Islam - What's your view on it?
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Joel
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I get you're talking about a hypothetical but when you lead with "what if we find out this peace and love stuff is bullcrap", it's not really fair to act like you're presenting a hypothetical premise in good faith. I don't think people are having trouble wrapping their heads around your argument, they just disagree with your premise. The argument isn't "are we justified to fight a war against an evil nation", the argument you're getting is about "is "Islam" a nation of evil or likely to become a nation of evil".
I understand the difference between nations and states, there's a perfect example with a distinct Kurdish nation existing in parts of Iraq and Turkey. Yes, it is justified to fight a war against ISIS or another hypothetical Islamic terrorist organization. But the idea of "Islam" as a nation is nonsense, Saudi Arabia and Iran are both Muslim countries in the sense that America and Russia are both Christian countries.
"What do we do if ISIS begins to stabilize and become an acting nation-state?" Is a very different thing than "what if we find out Islam is evil?".
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Keef
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I still don't understand why I'm getting flak on this. I don't harbor any feelings toward Islam one way or the other, I'm just asking a question. All I can see is that nobody wants to entertain the idea because of political correctness or something. So I'll ask again:
What if Islam were an evil religion that promotes the killing of anyone who isn't Muslim? What would you do?
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- supermanfromazle
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Joel
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Again, you don't really come off like you're just asking a question when you lead with "what if this peace and love is a bunch of bullcrap". I already said before that I think you're justified to make war against a nation in the ISIS mold or something similar, and I think most would agree.
@Sanji Himura Good lord you guys not everyone that disagrees with you is doing so to be politically correct.
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- 2,726
- England
- ECGadget
- Eh???
And I could counter you with exactly what Islam is about (which I have done a number of times, including the famous verse 'Kill them where they stand'), but if you do not care to listen... well.
And yes, this post may come off as me sounding like an arrogant sod who knows it all but guess what? In this particular topic I DO know more about it than most people in this thread. But it's always lovely to hear about things, and I even learn from here, which in itself I find wonderful.
BUT to answer @Keef, IF Islam was (and I know it isn't but let's be hypothetical) an evil religion who did promote the killing of anyone who was not Muslim (a very scary thought!) what would I do? Well, for one I would not be Muslim. And religion which says the lives of another Human are not important is no religion for me. And secondly I'd be morally bound to do my best to stop them from doing that. How though... that's a good question. I really do not know how we'd even manage that. But that is hypothetical... and scary.
Edit:
- Another point I want to make is that I am not a know it all, or a liar, or someone with an agenda to gloss over things. I will gladly concede the fact that I know very little about politics, or weapons, or biology, or what makes a comfortable bed. But I go around the various threads here to learn, taking in everything people say and if I feel the time is right, I then contribute (mostly with questions). And I will also concede the fact (as I have many times) that I am no scholar of Islam and as such there are also things I know little of there too. It is thanks to the likes of @TenEightyOne, @Famine, @W3HS, @Imari, @prisonermonkeys and @Ken Koios that I have learnt more, either directly from them OR to answer or clarify something they have said, whether for myself or to post here.
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- 13,831
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- Neomone
The problem with asking that question is that Islam as a whole does not promote killing anyone who isn't Muslim, any more than any of the other major religions do. Bits of it do, but bits of all the Abrahamic religions say all sorts of crazy things. Most Christians and Jews just ignore those bits because they're retarded, just like most Muslims do.
However, let's say for the sake of argument that you have a religion with 1.6 billion followers, all of whom consider that anyone who isn't part of their religion to be non-human, and are completely fine with using militant action to achieve their goals against non-humans. We can call it Killslam.
I think you can absolutely go to war with such a group, but you have to be careful what you're going to war with. If you're simply going to war with an ethnicity or a religion without central leadership, then it begs the question of what you're trying to achieve by going to war. Without central leadership, there can be no agreements, truces or bargaining. You can confine them to an area by force, or you can wipe them out. That's about it. We've seen this historically in the treatment of the Romani or the Jews.
If you're targeting distinct parts of Killslam that do have central leadership, then you can achieve something. You can pressure them militarily until they accept terms with which you are comfortable. Whether going to war is justified or not can be determined on a case by case basis, and is a lot easier than deciding whether to go to war with 1.6 billion people.
That's my problem with declaring war on Islam. It achieves nothing other than putting us on the wrong wide of WW3. There is nothing to be won by going to war with Islam as a whole, all you can do is kill a lot of people.
Going to war with the specific Islamist groups that are causing military issues seems far more sensible to me, and a lot less like chopping your leg off because your toenails are getting too long. But then, that's more or less what we're already doing. Pretty much everyone has already declared ISIS, Boko Haram and Al Qaeda to be terrorists, and a bunch of countries have declared outright war.
What more do you want? That they should go and start killing civilians as well? That doesn't seem like something that civilised people do, as the terrorist groups have amply demonstrated.
And we can cite similar passages from the Bible and the Torah:
So if it's enough to declare war on all Muslims, then we should add all Christians and Jews to that as well. So we're up to about 4 billion people that we're declaring war on. Including the vast majority of the US and the rest of the western world, what with most of them being majority Christian.
Who exactly is doing this declaring of war, that has no relationship to any Abrahamic religion? The Chinese?
That's it, the Chinese should declare war on all the rest of us, because we're all savage infidels living in countries with laws based around a book from a time when people regularly went out and bashed their neighbour's head in with a rock.
How about we drop the PC/anti-PC rhetoric, and actually carry your logic to it's natural conclusion without prejudices.
Keef
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I don't want anything more. I'm just curious what sort of societal implications there would be if, in fact, an entire religion were revealed to be evil by nature. As @ECGadget said, the first step for reasonable people would be to not subscribe to that religion. But there are over a billion reasonable Muslims in the world (hopefully), so imagine how these people would feel if they finally had to stop ignoring the truth, brushing aside the bad parts of their religion, and finally accept the fact that all the rules they've lived their lives by and all their beliefs are based on evil. To continue on practicing that religion and ignoring the parts you don't like would be like Holocaust denial. A person cannot simply PC or goodwill their way around that.
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- ECGadget
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There is one flaw (I think) with that argument though. Say the beliefs were all based on evil, surely that would be fed into them from a young age? In doing so, they wouldn't feel so bad about it because they'd have this feeling of superiority over others who didn't follow Islam (which incidentally is forbidden in Islam too), knowing that they are to kill all those who oppose them. As such, these billion plus Muslims that you refer to as reasonable right now, may not be so reasonable with the 'other' religion, that @Imari dubbed Killslam. So instead you would have over a billion people, all with some sense of superiority over everyone else, plotting the death of everyone else. A religion? Doesn't sound like one anymore. An execution cult? Yes. Evil? Dead cert.
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And yet, we're all still alive. How do you explain that?
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A major religion? It's basically impossible. A religion doesn't get to the size of Christianity or Islam by being fundamentally evil.
The closest example you get is stuff like the Khmer Rouge, where a relatively small group takes power and then enforces it through other means.
Were such a religion to exist that could be evil and yet not have the people practising it notice, then you would likely have no chance of convincing them otherwise. Evil is relative and perceptual anyway, there's no such thing as "naturally" evil.
Not really.
How do you think that Islam and Christianity have ended up splintered into as many sects as they have? Because at some point a sub-group decided that they disagreed with some small parts of the religion but they liked the general idea still. So they set up a splinter sect where they kept the majority of the beliefs (hence being still regarded as part of the same religion), and changed the things that they didn't like.
Which is how we have Catholics and Protestants, Sunnis and Shia, along with all the hundreds of other more minor divisions.
And which is exactly how we have Salafism and Wahhabism. These groups have been around for somewhere between 50 and 300 years, depending on how you use the labels. They do not represent anything like mainline Islam, they are a modification that the practitioners believe is more faithful to the "original" spirit of Islam, but which obviously the vast majority of Muslims disagree with.
So in fact, these extremist splinter groups are the ones attempting to practice the religion and ignore the parts that they don't like. Namely, the parts that don't approve of militant advocacy of their religion. That's not PC or goodwill speaking, it's the truth.
These are minor groups attempting to ignore basic tenets that the rest of their society considers fundamental so that they can do what they want. And even all the Salafi and Wahhabi don't agree on this militant advocacy, so it's actually a splinter group within a splinter group that's doing all this.
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- supermanfromazle
- SanjiHimura
I wasn't making that statement pointed at anyone here. It was more targeted to our governments at large. If I was singling anyone out here, they would bloody know it.
I think that, getting on the current events side of things here, if you watched the 20/20 special on the Coptic Christians that are stranded in Syria and Iraq, you will see that the numbers would speak for themselves. $12 million was raised to get the Christian refugees out of those two countries, that money raised by us Americans. That said, those 150 people who got out during that special nearly had their plane blown up by ISIS because of, guess what, they were leaving the country. Meanwhile we have upwards of 15,000 Muslim refugees unaccounted for across Europe, and the UN and the US says everything is fine. No it is not fine! We have no indication of where they are, much less if they are linked to ISIS or any other terror group.
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Some people don't assume that Muslim = terrorist.
I think i had enough.
My friend here in GTP who is also a moslem backs off from here thanks to some people here. Used to be checking here everyday, including this thread, but backs off since two weeks ago. I told him to just stay away from this thread but he says he may rest from here until he feels good. Dont know how much longer, but i wont tell explicitly who is exactly.
My friend here in GTP who is also a moslem backs off from here thanks to some people here. Used to be checking here everyday, including this thread, but backs off since two weeks ago. I told him to just stay away from this thread but he says he may rest from here until he feels good. Dont know how much longer, but i wont tell explicitly who is exactly.
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We have Scientology for that. So far the implications seem to be nothing.
Yeah, that'd work if you hadn't already advised him that in public in this thread before.
Perhaps a thicker skin is needed to deal with the discussion. I'm sure that the assumption that some have that Islam = Terrorism is irritating, but I'm sure it's no less irritating that some people think that Christian = Paedophile. Or Atheist = Immoral.
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But unlike the assumption that "Muslim = Terrorist", "Christian = Paedophile" and "Atheist = Immoral" aren't thrown around every day. At any one time, there's half a dozen active threads in this subforum where "Muslim = Terrorist" comes up with frightening regularity. Just the other day we had someone post a story about a furore that erupted over students in a calligraphy class being taught an Islamic invocation of faith, which in turn prompted another user to claim that the point of the lesson was to teach students of the cultural superiority of Islam on the false pretense of being a calligraphy lesson, and without so much as a shred of proof (despite repeated requests). The amount of bigotry in those comments was both staggering and mind-numbing. On the contrary, I haven't seen any comments that equate atheism with immorality (though I expect that if they are going to come up anywhere, it will be in the "Do you believe in God?" thread, which I tend to avoid) and the closest that we have come to someone suggesting Christianity is synonymous with paedophilia was the response to KSaiyu's thread about the persecution of Christians worldwide, and that was just people responding to his obvious attempts to hijack the liberal bias that he felt was permeating the forums and appropriate it to a more worthwhile cause; the word "paedophile" was never used, but given KSaiyu's reaction when the discussion didn't go according to the script, you could be forgiven for thinking that "paedophile" was the most mild of criticisms directed at him.
So I can't say that I fault anyone who feels driven away by the comments at times. A thicker skin may benefit them, but so too would a more nuanced approach from some members.
Dotini
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IMO, when we are involved in warfare with others - particularly when that warfare is expensive in money and lives and not going so well - we tend to demonize, denigrate, belittle, insult and discriminate against our enemy. It's just natural. It was done against the Germans and Japanese in WWII, Russians in the Cold War, etc.
One of the most concerning things about Islam is this thing called Sharia Law. It would seem that in places where Islam is the dominant or ruling party, Sharia Law supplants or subverts secular, or constitutional law. If Sharia Law is integral to Islam, then it (Islam) could never be accepted in secular, liberal democratic societies except in isolated enclaves or ghettos.
If I'm wrong, I'd like to know how.
One of the most concerning things about Islam is this thing called Sharia Law. It would seem that in places where Islam is the dominant or ruling party, Sharia Law supplants or subverts secular, or constitutional law. If Sharia Law is integral to Islam, then it (Islam) could never be accepted in secular, liberal democratic societies except in isolated enclaves or ghettos.
If I'm wrong, I'd like to know how.
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"Sharia law" is Islam as practiced on one side of the great schism. It's not the dominant part of Islam numerically (Sunni is, at 85%) and there are many Sunni governments around the world.
Global news often presents The Fight Against Islam when in fact it's mostly the fight against extreme Shia movements. There are plenty of Sunni fighting that too.
Dotini
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I do not see much in there about sharia. I do not see that it is practiced only on one side of the great schism, or maybe you mean since the schism rather before. It would seem Sunni are much more bound by the Quran than Shia.
You say that Shia is the extreme movement in Islam, and all along I thought it was Saudi Sunni Wahhabism. I still do.
I think that many of those countries where Islam is the dominant religion are either an Islamic state or have an Islamic state religion. I see that as perpetually anathema to liberal secular democracies.
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Fair point, there are still "sub-flavours" that don't follow the general rule.
Secular countries with a religious majority are a pretty new thing though, in historical terms at least. Your statement is true for many "christian" countries too. Even in Britain, that cutting edge of social liberalism, there is still a huge institutional nervousness at the prospect of leaving christianity behind.
Dotini
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I don't doubt it. For over 1000 years in Britain, the Christian church has been the arbiter of morality. In the new liberal secular society, it is the individual that is the arbiter of morality. That can lead to rapid social change; perhaps change for the better, or perhaps divisive, polarizing, chaotic or corrosive change. ANY kind of change can be stressful.
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- 2,439
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Hmmm, why? Perhaps because of the general prejudice some people (tend to) have that Muslims are terrorists who use military forces against those professing other religions other than Islam, or other political reasons for them coming at odds with those who aren't Muslims ?
The Muslim itself ain't a religion that promotes its followers to murder non-Muslims, obviously though.
(sorry if i mixed stuff between Religion, Race and my country overall but i needed to combine them all in one place)
This thread along with any "War" or "Religious" threads and discussion are the most places that i tend to go away from it especially on the internet. I go on the internet to calm myself down and just enjoy chatting & discussion about random stuff like movies, TV shows, sports, video games...ETC instead of just increasing my already high blood pressure even more and being depressed and miserable on how everyone hates me, thinking that i'm a backward-13 Century-goat :censored:er-terrorists...
That's why i never revealed anything about me back then (i'm not just talking about here of course), because everyone would've hated me by now. I never revealed because i want to be treated like a normal human being, i wanted to be treated like everyone else did. I want to have the freedom to talk and give a voice instead of just being bashed to hell with no freedom whatsoever.
It reaches to the point, that sometimes i wish if i wasn't even born as an Arabian guy!
I mean, Do i look like a freakin' Terrorists to you? Do i look like a freakin' Rich to you? Do i look like a freankin' hater to you?
Based on the stereotype i'm seeing, the whole world look at us Muslims and/or Arabs as...
1. A Region Terrorists who like to cause terror and then blew them self's up. / Obviously taken frombarbarians Terror Groups like Daesh and Al Qaeda which mostly at Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan (which's totally not an Arabian country).
2. Billionaires who could buy and own everything they could and then throw gold all over it. / Obviously taken from some rich royal family's in places like Qatar and Emirates.
3. A Region with s:censored:-tons of restricted Laws and Rules which means there's no such of thing as "freedom". / I guess that would be Saudi Arabia since they don't even allowed stuff like Cinema (
) until recently they announced that they will allow it (finally).
And then there's people who thinks that we are enslaving other people... then then there's people who thinks that we are Pedophilia... then there's people who thinks we torture, rape and decapitate women's....then there's people who thinks that we are still stuck in the 13-14 centuries...and so on...
What some people haven't realized is that not every single Muslim country shares all the exact same thing. If Oman had some laws, whatever is legal or not... does it share the same stuff as Egypt? Does Jordan share the exact 100% same things as Morocco? Does Iraq shares the same stuff as Turkey? Is Pakistan the same as Kuwait? Is the UAE the same as Indonesia? Is Malaysia the same as Bangladesh? Does my country Bahrain have exactly same laws as Saudi Arabia?
The Answer is simply NO...
Bahrain is a country with majority of the populations are Muslims yet...
...There's such a thing as Bars and Nightclubs where i live, Yet our neighbours (Saudi Arabia) really hate stuff like these...
Female have such freedom to do or to wear as Male yet Saudi isn't...(Well somehow).
Stuff like Transsexual or Homosexual people does exists in our country, in fact there's more chance that I'd spot one than the chances of spotting a Brony. Saudi Arabia? That's the last place your ever going to think about that...
Enslave? Sorry what you said there? isn't that Prohibited in this religion? Pedophilia...un what?
Does anybody ever do that nowadays!? Raping Girls? uhh
And those who think Daesh is doing "jihad", uhh sorry guys but your wrong again... Daesh doesn't represent us at all. I mean since when did protecting your own country from invaders and stuff converted into suiciding (which's a prohibited thing to do in Islam) and murdering innocent people at the same time (which's also a Prohibited thing in Islam unless they far away from innocent...)? Since when did slaughtering everyone who's not with Daesh even if he's Muslim had to do with Islam?
Did I force you guys to be Muslims or to die? No I didn't...nether other guys... be Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Hinduism, Buddhism...etc whatever you want to believe. Our problem isn't with these people... the problem are with people who keep just insulting us and that's why some people might hate some regions or such...because we always appeared as the TRUE EVIL TERROR and that kind of stuff...
But even that, it doesn't mean we DO hate people who hates us to death...
And then many assumed that we celebrated in joy when the horrible Paris Attack happened. Yet all (or most of us) reacted the same way as everyone else... There's people who put on the France Flag on their Social Accounts and "#PrayForParis". We focused so much that we ignored what's happening with thousands of people dying in places like Syria and Yemen to what happened at Paris.
Ahh...sorry but i just can't continue on, i just don't want to go on an agreement which all i do is bring hate between members for just posting here...I just don't want to be hated. I just want to express my feeling about that.
Thanks.
This thread along with any "War" or "Religious" threads and discussion are the most places that i tend to go away from it especially on the internet. I go on the internet to calm myself down and just enjoy chatting & discussion about random stuff like movies, TV shows, sports, video games...ETC instead of just increasing my already high blood pressure even more and being depressed and miserable on how everyone hates me, thinking that i'm a backward-13 Century-goat :censored:er-terrorists...
That's why i never revealed anything about me back then (i'm not just talking about here of course), because everyone would've hated me by now. I never revealed because i want to be treated like a normal human being, i wanted to be treated like everyone else did. I want to have the freedom to talk and give a voice instead of just being bashed to hell with no freedom whatsoever.
It reaches to the point, that sometimes i wish if i wasn't even born as an Arabian guy!
I mean, Do i look like a freakin' Terrorists to you? Do i look like a freakin' Rich to you? Do i look like a freankin' hater to you?
Based on the stereotype i'm seeing, the whole world look at us Muslims and/or Arabs as...
1. A Region Terrorists who like to cause terror and then blew them self's up. / Obviously taken from
2. Billionaires who could buy and own everything they could and then throw gold all over it. / Obviously taken from some rich royal family's in places like Qatar and Emirates.
3. A Region with s:censored:-tons of restricted Laws and Rules which means there's no such of thing as "freedom". / I guess that would be Saudi Arabia since they don't even allowed stuff like Cinema (
) until recently they announced that they will allow it (finally).And then there's people who thinks that we are enslaving other people... then then there's people who thinks that we are Pedophilia... then there's people who thinks we torture, rape and decapitate women's....then there's people who thinks that we are still stuck in the 13-14 centuries...and so on...
What some people haven't realized is that not every single Muslim country shares all the exact same thing. If Oman had some laws, whatever is legal or not... does it share the same stuff as Egypt? Does Jordan share the exact 100% same things as Morocco? Does Iraq shares the same stuff as Turkey? Is Pakistan the same as Kuwait? Is the UAE the same as Indonesia? Is Malaysia the same as Bangladesh? Does my country Bahrain have exactly same laws as Saudi Arabia?
The Answer is simply NO...
Bahrain is a country with majority of the populations are Muslims yet...
...There's such a thing as Bars and Nightclubs where i live, Yet our neighbours (Saudi Arabia) really hate stuff like these...
Female have such freedom to do or to wear as Male yet Saudi isn't...(Well somehow).
Stuff like Transsexual or Homosexual people does exists in our country, in fact there's more chance that I'd spot one than the chances of spotting a Brony. Saudi Arabia? That's the last place your ever going to think about that...
Enslave? Sorry what you said there? isn't that Prohibited in this religion? Pedophilia...un what?
Does anybody ever do that nowadays!? Raping Girls? uhh And those who think Daesh is doing "jihad", uhh sorry guys but your wrong again... Daesh doesn't represent us at all. I mean since when did protecting your own country from invaders and stuff converted into suiciding (which's a prohibited thing to do in Islam) and murdering innocent people at the same time (which's also a Prohibited thing in Islam unless they far away from innocent...)? Since when did slaughtering everyone who's not with Daesh even if he's Muslim had to do with Islam?
Did I force you guys to be Muslims or to die? No I didn't...nether other guys... be Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Hinduism, Buddhism...etc whatever you want to believe. Our problem isn't with these people... the problem are with people who keep just insulting us and that's why some people might hate some regions or such...because we always appeared as the TRUE EVIL TERROR and that kind of stuff...
But even that, it doesn't mean we DO hate people who hates us to death...
And then many assumed that we celebrated in joy when the horrible Paris Attack happened. Yet all (or most of us) reacted the same way as everyone else... There's people who put on the France Flag on their Social Accounts and "#PrayForParis". We focused so much that we ignored what's happening with thousands of people dying in places like Syria and Yemen to what happened at Paris.
Ahh...sorry but i just can't continue on, i just don't want to go on an agreement which all i do is bring hate between members for just posting here...I just don't want to be hated. I just want to express my feeling about that.
Thanks.
