I do believe the proper parallel to “Muslim” is not “Klansman” but “Christian”. Not seeing a lot of denunciation of Christian savages, tho there is some in the Fred Phelps threads.
Hmm. I wonder why that is? Nasty as he is, how many people has Fred Phelps beheaded, stoned or maimed in the name of his religion?
As far as I know, zero. However, there are a number of folks who’ve bombed abortion clinics and killed doctors who perform them, in the name of their CHristian religion, n’est-ce-pas?
Tomndebb, I asked:
To which you replied
I regret interrupting your flow, but you did not answer it, neither above nor now. To review the bidding, you had said:
I replied (emphasis added):
While I’ll respond to your other interesting points separately, I wanted to point out that your claim to have answered my question is simply not true.
w.
Thanks for your question. I’d like to see several things happen. First, I’d like to see politically correct groups and individuals like yourself to stop bending over and spreading your cheeks, to stop justifying and explaining the violence. Despite your claims, Islamic violence is by no means confined to the Middle East. Nigeria is about to stone some people to death. Nor are they about to kill people in this horrible manner for any reason other than Islam. Not because of Middle Eastern cultural norms. Not because they were treated mean in the past. Because of Islam.
Am I looking for a new Crusade? Absolutely not. You see, unlike you, I’m not trying to justify the violence, instead I’m trying to stop the violence. As long as you keep justifying the violence by telling the Muslims that it’s all fine, that they’re just misunderstood, that violence is not really part of Islam, that they really are a religion of peace, they’re only stoning people and chopping their hands off because they were oppressed in the past, chopping off people’s hands or killing people in a horrendous way are just “retrograde cultural norms”, you are supporting the violence and laying the groundwork for a new Crusade. Do you really think your appeasement tactics are preventing violence? Yeah, in the same way that appeasing Germany prevented World War II …
What would I like for the Muslims of Dearborn to do? Same thing as I’d like the rest of the world’s Muslims to do – grow a pair, and stand up and do something about the violence inherent in their religion. Stop saying “It’s not Islam, Islam is a Religion of Peace”. That’s bullshit, violence against a host of groups from women to heretics is a central part of Islam, and has been since the beginning when that violence was written into and justified by the Koran. Until they stop making your pollyanna claim that everything is just fine and dandy, they’ll never be able to root out the sick violent part of Islam. Jews and Crusaders can’t do that work, the reformation has to come from inside.
Tomndebb, we know that you “don’t see much point in blanket condemnations of large groups of people.” You’ve made that obvious by your point blank refusal to condemn the large groups of Muslims who are stoning young women to death and chopping hands off. Me, I guess I’m not as civilized as you are, I’m just a reformed cowboy … and sometimes I think my reformation didn’t take all that well.
As a result, I’m afraid I don’t see burying a terrified woman up to her neck and killing her with small stones designed to inflict maximum pain as a “retrograde cultural norm”. I see it as a sick practice done only and solely by Muslims. You want to explain it away by saying they were oppressed in the past, or somesuch … guess what? I don’t give a shit. Stoning people to death is a primitive, barbaric practice that has no place in the modern world no matter who oppressed who. If you can’t deduce from the fact that in our modern world only Muslims stone people to death that there are serious problems within Islam that make it different from other religions, I fear your ignorance has grown beyond the point where it can be fought by anything we can do.
But stop already with your fatuous ideas that I don’t like Muslims, or I want to deport them, or start a new Crusade. That’s nonsense. I just want to see them clean up their act, police their own backyard, abjure their violent past and barbaric practices, and join the rest of the planet in the 21st century. Is that too much to ask?
Someone above pointed out that Christians have bombed abortion clinics. That’s true, and when we find them, we arrest them and put them in jail for a long time. That’s keeping your own backyard clean. In Islamic societies, on the other hand, people who do corresponding acts are feted as heroes and hailed by the religious leaders. Perhaps some people here can’t see the difference … but some can.
No. That’s not the parallel at all. I’m comparing one group of people who follow a certain set of beliefs and live their lives as such to another group of people that follow a certain set of beliefs and live their lives as such. Sure there are other groups besides the KKK but that’s not the comparison I was making so why redirect? Really what is the difference between members of the KKK and Muslims? They both hate groups that aren’t like them and don’t conform to their beliefs.
Besides, I guarunfuckingtee you that if you take all the “atrocities” (ala violent crime in the name of religion) committed by “Christians” in the last 20 years and compare them to the same from Muslims you are going to find 999 or more for every 1 Christian example.
I really don’t understand why this is so hard to admit.
OK, intention. I get it. Some of your best friends are Muslims.
Nope, Tomndebb, you don’t get it at all, and given this comment, I begin to fear that perhaps you never will. None of my best friends are Muslims, as it turns out, and I never said they were.
Some of the people I correspond with on the Internet do make brainless provocative comments to try to avoid answering hard questions, though, so I suppose it’s possible they might convert to Islam at some time … were you perhaps referring to that?
More to the point, are you going to answer the questions asked and try to substantiate your position with something more than handwaving about unidentified “retrograde cultural norms”, or are you opting to stay just to dick around with puerile snide comments? We can do either, but the former is far more interesting, and given the current example, you seem singularly unequipped for the latter …
But . . . but . . .
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
FOUR LEGS GOOD! TWO LEGS BAD!
FOUR LEGS GOOD! TWO LEGS BAD!!!
Hey, you were the one who had to make a point of proclaiming
On the other hand, you have also accused me of defending actions that I have explicitly called barbarous. I have pointed out the specific association between the geographic locations and cultures and specific barbarous acts to which you have simply responded Nope. It’s all of Islam despite the fact that you have not actually demonstrated that the phenomena are occurring outside the regions I have indicated. If you want to pretend that I have engaged in “handwaving” against your gratuitous claims, then you have already reduced the discussion to the level of “puerile.” Your whining that other Muslims are not opposing the barbarous acts is simply an indication that you ignore them when they do. (This would correspond to your pretending that I had not identified the cultural origins of the Arab/nomadic connection to these acts. When I noted that they were carryovers from an older, harsher culture, you simply pretend that I have not told you that they are carryovers from an older, harsher culture.)
Since you simply ignore what I do post while repeating your mantra of “Islam is evil” while also ignoring the holes in your own claims, I can see where you would be frustrated.
That’s an awfully long winded way of saying you’re not going to answer my question, which was:
Next, I have said many times that I am not talking about all Muslims. I have said many times that it is not even a majority of Muslims. For you to say, after my repeated statements to the contrary, that I hold that:
means my writing must be terribly unclear.
Is stoning occurring “outside the region” of the Middle East. Oh, no, not at all. However, there’s folks waiting to be stoned in Nigeria, and it’s the punishment laid down in the law in Nigeria. And there is Islamic violence of a host of other kinds, say women being beaten for trying to leave the religion, all over the world.
But at least not in Indonesia, poster child for the good side of Islam. I give you Indonesia, they’re not actively stoning anyone at the moment. Here’s Indonesia:
Well gosh, that’s reassuring … and 88% of those surveyed are Muslim. Which means that since 43% of the people support stoning, almost exactly half the Muslims support stoning. Half. The. Indonesian. Muslims. Support. Publicly. Stoning. Women. To. Death.
Nor have you commented on the fact that (as I said before and you roundly ignored) while not all Muslims approve of and condone stoning, everyone who does approve of and condone stoning seems to be … well … Muslim.
If you really want to have a discussion and not just accuse everyone of hating Islam, you could start with those three. Or you could continue to try to ridicule me for mentioning that I have Muslim friends and I have worked in Muslim countries and I have seen a variety of Muslim cultures up close and personal around the world.
Next, you say:
If I have done so, I sincerely apologize, that was not my intention. What I am trying to say is not that you are defending the actions. It is that you are defending Islam, which is the source of those barbarous actions.
We find only Muslims performing some of those barbarous actions. No other religion is publicly stoning women to death. You ignore that fact, or say it’s due to unspecified Middle Eastern historical barbarity. That’s fine, but some of us don’t ignore it, we find it curious. We wonder why. My claim as to why that happens is that those precise barbarous actions are laid down in the religion itself. And hey, guess what? When you look in the Hadiths, that’s what Mohammed says to do to adulterers. It’s one of his instructions relating to general law. And hey, guess what? When you look in Sharia law books from a variety of Islamic countries, that’s what it says to do with adulterers.
As I understand it, your claim is that this has nothing to do with Islam, it’s just an unfortunate coincidence. It’s leftover retrograde cultural norms from the region, or something. But as I pointed out, the Persians (Iranians) in their luxurious palaces were as far from the Arab desert dwellers of the Rub al Khali of Saudi Arabia as you can get … but they both have the same identical barbarism. Odd, that. They have no common history, no common language, but they both have the same detestable practice. Now as you claim, that may have absolutely nothing to do with the one common link they do have, Islam … but the evidence and the odds don’t favor that theory.
Which is why I invited you to expand on exactly what common “retrograde cultural practices” might have led to both the Iranians and the Saudis practicing the same horrendous barbarity, when they have very little else in common, and don’t like each other that much. Where’s your evidence for that claim? It’s your theory, my friend, you need to expand on it and back it up if we are to believe it. What were the ancient practices, and how did both the Saudi desert dwellers and the Persian potentates end up with them, if it’s not by way of Islam?
See, here’s the crazy part. I agree with your theory. You are right. There were in fact a host of barbarous practices in that part of Saudi Arabia before Islam. People did all imaginable kinds of nasty cruel shit to each other back then.
You seem to have missed the next part of the story. That’s where Mohammed dictated what became a text which is a combination legal codex, social guide, rules of warfare manual, and religious instruction book. That book, the Koran, is surrounded and buttressed by the Hadiths. These are things that Mohammed is attested (often by a number of people) to have said. The most well-attested of these are treated with only slightly less deference and significance as the words of the Koran. Makes sense, these are the words of the Prophet that didn’t make the final cut, but they’re his words nonetheless.
In the process, a number of the pre-existing barbarous practices were approved of by Mohammed and wrapped up in the Koran and the Hadiths and codified into eternal Islamic Sharia law. Among these were that adulterers should be stoned to death. People who stole should have their hands cut off. People who left the religion and spoke against the Koran and the Prophet should have a hand and foot cut off on opposite sides of the body. As you correctly pointed out, Tomndebb, those were the bloody and barbarous “retrograde cultural norms” that long predated Islam. We know about them now because they were unfortunately incorporated into the Koran and the Hadiths, the core of Islam itself.
Over the centuries, parts of this whole collection of Mohammed’s instructions for all parts of daily life, some of them contradictory, some of them “superceded” by others, some of them clear, some ambiguous, were codified into Sharia Law. Not surprisingly, lawyers are lawyers in any culture, so interpretations abound and different countries have different shadings and styles of Sharia Law.
But because Mohammed laid them down, there’s not a whole lot of wriggle room in some of them. The starting point for discussion of the the question of stoning adulterers is the clear instruction of the Man himself.
Yes, there are ways around it. For example, there is a women’s movement in Pakistan right now, trying to go down whatever circuitous religiolegal path you have to follow in Sharia Law to make it so you don’t cut peoples hands off for certain crimes. I’ll say it again. Not all Muslims are into that shit, in this instance chopping peoples hands off. But in even the poster child, Indonesia, a third of the people say “Lop 'em off, they deserve it”. Which I suppose is good in a way, because it means that two thirds of the Indonesian Muslims oppose chopping peoples hands off … there is hope, but there’s miles to go.
But Mohammed was into it, into chopping and hacking and stoning. And the Koran is. And the Hadiths are. And Sharia Law is. And that’s the starting point for the poor Pakistani women who are fighting the fight against amputation. It is what the founder of the religion told people to do.
Unfortunately, those barbaric practices, practices which you rightly decry, are spreading. They are spreading to Nigeria where forty-two people await amputation. They are spreading to wherever Sharia Law is getting a foothold. They are spreading because wherever it is applied, Sharia Law is based on what the Prophet said. And that includes stoning people to death, and chopping off hands. I cited the Hadiths above. That’s the starting point of Sharia Law, that’s ground zero…
Do I think Muslims are “evil” as you claim? No. It is a word I try to never use, either in writing or speaking, so your claim is false out of the box. It is misunderstood far too easily. I don’t hate Muslims. I don’t want to wipe them out or do them any harm, quite the contrary. I wish them the joy of their lives. They, like us, are just fools trying to do the best they can with what they were handed.
What I do think is that the Koran and Hadiths lay down precise rules on how to live every aspect of your life. Legal, social, personal, war, grievances, sex, debts and business, family life, divorce, crime and punishment, relative positions and powers of men and women, political, slaves and masters, position of the Jews, it is all spelled out in the Koran and Hadiths in endless detail. It’s a complete and detailed instruction manual on a pretty good way to live life … if you happen to be a man in a seventh century warrior tribe with a taste for blood, a desire to keep women subjugated, and an appetite for war booty. It’s the perfect religion for teenage guys. Everything you want, fighting, women, slaves, more fighting, women slaves, war booty, virgins in paradise if the worst happens, adventures to lie about later, what’s not to like?
The Koran even has instructions on how to divide up the houses and wives and goods and slaves of the people you conquer. The Prophet got his fair share of the booty and the babes and more, of course, that’s part of what he used and dispensed to his followers to finance the whole operation. What, you thought a religion ran on prayers and loaves and fishes? It takes money and slaves to make it work.
It was a wonderful religion for the times, and it was spread by the sword all over the world. Hey, if I was a horny young guy when the Islamic raiders came to my seventh century sleepy village, kicked butt, and said to me “You want to convert to Islam, join our gang, and go off raiding?”, I know what my answer would be.
The difficulty, of course, is that the ideas, and cultural norms, and legal systems, and relative powers and positions of men and women, and forms of society, and definition of crimes and methods of punishment, of a seventh century tribal warrior culture don’t fit all that well in the 21st century world. The world has changed since Islam burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and spread the religion by force of arms around a good chunk of the world.
But Sharia Law hasn’t changed. In Pakistan and in Iran and in Nigeria and wherever Sharia Law rules, it’s still that good old, time tested barbarous brutality that was good enough for grandpa. Mohammed’s words haven’t changed. The Koran and Hadiths haven’t changed. And as a result, people are still, in the 21st century, being stoned to death in public based on the sayings of a desert warrior who died fourteen hundred years ago. As a result, in the 21st century, young women are being beaten and killed for the heinous crime trying to leave Islam. Humans are a strange species …
So no, I don’t wish the Muslims harm, they harm themselves enough already. They bomb and maim and amputate and stone and behead each other at a rate of knots. They cause themselves much more horrendous harm than I would wish on anybody.
Instead, I wish that they find their Reformer, the man who somehow has the strength and the authority to remove the barbarous practices from the religion at all levels. Someone who can say, “let’s take just the loving, caring, peaceful, supportive, important parts of the Religion of Peace, and leave behind the cruel barbarous seventh century warrior bullshit about stonings, and domination of women, and chopping off hands and feet, and hatred of other religions.” … and has whatever it takes to make it stick, to get people to buy in and abjure and put the violent side of Islam behind them forever.
Not an easy job, though. Baha’ullah tried that in the 1800s, as I mentioned before. The Muslims threw him in the slammer and persecuted his followers, and the Muslim persecution and killings of Bahai’s have continued … a cautionary tale for those who would try to reform Islam.
That’s a disturbing website, particularly if you follow the links to the guillotine and current world executions (not just beheading) many of which are carried out in the name of Islam.
The man beheading his wife because she asked for a divorce is wrong. She has the right to ask for it, in Islam. A muslim man is not supposed to physically harm or hurt his wife in any way.
Come to think of it- no man should harm his wife.
Note to self: beheadings are wrong.
Thatnks! That hadn’t been made so clear up to this point.
For me, the point of comparing modern Islam to Middle Ages Christianity is not “to justify the wacky shit that goes on in Muslim cultures,” but to point out that our own culture was just as backwards at one point, which leads me to believe that Islam will eventually sort itself out and become a more moderate, peaceful religion. The sooner the better, obviously. It took Western culture 500 years to get from there to here; I think Islam will make the transition much more quickly, now that we have the internet and globalization. Communicating with people who are different than you is a big step to tolerating their differences.
Why do you think so?
To take what might seem an extreme, off the deep end example, but bear with me: if you started browsing NAMBLA or Ku Klux Klan web sites and started talking to those folks in person, do you think there’s any chance in Hades that you’ll come around to their way of thinking or be willing to see them (eg) talking to your children at school or espousing their beliefs in your workplace? I suspect not, because no matter how much you “communicate”, those people’s beliefs and practices seem anathema to your very being.
Why the analogy? Because: for someone steeped in Islam, Weird One, you are an infidel. The things you do in your daily life are an affront to God and his Prophet, and chances are the more he learns about you – and how apparently happy you are to thumb your nose at Allah and the Prophet as you do – the more offended he’ll be. Because no matter how much “communication” goes on, your beliefs and practices seem to him to be anathema to his very being.
Don’t sweat it, The Weird One, as Koxinga notes, all Muslims are teh evull. No evidence that the Muslims clustered in Dearborn, MI have suffered all kinds of harrassment and abuse for over 30 years without resorting to any sort of retribution or calls for the suppression of their Christian neighbors indicates anything else. The fact that Muslims held most of the Iberian peninsula for over 600 years and Greece for over 300 years without forcibly converting or murdering the Christians in those places means nothing. Islam is bad, m’kay?
How do you figure? Has the Islamic world been in a frozen sleep box while the rest of the world was advancing? Is there some kind of time dilation going on?
We’ve all had the same amount to time to mature. Or are you suggesting that Islam set the Middle East back 500 years when it was widely adopted? If you’re suggesting that Christianity and Islam need roughly similar time frames to mature equally, shouldn’t that also mean Christianity set things back 500 years too?
Not that I object to that idea either, in particular. I’m just trying to understand how you’re reaching this conclusion.
Me, I tend to think Islamic extremism is more economic based than faith based. I can’t say I’ve studied it, though, so I’m not really able to defend that opinion very well.
Ah, one of the many charms of what the SDMB community has become. Makes me always so happy to come back here.
Lost cause, I know, but now that you’ve enjoyed your spittle-flaying non-sequitors and elementary-school level caricature of what you imagine to be my position: I don’t suppose you might care to factually address the point I raised? You know, that improved communication technologies provide little guarantee that a community might become more “tolerant” and change its attitudes?
:Yawn: