2893

Yeah, I think that in America, most of us never think of those guys as “Christian extremists”, because we all either are Christians, or virtually everyone we know is Christian. So when we see groups like the KKK, we don’t focus on their Christianity, and instead identify them by the stuff that is different from the “normal” Christians that we know.

2894

Since I don’t know how you could possibly know that, your assertion is ignorant at best and bigoted at worst.

-Tom

2895

Of course, the same is true of the teachings of Mohammed.

-Tom

2896

I think it’s perhaps easier to Cherry pick individual parts of Mohammed’s teachings to come to violent conclusions.

Individual sections of the Quran can be interpreted in a pretty dark way, such as how ISIS justifies their actions. Taken holistically, with the understanding of how Islamic scholars generally agree on interpreting the entire book, with principles such as abrogation where later sections generally (but not always) supercede earlier sections, it’s harder to justify such interpretations… Or at least, it’s easier to come to other, better interpretations.

Since there’s no singular church structure in Islam, there is quite a bit of room for interpretation, and given that there are some probs which can be construed as calls to violence, it may be easier for evil men to use it. Indeed we see a ton of the recruits for groups like ISIS are young men with very little understanding of Islam itself. Part of what opens then up to manipulation is their lack of understanding of their own faith.

The same potential exists for Christianity, but there are certainly fewer calls to violence in the new testament. Most of that crap is from the old testament.

I think there’s a real difference between Mohammed and Jesus, when it comes to the entirety of what each man said. I cannot think of anything said by Jesus himself which can really be construed as bad, whereas there are things from Mohammed which could be, taken in isolation.

Ultimately, it’s probably moot though since Christians who are ignorant of their own religion can basically be told that Jesus said they should send money to Trump and they do.

2897

Because I havent been on another planet the past twenty odd years? Would you care to show me the christian or jewish or hindu or buddhist equivalent of islamic fundamentalist terror and oppression this century? Scale & level of evil? And again, to be crystal clear, I am specifically speaking about the narrow extremist part of Islam which has in the past few years oppressed and murdered more decent regular Muslims than anyone else.

Oh and while I am at it, I am more than a little tired of folks going through the somewhat dull rhetorical techniques playbook in this thread instead of arguing with me, if you disagree thats fine, but jeez just respond with an argument, perhaps even with interesting counter points like Timex? Is that too much to ask?

I mean the old checklist of :
attack the credibility of the other person not the point he is making
mistate the other persons position
impugn the other persons motivations
attack the other persons warrant to make an argument not the argument

is all a bit dull isnt it? Oh and to save folks going through the rest of first year Rhetorics the other bits of the playbook are

appeal to higher authority
reframe the argument to subvert the persons position
enrage the opponent so he appears irrational
selectively quote the other person from an unrelated subject

I mean, it doesnt offend me. Its just boring and I get nothing out of it. If you disagree with me then go ahead and disagree. Thats cool. But I would sooner get educated and have other people make interesting points. Who knows one or (the horror) more than one of us might actually grow from the discussion.

p.s in the middle of posting that my internet died , so apologies if it was typo ridden :) I am gonna hit double figures in the edits to this post apparently.

2898

The vast majority of Muslims would disavow the extremists you’re assuming somehow represent their religion. They could explain to you, just as @Rock8man did upthread, how that isn’t Islam. But Islam is a big scary boogeyman to people who don’t know any better, who can’t distinguish between sectarian violence and religious teachings, who wouldn’t know the first thing about what is taught in mosques, and who certainly wouldn’t do the same thing with other religions because they haven’t subsumed Islamophobia. Do you blame Buddhism for the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo? Do you blame Christianity for the extermination of Native Americans, the Third Reich, and Jonestown? Do you blame atheism for Stalin?

You’re making the mistake of inferring a cause and effect out of ignorance, and you’re resorting to easy hyperbole in lieu of actual information or insight. That bigotry. The world could use a lot less of it.

-Tom

P.S. I know I’m being a dick, but a) this is P&R, and b) if there’s one thing that bothers me more than bigotry, it’s bigotry from people who I know should know better.

2899

Well, I don’t know if that’s fair. I get what you’re saying, and that’s certainly the stereotype. Pissed off Old Testament God and fatherly New Testament God cradling a lamb in his arms. But the Hebrew Scriptures are a lot more varied than the New Testament. They express a wider set of worldviews, from several different historical contexts. The New Testament is a very specific polemic with a very specific agenda. So, yeah, you’re right from that superficial perspective. But it’s still easy to cherrypick calls to violence from the New Testament. Just ask David Koresh or Jim Jones. And those bozos mostly made up shit out of the crazy nonsense in the book of Revelation! But there’s evidence elsewhere that Jesus presided over a radical and sometimes violent Jewish sect. I bring not peace but a sword, sell your cloak to buy a sword, let’s trash the moneylenders in the temple. And the Romans probably weren’t in the habit of executing peaceful Jewish dissidents. There’s a solid Biblical foundation for what’s called liberation theology that advocates righteous violence. It’s just that modern Christianity exists, for the most part, in a very different context than Islam.

-Tom

2900

Please note the word “officially” in that quote.

From Washington Post -

More from Pew Research -

Sure, not all Muslims are shitty fucking people, not even most of them. But HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS ARE.

2901

So the answer to my question is “no” then? :) Thats fine. No you are not being a dick at all. You are just trying to reframe my question by quoting my explanatory run on sentence instead of my question , let alone the rest of my argument. Shrug. And yes I get annoyed by people supporting bigots when they know better as well.

I will say I have heard the “well ISIS doesnt represent all of Islam” argument before. Sure, of course they don’t, neither do the 10 countries where the punishment for being gay is death. Again sure. I am not tarring an entire faith full of good people with that brush. What I am saying is the nutcases in islam are at this moment in time are worse than the nutcases in other religions and what I am further saying is that all other things being equal , as a whole, womens rights and gay rights are oppressed (in some places murderously) more in the Islamic world than the western world. So far nobody has refuted that argument so I guess it just stands as resolved?

@Balasarius thank YOU! I was starting to feel gaslighted there :) Yeah I hadnt brought in comparing freedom of expression or freedom of religion. But yes, those are areas where I have criticisms of the Islamic world as well.

2902

I don’t think shitty fucking people is remotely fair. It’s a result of their cultural environment.

The problem is that cultural environment is mainstream global Islam. Talking about ISIS and similar isn’t helpful because they’re a crazy extremist death cult that preys on Muslims and is denounced by the mainstream. But mainstream global Islam as it currently stands is frequently in conflict with western values - including the values of the vast majority of western Muslims. Like it or not in many countries in the world the Islamic establishment has become a tool of control which acts to support of powerful reactionary forces ( the analogy with evangelical Christianity in the US is obvious).

Wah wah Islam is evil is clearly not a helpful or accurate response to this, but neither is the kind of see no evil self righteousness and factual distortion on display in this thread.

2903

I’d agree that Islam when it is broken is worse than Christianity when it is broken at least in the recent decades, in both scale and specific acts (beheading, for example).

I’d have to say that may have been reversed during the time of the Crusades, at least from what I know.

2904

To bring this back to Hannity, I don’t even see him getting run off TV, over this anyway. The Cohen stuff maybe, but it doesn’t seem like it. This new story is just the Guardian throwing out scary words like “shell companies” and waving the HUD guarantees (which is common for these sorts of properties and not something Carson would be directly involved in) around. Essentially all commercial real estate is owned through “shell companies”, and the idea that anyone who has any connection at all to a government agency should disclose it when talking to the secretary seems insane. Do journalists now have to disclose their Fannie/Freddie/FHA guaranteed mortgages when talking to the Treasury secretary?

2905

Why do you even call that an “argument”? It’s no more an argument than saying “the sky is blue” is an argument. It’s a simple fact. It should never have to be challenged.

And I’m saying you have no way of knowing this, or even quantifying it, so your statement is bigotry, plain and simple. When people do fucked up things, stop attributing it to their religion, because then you are indeed tarring the entire religion with the same brush. This is the kind of thinking that has people in the United States in favor of a Muslim ban. Don’t be like them.

Are some Islamic countries backwards? Sure. Are some Muslims violent? Sure. But when you suggest it’s because they’re Muslim, that Islam is to blame, you’re not saying that because you know anything about Islam; you’re saying that because it’s convenient and you don’t know any better. If you don’t believe me, ask a Muslim. We have one in this thread. Are you just going to ignore his post?

Besides, you guys in this thread should know better than confusing correlation with causation. It’s the most intellectually lazy fallacy of them all. You all should know better.

You mentioned ISIS. I’d say the more salient fact about ISIS is that they wouldn’t exist if not for the invasion of Iraq. Some backwater extremist named al-Zarqawi hitched his grotesque distortion of Islam to the resentment caused by the invasion of Iraq (thanks, neocons!), and it spread like wildfire. Because it’s Islamic? That’s absurd. If that’s the case, why isn’t there an ISIS in, say, Dearborn, Michigan? Why would you blame Islam when ISIS is utterly unique to a very specific part of the world, a very specific condition, a very specific swath of anarchy? ISIS didn’t happen because of Islam. Islam was incidental. An innocent bystander, if you will.
Blaming the religion shows a facile lack of understanding about both the religion and that part of the world.

Again, you guys don’t blame Christianity for the Third Reich or atheism for Stalin or Greek Orthodoxy for the Serbian massacres in Bosnia. Why would you single out Islam for ISIS when everything they do, everything they stand for, is contrary to what Muslims believe? Why would you let ISIS’ distortion of Islam shape your thinking?

-Tom

EDIT: Gah, I should probably bail on this and let you guys get back to making fun of Hannity. I like all you guys a whole lot. Really, I do. You’re all awesome, and I admire how reasonable you guys are when you disagree. But the willful ignorance about religion in these threads – Christianity, Islam, or otherwise – really gets my goat.

2906

We’ve talked about this report before.

It must be taken with a grain of salt, given the social context within which those people were being polled. In many of those places, the law actually says some of those things, and to speak out against those archaic beliefs might be to endanger one’s self and family.

2907

To provide additional social context, the only time I heard about homosexuality in Pakistan was with reference to Bacha Bazi in neighbouring Afghanistan and the in the NorthWest Frontier Province of Pakistan. People look upon it rightly with disgust. So it’s a completely different lens on LGBT issues than someone growing up in America.

2908

Or Buddhism for the Rohingya crisis, Christianity for Joseph Kony, Hinduism for attacks in northern India, Catholicism or Protestantism for the Troubles and IRA in Ireland. That last one I’m confident you know about @Rod_Humble, being you are from Britain.

As a matter of visibility? Yes, Al Quaeda and ISIS take the cake. But I’d argue the focus on Islamic terrorism is more a matter of presentation, how often do you see people like those two from Illinois who wanted to shoot up mosques called terrorist after all. For reasons of ideology, power, and profitability it serves the agenda for certain people to ignore and downplay one set, while creating fear and outrage at the other. Buddhist terrorists don’t get play, because there is no interest or profit in intervention. I guaruntee you that if there was a buck to be made, you’d hear more about it.

And Joseph Kony used Christian rites and symbols, and for whatever reason people have decided in the US that this means it can’t be called terrorism or extremism.

2909

Sure, although in America homosexuality was generally regarded with disgust up until a few decades ago.

2910

Yeah, I agree. So far, there doesn’t seem to be much there.

From the Guardian story:

I don’t think Hannity will be going anywhere based on this. Unless there was something deeper going on that gets dug up.

2911

That’s really sound reasoning and often something I maintain privately.

2912

I’m going to assume that Pew Research are professionals and able to account for that.

And even if the numbers are inflated by 100%, that means there are still well over 100 million Muslims who support death for apostasy.

And I’m just focusing on apostasy here. If we want to talk about Sharia Law, where women are property, the statistics get much worse.

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it, and that means that recognizing that Islam is a terrible fucking religion.

For the record, I don’t support the Muslim Ban. We must embrace progressive Muslim leaders who reject the many evil aspects of Islam and support them.

It’s worth noting that one of these progressive Muslim leaders, Asra Q. Nomani actually voted for Trump because she was so pissed off about apologists on the left who refuse to recognize the threat of Islam.