Oruc
Reactionary
Christianity is irrelevant it surrendered the political sphere, I don't see why people would wish that on Islam? Islam is the only thing offering an ideological challenge to western values and that is important.
Sweeslamistan
- Thread starter Domen
- Start date
Christianity is irrelevant it surrendered the political sphere, I don't see why people would wish that on Islam? Islam is the only thing offering an ideological challenge to western values and that is important.
Christianity has not surrendered the political sphere in my neck of the woods.
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Pretty much. Arabic is one of those difficult languages where one word can have multiple meanings.
Sabr can mean patience, fortitude, acceptance of one's fate( ie resignation) depending on context. And that isn't even really a good example of ambiguity.
Jihad itself has multiple meanings. It boils down to struggle, and in Islam means a struggle in the path of God. But this struggle could be the struggle of the individual against temptation, of Muslims against invaders, and the prophet himself said the greatest Jihad was speaking out against the unjust tyrant.
So yes a fair amount of ambiguity is involved, another reason why the literal words shouldn't be taken at face value.
Quackers
The Frog
You believe an illiterate goat herder in the Middle East, was accosted by an angel and was told a revelation from god?
I've got some magic beans I want to sell you.
These numbers, among others, are a part of what is driving my dedication to this issue. While all polls must be taken with a grain of salt, and what people proclaim they'd do in polls may differ slightly from what they would actually do, it should be clear that we are talking about hundreds of millions of people rather than hundreds of thousands. Their views are extreme in many ways - they are extremely silly, they are extremely dangerous and worthy of our denigration; they are not extreme in the sense that they are rare.
How is that more far fetched than the illegitimate son of a woman to wed to a carpenter being the Son of God?
plarq
Crazy forever
This just boiled down to a mud-sling game. Anyway, my point is, Islam as ideology is a global force that can counteract the Western influence, however, political Islam does not appeal to much to non-Muslims.
Sure it does - Christians in the U.S. seemingly decry Sharia, but basically try to enact their own version of it.
plarq
Crazy forever
That's Christian theocracy, not a Sharia law. Why is a Christian fundamentalism movement rooted in jihadists?
Tahuti
Writing Deity
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2005
- Messages
- 9,492
Horrible conclusions. First of all, verbal declaration that one approves doesn't mean one would necessarily perform such acts themselves.
Secondly, the questions about Sharia law are particularly ignorant. In Israel and Britain, Sharia is legally binding for Muslims only, and only on family matters. This is effectively what most Muslims mean with 'our country should have Sharia'. The really cool stuff with the cutting hands and the like is called Hudud and is excluded from most modern interpretations of Sharia, including even in such countries as Iran.
Quackers
The Frog
You add an additional angel to the mix in the "Islamic" fairy tale, that may up the wacky stakes but both are beyond the pale for me.
I don't think so.
I just engaged with a fella who said:
Someone, somewhere actually believes that. In this instance i'm the reasonable one...
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Or the Holy Spirit, for any Trinitarians (i.e, everyone).
plarq
Crazy forever
Muhammed (pbuh) forgot to approve this message. Nonetheless, Jesus the bastard is still a holy prophet according to Muhammed. Which is even more weird... wait, or maybe he's no longer a bastard in Muhammed's version?
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
No he is still the son of the virgin Mary. God may be many things, but in this case at least he is consistent.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Not really. That old bastard still hasn't told us if gays are fags or not.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Unfortunately, it is the slogan of WBC that I am making fun of, so I am forced to.
I find it curious that in light of empirical data like this, people can still be in denial and make excuses. I'll take the caveats about polls, in fact I covered them in my last post. But at some point we have to wake up and look at the facts. We are facing a what in many parts of the Islamic world is essentially a death cult. Not of ten thousands who went to training camp. We are literally talking about hundreds of millions of Muslims who are utterly deranged by their faith. That these people think that the creator of the universe has given them instructions in a holy book in the 7th century, and think that it is the best book ever written brings them pretty close to derangement, considering that the Koran is a very mediocre book. What's worse, the concepts of the book which are spelt out ad nauseum, like killing the infidel, aspiring to become a martyr, the promotion of sharia, the degrading of women etc, bring an amount of suffering to the world which is really inconceivable.
This is a civilizational problem. Even if it didn't pose a problem to Western societies, the great amount of harm done among Muslims alone, especially among women, would be worthy of our denigration. I have experienced first-hand what it means for women to live under the sharia, and it is a truly horrific state of existence.
But the problems don't stop there. As I said before, it is sheerly impossible for us to just lean back and do nothing for a hundred years and think that everything will go well. Not with the increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Do you seriously think the IS would hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they had any? Right now they are working on building biological weapons. As long as these people think that dying for Allah is the best thing that can possibly happen to them, there is no incentive for them not to use them.
What I don't know is how to best go about trying to solve this problem. On the one hand we have to empower moderate Muslims and help them undercut these perilous dimensions of their belief. On the other hand, at some point we must be honest with ourselves and with others in that there are no gods, and that the Koran is bogus on any subject really as a guide to live our lives by in the 21st century. Where and when we choose which path to go down is a question of strategy and has to be evalued. But one thing should be clear - denying that a problem exists in the first place will not help us solve this dilemma.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
dude that is not what "empirical data" no means not even close just stop you're embarrassing yourself and everyone else.
useless
Social Justice Rogue
Why the hell would muslims want to speak out when you would condemn them, their religion and other practioners in one sentence then appeal to them in the next?
Empirical means whatever he wants it to mean
Empirical means whatever he wants it to mean
aelf
Ashen One
You are so ignorant of Islamic politics and history that I'm not sure there can be a productive discussion with you. Do you know anything about Islamic revolutionaries like Ali Shariati? They use Islam as the basis for their ideologies, sure, but those certainly cannot be reduced to "different degrees of literalism and varying interpretations of certain verses". You might as well say that about every medieval European polity, which is patently nonsense.
Funky said:
So what kind of Islam do you think moderate Islamic societies subscribe to?
Funky said:
Really? You don't think that Western imperial ambitions have been a huge contributing factor to the division, conflict and hence extremism in the Muslim world?
Inasmuch as you insist on describing these values as 'Western', no one whose opinion is honest and informed enough to consider really gives a crap about what Western values prescribe when they are removed from what Western societies have actually practiced. Western values are nothing but what Westerners live, and I think the picture is pretty grim if history has anything to say about it.
I do suspect you are wading into this thread to promote your own brand of hatred under the veneer of polite debate - in other words, you're in the honourable company of so many conservatives whose presence have graced this place.
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