I suspect it’s the environment that results in the particular means of practicing it ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/73 "2016-12-31T01:21:42Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > [http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/](http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/) > > If you don’t see a great problem here, there is no point going further. It’s like seeing a man standing in torrential rains asking where the water is. Are you sure you are posting in the correct thread? That bigoted hate site got dis(cus)sed [over here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=814866). Feel free to “contribute” there so one may respond properly to you. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/74 "2016-12-31T08:03:36Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > At least those who’ve seen the movie probably know how to spell Gandhi’s name. :rolleyes: I’m not sure there’s only one recognized way to spell it since it’s a name from a language that doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. There are lots of names and words which when transliterated using the Roman alphabet have multiple spellings. Quran v. Koran, Muhammad v. Mohammed, Saul v. Sol, and even Yeltsin v. Eltsin. That said, you may be right. > [@](#): > > Not sure what you’re talking about here. > > If what you’re referring to is the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition, you’re aware that Gandhi was opposed to it, right? He’s from Pakistan, I’m sure he’s forgotten more about the India-Pakistan conflict than you or I know and I’m not sure why you would possibly think he sees that partition as a bad thing. Beyond that Muslims in Pakistan do not have the fond memories of Gandhi that westerners like yourself have. I won’t presume to speak for AK but I suspect he’d argue that Gandhi’s insistence on a united India rather than recognizing that for many if not most Muslims “home rule means Hindu rule” made the eventual and inevitable breakup vastly worse than it could have been and that things like blessing the Nawab of Maler Kotla when he gave orders to shoot ten Muslims for every Hindu killed in his state wasn’t something that would create interfaith harmony. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/75 "2016-12-31T15:15:30Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > How about we classify someone shouting Allah u akbar before they blow themselves up as being at least somewhat religiously motivated, as if God sanctions their suicide bombing activities. > > Is that too much of a stretch for the people here? > [@Trinopus](#): > > And the paratroops who shouted “Geronimo” when dropping on enemy positions in WWII were redressing the wrongs done to Native Americans. It is more relevant to say we must classify the actions of the American troops who in the combat or the stress swear to the Jésus / Jésus Christ as being motivated by the Christian religion… If a person in question is an Arabic native speaker it is a similar stress expression, that even a secular person will say. Of course the specific case of a DAECH suicide bomber is one thing but as I recall some argument about a video of the Syrian rebels, a secular group and it was being asserted that because some exclaimed Allah akbar during the video of combat this was proof if in fact they were jihadist, in ignorance of the native speaking habits. Since the OP freely cites biased and hate sites, the actual knowledge is of course not of any concern. But the mere use of the phrase by someone of a native Arabic background does not say too much, any more than the American soldier in the Iraq swearing to Jésus is proof of the Crusade intentions of the Americans… > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I’m not sure there’s only one recognized way to spell it since it’s a name from a language that doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. > > There are lots of names and words which when transliterated using the Roman alphabet have multiple spellings. Quran v. Koran, Muhammad v. Mohammed, Saul v. Sol, and even Yeltsin v. Eltsin. . In the Arabic it is written with grayn so at least for us in using the Latin alphabet we have the tendency to use a transliteration that starts Gh as this is usual for ghayn. ---
**Author:** ![Doubticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@Doubticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doubticus)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/76 "2017-01-03T20:07:07Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > And that’s why we shouldn’t blame the religion- it’s full of crazy shit, just like all the rest of them. But I suspect it’s the environment that results in the particular means of practicing it I’m posting to note my agreement with this statement. Looking around the world there is a lot of variation of what is acceptable within the largest religions. What the Christians of Egypt think is acceptable behavior would be quite different than the Christians of Spokane for example. Arguing about religion misses the mark. It would be a much more fruitful debate to talk about local culture and tribalism. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759/77 "2017-01-09T02:01:45Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > In particular, to destroy the ONE ethical foundation of theists around the world. > > “Because God said so” > > This formulation of god based ethics that virtually all traditions of ethical monotheism are founded on is the original sin of ALL religious moral systems. For that alone can sanction both good and evil actions on a scale that would swallow the world. > > God says we should give to the poor, and so this is good and just and righteous. > God says we should kill the infidel, and so it is good and just and righteous. > > We have to find a way to force a crucible against all god based ethics, a test that will forever cement or break the chains of the moral minds of believers. Find a way to get muslims (and in a collateral wave of damage, everyone else) to defy the will of god because his commands are so monstrous that they would rather DIE and wither and burn for eternity than engage in an act of such pure malice with the sanction of “because god said so” > > We have to destroy this justification for belief, without it I think the worst of theism will fall into impotency. Wont work Why? Because those people that you’d like to stop killing everybody? God didn’t tell them to do jack, just like God didnt tell some idiotic Pope to send every sword swinging moron to invade the middle east and kill every muslim, jew, and non european christian they came across. How do you get someone to “defy” something that they are already defying? Destroy religion? How when the people you are angry about have already done so for you? You want to fix a problem by doing what the people in the problem have already done and punish all the rest of the people who are not the problem in the process, which is going to open up a much bigger problem [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-way-to-break-the-theocracy-of-islam-is-to-destroy-gods-commands/775759.md?page=3)