What do ex-Muslims and disidents have to say about Islam.

The BBQ Pit
21

[QUOTE=Valteron]
There is a video of an actual death by stoning on the Apostates of Islam wesbsite that everyone should see. But maybe not everyone. It is not for the faint-hearted.
[/QUOTE]

I once saw a video of a Chechen soldier being beheaded by Russians. Clearly, Russians want to kill us all.

I’ve seen a video of a black man being dragged out of his car and being beaten by the police. Clearly, the police want to kill all blacks.

Oh, also, neither of the above are for the faint-hearted. In case you want to go Googling for them.

:rolleyes:

22

[QUOTE=Valteron]
There is a video of an actual death by stoning on the Apostates of Islam wesbsite that everyone should see. But maybe not everyone. It is not for the faint-hearted.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve just looked back over a number of threads regarding Islam in which I have participated. Oddly, I do not find any place where I have made a claim that there are no sects or factions within Islam that commit barbarous practices.

Waving about one more atrocity hardly gets close to your egregious claim that all of Islam is barbarous.

23

[QUOTE=El_Kabong]

Let’s assume that you and the OP are correct and there is a universal threat from Islam. Now, do you or the OP have any concrete proposals to debate? Here are some examples of what I mean by something concrete:

Should muslims living in the West be subject to a greater degree of surveillance than persons of other religions?

Should limits be placed on the civil liberties of muslims that are not applied to persons of other religions?

Should muslims living in the West be expelled from the countries they live in, or their ability to emigrate curtailed?

Should Muslims be forcibly converted, as Ann Coulter has famously said?

Please start taking some responsibility for your anti-muslim statements. If you believe that muslims are being treated too gently by the West, please state exactly what you mean, so that we can understand to precisely what lengths you feel persons of that faith should be suppressed. Then at least we can have some kind of debate as to whether those lengths are justified.

If all you and the OP are saying is, “the muslims are coming!”, well, everyone knows that and there’s no debate there, is there? The forum is Great Debates, not Great Alarmist Rants.
[/QUOTE]

That of course is the whole problem, Kabong. Most knee-jerk practitioners of political correctness in the west will NOT assume or accept that there is a world-wide (I never said “universal”) clash of civilizations going on right now and getting worse every year.

I have said that one country, France, which has an enormous 10% Muslim population (compared to 1.5% for the US) is already feeling the attacks on its status as a secular republic. Britain and France have both taken stands on the wearing if hijabs or veils in schools.

One of the reasons France adopted a rule that forbids ALL overt religious garb in the schools (Christian, Jewish, Islam etc,) is that young Muslim thugs in public schools were going around threatening Muslim girls who did not want to wear the hijab.

As to the other measures the west might take, as you can see, at present, a person is damned as a bigot simply for saying that there IS a danger. And that maybe it has a lot to do with Islam, which is a world-wide movement espousing violence and domination.

People who bring this fact up in the west are conveniently shouted down as “bigots”.

So before we start discussing what the west can do to defend itself, we have to start by getting people like you and Tomndebb to at least agree that there is a threat.

Here is an article by a well-known “bigot” : author Salman Rushdie, who has had to spend years in hiing for fear of his life, for the crime of writing a book that displeased some theocrats. It is entitled “Yes, this IS about Islam”, and you will find it here:

24

[QUOTE=Valteron]
Most knee-jerk practitioners of political correctness in the west will NOT assume or accept that there is a world-wide (I never said “universal”) clash of civilizations going on right now and getting worse every year.
[/quote]

Oh, it’s only world wide? Man, I’m glad you cleared that up. I thought it was universal, and what the hell are we supposed to do about Muslims in Eridanus? Thankfully, the Muslim threat appears to be contained on planet Earth.

For now.

25

Most knee-jerk practitioners of xenophobia will NOT recognize or accept that there is are individual groups with only loose associations that are not covertly joined in a world-wide clash of civilizations when it is easier for the xenophobes to label everyone they can “bad” so that they do not have to actually pay attention to facts or try to perform the excruciating labor of thinking logically.

It’s a rough life (made easier by the amount of effort not spent in actual ratiocination).

26

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
I’ve just looked back over a number of threads regarding Islam in which I have participated. Oddly, I do not find any place where I have made a claim that there are no sects or factions within Islam that commit barbarous practices.

Waving about one more atrocity hardly gets close to your egregious claim that all of Islam is barbarous.
[/QUOTE]

Oddly, I do not find any place in which I have said that every one of a billion Muslims was necessarily barbarous.

What I fail to understand is the reasoning that one must demonstrate that every single member of a threatening or dangerous movement (or even the majority of its members) must be in accordance and connivance with that threat before we wake up.

As I have analogized over and over, it is likely to the point of certainty that out of the estimated 60 or 70 million Germans who by 1938-39 thought Hitler and Naziism were wonderful, tens of millions, perhaps even a majority, were probably sane, kind people, nice folks, who probably did not want war.

So by your reasoning, I would have been a ranting anti-German bigot if I had said in 1938 and early 1939 that we faced a horrible threat from the overall philsophy of Nazi Germany.

No matter how many pictures of smashed Jewish shops or labour leaders being marched off to concentration camps I could show you, you would, I assume, have continued the mantra that “not all Germans are like that or even agree with the Nazi government”.

There is a difference between "All of Islam (i.e., every man, woman and child including five-year old Habib playing with his trucks in a sandbox) and the *overall * direction of agressive wars, conflicts and the attitude of conquest that is found in the present-day Islamic world.

Nor, for that matter, was everyone in Britain an evil person when British Colonialism (or French or others) was in full flower. But you could always get most of those kind and decent Brits to grab a Union Jack, sing “Land of Hope and Glory” and make them think they were supporting a wonderful movement that was liberating the world from barbarism.

27

[QUOTE=Miller]
Oh, it’s only world wide? Man, I’m glad you cleared that up. I thought it was universal, and what the hell are we supposed to do about Muslims in Eridanus? Thankfully, the Muslim threat appears to be contained on planet Earth.

For now.
[/QUOTE]

My country has embassies world-wide. It has missions in the major cities of most important countries. I would not say we have “universally present” missions. I woul not say we have missions “everywhere on earth”. Ther are meanings to words.

28

[QUOTE=Little Plastic Ninja]
Why did you even start this? Your thread title is “What do ex-Muslims and dissidents have to say about Islam?” But you already know the answer to that question. You have weblinks and everything.

[/QUOTE]

One point was to illustrate what I suspected would happen. Everyone kept telling me in the other thread that I did not know enoughabout Islam. I gave Daniel Pipes’ website but I was told he was a bigot. I quoted Samuel P. Huntington and Sam Harris until I was blue in the face but that would not do.

So I give threads of people who agree that Islam IS a bararic threat, because they have exprienced it first hand and are now in many cases risking their lives to warn people. I give sites for the international campaign to stop the advance of Sharia law into the west, Faith Freedom International, Apostates of Islam who tell their own stories, etc.

I give the link to the article by Salman Rushdie, a man who has risked his very life for the principle of free speech and has paid a price far heavier than most of us would be ready to pay. Rusdie’s article “Yes, this IS about Islam” (the IT being terrorism) was written not long after 9-11 and can be found here .

But no, these are all HAAAAAAAAATE sites. None of these people are credible. Back of the hand to the hatemongers!

29

From your own cite:

[QUOTE=Rushdie]
An Iraqi writer quotes an earlier Iraqi satirist: “The disease that is in us, is from us.” A British Muslim writes, “Islam has become its own enemy.” A Lebanese friend, returning from Beirut, tells me that in the aftermath of the attacks on Sept. 11, public criticism of Islamism has become much more outspoken. Many commentators have spoken of the need for a Reformation in the Muslim world.

<snip>

… the first stirrings of this counterproject are of great significance. If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar. Many of them speak of another Islam, their personal, private faith.

The restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal, its depoliticization, is the nettle that all Muslim societies must grasp in order to become modern.

[/QUOTE]

It sounds as if Rushdie argues here that Islam itself is not the threat. The threat to modernity is Islam ‘politicized.’ About which I can say, 'Hear, hear," and would add (as a Christian American) that Christianity ‘politicized’ worries me at least as much, if not more. I believe that politicized Christianity has certainly done more damage to the United States than has politicized Islam.

30

[QUOTE=Valteron]
I give the link to the article by Salman Rushdie, a man who has risked his very life for the principle of free speech and has paid a price far heavier than most of us would be ready to pay. Rusdie’s article “Yes, this IS about Islam” (the IT being terrorism) was written not long after 9-11 and can be found here .
[/QUOTE]

I find it endlessly amusing that you think that Rushdie column supports your position, or that it contradicts that of those against whom you have been arguing. Rather, it strikes me as a rather good summation of the point that tomndeb, Kimstu, and others have been trying to pound into your skull in your concurrent GD thread. I’m quite a fan of Mr. Rushdie, and I think it speaks exceedingly well of him that, despite suffering far more at the hands of radical Islamists than you have, he has nonetheless avoided falling into the trap of bigotry and raving paranoia that is the hallmark of your posting.

But of course, that likely has a lot to do with him being a terribly intelligent, sensitive man, while you… are not.

31

From zero to Godwin in 26 posts…

I understand your reasoning. I do. I agree that there’s a big cultural disconnect here. I just don’t think the religion of Islam is inherently evil beyond the capacity of people to use organized religion to foment hatred.

Humans are inherently tribalistic. We like to form ourselves into little groups that say “We belong! Those outside people do not!” It takes the form of religion, race-pride, nationalism. These are not all inherently evil, but they are all taken to horrific extremes. Pride in one’s race or cultural background gives rise so easily to organizations like the KKK. Nationalism brings fascism and governments like Nazi Germany. Religious thinking brings Catholic terrorists and Islamic extremists.

Pride in one’s race or cultural background gives us Oktoberfest, Cinco de Mayo, and Black History Month. Nationalism brings unity to communities. Religion brings charity, love, and morality.

Tribalism is a double-edged sword. It is also an endemic part of humanity, as natural as breathing, copulating, or loving. I do not think it is something to remove, excise, overcome; I think it is something to be conscious of even as we celebrate it.

I am unconvinced that there is any more wickedness in Islam than there is in any other religion or any other tribalism. Certainly there are people who were once a part of it and are no longer. Certainly many of those people have bad things to say. That doesn’t mean their opinion is any more valid than any other apostate or non-apostate or any guy on the street. They are not demigods; they are people with opinions. They may be dead right and I may be dead wrong. I am willing to accept that.

But the question you seem to be asking is more complex than something we can answer here. We can just argue for pages upon pages.

32

[QUOTE=Miller]
Oh, it’s only world wide? Man, I’m glad you cleared that up. I thought it was universal, and what the hell are we supposed to do about Muslims in Eridanus? Thankfully, the Muslim threat appears to be contained on planet Earth.

For now.
[/QUOTE]

Careful, I heard there are some fundimentalists on Aldeberon.

:cool:

33

[QUOTE=Valteron]
Yet you have only to read them to get the picture of Mohamed as an ignorant, superstitious and primitive, manipulative man whose ideas are nonetheless being unleashed and imposed on the modern world.
[/QUOTE]

O mankind! We created you from a single soul, male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. Truly, the most honored of you in God’s sight is the greatest of you in piety. God is All-Knowing, All-Aware. (Quran 49:13)

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Say: O unbelievers! I do not serve that which you serve, nor do you serve Him Whom I serve: nor am I going to serve that which you serve, nor are you going to serve Him Whom I serve: you shall have your religion and I shall have my religion. (Quran 109:1-6)

Let me put this as simply as I possibly can:

ALL OF ISLAM = / = EXTREMIST FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM.

Thank you, have a nice day.

34

All Of Islam ≠ Extremist Fundamentalist Islam.

I just find the “doesn’t equal” sign to be more aesthetically pleasing.

I also agree with the statement above, despite looking at most religions with an extremely jaundiced eye.

I do wish that the tiny faction of Islam that doesn’t feel it must take the Q’uran as literally true was larger, but there you go.

Carry on.

35

To answer the OP, you might like to read this book - Why I left Jihad:

36

[QUOTE=Valteron]
One point was to illustrate what I suspected would happen. Everyone kept telling me in the other thread that I did not know enoughabout Islam. I gave Daniel Pipes’ website but I was told he was a bigot. I quoted Samuel P. Huntington and Sam Harris until I was blue in the face but that would not do.
[/QUOTE]
Pipes is an ignorant bigoted tool of the neo-cons.
You never presented Huntington’s actual thesis; you simply selectively quoted him to inadequately support your own prejudiced view of the world.
Your quotations from Harris, (which may have suffered from poor selection or constrained venue), were little more than unsupported polemic.

[QUOTE=Valteron]
So I give threads of people who agree that Islam IS a bararic threat, because they have exprienced it first hand and are now in many cases risking their lives to warn people.
[/QUOTE]
You provided links to people who had developed a sufficient hatred of (their personal experiences of one sect or another within specific regional cultures within) Islam that they were willing to generalize their experiences to the entiure Muslim world.

::: shrug :::

37

[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]

I just find the “doesn’t equal” sign to be more aesthetically pleasing.

[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s what I was going for, but I didn’t think to copy-and-paste from Microsoft Word. Yours looks better, at any rate. :slight_smile:

38

[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]

I do wish that the tiny faction of Islam that doesn’t feel it must take the Q’uran as literally true was larger, but there you go.

[/QUOTE]

Why are you saying it’s ‘tiny’? Are you in Valteron’s camp? :eek:

39

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
Why are you saying it’s ‘tiny’?
[/QUOTE]

Because it is tiny. Most muslims, when queried, state that they believe that the Q’uran is the literal word of God.

Fortunately, most of them do not subscribe to the extreme (and usually xenophobic, intolerant, and violent) interpretations that the islamic fundamentalists do.

But very few muslims consider the Q’uran to be allegory, or “inspired by, but not the literal word of” God. While nearly half of Christians surveyed say that they hold such a belief.

Or if more muslims do hold such a view of the Q’uran, they tend to keep pretty quiet about it.

Coming from a region of the country where biblical literalism is considered the norm and dissent does not make you popular in the community, I can understand their reticence at proclaiming a differing view.

40

Well, Valteron, since this is the Pit, I’m now going allow myself both ad hominem attacks and erecting a giant straw man.

You are scared of muslims.
“No, I’m not, just afraid islam is a threat to western…”
Yes, that’s one flavour of being scared of muslims. Don’t be. All these people around you who isn’t particulary scared of muslims aren’t part of a big conspiracy. Trust them.

Let me ask you, were you scared of muslims before the attack on Sept 11th 2001?
“Well, no, but it opened my eyes to…”
No. We were terrorized and something inside you died and you haven’t been able to get back on your feet intellectually. You took a wrong turn looking for answers.
“No, most of my islamophobia as you call it began long after 2001 while I read up on the truths about islam.”
I was getting to that. You started visiting hate sites and confirmed your new fear in discussion with equally scared. Your eyes are closed. In the age of the Web you can choose to read what you (think you) wan’t to read.

Rise again and stand tall. Befriend a muslim. Go to Teheran and check in to a nice tourist hotel. Go shopping for a nice poster of the prophet Mohammed nearby, hang it on the wall in your room, order a bottle of wine to your room and sip on it while looking at the poster.

“But wait, muslims aren’t supposed to dri… and aren’t they going to stone the guy selling…”

Yes, that glass of wine teaches you that islam’s rules are for muslims, if followed. That poster teaches you that you shouldn’t take everything you read for truth. Let 9/11 teach you what hateful people can do. If you were born in the middle east and had the same mindset as now but different “home team”, you could easily 've been one of the hijackers.

There are plenty of room to discuss the many problems within current practise of Islam around the world, but you’re only here to spew hate and lies, Valteron, and I’d like you to stop.