All Christians, (well, perhaps not Phelps or Chick), will at least give lip service to the Golden Rule.
Similarly, Buddhists are not going to openly scoff at the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path.
There is a difference between failing to live up to the ideals of a religion and rejecting a teaching.
Ah, so now it’s down to a cite. Could you point me to any sizable community of Muslims that openly rejects the teachings of the Koran and the Hadiths?
If by “openly rejects” you mean that they do not stone people to death, etc. then there are plenty, in fact most Muslims are like that. Or do you also demand from Christians that they “openly reject” the teachings of the Bible because it also contains lots of barbaric teachings?
What counts is what people actually do, and not what some of their traditional books may say.
You can look at the Constitutions of Cuba or China and they are full of excellent protection of individual rights while the UK does not even have a written constitution but I think it is obvious the situation is not better in Cuba.
The USA has laws which prohibit torture and guarantee habeas corpus. But that is not important at all if the authorities now interpret those laws to mean torture is permitted and habeas corpus is at the discretion of the authorities, as has happened, recently.
The notion that all Muslims are bad because they support stoning of people because it says so in the Koran is just silly when you can just open your eyes and see that most Muslims in the world do not support such things. But I can understand that you might not want to open your eyes when your head is inside your butt. You wouldn’t see anything even if you opened them.
I dunno, sailor, it’s tomndebb who contends that there is a difference, for the purposes of the debate, between “failing to live up to the ideals of a religion and rejecting a teaching.” If you feel there is no difference, you should take your beef to him.
For the purposes of this discussion, suppose that I do. What does that have to do with our discussion of Islam right here and now?
Is that what is being said? That all Muslims are bad? If anything is being said is that Islam itself is bad because it condones the stoning and mutilation of people. And probably those people who follow Islam and use it as an excuse to do those things to others.
Well, since I think everything is relative I was assuming that you were saying that Islam is much worse than Christianity. But I will agree with you that the Koran when taken literally is pretty bad and comparable to the Bible when also taken literally.
My point is that there exist Christians and Muslims who have managed to not take to a blind and literal interpretation of their respective books.
And if you say all Muslims are bad because they believe in the Koran which says X then it follows that, similarly, all Christians are bad because they believe in the Bible which says Y.
The fact is that in my experience people are good or bad in spite of any religion and not because of any religion. There are millions of peaceful Muslims around the world and if you choose to say “but they are not true Muslims because they do not follow the Koran literally”, then I could similarly say Christians who do not literally follow the Bible are not true Christians. It is the true Muslim Scotsman fallacy all over again.
People everywhere, including America, who have radical views have those views much more due to general culture than to religion altough certainly religion is a major part of the culture.
Well, I do not know what “is being said”, I only know what I am saying.
I agree that all Muslims are not bad. I agree Islam itself is bad in the measure that it used as an excuse to do bad things, just like Christianity is bad in the measure that it is used as an excuse to do bad things and American patriotism is bad in the measure that it is used as an excuse to do bad things. There is no difference. And there is plenty of evil being done in the world with all those excuses and many others.
For me it is simpler. I do not care what is the excuse. If you do or support the doing of evil then you are an evil person and I really do not care what your excuse is. Little old ladies in 1930s Germany who supported Hitler were supporting evil in spite that they may have thought otherwise. Little old ladies in America who supported Bush were supporting evil even if they did not know it. Little old Muslim ladies who support terrorism are supporting evil even though they do not know it.
But a major point of this discussion has been that Christianity (for example) has undergone movements like the Reformation wherein specific elements of the faith have been specifically and vocally rejected by the clergy and believers; whereas Islam has yet to undergo any such movement of any significance. And arguably as a direct consequence, you see millions of people subject to a brutal and barbaric code of laws that call for stoning and maiming people, whereas other major religious communities have left that kind of thing half a millenium in the past, or more.
I agree that in general Islamic cultures are generally behind western cultures in their level of tolerance of differences, although not by as much as many people seem to think. But neither Christianity nor Islam are monolithic and there is much diversity. It is not that Christianity is any better than Islam it is that in Western societies religion has been relegated to a private sphere whereas in Muslim countries it mostly has not. If the religion in those countries were other than Islam the effects would be the same. The effects were pretty bad in western countries when religion was linked to the state. What changed was the state not the religion. Religion was just sent into the private sphere where it had little influence over public policy.
I definitely think many poorer countries need to learn many things and religious tolerance is one, just like political tolerance but the primary fault is in the culture and not the religion. It seems there are plenty of tolerant Muslims in the world who are not schizophrenics so I would say Islam and tolerance are compatible.
And we also need to look at ourselves who like to preach tolerance but in fact intervene all the time by hook or by crook in the affairs of other countries. We need to practice what we preach more because it looks pretty hypocritical when we preach tolerance but we invade, destroy, torture and kill without restraint. The fact that we do it in the name of “democracy” (in reality just to plunder) and not in the name of Christianity makes no difference.
:yawn: huh, bait. Not takin’ it.
:stretch: mm-hmm. A hobby horse. Not ridin’ it.
:snore:
That’s OK because Muslims and non-Muslims alike aren’t buying your stuff either.
Sleep well.
Speaking of selling. In a thread about a women being beheaded by her husband that then changes to Islam and whether it condones actions such as stoning people for the ‘crime’ of adultery, you barge in with crap like this:
What’s the point of talking with someone who equates a woman having her head cut off by their husband and people being stoned to death for stone age reasons and that of a state killing someone for the crime of murder? When the US starts killing people for the ‘crime’ of adultery, then you will have a point. Until then, get some perspective.
I am sorry if I do not share your belief that the only correct and acceptable way to go postal is the American way of shooting up people at your workplace or school with modern firepower and that cutting up people with knives is unacceptable and primitive.
Tomndebb, you say:
I’m not sure why this would be interesting. People are often cruel to each other in ways big and small. We see it every day. However, few of them are either violent or evil (as I understand “evil”).
What would I call “evil”? Here’s what I know about “evil”. After WWII, my grandmother ran two camps for Jewish “displaced persons” in Germany. She wasn’t Jewish, or German, but that’s another story. When I was a boy, not long after the war, my grandmother told us grandkids about trying to trace what had happened to several dozen Jewish children, the children of some of the people in the camps. She followed the paper trail to a hospital. She went to the hospital and asked the head of the hospital about the children. He invited her into his office, offered coffee, talked about the hospital. And what brought Madame to the Hospital?
She asked, did they have a record of these children coming to the hospital during the war on or around that date?
Oh, yes, they had records, they were good at that. He had them sent for. They showed that the children had come to give blood donations for injured soldiers.
And where did they go from the hospital after that? she asked. Do you have records of where they went from here?
He said, But Madame, don’t you understand? I just told you. Their blood was needed for the injured German soldiers.
Seeing the horrified look on her face as she finally understood his meaning, he hastened to assure her that they had all been given a proper burial. And did she have any more questions?
She said she stood up, turned around and walked out the door. She said if she stayed looking at that placid, smiling, well-fed face in his nicely tailored suit in his clean warm pleasant office for one more instant she would have exploded. So she left to face returning to the cold, hungry camps. She left to break the news to some still-hopeful parents, the news that all hope was gone.
My grandmother told us, her seven grandchildren, that she had seen many bad and mean and vicious people in her life, but she had never seen true evil until that moment. He was Herr Dokter, how could he say that? she said. The soldiers were not evil, she said, they were bad and mean, but Herr Doktor, he was evil.
Now, I hasten to add that this is likely not your description, or anyone else’s description, of evil. It is mine. Which is why I don’t use the word evil unless I have to. It means too many different things to different people.
Absolutely not. Herr Doktor the hospital administrator was not a violent man, nor was he cruel. He took care of the living and gave the dead a good burial. He was just doing his job according to instructions. He would not stone a woman in public, that’s barbaric (a throwback to an earlier more savage time.) It’s also cruel (much needless pain is inflicted) to both the victim and their family. Finally, it is violent, no death by lethal injection, its a bunch of people throwing stones. Can’t get much more cruel or violent or barbaric than that. And that’s what Big Mo and the men around him both recommended and did. But evil? No. That’s a different thing which is not “all of the above”.
No. Not “whatever”.
You tried to stuff the word “evil” in my mouth. After I objected and asked you not to, and told you I never used the word, and defied you to find me a time when I ever used it … you turned right around and did it again. Claimed again that I think or that I said something or someone was evil.
Now you seem to be saying it is unimportant, we are talking semantics, it’s trivial, “whatever”. It is not “whatever”. It is you putting words in my mouth. Stop doing it. I choose my words with a certain amount of care, so if you object to them, please have the decency to quote the exact words that you object to rather than twisting them to fit your fantasy about my beliefs…
Here’s how I see it, quote me as you wish. According to all available reports, including his contemporaries testimony, and the above-cited testimony of the Second Caliph, the second head of the faith, Mohammed said to stone adulterers to death and chop off the hands of thieves. Hadith or Koran makes no difference, Saudi Arabian law explicitly says Sharia Law is based on both the Koran and the Hadiths, full stop. Big Mo said it, his buddies agree he said it, they believe it, that settles it …
On the other hand, according to all available reports, Jesus decried stoning. He said, let he who is without sin shall cast the first stone. He did not order people to cut thieve’s hands off, he forgave the thief on the cross.
According to all available reports, including his contemporaries testimony, Mohammed led a band of men who, at his direction, took their swords and attacked and defeated the neighboring town, lined up the captives, killed all the males with pubic hair, took the women and children as slaves, and took their houses and possessions as war booty. (As a curious coincidence, at about the same time, the angel or Allah was revealing to Mohammed the verses of the Koran about how to divide up war booty. Go figure. But I digress …)
On the other hand, according to all available reports, Jesus led a band of men who, at his direction, laid down their swords and repaid injury with kindness and gave up their possessions, including peacefully giving up their leader to his death. (As a curious coincidence, about the same time, the angel or God was revealing to Jesus that he had to lead by example and it was likely to really hurt, so he’d better man up pronto. But I digress …)
Here’s another example. Jesus said the thing to do with repeat offenders is to forgive them “seven times seven times”. Mohammed said the thing to do with repeat offenders is to cut off their other hand …
Now, I’m neither Muslim nor Christian. I think both are quaint myths, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. But surely, anyone can see that those two men are pointing at different paths. They are describing radically different visions of life and how to live it. As can be seen in the examples above, from the start, from when the founders did things in their own lives and led by their own example, one is a path encompassing violence, and the other is not.
Sure, christians have done huge amounts of violence. But not the man himself. He advocated a path of non-resistance, and if stories are to be believed, lived it knowing it would cost him his life.
Like I said, I see the two men, JC and Big Mo, standing there and pointing in very different directions. It’s not just the oddball views of curious sects of Islam that are violent. Koran and Hadith and Sharia and Muhammed and the Caliphs preached and practiced vengeance and stoning and retribution and amputation from the birth of the religion. And in Islamic Sharia Law (which is the legal codification of the Hadiths and the Koran) stoning and amputation are part of the the law because they are attested to in the Koran and Hadiths.
So no, stoning and amputation are not some minority view. They are spelled out in both the holy books and the law, and are part and parcel of Islam.
Do not mistake my meaning. This is not a fatal flaw. It is not a manifestation of “evil”. It is not a reason to look down on Muslims, or to condemn Islam.
It is the challenge that Islam must overcome to join the modern world. I wish them well, it is a difficult challenge. But the only way to overcome the violence inherent in the holy books and laws of Islam is to acknowledge that violence.
Oh, horseshit.
You are the one who has said
which is an utter lie that is not justified by anything I have posted, and went on to say that my being snide was not helping the discussion, and now you want to quibble that a fairly reasonable deduction of your intent taken from things you have actually posted is, somehow, some great travesty.
Whatever.
Jesus, Mohammed, God, Allah, Imhotep, Cthulu and any others I left out on a pogo stick.
This thread makes my eyes bleed.
The thread has always been all about you, tomndebb. Good on yer for sticking up for yourself. Don’t let facts and logic get you down!
You’re an idiot. And I am for feeding you.
My saying “everything is fine in this the best of all possible Islamic worlds” was an obviously wasted literary allusion to the character Pangloss in Candide. It refers to a person who believes that problems don’t exist despite evidence to the contrary. From my perspective, that is what you are doing in re Islam. It was intended as a literary allusion, not a literal description of your words or beliefs. I am sorry that you were offended, my bad. Calling it a “lie” is over the top, I had no intention to deceive.
On the other hand, Tomndebb, you tried to stuff the word “evil” in my mouth.
I asked you not to do it. I noted that I never use the word. I defied you to find one instance where I had used the word.
Your response was to do it again. Again I objected, asking you to refrain from putting words in my mouth, in particular one I carefully avoid using.
You then defend your actions on semantic grounds, based on what my words mean in combination.
That in my world is an asshole move. Put words in my mouth, get asked to stop, put words in my mouth again, get asked to stop again, defend your action.
I guess in your world, the proper response to someone politely asking you again and again to cease and desist is … simply do it again, and then defend it.
Whatever … on the plus side, that whole episode makes your position on Islam much more understandable. I’m moving on, your move.