Beyond some minuscule semantic quibbles I would maybe add that as in the beginning islam was an oral tradition so the sayings and actions of the prophet (Hadiths) were put to writing way after his death. Through a line of narrators, each of whom have different degrees of reliability, and are differently regarded by the sunni and shia confessions.
So there is *some* wiggle-room, but still only within the context of the life of an aggressive, deceptive and rapatious warlord by the name of Mohammad.
Well, the dead give-away is the ending when he keeps yelling "haram" and the translation says "wake up" when it means something else entirely (like forbidden by god or something like that).
Not all muslims are dirty brown towelheads. Introducing Mr. Adnan Oktar or also known as Harun Yahya, the world famous Evolution denier and muslim scholar:
You'll also regularly see big titted romanian and russian girls that are of course only attending to hear the very important message this guy is spreading
Nope. He's not. Obama is one of the people who categorically denied the role of religion in any case of islamic terrorism so far.
As such, he's part of the so called regressives or politically correct left that instead of honestly admitting religion IS a factor - maybe not the only one, but better than saying it say NOTHING to do with religion!
And this thread is exactly about that general regressiveness with regards to Islam OR actual muslim apologetics.
I can't fathom why you can't realize that pointing "Islam" as the issue out would make matters even worse.
I don't believe Obama's stupid enough not to understand that there is an underlying issue with Islam, but he's clever enough to know that no matter what he could possibly say regarding the subject, the negative consequences will outweigh that "honesty" by far. That's what I like about Obama: he takes the least horrible decision, most of the time. He realizes Islam is an issue, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to mention it in your speech the day after an attack was carried out.
I'm talking from experience here, since french politicians are more and more vocal about Islam being a problem, that it just "can't work" with french values - probably encouraged by the anti-conformist trend: let's ride on to the extreme-left boys, that's where the votes are, yay ! We are so anti-conformist, spewing the hate people usually keep for the bar counters !
Since then, I've witnessed muslim friends ( who are religious at various levels, from basically atheist to rather devout ) all feel like they can't be considered "truly" french anymore, because that's clearly the message that was conveyed. Things are getting very ugly, really fast.
I mean no disrespect to you personally, but that statement about Obama kinda angered me. You put a lot of effort in informing yourself and that is highly respectable, but it's pretty obvious what your views are ( I don't mean you're islamophobic in any way by that ).
( This is more related to your more recent posts )
You won't just eradicate religions, and it's pointless trying to rank them up. True theological debates have merits, but I'm not really seeing this here: I'm seeing a lot of rather clever people, more or less well-informed, with rather clear agendas.
I disagree that there is such a big difference between Islam and Christianity in terms of possible negative interpretations: history has clearly shown us that both religions were very good vessels for "inspiring" people to kill/torture/oppress non-followers and followers alike.
I can't fathom why you can't realize that pointing "Islam" as the issue out would make matters even worse.
I guess what you mean is, as you have explained later very clearly, that people in power such as Obama or Obama personally should be very careful pointing fingers at an ideology such as Islam when the majority of the people are not ready to fully comprehend and appreciate the points made, especially in a hostile media environment which would do anything to twist such hypothetical words and take them out of context to mean bigotry against people, e.g. Muslims or others.
But, that's not what you wrote there. You didn't say in your first sentence that Obama can't and propably shouldn't have pointed out Islam as an issue,
you specifically questioned my lack of realization that and I quote:
"... pointing (to) "Islam" as the issue out would make matters even worse."
Now I don't mean to be a smartass here, but the problem with that is quite obvious, isn't it?
If you cannot identify and address the problem openly, your ability in copeing with it will be penaltized.
As a general rule, it is very reasonable to point out the problem when trying to fix a problem.
But I am sure you already knew that, have nothing to counter this, do not disagree with it and propably already regretted your wording.
TheZor wrote:
I mean no disrespect to you personally, but that statement about Obama kinda angered me. You put a lot of effort in informing yourself and that is highly respectable, but it's pretty obvious what your views are.
What are my views and about what?
TheZor wrote:
You won't just eradicate religions, and it's pointless trying to rank them up. True theological debates have merits, but I'm not really seeing this here: I'm seeing a lot of rather clever people, more or less well-informed, with rather clear agendas.
So what's wrong with that? What are our "agendas"?
TheZor wrote:
I disagree that there is such a big difference between Islam and Christianity in terms of possible negative interpretations: history has clearly shown us that both religions were very good vessels for "inspiring" people to kill/torture/oppress non-followers and followers alike.
There is no difference in terms of "possible negative interpretations" as interpretations are not intrinsic to the ideologies, but to people in general.
The potentials or possibilities for negative interpretations are infinite as time goes on, in fact tomorrow there may arise a new fundamentalist interpretation for Christianity that is 100x worse than the doctrines of Islam and the day after that a new fundamentalist interpretation of Islam may arise that's pi times more horrible than that even.
By talking about "possibilities" you are not talking about the ideology itself of a particular religion, but what the people can do with it and where they can take it.
I'm not making judgement about peoples' interpretations at this point, I make judgement about scriptures themselves mainly, because when I talk about "the ideology" or "the doctrine" of Islam, what I mean is everything that Islam teaches us, literally taken as it was written, from it's holy scriptures Quran, Hadith and Sira.
As such, one can make a ranking system of religions, no matter whether or not you believe that to be an useless and unfruitful exercise or not.
What I'm saying is that it is possible by numbers and objective facts to figure out such a ranking, if someone wanted to do that.
Islam is a totalitarian, political ideology, that is incompatible with plurarism, secularism, democracy, human rights, let alone universal individual rights of any kind.
However, it's different from other ideologies, because it consists of two parts:
1) the perfect word of God (the Quran)
2) the example of Mohammed the Prophet (life of historical person)
According to Islam, the best example for any human being on earth is Mohammed.
If you wanna be a good Muslim, ask yourself what would Mohammed do.
Mohammed was a warrior, emperor, politician, not "just" a prophet like in the judeo-christian sense.
We know from the recorded conversations and Mohammed's biography that he was a man of absolute power and merciless, grotesque violence, with many backwards views on homosexuality, polygamy, child wifes, sex slaves and how to treat defeated people, pillaging for war booty, raping, taking sex slaves, humiliating the Dhimmis, oppressing and persecuting Kafirs, all things considered immoral behavior, attrocities and war crimes for today's understanding of secular morality and humanism.
You were talking about "history". I see differences, historically, between Islam and Christianity.
Jesus is not an established historical figure, neither were his 12 apostles (with the exception of Paul and some argue Peter).
Mohammed is a well established historical figure beyond doubt, so is most of his biography.
Christianity is a purely spiritual ideology.
Islam is a "full package", as in it spiritual + wordly (political) guidance (read: dictate).
Christianity was established peacefully (initially) and has spread due to the adoption as state religion of the Roman Empire (in Europe) and later through missionary work, exploration and colonialism (to the rest of the world).
Islam was established and spreaded by war - exclusively.
Christian ideology does not tell you how to kill/torture/oppress non-followers and followers alike. (Although sure people did that)
Islamic ideology tells you in painful detail and legislated and regulates how exactly to kill/torture/oppress/humiliate non-followers and (unwanted) followers alike.
I don't see no benefit in pathologically trying to make everything equal when it comes it religions.
You see I could be a Satanists right now for the sake of the argument.
My book is the Unholy Satanic Bible and it said there written:
"You shall rape every woman that you want to and kill her afterwards,
You shall kill and newborn every day and drink it's blood,
..."
And so on and so forth.
My problem is that there are SJW types who are saying that it is improper to judge a religion solely by it's literal text / ideology / doctrines itself.
They think that you have to evaluate and judge all possible interpretations of this Satanism and if you find (by pure chance) one that is not obviously immoral and gruesome, then you could never make an ill judgement about that religion (here: Satanism) overall.
They also think that one must take into account the behavior and actions of the people who believe in that ideology before making judgement of it - as a necessary fact.
So let's take me for example: I'm a good Satanist.
But, I don't actually kill no new-born babies and drink their blood.
In my opinion this practice was right for the people at the time, but today, different times, different practices.
Today I just have a little doll that I symbolically bite into every morning and I drink a glass of red wine, which serves metaphorically as the blood of the infant.
Similar to the Catholics who eat a cracker for the body of Christ and red wine for his blood.
Also, I don't actually rape no women, because that was the only option for the people at the time my Satanic Bible was written.
Instead, today I just take a photo of the women I lust for and then I masturbate to it, raping them only in my mind, metaphorically speaking.
You can see I commit to immoral acts that may harm the well-being or health of any human being.
Who are you to judge me based on my religion?
Who are you to say that Satanism and the promotion of rape, murder and infant canibalism is immoral?
Are you saying that I am immoral? Well, sure, there are still some minorites, those Satanist terrorist, who are backward medieval poeple who take our scripture literally,
but I don't take it literally, I have my own contemporary interpretation, so how dare you say my Satanism is NOT equal to your glorious Islam?
How dare you rank me (below) other religions, such as Bhuddism or Christianity?
All religions are equal, historically, potentially, possibly, ... Satanism is NOT a bad religion / ideology.
Stop pointing out that rape, murder and infant canibalism is wrong, you're making things only worse.
Can't you see I'm not actually raping, murdering women and eating new-borns?
There are 1.6 billion Satanists in the world, we are the worlds fastest growing religion.
How can our religion be bad then?
The Satanic terrorists who are taking our scripture literally are the absolute minority.
Pls don't point out the flaws in our ideology.
You're being a Satanophob. Stop it.
Point 1 ( Obama ):
You're right, the way you phrased it would have been the one I would have, had I been able to. I'm just not fluent enough.
You understood my point perfectly and I thank you for that, yet there was no need to be so condescending about it. Sorry if I sounded condescending as well, but when I said "I can't fathom", it was mostly to be seen as a compliment towards your usual clairvoyance.
Still, I think Obama's not saying there is an issue with Islam for a reason ( that is not being "politically correct" ), and I believe that he is politically right to do so at the current time. Philosophically and so forth, probably not, but that's not his current job.
Point 2 ( Views ):
You seem awfully critical of Islam, and you'll push the controversy around it for the sake of the argument. Overall, you don't talk a lot about the positive aspects of Islam/ Islamic culture-history in this topic either - which would make perfect sense in relation to the initial topic.
I'm just being brutally honest because you're asking me.
Point 3 ( Agendas )
I was talking about the YT videos, not the forum members. I should have made this clearer, sorry.
All of these pseudo-journalists' agendas are pretty clear if you look at the entirety of their videos. Objectivity ( or impartiality ) isn't what they are most concerned about, and I dislike such stances when you're talking about such "hot" topics.
I don't blame them for having opinions, but most of these videos leave a sour taste of "okay, where's the counterpart of your arguments ?".
Point 4 ( Religion "contest" ):
Again, you phrased my thoughts regarding the "possible negative interpretations" way better than I could have, but...
Quote:
I'm not making judgement about peoples' interpretations at this point, I make judgement about scriptures themselves mainly, because when I talk about "the ideology" or "the doctrine" of Islam, what I mean is everything that Islam teaches us, literally taken as it was written, from it's holy scriptures Quran, Hadith and Sira.
That's where you lost my point entirely, since I wasn't going on these grounds at all willingly - I'm not knowledgeable in scriptures enough to be debating about them with you, who seem to be more fluent in those subjects.
You could play this "I only judge what's written in the holy books" card with basically any religion save for Buddhism and reach the conclusion that they're all barbarians, with varying degrees of course.
Quote:
You were talking about "history". I see differences, historically, between Islam and Christianity.
You're twisting my words here, and you probably know it.
Obviously there are differences between Islam and Christianity historically, I just meant in a very general way ( unlike your following analysis ) that both religions fuelled atrocities committed in the name of "God" in very similar ways. I see an awful lot of articles/videos about Islam's awful past, but not a whole lot about the Spanish Inquisition. I'm exaggerating on purpose here.
Quote:
Christianity was established peacefully (initially) and has spread due to the adoption as state religion of the Roman Empire (in Europe) and later through missionary work, exploration and colonialism (to the rest of the world).
Islam was established and spreaded by war - exclusively.
You should have made the "initially" part bold. The Roman Empire was an Empire, it didn't leave much choice, did it ?
And yeah, missionary work and colonialism wasn't a very happy story either.
I'm not saying Islam didn't spread by war either, but you're being slightly unfair there, aren't you ? Christianity had its own fair share of oppression.
Quote:
Christian ideology does not tell you how to kill/torture/oppress non-followers and followers alike. (Although sure people did that)
Islamic ideology tells you in painful detail and legislated and regulates how exactly to kill/torture/oppress/humiliate non-followers and (unwanted) followers alike.
That's exactly what I was focusing on, but I've replied to you about this previously.
---
Sure, you can make a ranking of how viable religions are in regards to European modern societies, it's fairly easy to do so. The day I see a politician doing it, I know we're fucked for good and that I gotta pack up before shit hits the fan. I mean that while it's possible to do these comparisons, it's irrelevant in the political field.
Quote:
My problem is that there are SJW types who are saying that it is improper to judge a religion solely by it's literal text / ideology / doctrines itself.
They think that you have to evaluate and judge all possible interpretations of this Satanism and if you find (by pure chance) one that is not obviously immoral and gruesome, then you could never make an ill judgement about that religion (here: Satanism) overall.
They also think that one must take into account the behavior and actions of the people who believe in that ideology before making judgement of it - as a necessary fact.
It makes little sense to judge a religion by its literal text only politically-wise, which was my main point - as I was saying that on the opposite, it is very interesting to do so theologically and philosophically. Moreover, I strongly doubt that those comparisons are
made with no ulterior motive.
What's the goal here ? What's the aim in proving that Islam is inferior/barbaric/whatever ?
I mean, one could play the same game between Judaism/Catholicism or Buddhism/Catholicism, but I'm not seeing that anywhere. I feel that's being a little dishonest, don't you ?
The Quran isn't going to be rewritten overnight, and there's no way billions of people are going to suddenly realize that their values comparatively suck compared to us. There is no way that they would respect your word, or the word of any of these YT polemicists. Why would they, after all ? I don't mean to say that "their opinion is always at least worth yours", but it wouldn't be absurd for them to tell you to gently fuck off.
Islam is obviously way more political than other religions, but that doesn't mean it can't evolve in a positive way towards not melding with political affairs.
Christianity wasn't very good at distinguishing religious from political matters either, and that was for an awfully long time - sure, the doctrine didn't encourage it as clearly as the Quran does.
What I ultimately mean is that in my opinion, all religions are not much more but what the men and women following them have made them throughout time. We seem to disagree here since you give doctrines a lot more credit than I ever will.
There's a difference between saying "religions are all equal" and "try to rank religions up is counter-productive, and damaging to societies".
I have some Muslim friends, and I'm truthfully sad seeing people question their faith ( regardless of how stupid I believe it to be ) THIS much, even though I'm a firm atheist myself.
Let's go, I wanted this to be a pleasant conversation, but your first statement is such an obvious bait that I have to take it, stupid as I am.
Just because I fundamentally disagree with you on the subject of the religious texts' importance doesn't mean I didn't understand the points you were making. They just didn't convince me, even though they have their own merits.
Quote:
You see there are so many Atheist communicators, voices of reason, science, secular morality and humanism, they criticize A LOT of religions, but mostly Christianity (for obvious reasons),
yet never have they been faced with accusations of Christianophobia or racism of any kind.
That tolerance is mostly because Christianity's influence over society has dramatically decreased over the past century in most European countries - I'm assuming you're European, correct me if I'm wrong.
Would the Church have allowed such criticism and satire say, 150 years ago ? I don't believe so.
You're once again going to tell me that nothing written in the Christian scripture prevents people from contesting that religion ( which I strongly doubt, but I'll trust you on that one, however dumb that might be ), but as you might have realized, I'm more interested in how reality plays out, to simply put it.
By the way, when you say "faced with accusations of Christianophobia or racism of any kind", what do you mean, and for what time period ? Accusations made by a court, by a country's main politicial forces, by nobodies ?
Nowadays, a portion of Christians do react to all those critics, it's mostly that nobody gives a damn anymore but themselves in Western countries , and that's due to history, not scriptures and whatnot - but you can end up in jail fairly quickly in Russia if you start disrespecting the church ( the fact that they're Russian Orthodox is of little relevance ).
Second point:
Quote:
Yes, I'm awefully critical of Islam, not my fault, Islam's fault.
Yes, I'm having some kind of an argument, at least I would very much hope so.
What's the issue with that? Do you believe I'm being unfair or unreasonable in my arguments or do you believe it's taboo to criticize Islam publicly?
What positive effects of Islam are you talking about here? Are you sure you're talking about the ideology or are you talking about the good actions of people here?
Cause I told you I'm not talking about people, people's interpretations, or people's behavior / actions here.
I'm just being brutally honest, too without you having asked me.
I have no issue with criticizing Islam, or any religion for the matter, I believe in the freedom of speech.
No, you're not ever being unreasonable at all ( you're being very cautious in your phrasing ), I find you're just being quite one-dimensional in your overall approach of "I judge by scriptures". I believe you've seen that my grudge lies there, and not in the criticism of any religion, but I'll let that slide.
I take an issue if I see fit, can't I do that ? I strongly disagree with your approach of religious matters in which the text exists on its own, as if it actually was written by the hand of God - it simply isn't worth anything anywhere other than in a mental masturbation palace of sorts.
Quote:
Yes, they are clear to me. What's your issue with that? Or are you suggesting there is a (hidden) agenda behind their proclaimed motivs?
I'm sorry but some of the videos I posted are very well made and factually documented/sourced, so I really don't know what you mean when you say they're not objective.
Maybe care enough to make one specific example?
You really think it's a generally BAD thing to be called out for some weaknesses? To have to justify one's religions believes and views?
And why does it leave you with a sour taste to do that? Are you not confident in defending your religous beliefs?
Who's fault is it when a critical question is asked that you would have to answer for?
The person who's asking or the topic that allows for such a criticism or inquery in the forst place?
I thought the Quran was the perfect word of God, should be easy defend and difficult to refute or criticize, right?
You're not even making an argument of any kind here, your comment (in violet) is entirely emotional and has no meaning, it's 100% empty words.
Yep, it was emotional, sorry, is this court ? Are we in a presidential debate ? Where's the judge ? I can see that you take this stuff very seriously, but please consider getting off your high horse once in a while.
I generally dislike people using their intelligence in order to spread divisions within society, rather than the opposite. It's easy to point that Islam isn't a religion of peace, it's much harder to explain how we can deal with that aspect and make it work in our modern societies. That's whence my uneasiness springs from.
I admit my criticism of the videos you actually submitted was uncalled for, as I was mixing them off with other topics from the World News subsection - they're all pretty mild too.
Quote:
So you're not really fluent in those subjects, yet you're fluent enough to tell me and others to rather not criticize Islam "THIS" much and accuse me of (hidden) agendas, suggesting it's "clear" what I'm doing here without elaborating what you mean and the speakers of the videos I linked (for which I don't speak) are not objective and factual... Please. You're being emotional again.
No I disagree. You can't conclude that Jainists and Bhuddist are barbarians even if you'd really like to do that for the same purpose those SJW types like doing it: to call everything even, because when everything is even, Islam (and no particular religion) is worse than others.
It's clear that religions who feel the most to hide and the most embarrassed of their scriptures in the face of modern science, technology and philosophy, will be first and strongest in their desire to call everything even.
Because calling them even actually elevates them up and drags down their competition.
It's funny you keep considering me as "emotional".. Your questioning of Islam couldn't have been fuelled by emotions in any possible way.. Are you a robot of some sorts ?
You're probably referring to my last sentence ( "THIS" ) which obviously was purely anecdotal and emotional ( that's why I put it alone ). Yea, I don't really understand what your aim is - you avoided the last paragraphs like the plague, surprisingly - but it certainly is not helping people to live together and understand each other more easily.
Is that an emotional view to hold ?
I had excluded Buddhists from the equation - but they don't have proper scriptures, which might explain something.
Quote:
If I twisted your words for whatever reason, it's certainly not on purpose, because I usually don't like exposing myself in an inferior position when it comes to intellectual arguments and I take this shit rather seriously. I also don't like to say sorry too much, so you can bet your ass I didn't know it as you claim and I wouldn't waste my time and energy to knowingly attack a position I believe you did not hold.
Your very general way may be so general that it kinda defeats it's purpose to talk about it in a sensible manner.
Christianity does not say kill the non-believers. Islam does.
However sure Christians (talking about people) have killed non-believers, but they did that on their own (interpretation / justification) and the various Churches have promoted such behavior, but it didn't come from the perfect word of God, their holy scripture, not from the example of their prophet Jesus.
If you don't want to get into the details of "what does the religion say" (never-changing, eternal words written in some books) versus "what do the people from this religion say" (at different times in history), then we shouldn't really continue argueing, because I'm definetly NOT interested into mixing that up and you're definetly misunderstanding me if you thought that's what I am doing here.
I genuinely believed you were sort of twisting my words, sorry if I misjudged you on that - unlike you, sorry is a word I have no problem using
The way I was talking about in my original post certainly didn't fit your approach at all, but I didn't realize it was the only approach you were using in this thread until then.
However, there are Bible verses which could be easily interpreted as encouraging missionary work: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit ( Matthew 28:19 ). I know you dislike interpretations, but this is pretty straightforward.
I do agree we should stop arguing since our views radically differ over this matter - as I'll be saying in my conclusion.
Quote:
...then, according to your logic, it makes "little sense" to judge the sentences:
"You shall rape and kill every woman you lust for", and
"You shall kill and drink the blood of a new-born baby everyday"
...by their literal text. Is that what you're saying?
Thank you for picking the most extreme quotes you possibly could, as it demonstrates my point perfectly: the scriptures don't mean jack if they are considered irrelevant to anyone sane, and aren't applied by anyone on the face of Earth but criminals - I doubt even Saudi Arabia promotes newborns' blood binge drinking ?
Obviously, it does make little to no sense to "judge" ( in your imaginary court ) a religion based on two quotes completely taken out of their context.
Does every Muslim person actually rape and kill every woman he lusts for ? Do they drink the blood of a new-born baby everyday ? Or any single day for that matter ?
You wouldn't tell me that it's the people who are twisting their own religion, now ? Thinking about it, I actually believe you seriously would, considering your stance.
What about the Old Testament then ? That's one piece of text which you don't want to be taking literally.
---
To be blunt, I don't care as much about what the doctrine/text says as much about how people interpret it and act on it. You're behaving like religion is a big monolithic block of texts which can't be subject to interpretation in the case of Islam.. Just like for all religions, those interpretations are at the very core of religious behaviours - people mostly listen to their priests of choice, as scriptures are often confusing and worded in sometimes vague ways.
If you so want to refer to scriptures only, then call them by names, don't just refer to it as "Islam" - which is more than just the raw text, I think you'll agree.
Even the most obviously phrased advices/rules given in religious books ( when they exist, which isn't really the case for Buddhism for instance ) are subject to timeless debates between theologians. Why is that, if it's so damn clear ? Are they stupid ?
At least, now we know Islam is the worst out of them all now ! Yep, its text probably is, but I don't find that the most important.
By the way, I'm not a religious person at all in any possible way, I honestly had a lot of contempt for religious people before, but I'm trying to be more understanding. To me, scriptures are just outdated pieces of law that people interpret as they see fit ( that's emotional and personal too ). Not sure whether that was clear to you or not, sorry if that already was the case.
I strongly disagree with your approach, you strongly disagree with mine, let's leave it at that since I doubt we can convince one another.
I hope no bad blood remains between us after that, but you appear to be more than clever enough to dissociate debates from the rest. Even if we have strong differences of opinion, it's nice to be able to talk about such subjects to someone who cares.
Signature/Avatar nuking: none (can be changed in your profile)
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
so true!
