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Author | Topic: The Search for Moderate Islam | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
It is a problem when Western political ideology is tied to the Christian religion. If Christians actually practiced what they preached, our culture would change. We would be less consumer oriented, less materialistic, more giving and more generous towards all cultures and beliefs. Moderate Islam would respect us.
As it stands now, moderate Islam sees no superior virtue in the mindset of the West. They may not support ISIS and extremist Islam, but by their silence they also do not condemn it. Saying, "I don't know," is the same as saying, "Maybe."~ZombieRingo It's easy to see the speck in somebody else's ideas - unless it's blocked by the beam in your own.~Ringo If a savage stops believing in his wooden god, it does not mean that there is no God only that God is not wooden.(Leo Tolstoy)
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jar Member (Idle past 425 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Phat writes: As it stands now, moderate Islam sees no superior virtue in the mindset of the West. They may not support ISIS and extremist Islam, but by their silence they also do not condemn it. But almost all of Islam does condemn extremists like ISIS. Just look at the news reports of marches against terrorism even in locations like Tunisia as well as the policies of Islamic heads of States.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1055 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
The first modern example of "terrorism" was likely the Jewish Zionist terrorists in Palestine and even today Israeli terrorism has been refined to almost a high art. Nonsense. Zionist terrorism began only in the 1920s, while the modern concept of terrorism probably dates back to Russian anarchist movements of the mid-19th century. By the end of the 19th century, anarchist terrorism was a big thing - with terrorist attacks by anarchists ending the lives of a Russian Tsar and Amercan and French Presidents, along with many other victims of lesser note. Terrorism is, of course, as old as politics. The only thing that changed in the 19th century was the invention of dynamite and bombs.
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jar Member (Idle past 425 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined:
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But terrorism as we see it today, attacks on innocent non-connected individuals seems to be modern and beginning with the bombing of the King David hotel. not aimed at an individual or military target, not aimed at a parliament or congress, a palace or military base, a monarch or duke or king or prince of whatsoever quality.
I see a whole difference of kind there.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1055 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined:
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But terrorism as we see it today, attacks on innocent non-connected individuals seems to be modern and beginning with the bombing of the King David hotel. not aimed at an individual or military target, not aimed at a parliament or congress, a palace or military base, a monarch or duke or king or prince of whatsoever quality. I see a whole difference of kind there. Amongst the targets bombed by the Irish Republican Brotherhood in their 1880s campaign were railway stations, bridges and the London Underground. Zionist terrorist groups were heavily influenced by the tactics of Irish Republicans who were old hands at the same thing. Amongst the anarchist terrorist attacks on the 19th century, one of the most famous was the bombing of the Liceu opera house in Barcelona, which killed 72 people, none Dukes. When asked in court how he could justify the murder of so many innocents in his bombing of a Paris cafe in 1894, anarchist Emile Henry opined that "there are no innocent bourgeois".
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jar Member (Idle past 425 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined:
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Thank you. I learn stuff every day.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I will follow that up with a link to a bit I saw on the local news this morning:
One thing you will notice entirely absent from the discussion (though hinted at in the overlain video clips) is the specific culture(s) responsible for the majority (all?) of the honor violence mentioned. Is it Christians? Is it Atheists? Who is it? To which culture(s) do the people committing honor violence belong? Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Ummm, you seem to have read my post quite wrong. Really?
The little girl was a murder victim not a suicide bomber. That is correct, and exactly my point. Strange that the first three words of your post were
quote: given you want me to believe that I was reading your post wrong, can you see how I might be confused into thinking you were calling her a suicide bomber, given that you referred to her as a suicide bomber? The bit where you failed to mention her murderers in the post at all, or that she was murdered, and how it was all about her (a murder victim's) beliefs and that you disregarded the murderer's religious beliefs. But no, you are right. I totally read your post about how a child suicide bomber killed at least 16 and she might have been a Muslim *wink wink* completely wrong.
But still, she wasn't Amish. Again, she was a child, not a religious perspective. Her religious perspective could not be less relevant to the story. Unless you are a disgusting person that wants criticize the opinions of a murdered little girl as if they were causative in her murder and that this is somehow her/her opinion's fault. And not the murderous band of violent religious maniacs that probably kidnapped and did - or threatened to do - terrible things to her/her friends/her family.
Care to guess what the dominant religion is in that area? (Isn't Mormon either.) I wasn't calling your post disgusting because you were pointing out demographics. It was the calling a little girl a murderer and making out that she wouldn't have done it if she were Amish (she would, because her religious views were utterly irrelevant to the situation.)
But what amazes me is how many apologists there are for the religion that fosters all of this mayhem. Once people like you stop blaming a little girls opinions for another group's murderous campaign maybe we can start having a sensible discussion. Until then, it is going to appear to you as if you are facing religious apologists because you think that pointing out that little girls who have their family and friend's lives threatened, are lied to and so on are somehow blameworthy in this struggle because their parents are most likely to have taught her that Muhammed is the true and final prophet. We know believing in Islam is not causative to violence - otherwise you and I would be in the midst of a total war. I have an Irish friend who who was held at gunpoint by Catholic terrorists on more than one occasion. Incidentally, he was raised a Catholic in a very Catholic area of Ireland. If, as a little boy, he had been threatened, cajoled, manipulated, coerced etc into inadvertently delivering an IRA device...would you be saying 'Well....he was a Catholic...."? The problems are exacerbated by entrenched religious differences, obviously. But both with the IRA and Boko Haram - there are additional factors, without which there would be no violent madness. Those factors were mostly dealt with in Ireland (it took a long time) and unlike when I was a kid, nobody worries about IRA bombs any more. In Nigeria the problems have never been addressed and have been allowed to fester. Incidentally, they are not entirely dissimilar problems in both countries (a split between westernised sections North and South and the resulting conflicts of religious and cultural differences). And most Irish people hated the IRA as much as most Nigerians hate Boko Haram. Nigeria finds itself 50/50 Christian/Muslim, a divide largely based on geography. There are precious natural resources in one part of the nation. One part of the nation is doing OK for itself and is pretty well educated using western methods, whereas the other is less so (Hence Boko Haram meaning 'western education is forbidden'). It is, as in other areas a tension that has built based on relatively recent historical context. The specific religions involved may give a specific flavour to the violence, but the existence of the violence was pretty inevitable whether these people were Catholic/Protestant, Sunni/Shia, Hindu/Sunni or Shia/Catholic. The outbreak of outrageous violence is entirely to be expected in countries whose borders do not match the demographics and essentially have two different people's located in different parts of the country being ruled often by one of those groups of people. It's a recipe for disaster everywhere just ask Ukraine. Or Bosnia. Or Ireland. Or America. Or, well, look at any nation's history and this is likely to come up sometime. So no, people arguing for nuance are not religious apologists. If you had ever read anything I had to say about religion, that should be painfully obvious. The point is that it isn't ISLAM itself that is the problem, it's certain types of dogma combined with certain social/cultural/political contexts. I'm sorry the world is not so simple that we can see a little girl walking into a market and exploding and say 'that child killed herself to murder others and she was likely from a Muslim family (although the region where this occurred does have a significant Christian presence so one can't really have any confidence in such a thing), therefore Islam is not a moderate religion because this little girl murdering people is not moderate"
Care to guess about what percentage of all terrorism today comes from one primary source? (And no, it isn't the Amish or the Mormons.) Is today special? Seriously, why use the qualifier 'today'? Is it because Catholics and Jews could conceivably have topped this list in relatively recent history? Have we reached a consensus on the objective difference between freedom fighters and terrorists? Is Islam really a singular source? Is that because it isn't so much about the specific religions but about social and historical context? Nuance? Perhaps? I mean its unlikely the Mormons are going to start a campaign of murder and mayhem any time soon, but they're wealthy and powerful and live in a society which may dislike them, but the hostility is mild, and they're wealthy and powerful. But give them the right social/political context and you get the Mountain Meadows massacre. As for the Amish, they've never really had the numbers or the social context, but they are ultra conservative and ruthlessly conformist - they certainly have the right ingredients there, but the amount of Amish in the world is around the same number of Muslims as there in Japan. It's not enough to expect nationwide conflicts to arise with them.
quote: Hrm, the fact that they were Mormon was certainly important to the situation, but apparently there were social and political factors that are considered to be the real causes. I'm sure historians will be looking back at this period and saying 'We attribute {Insert name history gives this series of things} to Islam. Just Islam. It's just awful. We know that there are Muslims today that aren't doing this, and there were Muslims then that weren't. Indeed, we know that throughout history Muslims guilty of these kinds of acts were overwhelmingly in the minority. Nevertheless, in our considered opinion all the border disputes, the ethnic groupings, the historical injustices perceived and real, all of these things and everything besides were not the real factors. They may have made it a bit worse. The perpetrators talk of the damage colonialism has done, their fear and mistrust of further westernization harming their culture and damaging their religion...all distractions sewed by liberal apologists. There was only one cause of the violence of the early 21st Century: Islam. Islam Islam Islam. Totally Islam. "
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Jon Inactive Member |
What separates the IS Islamists from the good Islam of Saudi Arabia? According to Prince Turki Al Faisal, it's the presence/absence of a "legal system".
Saudi Arabia a 'Prime Target' for Islamic State (video from the BBC) When asked, at 1:10, how Saudi Arabia's criticism of IS can be taken seriously in the face of its own record of human rights abuses, the good prince responds by saying that IS "is a terrorist group; it has no legal system. The Kingdom is a state; the Kingdom has a judicial system that traces its history even longer than English common law". And that's it. The difference between Saudi Arabia and IS is that Saudi Arabia has a legal system backing its human rights violations while IS does not. An important question to ask: If the Middle Eastern countries' Western-aided fight against IS is successful, what type of a government can we expect them set up in its stead? Saudi Arabia clearly cares whether Islamist human rights violations are carried out by a formal government or not, but should we?Love your enemies!
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Most liberals think that religion is never the true source of a person’s bad behavior. That isn't the case of the liberals I know. However, most liberals will point out that the kind of religion a person adopts is related to their social position. A wealthy Muslim in a western society is less likely to actually believe radical Islamic dogma than a disaffected teenager made homeless by Israeli military retaliation. So the question isn't why 'why did that individual do action x' but 'why are toxic religious beliefs gaining traction within this society?' And the answer isn't the specific host religion - it's usually a wider issue than that. Now true, some 'liberals' may appear to, or actually, believe that Islam is blameless in this. I think, however, the perception exists that liberals are guilty of this because one side of the argument is saying "Islam is to blame", and the liberals are saying 'No, that's not right'. And the other side interprets this as 'Islam is blameless', rather than 'Islam is not the main culprit for bad things happening, it's just the lens through which grievances being met with vengeance are being viewed as a means to rationalise or justify otherwise unacceptable behaviour. And it really really doesn't have to be Islam. It wouldn't really be appropriate, for instance, to regard the League of Militant Atheists' actions as being 'because of atheism', even if...
Even when jihadists explicitly state their religious motivations Yeah, the thing is - they don't just do that do they? Marytydom videos are clearly in the language of religion, but they list temporal grievances such as the location of US military bases, western corruption of children, economic sanctions, political or military interferences, national bullying, drone strikes and so on. So yeah. Now I know Sam knows this, as I've seen him talk about it. I'm addressing you guys though so...
If a man murders his neighbor because he wants to steal his property and doesn’t want to leave a witness, everyone accepts the killer’s account of his actions. Unless, of course, suddenly Estonians started killing their neighbours for their property at a higher frequencies and then we have to ask ourselves - why has the Estonian culture been infected with neighbourcidal robberies?
But when he says, as every jihadist does, that he was driven by a sense of religious obligation and a yearning for Paradise, liberals insist that the search for an underlying motive must continue. Because almost every jihadist says more than this.
quote: See? He's clearly taking this specific action being to take revenge for oppression, interference etc. He's rationalising that it needs to be done with reference to it being willed by God and part of a Holy action, absolutely.
quote: quote: quote: quote: quote: So yeah, to run with Sam's statement: But when he says, as every jihadist does, that he was driven by a sense of religious obligation and a yearning for Paradise and a sense of deep grievance against political enemies they perceive as oppressive and unstoppable through peaceful means, liberals insist that the motivations can't be simply boiled down to the religious position of the perpetrator.
That’s what is so crazy about this Islamophobia charge. The people who commit the worse offensesthe honor killers, the suicide bombers, the Taliban gunman who attempted to murder Malala Yousafzaiare absolutely clear about their motives and articulate them at every opportunity. They are motivated by Islam. Yes, other religions have problematic doctrines. And there is the problem. We're saying that it isn't Islam that is necessarily the problem here, and that perfectly civil and nice versions of Islam exist. When you say the problem is with Islam you create a social situation wherein there is fear and distrust of Muslims. A toxic environment of distrusting and even hating a religious or ethnic group has not historically worked itself out in a healthy way by Westerners. Therefore, there is genuine reason to be concerned with the way this is being discussed. Europe is still fighting against a strong underbelly of Nationalists who would happily deport the Muslims (and more besides I'd wager, but they'd never publicly say it). Remember when a certain religious/ethnic group was being blamed for the ills of the world in an environment of growing nationalistic movements (which didn't even have to be in the majority to cause major problems)? So let's talk about things sensibly: 1) There are many factors behind the jihadist movement. Social, political, cultural, historical and so on. This is something we have some degree of control over, but decisions are difficult and fraught with the possibility of exacerbation. 2) To the extent that Islam is to blame, it should be noted that it is much the same with Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Christians who have also engaged in this behaviour. We might hypothesize that some religions have features that make them more vulnerable to toxic variants, but we shouldn't just be looking at it with an air of superiority, but with a view to understanding how we can minimise the ability for those toxic versions to gain traction.
But Christians and Jews don’t tend to take the worst of its passages seriously They have done in the past, they still do in some places, and they might do so more in the future. It depends on political, social and cultural factors.
Most important, in my view, is the fact that Christianity and Judaism do not have clear doctrines of jihad, nor do they promise, ad nauseam, that martyrs go straight to Paradise. Islam's doctrine on jyhad is not clear, is not singular, and has no universal consensus. If you find yourself in a region where the idea that martyrs go to paradise and that killing yourself and random civilians is martyrdom is common, you'll probably notice that the education system is corrupt, the land is poor with a history of war, civil and otherwise - has unclear borders probably arbitrarily drawn by a European nation who didn't give them independence until sometime in very recent history. You'll find the people feel oppressed and they feel powerless.
Of course, your focus has been on the plight of women and girls under Islam, many millions of whom live in conditions that are antithetical to the most basic human happiness, as you know all too well. And the rationale for their oppression is drawn directly from scripture. Of course, but that's just a rationalization. The reason men oppress women is because they can and by doing so it maximises their power. When they educated and women are not they can manipulate and control women easier, they can get the jobs with power and money and don't have to compete against 50% of the population for those positions. The conditions many women found themselves in 19th Century Britain were not exactly great either, and Scripture was used to justify treating western women like crap for millennia. Patriarchy, even extreme patriarchal societies are not exclusively populated with Islamic nations over all of history. This is a problem. Because we see that many problems are coming from Muslims, it is tempting to blame the easiest to understand common element: their religion. IT is certainly making the situation worse, entrenching it and makes it near impossible to imagine it. And yes, some things do seem to our eyes to be difficult to see how they could ever exist within a peaceful moderate religion. Then again, Christians used to burn and hang and behead heathens and witches with alarming regularity. OFten for political or social reasons of course. For the most part those reasons don't exist now. Christianity still does. Persecuting innocent people for being witches still happens in some minor communities, but it is rare enough, and the communities are insular enough, to make it difficult to detect and investigate. Maybe, despite their seeming strong association now may be a distant notion that seems impossible in the future. Without the need to eradicate Islam or severely reduce it to achieve this end.
Anyone who likens the criticism of Islam as a doctrine to a hatred of Muslims as peopleor to anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of bigotryhas made it more difficult for Muslims who are truly suffering to speak about their problems. Feel free to criticise Islam, but you should be criticising Islam, not laying 100% blame for bad things upon Islam. Sure, the reason that woman was flogged, or that blogger was beaten to death, is because of the religious beliefs of the floggers/lynchers but a) those religious beliefs are not 'Islam'. They are Muslims, and their religion is Islam, but Islam is not a single thing with a correct version. b) The question therefore is should be 'why does that version of Islam have the traction that it does to that community/culture/nation? Dismissing this view as dishonest is not a good idea. If the problem is ISLAM an sich, then we're fucked and there's nothing we can do but genocide and total war. We're not going to persuade billions of people to convert. So basically, we're stuck with the shitfest and we just have to wait it out. If, on the other hand, we see the problem as a toxic brand of a certain religion has gained sufficient popularity to be causing misery and violence and low education in certain regions of the world. This is a problem that isn't easy to fix, but it is something we can influence if any of the reasons the toxic brands are flourishing is because of the historical and present relations with the people of those regions. Historically, the latter approach has led to long term resolutions, the former approach simply leads to short-term cessations of hostility. So which is it? Life under the red fear, or export McDonald's?
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Jon Inactive Member |
A wealthy Muslim in a western society is less likely to actually believe radical Islamic dogma than a disaffected teenager made homeless by Israeli military retaliation. An unsupportable belief, it would seem:
Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
What separates the IS Islamists from the good Islam of Saudi Arabia? Good should be in scare quotes here. Unless you personally believe that Wahhabism really is a good Islam.
An important question to ask: If the Middle Eastern countries' Western-aided fight against IS is successful, what type of a government can we expect them set up in its stead? Based on our track record for interfering in the region: Something awful. We can hope for a Turkey over a Saudi Arabia though.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
An unsupportable belief What makes you think it is unsupportable? The video didn't address it.
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Jon Inactive Member |
Good should be in scare quotes here. Unless you personally believe that Wahhabism really is a good Islam. Yes; I really didn't mean to call it good by any meaningful measure of morality or ethics, but only wanted to point out that the Saudis try to market it as better than the Islam of IS (which it isn't) and how the popular media often buy into such nonsense, though the BBC report I linked to certainly attempts to call the matter into question in a way few media outlets typically do. But I don't want to add scare quotes, because there are plenty of people who, by tiptoeing around the matter, enable the image of Saudi Arabia as a Middle Eastern force of Islamic good, which is complete bullshit.
We can hope for a Turkey over a Saudi Arabia though. And the likelihood of that is...? Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Yes; I really didn't mean to call it good by any meaningful measure of morality or ethics, but only wanted to point out that the Saudis try to market it as better than the Islam of IS (which it isn't) and how the popular media often buy into such nonsense, I've not seen the media refer to Saudi Arabia as 'good', sounds scary if they are. The Saudi's are the proud sponsors of al-Qaeda, who are rivals of IS, so obviously they will say they are superior to IS.
And the likelihood of that is...? Very unlikely. Turkey was able to more or less figure out for themselves and did so coming out of the liberal Islamic world of the 19th Century with the right man was in the right place socially and spatially. Unfortunately, Europe and later the US, fucked up any reasonable chance of it happening anywhere else.
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