Cite? I find no strong pre-Islamic connection between the Hausa and the Middle East.
I asked Tomndebb two simple questions:
Tomndebb, as usual, refuses to answer simple questions, saying:
There is nothing of “have you stopped beating your wife”, Tomndebb. I’m trying to find out what it is that you believe, which is very difficult even on a good day with a following wind. So what is the “false dilemma” that I’ve proposed? What kind of “have you stopped beating your wife” assumptions am I making? What “odd beliefs, (unsupported by reality)” are you referring to here?Is it what I said about stonings and amputations being in the Holy Trinity of Koran/Hadith/Sharia?
And why is it so damn hard to get you to answer a simple question?
Because all of your posts indicate, to me, an agenda to portray Islam in the worst possible light and to portray me as an apologist for violence and I see no reason to feed you with more straight lines. Your first posts to this thread took that tack and I do not see where you have varied from that path or even considered any alternatives.
I have answered several simple questions. I choose not to answer the false dilemmas you pose. I have already provided the answer your question #1 and I decline to repeat that answer just because you want to pretend I have not answered it. Your question #2 combines multiple questions in a simplistic format that amounts to asking whether I have stopped beating my wife.
And in the end, based on your views, what would you propose to do about it?
My proposal is to condemn Wahabbism without condemning Islam, giving less reason to moderate Muslims to view the secular West as an enemy to be contested. You appear to want to simply tell Muslims that they have a bad religion to follow–giving the Wahabbists and their Fundamentalist Islamist buddies more evidence that they are correct and that the West does seek the destruction or suppression of Islam–which amounts to suppressing Muslims.
There can be no Wahabbism without Islam. Islam leads to fundamentalism because that is what it explicitly demands. At any time of crisis it is very easy for someone to stand up and say this is caused because we haven’t been following what Mohammed actually said and did and off you go down the jihad/sharia path again.
Honestly, I understand why people don’t want to label Islam for what it really is because they don’t want 1 billion potential jihadists taking offense. It seems to me if that if there are religions that are nutty and have the potential for its followers to act nutty and by doing so harm others, then Islam tops the list of the major ones. Saying that doesn’t let off other religions for past crimes and misdeeds, but there is a world of difference between those that don’t follow their religion and kill people, and those that do follow their religion and kill people.
There could be no Crusades, Inquisition, witch burnings, and North American and Australian genocides without Christianity. And to the extent that there are people in the Middle East hopinfg for a genocide against the Jews, it should be noted that they first borrowed the idea from Christian Europe.
If it is so easy, why did it take a thousand years to actually occur and another 150 years to get out of its initial little enclave? Compare Muslim behavior in the taking of Jerusalem and Constantinople with Christian behavior conquering the same cities. Note, again, that 600 years after the Muslims conquered Iberia and 300 years after they conquered the Balkans, there were still Christians and Jews living in those lands, yet within a decade or so of the Christians reconquering Iberia, there were no Muslims or Jews living in those lands.
On paper, your argument has a certain facile plausibility, but the reality of history does not support it.
So, explain why followers of Jesus, who was all for turning the other cheek, etc, were more brutal than the followers of Moh’d with their House of Islam and House of War?
Were the Christians following the core of their religion, or discarding it and doing what they wanted to do?
How about the Muslims? Once the enemy stops fighting what is a Muslim supposed to do? Not being an expert, I understand they are to stop killing them.
Who was following their religion more closely?
This is just supposition on my part, of course.
I would guess that, as MEBuckner pointed out years ago, rather than religion being the terrible instigator of inhumanity that some opponents of religion like to claim, it actually has rather insufficient influence on many people’s actions.
I don’t consider it an instigator. It is inanimate. It can’t do anything on its own. I do consider it an enabler instead. It is used to justify people’s actions and allow people to do things that otherwise they wouldn’t have the authority to do. By eliminating religion you eliminate one more important excuse that people use to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’.
Tomndebb, I begin to despair of ever explaining my position to you. However, I persevere. I asked why you would not answer two simple questions. You say:
You won’t answer because you think I have an agenda? Really? And you and the rest of the people who post here don’t have any agenda at all? That is the most pathetic, puerile excuse for not answering a couple of simple questions I’ve heard in a while. For those not following the story, here are the questions:
I’ll assume that means “True”.
Bullshit. #2 is a simple question. Asking “have you stopped beating your wife” contains the assumption that you are beating your wife. However, I do not see such an assumption in #2. Where is that assumption, and what is it? If you think there are “multiple questions” in there, what are the questions? Stop waving your hands and show us how #2 is asking if you’ve stopped beating your wife.
I’ve told you this several times.
Islam needs a Reformation. It cannot come from outside. It can only come from inside. I propose that we make it clear that Islam is schizophrenic, half violent and half peaceful, and that the violent part of Islam needs to be condemned and foresworn by its adherents.
Since the Wahabbis follow Islam exactly, every hateful injunction in the Koran/Hadiths/Sharia fulfilled to the letter … how do you plan to condemn Wahabbism without condemning Islam? They are doing precisely what the Prophet both told them to do, and what the Prophet did himself. If you attack that, you are attacking Islam.
That’s the part you gloss over. It’s not like some offbeat sect was proposing and following some misrepresentation of Islam. It’s not like some maniac claiming that Jesus told him to bomb an abortion clinic.
The Wahabbis are following the instructions in the Koran/Hadiths/Sharia literally and precisely. How you plan to condemn one without condemning the other is a mystery to me … which is why I asked those particular questions, the ones you don’t have the … desire … to answer.
How can you condemn the acts without condemning the source of those acts, which are the violent parts of Islam, the “satanic verses” telling all true believers to do those violent, cruel, and barbaric things?
Actually, Wahabbism and Islamists do not follow Islam “literally and precisely.” That is a rather silly claim. Wahabbism and the Islamists follow various interpretations of the Qur’an and particular interpretations of a number of the Hadiths, (when they are members of a sect that accepts the hadiths), and that they use varieties of Shari’a, (I hope that you are, at least, aware that there are multiple versions of Shari’a), that is not supported by most mainstream scholarship of the Qur’an and Hadiths.
For example, the rules regarding adultery require the testimony of four eyewitnesses, yet the Islamists have generally found ways to trump up charges based on interpretations of other events. Those hadiths that are interpreted to specify stoning refer only to marital infidelity, yet the Islamists have condemned several unmarried persons to death. The Taliban have gone so far as to interpret adultery as the inference of such an act whenever two opposite sex persons are alone together–a point not supported by any verse in the Qur’an or hadiths.
It is much more accurate to say that the Fundamentalists have imposed their own interpretations on cherry-picked verses, so your base line is not supported by the evidence. The analogy to the abortion clinic bomber taking orders from Jesus is not nearly as distant from what has happened as you would like to claim.
So on the one hand you say that reform can only come from within and on the other hand your suggestion to make that happen is to publicly attack Islam, condemning it for the actions of some groups within it. That should work well. I know that when people attack Christianity for its various foibles, the Christians have, traditionally, leaped into councils to cast out the offending parts of their dogmas.
Sorry. You still have not persudaed me that the best course is to pretend that one or two groups within Islam are practicing “real” Islam, (when I can see that there is more to Islam than their odd views), and that we need to go about condemning the whole religion because we prefer to treat it like the monolith that it is not. You certainly have not persuaded me that attacking any group is a viable method to get them to change their beliefs or behavior. I have pointed out on several occasions that the Fundamentalist sects are flourishing best where the people perceive that they are threatened by Western Christian or secular cultures, so it seems to me that your approach is particularly ill conceived.
Tomndebb, you say:
Actually, the mainstream Christians have done a good job of distancing themselves from the actions of people like the abortion clinic bombers.
The mainstream Muslims, on the other hand, have said very little about the actions of say the Iranians … and I understand that, because if I lived in Iran, I wouldn’t say much either. In general, the actions of the suicide murderers and the cartoon murderers and their ilk seem to be either celebrated or ignored by Muslims … which is in very clear contrast to the Christian situation. So no, they are not alike, your comparison fails badly when looked at closely.
I am not condemning the actions of some groups within Islam. I am condemning the “satanic verses”, those parts of Islam that are emphasized by those groups. These are the verses that require that the faithful must impose horrible punishments on people who have done awful things … awful things like leaving the religion, or insulting the Prophet.
For example, Jesus never said that if you leave the religion you should be either killed, or a hand and a foot chopped off on alternate sides of your body.
Mohammed did say that. The people who practice that are not just making it up. They are doing exactly what Mohammed told them to do. That’s the difference between the religions. Jesus said forgive your enemies. Mohammed said kill them or cut their hands and feet off. It is not a weird interpretation of some obscure verse. It is a clear commandment to the faithful, one which is followed to this day.
I say that for Islam to renounce its violent parts, it first must recognize that those violent parts are a part of Islam itself, just as are the peaceful parts. Although at some point it may have been done by Christians, chopping alternate hands and feet is not a part of Christianity itself. However, it is a part of Islam itself. That’s the difference.
Your denial that those violent parts are anything more than an aberration is not the path to reform. To reform, as Alcoholics Anonymous knows, you first must admit that you have a problem. If you keep denying that you are an alcoholic, you have no chance of a sober life.
You keep saying that the problem is that a few crazy sects have a violent point of view. But that’s a shallow view.
I, on the other hand, hold that the trouble goes much deeper. I hold that the problem is that Mohammed had a violent point of view, and that point of view is shown in a host of places in the Koran, the Hadiths, and Sharia Law. The injunction to chop off hands is not some weird idea that the Iranians came up with. It has been a part of Islam since day one. It was ordered by Muhammed. That’s why it is observed in many very different and distant parts of the world, from Arabia to Aceh.
As long as Islam keeps up its ridiculous claim to be the Religion of Peace™, it will never actually become a Religion of Peace. That’s what denying a problem does. It prevents forward motion.
So you can keep up your denial that the problem is deep within Islam itself, Tomndebb. You can keep insisting that it’s just a few nuts misunderstanding the true Islam … but I doubt that the victims of the violent aspects of Islam will thank you for it.
PS - I note that you still haven’t found the balls to answer my question above, nor to explain how it is a “have you stopped beating your wife” kind of question as you claim. I answer your questions. You, on the other hand, continue to dodge the hard issues and spread peanut butter over the cracks in your claims. Color me unsurprised …