# Where do you stand on the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck argument? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 6, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589 "2014-10-06T21:01:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/442 "2014-10-29T17:11:01Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Going to the foundations of the religion, Christ was a carpenter who instructed to turn the other cheek. Mohammad was a conqueror/warrior. And those differences can be found in the texts people look to. Sure, the Old testament is pretty violent, but there IS a New Testament, and that is what is more instructive to today’s Christians. This sort of hypothesizing is subject to actual falsification, (just as a scientific hypothesis), and when examined, it comes up false. The notion is that Islam was founded in violence and its primary scripture discusses violence, making it more susceptible to calls for violence, while Christianity, founded by people who were not violent with teachings that promoted peace is less susceptible to calls for violence. It sounds nice, if one ignores both the texts of the scriptures and the history that followed them. Christianity might have a nice peaceful set of 27 letters and stories without much violence in them. However, Christianity has never existed without the additional 39 books of the Hebrew tradition, (even throwing out the first guy who tried to remove them). And those 39 books contain lots of examples of calls by God to wreak havoc on His enemies. Historically, Islam was no more violent than Christianity. The initial wars of conquest were just that, political wars of conquest. They followed the earlier examples of Macedon and Rome and foreshadowed the eighteenth century French in which a society under attack discovered, in defending itself, that it was sufficiently powerful to turn that defense to conquest. Similarly, the Muslim invasions of India from what is now Afghanistan followed an ancient tradition of Asian empires coveting the riches of the sub-continent. Those invasions did bring Islam to Northwest India, but other areas–Southern India, what is now Bangladesh, Sri Lanak, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines–had numerous Muslim communities converted through missionary efforts without any warfare. References to the _dhimmi_ status of non-Muslims in Muslim lands makes a big deal about the _jizyah_ tax they paid while ignoring the fact that they were treated equally under Muslim laws aside from being permitted pork and alcohol and generally being free from conscription to the military. Contrast this with the restrictive laws passed against Jews and pagans in Europe or their forcible exile that was not often employed by Muslims. Similarly, the “violent” Muslims behaved far more charitably toward their captives in the sieges of Jerusalem and Constantinople than the “peaceful” Christians did when they conquered those cities. For that matter, while the Twentieth Century West considers many rules regarding women to be restrictive, those same laws actually treated women far better than Christianity prior to the Nineteenth Century, permitting ownership of land and inheritance in ways that few Christian societies did. Punitive laws against women in Muslim lands are generally examples of culturally imposed actions that are not actually found in Islamic Law. If the hypothesis that Islam, arising from a militaristic scripture, will “obviously” be harsher and more violent than Christianity, then history refutes that claim. Muslims have, indeed, carried out any number of massacres and pogroms and imposed harsh conditions on those under their rule. However, there is no indication that they have done so with any more religious fervor or inspiration than the Christians following the books of Joshua and Judges and similar texts. ---
**Author:** ![Contemporary\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b38774/32.png) [@Contemporary\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contemporary_Logic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/443 "2014-10-29T18:51:45Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > What you offer goes to showing instances where today’s Christianity is violent and discriminatory. That does not mean it is AS violent and discriminatory as Islam. And since you claim that it is, the burden falls to you. You’re not even close. Again you failed to address for why my argument falls short outside of simply asserting it. This is the second time you’ve made the argument from assertion fallacy. The burden of evidence lies upon the claimant. I gave evidence; You failed to address it with a rebuttal. Imagine if a scientist handed in a peer reviewed paper and a colleague looked at it and simply said, “nope”. You’re doing it wrong. LRA participates in murder, rape, and torture. These are the highest ranges of violence one can achieve within almost all moral parameters. ---
**Author:** ![Contemporary\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b38774/32.png) [@Contemporary\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contemporary_Logic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/444 "2014-10-29T19:17:49Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > There’s so much conflation that happens in these threads that it gets really hard to follow what people are actually asserting. And I suspect that a lot of posters don’t even really know themselves what point they are trying to make. It could be any of the following, or some combination of them: > > (a) Regardless of their individual motivations, lots of Muslims are doing violent and bad things in the world, out of proportion to the overall number of Muslims in the world when compared to Christians. > > (b) Lots of Muslims are doing violent and bad things in the world because they understand their religious tradition to command this, but they would just as easily have found these commands in Christian tradition if that were the prevalent religion. In other words, political and social gripes are why they are interpreting Islam in a certain way, not vice versa. > > (c) Lots of Muslims are doing violent and bad things in the world because they understand their religious tradition to command this, but if they had a different religious tradition, they would not be doing these things even if the political, social, and cultural circumstances were the same. > > (d) Lots of Muslims are doing violent and bad things in the world because they understand their religious tradition to command this, and that is the only reasonable way to interpret Islamic tradition. > > It seems to me that (a) is transparently true and (d) is transparently false. And I suspect that accounts for a lot of the illusory disagreement in these threads. I think the real disagreement is over whether (b) or (c) is correct. There’s obviously no way to objectively get at that question, because it involved a counter-factual, and because world religions played a big role in setting up modern political, social, and economic circumstances. But I think it is helpful to at least identify the real dispute here. There is actually a way to objectively answer (b) and (c); It’s called science. If one theory explains more facts than another; It’s the superior theory. Asserting a theory of one religion over another religion, as the primary cause behind the brutality of modern terrorist attacks, does not explain as many facts as asserting a theory of geopolitical causes does. ---
**Author:** ![SandMan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@SandMan1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandMan1)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/445 "2014-10-29T20:15:17Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Why let you reiterate? You chose a single statement and tried to put words in my mouth and now you are upset that your weird claim has been demonstrated to be wrong. I have dodged nothing. Yes, you did and continue to do so. YOU claimed that honor killing was not an Islamic problem and used crimes against women in India to suggest that such crimes are equally prevalent in Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan. Then you said some non-sense about acid attacks and dowry killings. You are yet to provide any evidence to suggest that honor killings in India are equivalent to that in Pakistan. You did not address the fact that Much of the “honor killings” in Pakistan goes unpunished because of a specific law in the legal system that they refuse to ammend. One can be not-charged for murder if the victim’s family forgives the murderer. So, if a brother kills his sister in Pakistan, and the parents permit the murder and forgive the brother, then there is no punishment for the brother. This is the Diyat and Qisas law. > [@](#): > > In a general discussion of the ways in which different religions and cultures wind up treating women better or worse, you claimed it was “foolish” to compare India and Pakistan when I had never done any such thing. I noted that a specific complaint against Islam could be lodged against a number of other places, notably India. Yes, you did. You compared honor killings in India and Pakistan and much more … > [@](#): > > Your “objection” focused on a problem with a single country, Pakistan, as though that had any bearing on a general discussion of Islam. Does the same law about which you are so upset occur in other Muslim lands? Which ones? (You have not yet provided evidence that it occurs anywhere else.) If it does occur in other Muslim nations, do they have similar tribal, paternalistic cultures? Pointing out a single state that has a bad law says nothing about Islam if the same problem occurs nowhere else. You brought up honor killings in Pakistan. I simply responded to your false assertion that it had nothing to do with religion. Why does it matter whether honor killings occur elsewhere? In Pakistan, honor killings seemed to be tied very closely with their Islamic laws. A fact you cannot deny. Whether honor killings happen in Bangladesh or Indonesia is irrelevant. In the case of Pakistan, the law can be tied to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. And I’m not the only one who makes this assertion - thousands of women activists from within Pakistan have been talking about this since decades. > [@](#): > > And if a similar law occurs in multiple places, but it always occurs in Muslim Middle Eastern societies with a long tradition of tribal and paternalistic cultures, but it does not appear in Muslim countries with no similar tribal and paternalistic cultures, that would indicate that the culture, and not the religion, prompts the behavior. So, where is the evidence that the law about which you are upset occurs elsewhere and where does it occur? Doesn’t matter. > [@](#): > > My reply did not dodge the issue, it pointed out that your specific claim regarding India was in error and you still have failed to provide evidence that the situation in Pakistan can be generalized to all Muslim places. Why would a Pakistan specific situation be generalized to other Muslim places? The fact of the matter is that in Pakistan, the Islamic laws and traditions have lead to the legal sanctioning of rules that _almost_ permit honor killings. And what’s amazing is that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan refuses to change the law even in the year 2014. You should at least concede to the fact that honor killings in Pakistan are tied to Islam. > [@](#): > > You are wrong. Honor killings–which occur in several societies: Muslim, Christian, Hindu, (perhaps even Buddhist)–are not religious acts, either. They are cultural expressions that are only loosely correlated with religion, not caused by it. No religion calls for honor killing and the correlation that you perceive between such killings and Islam have more to do with the reporting of such acts in regard to specific societies than an actual association with a religion. Your attempt to pretend that similar acts carried out in India are “different” is nothing more than special pleading to make a case that is not supported by the evidence. You just compared India and Pakistan again. I would like you to show me some evidence to suggest that honor killings in India are as big a problem as in Pakistan. Please provide a citation. Else there is no point brining this issue up over and over again. I have already provided stats which suggest that murder rates in India are several times lower than Pakistan. The fact is that Honor killings in Pakistan are tightly correlated to religion as evident by the Diyat and Qisa laws. > [@](#): > > A single act, or a small collection of acts, carried out by a tiny group of people from within a group, cannot legitimately be used to condemn all the people of that group, (unless you are willing to say that all non-Muslim Yanks, Brits, and Norwegians also share terrorists tendencies). > Your logic fails. No one is using a small set of events to criticize a whole community of peoples. If a Christian guy blows up an abortion clinic, I would not go around blaming all Christians. However, I would blame all people who supported such an action. Increasingly in the Islamic community in some countries, there is a lot of support for violent actions. Majority populations can never be violent. But large portions of a population can condone violence. The Muslim extremists in Swat Valley might be minorities. But they get a lot of support from the local population who believe in ideals such as _girls should not go to school_ - and therefore indirectly support actions such as (a) shooting little girls and (b) bombing schools. This is the connection I am trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/446 "2014-10-29T20:55:05Z")
The major difference is that Christianity has evolved to accept secularism. Yes, there was the Inquisition, burnings at the stake, and other atrocities, but over time the Christian world seemed to learn from its mistakes. Islam seemed to have taken the opposite track: secularism and tolerance were acceptable for a while, and then the religion turned inward (perhaps as a counterbalance to the growth of secular Christian thought during the Enlightenment). It just seems like the Islamic world is so insecure about people who stop following the faith. Christianity eventually learned that forced faith is no faith at all. It is tyranny. ---
**Author:** ![SandMan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@SandMan1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandMan1)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/447 "2014-10-29T21:04:17Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > This has been my primary point throughout the thread – that it’s individuals, and not communities or religions, that should be judged for bad behavior. Well, your primary point is highly flawed. Allow me to explain with an example. When crime (or terrorism) is highly prevalent in a society, it is not always enough to blame the minority perpetrators. Take for instance the problem of rape or sexual assault in the US, especially in colleges. All [statistics](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/sv-datasheet-a.pdf) show that sexual assault against women on a college campus is a huge problem. Many top leaders including the President have spoken about it in recent times. Now, is it enough to just blame the individuals who are charged with the crime of sexual assault? No! Of course you want to punish the perpetrator, but you have to understand why this became such a big problem in the first place. Would it be enough to say that only a small % of college students engage in such crime, let’s just blame those individuals. This is an institutional problem. The colleges across America have created an environment that has lead to a surge in such crimes. Not only have colleges under-reported sexual assault, but they have also hidden such crimes and protected the criminal actors. One could make a similar claim about parts of the world with high incidence of rape that have a patriarchal system where males hold primary power. Read any article about rape in India and it always talks about the flaws in society that have lead to such a big problem. Do you blame the individual who commits rape? Of course. But you also have to place blame on the **system** - from the society to the cops to the courts. The problem with violence and terrorism in many Islamic countries is the same. When terrorists kill a girl child for going to school it is not enough to blame the terrorist … but you have to blame all those people who supported extreme ideas that lead to such violent incidents in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/448 "2014-10-29T21:11:04Z")
There were reform movements in Islam that adopted the idea of dividing the secular state from religion. Some of them were relatively successful. That’s where Turkey came from. Some of them were snuffed out by the West for their own colonial ends, as in the case of Iran. Some, like Egypt’s secularism, were…uh…complicated. All of that has very little to do with Islam as a religion, just as the development of secularism in the West had very little to do with the content of Christianity. It had a whole lot more to do with economics, societies, geography, and other factors. I think it would be great if the whole world had secular democracies. But the reason it doesn’t is a whole lot more complicated than Muslims being " insecure about people who stop following the faith." ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/449 "2014-10-29T21:11:54Z")
> [@SandMan1](#): > > Yes, you did and continue to do so. YOU claimed that honor killing was not an Islamic problem and used crimes against women in India to suggest that such crimes are equally prevalent in Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan. Then you said some non-sense about acid attacks and dowry killings. Honor killing also occurs in Hindu India, in addition, India has problems with other violence against women, such as dowry killings. Acid attacks are carried out for the same reasons as honor killings, stopping just short of actual murder. If you are unaware of these facts, why are you posting your nonsense that honor killings only are related to Islam? Honor killing occurs in multiple societies, not just Muslim societies. If you are unaware of this fact, you have no business claiming that anyone else is in error. > [@SandMan1](#): > > You are yet to provide any evidence to suggest that honor killings in India are equivalent to that in Pakistan. You did not address the fact that > > Much of the “honor killings” in Pakistan goes unpunished because of a specific law in the legal system that they refuse to ammend. One can be not-charged for murder if the victim’s family forgives the murderer. So, if a brother kills his sister in Pakistan, and the parents permit the murder and forgive the brother, then there is no punishment for the brother. This is the Diyat and Qisas law. I did address it, You just were not paying attention. I asked you to show where that law exists anywhere besides Pakistan. If that law only applies to Pakistan, then it is the result of Pakistani culture and not Islam. I further noted that if it occurred in other Muslim countries, but that all of those countries were part of the region where tribalism and paternalistic conditions prevail, but not in other Muslim countries, then it is a cultural problem, not a result of Islam. So where does this law occur besides Pakistan? Do you even know? > [@SandMan1](#): > > Yes, you did. You compared honor killings in India and Pakistan and much more … Quote me using Pakistan in any comparison before you dragged it into the conversation. I see no need to defend myself against imaginary claims. > [@SandMan1](#): > > You brought up honor killings in Pakistan. You accused me of comparing India to Pakistan in Post #405. Prior to that post, I had never typed the word “Pakistan” in any post in this thread. You appear to be fixated on accusing me of your errors. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I simply responded to your false assertion that it had nothing to do with religion. Why does it matter whether honor killings occur elsewhere? In Pakistan, honor killings seemed to be tied very closely with their Islamic laws. A fact you cannot deny. If you look at your [Post #405](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17853191&postcount=405), you will see that you selectively quoted a portion my my [Post #305](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17803312&postcount=305) in which I pointed out that most of the same problems that Robert163 attributed to Islam were occurring in Christian and Hindu nations that had similar levels of poverty and governmental dysfunction. I never claimed that religion had nothing to do with any given situation, only that the wild charges leveled against Islam, by itself, make no sense when we see the same bad conditions in parts of the world that have certain levels of poverty and government dysfunction and the same less bad conditions where government and economies are better. Your claim that I asserted that bad situations had “nothing to do with religion” is wrong. Your claim that I said anything about Pakistan is wrong. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Whether honor killings happen in Bangladesh or Indonesia is irrelevant. In the case of Pakistan, the law can be tied to **a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam**. And I’m not the only one who makes this assertion - thousands of women activists from within Pakistan have been talking about this since decades. Ahh! “A fundamentalist interpretation of Islam” is responsible. Just as a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity is responsible for the attacks on homosexuals in Uganda. So, instead of an entire religion being a problem, you now claim that it is one specific interpretation of that religion–an interpretation that, just coincidentally, occurs in a location with a poor government and extreme poverty. How interesting. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Doesn’t matter. > > Why would a Pakistan specific situation be generalized to other Muslim places? The fact of the matter is that in Pakistan, the Islamic laws and traditions have lead to the legal sanctioning of rules that _almost_ permit honor killings. And what’s amazing is that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan refuses to change the law even in the year 2014. You should at least concede to the fact that honor killings in Pakistan are tied to Islam. You have spent an inordinate amount of time criticizing me for failing to condemn Islam when you now admit that you are not talking about Islam, _per se_, but one specific interpretation of Islamic law that is being carried out in only one place in the world. :rolleyes: > [@SandMan1](#): > > You just compared India and Pakistan again. Are you serious? I am responding to your nonsense. It is difficult to respond to your odd claims regarding India and Pakistan without mentioning India and Pakistan. I have not said that I will never compare the phenomena in the two countries. I merely pointed out that your initial accusation that I had done so was without any factual basis. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I would like you to show me some evidence to suggest that honor killings in India are as big a problem as in Pakistan. Please provide a citation. Else there is no point brining this issue up over and over again. I am not sure that it is “as big a problem,” only that it does exist. India is more advanced than Pakistan and it should have fewer ancient cultural practices of that sort, in any event. (Although, it is noteworthy that a number of misogynistic violence continues to occur in India and that you are unaware of those situations while blithely asserting that they will be suppressed in the next ten years even though they have not been suppressed in the last 65 years or in the couple of centuries in which Britain tried to assert its social norms.) > [@SandMan1](#): > > No one is using a small set of events to criticize a whole community of peoples. Tell yourself whatever you want. However, when you natter on and on about “Islam” when you are really talking about one localized phenomenon in one Muslim country in the world, you fail to persuade. By your logic, we should have a thread criticizing Christianity for the anti-homosexual laws in Uganda. It is only one set of laws in only one country, but it is Christian. Why are you not making a big deal about that? > [@SandMan1](#): > > Increasingly in the Islamic community in some countries, there is a lot of support for violent actions. Majority populations can never be violent. But large portions of a population can condone violence. The Muslim extremists in Swat Valley might be minorities. But they get a lot of support from the local population who believe in ideals such as _girls should not go to school_ - and therefore indirectly support actions such as (a) shooting little girls and (b) bombing schools. Yes. [And in countries with similar social conditions that are not Muslim, we see many of the same problems.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17803312&postcount=305) That you choose to ignore that point while making a big deal about how “Islam” has to be the issue, you make my point and undercut your own. ---
**Author:** ![SandMan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@SandMan1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandMan1)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/450 "2014-10-29T22:10:55Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Honor killing also occurs in Hindu India, in addition, India has problems with other violence against women, such as dowry killings. Acid attacks are carried out for the same reasons as honor killings, stopping just short of actual murder. If you are unaware of these facts, why are you posting your nonsense that honor killings only are related to Islam? > Honor killing occurs in multiple societies, not just Muslim societies. If you are unaware of this fact, you have no business claiming that anyone else is in error. I don’t know why you are so obsessed with India. Just because you say honor killings happen in India does not make it true. I am still waiting for any citation that proves that honor killings in India and Pakistan happen at the same rate. Violence against women in India is no different than violence against women in the civilized world. As I have proved time and time again, that even for a poor country, the overall crime rates in India are very low. Also, there is no such thing as “_Hindu India_” - 13% of Indians are Muslim, a number much bigger than many majority Muslim countries. Crimes against women in India have a lot to do with the patriarchal society, but has nothing to do with religion. India used to have the practice of Sati, which was mainly a Hindu ritual where the widowed woman burnt herself on a funeral pyre - needless to say, this is unheard of in modern India. But, only a fool would deny that the practice of Sati was not religious. > [@](#): > > I did address it, You just were not paying attention. I asked you to show where that law exists anywhere besides Pakistan. If that law only applies to Pakistan, then it is the result of Pakistani culture and not Islam. Why should I believe this statement when all activists in Pakistan routinely say that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan uses Sharia and other Islamic tools to justify the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance. Pakistani culture did not come up with the ideas in the Hudood and Qisas and Diyat Ordinance. Many of the laws for punishment for adultery, etc. come directly from the Q’uran. > [@](#): > > I further noted that if it occurred in other Muslim countries, but that all of those countries were part of the region where tribalism and paternalistic conditions prevail, but not in other Muslim countries, then it is a cultural problem, not a result of Islam. So where does this law occur besides Pakistan? Do you even know? Again, it doesn’t matter. I am formed a link between Islam and Pakistani law. I need not form the same link in Bangladesh. > [@](#): > > Quote me using Pakistan in any comparison before you dragged it into the conversation. I see no need to defend myself against imaginary claims. > > You accused me of comparing India to Pakistan in Post #405. Prior to that post, I had never typed the word “Pakistan” in any post in this thread. You appear to be fixated on accusing me of your errors. > If you look at your [Post #405](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17853191&postcount=405), you will see that you selectively quoted a portion my my [Post #305](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17803312&postcount=305) in which I pointed out that most of the same problems that Robert163 attributed to Islam were occurring in Christian and Hindu nations that had similar levels of poverty and governmental dysfunction. I never claimed that religion had nothing to do with any given situation, only that the wild charges leveled against Islam, by itself, make no sense when we see the same bad conditions in parts of the world that have certain levels of poverty and government dysfunction and the same less bad conditions where government and economies are better. > Your claim that I asserted that bad situations had “nothing to do with religion” is wrong. > Your claim that I said anything about Pakistan is wrong. I don’t know when you started using India vs Pakistan in your posts. But the theme is clear to anyone who reads it. You may not have started it - but you did blow it out of proportion. > [@](#): > > Ahh! “A fundamentalist interpretation of Islam” is responsible. Just as a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity is responsible for the attacks on homosexuals in Uganda. So, instead of an entire religion being a problem, you now claim that it is one specific interpretation of that religion–an interpretation that, just coincidentally, occurs in a location with a poor government and extreme poverty. How interesting. Yes! A fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity is also responsible for blocking stem cell research and spreading contraception mis-information in Africa. You continue to spin what I said… > [@](#): > > You have spent an inordinate amount of time criticizing me for failing to condemn Islam when you now admit that you are not talking about Islam, _per se_, but one specific interpretation of Islamic law that is being carried out in only one place in the world. :rolleyes: I said no such thing. lol … what did I admit to? I consider killing someone for drawing Mohamed a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. However, more than a few people in the Islamic world wanted blood during the Danish cartoon incident. I consider the claim that Q’uran is the perfect word of god to be fundamentalist reading of the religion. However, much of the Islamic world believes that. You want to try again? :dubious: > [@](#): > > Are you serious? I am responding to your nonsense. It is difficult to respond to your odd claims regarding India and Pakistan without mentioning India and Pakistan. I have not said that I will never compare the phenomena in the two countries. I merely pointed out that your initial accusation that I had done so was without any factual basis. Please provide the factual basis for honor killings in India vs Pakistan. > [@](#): > > I am not sure that it is “as big a problem,” only that it does exist. India is more advanced than Pakistan and it should have fewer ancient cultural practices of that sort, in any event. (Although, it is noteworthy that a number of misogynistic violence continues to occur in India and that you are unaware of those situations while blithely asserting that they will be suppressed in the next ten years even though they have not been suppressed in the last 65 years or in the couple of centuries in which Britain tried to assert its social norms.) Ah! Finally you admit it. It is not “as big a problem”. If you had admitted this a few posts ago … I wouldn’t have wasted my time arguing about this. India and Pakistan after partition adopted two very different social paths. One a majority Hindu culture worked to abolish ancient practices. The other, an Islamic country took the opposite path while using Islamic laws to establish a country. The result is for everyone to see. > [@](#): > > Tell yourself whatever you want. However, when you natter on and on about “Islam” when you are really talking about one localized phenomenon in one Muslim country in the world, you fail to persuade. > By your logic, we should have a thread criticizing Christianity for the anti-homosexual laws in Uganda. It is only one set of laws in only one country, but it is Christian. Why are you not making a big deal about that? I think people do criticize Christianity for the anti-homosexual and anti-abortion stuff that goes on. In fact Uganda laws were pushed by Christians from the US who have a long history of promoting hatred in Africa. Of course I would apply the same logic here … You are acting as if this is all new for you. How many times have US politicians been ridiculed for using the bible to justify their claims? Left-media has 100s of shows trashing Christians for their beliefs re: abortion, stem cell, evolution, etc. > [@](#): > > Yes. [And in countries with similar social conditions that are not Muslim, we see many of the same problems.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17803312&postcount=305) That you choose to ignore that point while making a big deal about how “Islam” has to be the issue, you make my point and undercut your own. Hah! How can I take any of this seriously when you made the following claim in this post you just referenced: This is why women are still subjugated, with few rights, and a constant threat of honor killings in Hindu India in those regions where poverty and governmental corruption persist, even though India has actually had a woman as the head of state. Constant threat of honor killings? Your claims are laughable. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/451 "2014-10-29T22:19:56Z")
> [@SandMan1](#): > > Well, your primary point is highly flawed. Allow me to explain with an example. > > When crime (or terrorism) is highly prevalent in a society, it is not always enough to blame the minority perpetrators. Take for instance the problem of rape or sexual assault in the US, especially in colleges. All [statistics](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/sv-datasheet-a.pdf) show that sexual assault against women on a college campus is a huge problem. Many top leaders including the President have spoken about it in recent times. > > Now, is it enough to just blame the individuals who are charged with the crime of sexual assault? No! Of course you want to punish the perpetrator, but you have to understand why this became such a big problem in the first place. Would it be enough to say that only a small % of college students engage in such crime, let’s just blame those individuals. > > This is an institutional problem. The colleges across America have created an environment that has lead to a surge in such crimes. Not only have colleges under-reported sexual assault, but they have also hidden such crimes and protected the criminal actors. > > One could make a similar claim about parts of the world with high incidence of rape that have a patriarchal system where males hold primary power. Read any article about rape in India and it always talks about the flaws in society that have lead to such a big problem. Do you blame the individual who commits rape? Of course. But you also have to place blame on the **system** - from the society to the cops to the courts. > > The problem with violence and terrorism in many Islamic countries is the same. When terrorists kill a girl child for going to school it is not enough to blame the terrorist … but you have to blame all those people who supported extreme ideas that lead to such violent incidents in the first place. Sure, I blame the system – theocracies are bad systems. Religious bureaucracies are generally corrupt. Dictatorships are bad systems. All of these systems are bad and bear responsibility for much of the strife around the world, including in the Muslim world. So I guess we agree after all. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/452 "2014-10-29T22:25:13Z")
> [@Contemporary\_Logic](#): > > Again you failed to address for why my argument falls short outside of simply asserting it. This is the second time you’ve made the argument from assertion fallacy. The burden of evidence lies upon the claimant. I gave evidence; You failed to address it with a rebuttal. Imagine if a scientist handed in a peer reviewed paper and a colleague looked at it and simply said, “nope”. You’re doing it wrong. I explained why what you did fell short of your goal. But let’s try this: \*\*Person A: \*\*Golden Retrievers are not as violent as Pit Bulls, which often kill people. \*\*You: \*\*Not true. And here’s proof: (and then you offer a cite merely showing a couple of instances of Golden Retrievers clearly being violent, maybe even killing someone). \*\*Me: \*\*All you’ve done is show that Golden Retrievers do have _instances_ of violence, even same that may be on par with the worst Pit Bulls. What you have NOT shown, is that they, as a breed, are AS violent as Pit Bulls. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/453 "2014-10-29T22:31:27Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I explained why what you did fell short of your goal. But let’s try this: > > \*\*Person A: \*\*Golden Retrievers are not as violent as Pit Bulls, which often kill people. > > \*\*You: \*\*Not true. And here’s proof: (and then you offer a cite merely showing a couple of instances of Golden Retrievers clearly being violent, maybe even killing someone). > > \*\*Me: \*\*All you’ve done is show that Golden Retrievers do have _instances_ of violence, even same that may be on par with the worst Pit Bulls. What you have NOT shown, is that they, as a breed, are AS violent as Pit Bulls. But if we had evidence that for hundreds of years, Golden Retrievers were as violent or more violent than Pit Bulls, in addition to data that suggests that in modern times Golden Retrievers live in places with much greater living conditions on average, then that might lead one to question whether there is really anything fundamental to the breeds that makes one more violent, or if the disparity is caused by other factors. ---
**Author:** ![Contemporary\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b38774/32.png) [@Contemporary\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contemporary_Logic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/454 "2014-10-29T22:58:39Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > The major difference is that Christianity has evolved to accept secularism. Yes, there was the Inquisition, burnings at the stake, and other atrocities, but over time the Christian world seemed to learn from its mistakes. > > Islam seemed to have taken the opposite track: secularism and tolerance were acceptable for a while, and then the religion turned inward (perhaps as a counterbalance to the growth of secular Christian thought during the Enlightenment). > > It just seems like the Islamic world is so insecure about people who stop following the faith. Christianity eventually learned that forced faith is no faith at all. It is tyranny. Christianity has not accepted secularism; It’s that Christians who were raised in progressive societies have also accepted secularism." The progressive philosophy of separation between church and state concerns itself with a precise social distinction that would be too subtle for poor, ignorant people living in societies with archaic social structures to consider. Think of philosophy as a tool that has been sharpened to a precise scalpel in societies that contrast the previous description, and a club in ones that adhere to it. This openness to ideas is a luxury that has sprout from the golden ages of both Europe and the Middle-East as you mentioned. It’s only natural it would be lost as the societies declined, as it was when Secularism’s early roots fell with ancient Greece and Rome. ---
**Author:** ![Contemporary\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b38774/32.png) [@Contemporary\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contemporary_Logic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/455 "2014-10-29T23:19:58Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I explained why what you did fell short of your goal. But let’s try this: > > \*\*Person A: \*\*Golden Retrievers are not as violent as Pit Bulls, which often kill people. > > \*\*You: \*\*Not true. And here’s proof: (and then you offer a cite merely showing a couple of instances of Golden Retrievers clearly being violent, maybe even killing someone). > > \*\*Me: \*\*All you’ve done is show that Golden Retrievers do have _instances_ of violence, even same that may be on par with the worst Pit Bulls. What you have NOT shown, is that they, as a breed, are AS violent as Pit Bulls. No, you’re strawmanning me. I never set out to demonstrate Christianity, as it is practiced **as a whole** , is as violent and discriminatory as Islam,as it is practiced **as a whole**. Your argument concerning me only demonstrating that some Golden Retrievers are on par with the worst Pit Bulls is **exactly** what I was trying to illustrate. This has been specifically explained to you in three separate posts now. Here is the OP quote: “I stand with Maher on this. Despite the rare killing of abortion providers, **Christianity is not a violent religion**. Maybe 400 years ago it was, but not now and not for a long time. The same goes for freedom of speech, treatment of women, treatment of minorities, etc.\*\* Islam is the only major religion that openly practices this sort of repression\*\*. Not all Muslims, of course, but a significant minority does, and a majority refuse to denounce the practices.” I am not setting out to prove that the aggregate of Islamic practices is less harmful than the aggregate of Christian practices. I am, however, stating that Islamic practices are inseparable from poverty, ignorance, land disputes, and many other factors enumerated in previous posts that contradict the theory that the differences between Islam and Christianity are the primary factors behind the atrocities typically credited to Islam. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/456 "2014-10-29T23:46:02Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > But if we had evidence that for hundreds of years, Golden Retrievers were as violent or more violent than Pit Bulls, in addition to data that suggests that in modern times Golden Retrievers live in places with much greater living conditions on average, then that might lead one to question whether there is really anything fundamental to the breeds that makes one more violent, or if the disparity is caused by other factors. And this is the danger with analogies. While they can be useful in helping illustrate a particular point, they can be dragged further into the argument and d be asked to do too much. Leaving that aside, your position makes a huge assumption that I do not grant. And that is the time in which people live do not matter. Yes, Christianity had a time when is was violent. But that was at a time when the world was 1) more ignorant and 2) violence often took on a barbaric color. And as everyone acknowledges, religion is rarely, if ever, the sole impetus for violence. Tribalism, for instance, is a huge factor. So, just because one can look back a few hundreds years or more and see that a religious people were violent doesn’t mean that religion was the sole cause of the violence. Or the main cause. Or even _a_ cause. The premise that underlies my position lis that different religions encourage or excuse violence and barbarism to differing degrees. If you look at Jainists, Buddhists, Quakers, Mennonites, Hindus, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, Shintoists(?), etc., it is not equally as easy to justify violence for each of those adherents. I think it’s safe to say that it’s quite difficult to find a justification for violence and barbarism in Jainism, or to argue that it would be as easy for the Quaker as the Catholic to justify violence. Given a spectrum with justification for violence and barbarism as the metric, religions can be assigned an order along the spectrum. I don’t know the religions near well enough to rank all of them, but from what I understand of it, it would be hard to imagine a religion with less justification than Jainism. And I think it safe to say that Islam would be at the other end. That’s really the only point. Not that other religions can’t be used to violent ends, or haven’t been. But rather, that there is greater justification for violence and barbarism within Islam. In some instances, even a calling for such behavior. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/457 "2014-10-29T23:50:32Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Leaving that aside, your position makes a huge assumption that I do not grant. And that is the time in which people live do not matter. Yes, Christianity had a time when is was violent. But that was at a time when the world was 1) more ignorant and 2) violence often took on a barbaric color. And as everyone acknowledges, religion is rarely, if ever, the sole impetus for violence. Tribalism, for instance, is a huge factor. So, just because one can look back a few hundreds years or more and see that a religious people were violent doesn’t mean that religion was the sole cause of the violence. Or the main cause. Or even _a_ cause. I totally agree with this, and I think it applies as much to the Islamic world today as it did to the barbaric Christian world of the past. > [@](#): > > The premise that underlies my position lis that different religions encourage or excuse violence and barbarism to differing degrees. If you look at Jainists, Buddhists, Quakers, Mennonites, Hindus, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, Shintoists(?), etc., it is not equally as easy to justify violence for each of those adherents. I’m not sure about all of these, but for Christianity and Islam at least, it seems to be _incredibly easy_ to justify violence. > [@](#): > > Given a spectrum with justification for violence and barbarism as the metric, religions can be assigned an order along the spectrum. If this is so, then Christianity and Islam are at the same point on this spectrum – it’s incredibly easy to justify violence in both. It’s also very easy to condemn violence in both. ---
**Author:** ![nani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58956e/32.png) [@nani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nani)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/458 "2014-10-29T23:54:31Z")
> [@SandMan1](#): > > Much of the “honor killings” in Pakistan goes unpunished because of a specific law in the legal system that they refuse to ammend. One can be not-charged for murder if the victim’s family forgives the murderer. So, if a brother kills his sister in Pakistan, and the parents permit the murder and forgive the brother, then there is no punishment for the brother. This is the [Diyat and Qisas](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population/abortion/PAKISTAN.abo.htm) law. Not to get involved in the larger argument, but Diyat and Qisas are indeed as foundationally Islamic as you can get. However, they are not related to honor killing directly. They are not laws envisioned to excuse murders. This is why they manifest as problematic only in specific contexts. Remember that the environment in which Islamic law was elaborated was not like ours today. The relationship between law and policy was different, just for starters. More specifically, there is also the question of who is the aggrieved party in a murder. The nation state? The family of the victim? The local community? God? There are competing views on this in Islamic history and contemporary politics, and teasing them out is a complicated process that necessarily involves looking at non-Muslim populations too. > [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > There’s so much conflation that happens in these threads that it gets really hard to follow what people are actually asserting. And I suspect that a lot of posters don’t even really know themselves what point they are trying to make. It could be any of the following, or some combination of them… I like this framework that **Richard Parker** provides but I just want to add that structural violence should be considered too. The Jim Crow South was violent even when no one was being murdered. Violence in ISIS cities does not only extend to the people being murdered or enslaved. All of this makes this question of who is more violent exponentially harder to quantify. But I’d suggest something between B and C – that specific texts and religious traditions incline affected populations towards some behaviors in certain instances and other behaviors and other instances, and that these inclinations can change over time. For example, slavery in Islamic lands was more varied and missing some (but sadly not all) of the racial aspects of slavery in the New World. However, it was awful, and there was never a grassroots religious movement to end slavery in Islamic countries before the 20th century. It was codified, it was accepted. BUT there was a dramatic change thanks to outside pressure, and today you’ll find almost all Islamic scholars jumping through hoops to explain why Islam is really anti-slavery from the start. To be honest I don’t think much of their case. Indeed, while you’ll find that most extremist violence is condemned and not engaged in by the majority of Muslims, it gets a bit iffy to claim that specific violence is being denounced as inherently wrong. If Muhammad and the Companions are seen as having practiced something, then condemning it becomes a lot more difficult. Even on slavery, you won’t find many Muslims who say that Muhammad was going against God’s will for taking slaves. Lots of acts, like stoning adulterers or death to apostates or whatever, occupy this space where they are condemned in the present day, but that condemnation is conditional to there not being a truly Islamic state to carry out these acts. Condemning a practice as inherently wrong, rather than wrong for one to do personally or in a specific time, is really, really hard when it’s something that is in the early tradition. Sunni Islam in particular depends to a tremendous degree on the trustworthiness and goodness of Muhammad and his companions. They are, after all, the people of the Sunna. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > This might be more convincing if we didn’t have a horiffically violent history of Christianity to look at. The stats now are skewed – **Richard Parker** ’s “A” is correct – but in the past, this wasn’t so. In the past, Christians were as violent and brutal as any group in history, including the justification of murdering and raping civilians. How do you actually quantify this, one way or the other? > [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I don’t dismiss this idea out of hand. I’m a rank amateur when it comes to learning about Islam, but I think there may be something to the idea that early Muslims venerated their success in key historical battles as evidence of the righteousness of Islam, in a way that is not unique to Islam but perhaps more prevalent. Of course, Christians and Jews have also done this, but it is arguably more central to Islamic tradition than those others. > > That said, there’s also huge parts of the Islamic tradition that are about the exact same values that Christ purportedly espoused–including turning the other cheek. There’s plenty of Quranic support and support in the hadith for the notion that violence is only justified in self-defense and a good historical argument that Muhammad’s battles (if not, perhaps, those of subsequent caliphs) were justified by self-defense. When Muhammad gave his last and most famous sermon about the goals of Islam, do you know what he said? A bunch of stuff about being nice to the poor, treating women (relatively) well, and how people are equal in the eye’s of Allah. Unfortunately I don’t think the case that Muhammad only acted violently in self-defense is defensible. Also unfortunately, Muhammad’s farewell sermon that is popularly passed around with all the nice stuff seems to be a modern day fraud. This kind of thing is quite common, ironically. The version recorded in the early sources is much less nice, and much more misogynist. Islamic scholars pre-Colonialism certainly used early military victories as signs of divine favor. Well, Constantine saw a cross in the sky too, right. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > So Christianity and Islam certainly can be, and have been at times, equally violence provoking. Though I don’t believe most of the violence was “provoked” by the actual religion – I believe it was provoked by other factors (mostly geopolitics and economics) – and then justified (sometimes in advance) by the specific religious interpretations of those who committed the violence. > > This is way, way wrong. There are Muslims who believe they should kill the infidels, but obviously Islam as a whole does not do this, because there are millions of Muslims who explicitly denounce this belief. And at times in the past, there were Christians who believed that the proper actions were to kill heretics. But it wasn’t Christianity that suggested this – it was some individuals’ interpreations of Christianity. Just like it has been now and in the past for all religions, at times, including Islam. > > I was equating the two religions as to how they have existed in world history. There were times when Christians were as violent, as a group, as any group in history. This, to me, eliminates the possibility that there is something “special” about Christianity that necessarily means people will be more peaceful. > > If I were Christian, I probably would be incapable of believing that Christianity is not special in this way. But I’m not Christian, so it’s not hard at all for me to believe this. Provoked is a very problematic word to use, that is true. I broadly agree with the first paragraph. I’d just say different rather than “special.” Unfortunately many condemnations of Islam are done out of ignorance and flawed assumptions, but this doesn’t mean that specific trends, texts, statements etc. can’t be judged in their contexts. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > Just like with the Bible, there’s enough text available, that a person can find support for pretty much any position that they seek to justify. A diversity of opinion among people is one thing, the decided policy of the leadership is another. Tolerant and intolerant beliefs belong to everyone, but tolerant and intolerant expressions are more often limited to certain authority figures depending on where they happen, and they have more power to influence others by virtue of their position. > [@Contemporary\_Logic](#): > > The religions have not changed. The Bible still retains the same texts professing the commanded slavery of conquered people by God, the stoning of disobedient children, the moral reasoning of “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth”, etc. If you agree that the practice of Christianity use to be different, then you should also agree that religion is not the independent variable here. > > To address two points you made about Christianity, as it’s practiced today, not being as violent or openly discriminatory towards minorities as Islam; Take Uganda. Uganda passed it’s Anti-Homosexuality Act just this year. The bill called for the death penalty for homosexuals, but was amended to life-imprisonment due to the threat of losing aid from western countries . Uganda has a 4/5 Christian majority, and has an electoral government. The most prominent justifications for this bill have been religious. Christianity is more than the Bible, and the Christian intellectual tradition has hardly been stagnant. Relevant to your argument, competing ideas on Just War have evolved and coexisted over time in Christianity and still are doing so today. The Bible and the Qur’an are also not analogs. They hold very (and in Islam, self-consciously) different positions in the mainstream traditions. Furthermore, comparing ISIS to the LRA is unproductive and does not lead to useful insights for how to deal with either one. Anti-Gay laws and discrimination in majority Christian countries arise from different traditions than in majority Muslim countries and activists for change in both places cannot take the same approach, not just because of geopolitical concerns but also out of sensitivity to the local religion and culture. The tendency to look at religion to determine whether or not it is the “primary factor” is the result of an arbitrary definition of religion that is obsolete in modern scholarly thinking. Religion is always involved in communal issues to some extent, and it offers pathways for understanding and engagement. All of these other factors that you cite elsewhere, and the local responses, take meaning based on the religio-cultural context they take place in. > [@magellan01](#): > > The fact is that the Koran and the Bible are different. They champion different men that were on opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to conquest and violence. The religions are worlds apart when it comes to how adherents should view and treat those not of the religion. Christianity suggests that one spread the word of God. Islam suggests that Muslims should kill the infidels. > > Any attempt to equate the two religions as to how they exist in the world today is ridiculous. The Bible and the Qur’an are different, but neither are the only sources for how Christians and Muslims live their lives. The Qur’an especially, actually the legal content in the Qur’an is very small in a book that already isn’t that big. While I appreciate that you are willing to recognize that religions in the real world are not like in Civilization 4, I think the leap you are making to explain why violence is happening in Islamic contexts and what we can expect Muslims to believe and do, would benefit from a deeper consideration of how different Islamic societies have actually developed. > [@tomndebb](#): > > If the hypothesis that Islam, arising from a militaristic scripture, will “obviously” be harsher and more violent than Christianity, then history refutes that claim. I completely agree with this statement even if I do not necessarily agree with the specific claims you make in support of it. > [@Contemporary\_Logic](#): > > There is actually a way to objectively answer (b) and (c); It’s called science. > > If one theory explains more facts than another; It’s the superior theory. Asserting a theory of one religion over another religion, as the primary cause behind the brutality of modern terrorist attacks, does not explain as many facts as asserting a theory of geopolitical causes does. Do you think it is possible to understand how religion is involved in phenomena like modern terrorism, and that such an understanding would vary depending on the specific religious context that is under consideration? Do you think that anything useful can be taken from such an analysis? > [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > There were reform movements in Islam that adopted the idea of dividing the secular state from religion. Some of them were relatively successful. That’s where Turkey came from. Some of them were snuffed out by the West for their own colonial ends, as in the case of Iran. Some, like Egypt’s secularism, were…uh…complicated. > > All of that has very little to do with Islam as a religion, just as the development of secularism in the West had very little to do with the content of Christianity. It had a whole lot more to do with economics, societies, geography, and other factors. > > I think it would be great if the whole world had secular democracies. But the reason it doesn’t is a whole lot more complicated than Muslims being " insecure about people who stop following the faith." A part of it is that fact, that they were adopted. In most cases, they were imposed, either by colonial leaders or a Westernized elite. And you should know I disagree with secularism’s development not having much to do with Christianity! Two Swords Doctrine, man! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/459 "2014-10-30T00:02:48Z")
> [@Contemporary\_Logic](#): > > No, you’re strawmanning me. I never set out to demonstrate Christianity, as it is practiced **as a whole** , is as violent and discriminatory as Islam,as it is practiced **as a whole**. Your argument concerning me only demonstrating that some Golden Retrievers are on par with the worst Pit Bulls is **exactly** what I was trying to illustrate. This has been specifically explained to you in three separate posts now. > > Here is the OP quote: > > “I stand with Maher on this. Despite the rare killing of abortion providers, **Christianity is not a violent religion**. Maybe 400 years ago it was, but not now and not for a long time. The same goes for freedom of speech, treatment of women, treatment of minorities, etc.\*\* Islam is the only major religion that openly practices this sort of repression\*\*. Not all Muslims, of course, but a significant minority does, and a majority refuse to denounce the practices.” > > I am not setting out to prove that the aggregate of Islamic practices is less harmful than the aggregate of Christian practices. I am, however, stating that Islamic practices are inseparable from poverty, ignorance, land disputes, and many other factors enumerated in previous posts that contradict the theory that the differences between Islam and Christianity are the primary factors behind the atrocities typically credited to Islam. We disagree. On both the degree to which violence and barbarism should be attributed to Islam and what point is worth being made. Did you really think that someone was of the mind that Christianity has not been linked to such disgust? Or that one could not find an example of it happening today? Please. For some reason I cannot fathom, you (and others) seek to create some false equivalence between islam and other religions. Simultaneously, intentionally or not, you become apologists for the atrocities done in the name of the religion and minimize and excuse the barbarism that, as we can learn for the extremists themselves, is part and parcel to it. ---
**Author:** ![nani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58956e/32.png) [@nani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nani)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/460 "2014-10-30T00:12:05Z")
> [@Contemporary\_Logic](#): > > Christianity has not accepted secularism; It’s that Christians who were raised in progressive societies have also accepted secularism." The progressive philosophy of separation between church and state concerns itself with a precise social distinction that would be too subtle for poor, ignorant people living in societies with archaic social structures to consider. Think of philosophy as a tool that has been sharpened to a precise scalpel in societies that contrast the previous description, and a club in ones that adhere to it. This openness to ideas is a luxury that has sprout from the golden ages of both Europe and the Middle-East as you mentioned. It’s only natural it would be lost as the societies declined, as it was when Secularism’s early roots fell with ancient Greece and Rome. How can you have secularism without articulated ideas of religious vs temporal authority, and religious and non-religious spheres? When a peasant is called to fight in a battle by his feudal lord and the local Bishop is trying to tell people they can’t fight on Sundays or do this or that, the social distinction between religion and the state is going to be pretty relevant. Many modern elaborations of secularism are explicitly non-Christian but they rarely question the assumptions that spent a lot of time being developed in a Christian context that was hardly the closed-minded age that you imply. Portraying Islamic states as stagnant after their “golden age” is also something I would disagree with. [QUOTE=magellan01] Did you really think that someone was of the mind that Christianity has not been linked to such disgust? Or that one could not find an example of it happening today? Please. For some reason I cannot fathom, you (and others) seek to create some false equivalence between islam and other religions. Simultaneously, intentionally or not, you become apologists for the atrocities done in the name of the religion and minimize and excuse the barbarism that, as we can learn for the extremists themselves, is part and parcel to it. [/QUOTE] Even starting to get a hang of Islam, coming from a Western context where most people barely know anything about Christian history, is really time-consuming. In the meantime, we have these questions about Islam and terrorism and all of that being used as political tools to promote both political parties and policies. This is the character that these arguments overwhelmingly take, it’s not about Islam or Muslims, it’s about winning the political between conservatives and liberals or whatever. Anecdotally, most of my Muslim friends in Islamic Studies rolled their eyes at both Ben Affleck and Bill Maher. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589/461 "2014-10-30T00:18:42Z")
> [@SandMan1](#): > > I don’t know why you are so obsessed with India. I’m not. You are the one keeping the topic alive with your professed ignorance. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I am still waiting for any citation that proves that honor killings in India and Pakistan happen at the same rate. Why? I have never made such a claim and so your straw man is silly. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Violence against women in India is no different than violence against women in the civilized world. As I have proved time and time again, that even for a poor country, the overall crime rates in India are very low. You have not proved anything “time and time again.” And if you are going to go on reported crime statistics, you are demonstrating even more ignorance of the topic. Few of these crimes get reported as crimes. From [Wikipedia: Dowry Deaths](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry_death): > [@](#): > > India has by far the highest number of dowry related deaths in the world according to Indian National Crime Record Bureau. In 2010, 8391 dowry death cases were reported across India This means a bride was burned every 90 minutes, or dowry issues cause 1.4 deaths per year per 100,000 women in India. For contextual reference, the United Nations reports a worldwide average female homicide rate of 3.6 per 100,000 women, and an average of 1.6 homicides per 100,000 women for Northern Europe in 2012. Although India’s dowry death rate per 100,000 is lower than equivalent rate for Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is a significant social issue in India. > > According to Indian police, every year it receives over 2,500 reports of bride-burning The Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports that there were about 8172 dowry death cases registered in India in 2008. Incidents of dowry deaths during the year 2008 (8172) have increased by 14.4 per cent over 1998 level (7146), while India’s population grew at 17.6% over the 10 year period. The accuracy of these figures have received a great deal of scrutiny from critics who believe dowry deaths are consistently under-reported > [@SandMan1](#): > > Also, there is no such thing as “_Hindu India_” - 13% of Indians are Muslim, a number much bigger than many majority Muslim countries. The phrase “Hindu India” refers to those regions in India that are overwhelmingly Hindu and not majority Muslim or strongly mixed between the two. While 13% of the population is Muslim, they are not scattered across the country making up 13% of each city and village. There are places in India where one may never meet a Muslim, just as there are areas where Hindus are rare. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Crimes against women in India have a lot to do with the patriarchal society, but has nothing to do with religion. Exactly. Just as honor killings have to do with culture and not religion. Honor killings are carried out when a member of a family thinks that a woman has brought shame to the family in a social setting. Religion has nothing to do with it. Dowry Deaths are simply one form of honor killing that get a different label because they follow a particular rationale. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Why should I believe this statement when all activists in Pakistan routinely say that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan uses Sharia and other Islamic tools to justify the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance. Because, until you have demonstrated that the same laws are used in the same ways in other Muslim lands, all you really have is the fact that a group of people in Pakistan have seized on passages from their religion to create acts that support pre-existing culture without any evidence that the religion inspired the behavior. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Again, it doesn’t matter. I am formed a link between Islam and Pakistani law. I need not form the same link in Bangladesh. Of course, not. It is much easier to say, one Muslim country has a problem, therefore it is the fault of Islam than it is to actually find out what you are talking about. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I don’t know when you started using India vs Pakistan in your posts. But the theme is clear to anyone who reads it. You may not have started it - but you did blow it out of proportion. Do yourself a favor. Scroll to the top. Click on the button that says “Search this Thread.” Enter “Pakistan” and Click “Go.” You will see the following posts, (probably in reverse order)": 10-08-2014, 06:12 PM wolfpup 10-09-2014, 09:19 AM Hector St Clare 10-09-2014, 12:12 PM Robert163 10-09-2014, 12:58 PM MOIDALIZE 10-09-2014, 01:01 PM Robert163 10-09-2014, 01:16 PM Robert163 10-09-2014, 01:19 PM iiandyiii 10-09-2014, 01:29 PM Robert163 10-09-2014, 01:33 PM Robert163 10-09-2014, 01:52 PM Human Action 10-09-2014, 03:59 PM Ibn Warraq 10-28-2014, 02:16 PM SandMan1 Note that nowhere in that list, until we come to your false accusation in Post #405, quoting my Post #305, do I even mention the word “Pakistan.” Now you are accusing me of blowing it out of proportion? This whole hijack resulted from your erroneous claim that I compared India and Pakistan when I had never made any such comparison. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Yes! A fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity is also responsible for blocking stem cell research and spreading contraception mis-information in Africa. And yet, I notice you limit it to a “fundamentalist interpretation” and I see no general condemnation of Christianity from you. Seriously inconsistent on your part. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I said no such thing. lol … what did I admit to? Well, of course, you will deny admitting it. However, when you note that the situation in Pakistan is specific to that country, you would, if you were paying attention, admit that it does not justify a condemnation of Islam. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I consider killing someone for drawing Mohamed a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. However, more than a few people in the Islamic world wanted blood during the Danish cartoon incident. I consider the claim that Q’uran is the perfect word of god to be fundamentalist reading of the religion. However, much of the Islamic world believes that. > > You want to try again? :dubious: Try what, again? I have no problem with people opposing the Salafist/Wahabbist traditions of Islam or the even more extreme version promoted by ISIS. My objection is to lumping all Islam under one banner and claiming that the most extreme versions are the ones by which we should regard the whole religion. I object to making silly pronouncements that Islam is inherently violent or is less civilized than other belief systems–which was the point I was making in the post that you originally quoted before you hijacked the thread into a comparison of India to Pakistan that I never made. > [@SandMan1](#): > > Ah! Finally you admit it. It is not “as big a problem”. If you had admitted this a few posts ago … I wouldn’t have wasted my time arguing about this. India and Pakistan after partition adopted two very different social paths. One a majority Hindu culture worked to abolish ancient practices. The other, an Islamic country took the opposite path while using Islamic laws to establish a country. The result is for everyone to see. First, I have nothing to “admit” since I never claimed that honor killing was “as bad.” I simply (correctly) pointed out that India has similar types of violence against women, even in areas where Hinduism is dominant rather than Islam. As to your claims for the noble efforts of Hindu India: _pshaw_. There are and have been efforts reduce Dowry Murder in India, but as the quote, above, notes, it still continues at a high rate. Similarly, gang rape has only begun to be addressed in the last five or six years since it became widely reported outside the country. I recognize and applaud the effort to curtail bad behavior, but you are trying to cherry pick data to support your claims. > [@SandMan1](#): > > I think people do criticize Christianity for the anti-homosexual and anti-abortion stuff that goes on. In fact Uganda laws were pushed by Christians from the US who have a long history of promoting hatred in Africa. Of course I would apply the same logic here … And yet, I do not see you condemning Christianity. > [@SandMan1](#): > > How can I take any of this seriously. . . . You probably cannot with the odd view you have of the world. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-stand-on-the-bill-maher-ben-affleck-argument/700589.md?page=24)