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Islam - What's your view on it?
- Thread starter SalmanBH
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Scaff
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GPI, but you still a million miles away from causality in regard to conflicts.
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The conclusions you cite aren't disproving correlation. It's very likely there is a correlation between Islamic religious belief and GPI from just looking at the wiki but the report doesn't investigate this (and therefore can't dismiss it).
As for conflicts, I didn't actually say that there was a causality, but instead said there was a disproportionate amount of conflicts with a religious element that included Islam.
Scaff
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I disagree, as you like to bang on about, most of them are mainly Countries with Islam as the main religion, as such they are talking about Islam in regard to conflict in those countries.
Your inference is very clear and consistent.
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Oh, the “I didn’t say those exact words” game again. Your premise is that Islam is inherently violent. Conflicts only support your argument if there’s causality, otherwise it’s just coincidence. Without causality, those conflicts could even be a sign that Islam is the victim of violence rather than the source of it. Either way, without causality, your argument falls apart.
People been blaming me and even sending death threats for being a "rich, filthy, Arab terrorist who wants to destroy" or some random bull crap that they pulled up from watching some run of the mill movies or random news channels. Last time I checked, I wasn't the cause of SARS 2.0 or every War, Mass shootings and invasions ever happened in this planet. I been never been to France or anywhere in Europe aside from the Balkans but millions are going to blame me for some edgy student fault. I'm just a 21 year old kid who's struggling with I.T classes and spends his free time playing old racing games or eating some Burgers.
But whatever, we live in a world and an era where wishing genocide on entire population is acceptable under the name "freedom of speech" yet saying the word "guys" instead of "people" or accidentally misgendering someone would not only be considered a Bigoted, Sexist and Homophobic person but would probably land you decades in jail. So much for "open minded" and "freedom".
That being said, I'm surprised there wasn't a "boycott" for Chinese or American products instead of French ones. Considering what's happening since forver, Kinda reminds me of Ford and Coca Cola Ban in 1967 that lasted until 1986 here in the GCC.
But whatever, we live in a world and an era where wishing genocide on entire population is acceptable under the name "freedom of speech" yet saying the word "guys" instead of "people" or accidentally misgendering someone would not only be considered a Bigoted, Sexist and Homophobic person but would probably land you decades in jail. So much for "open minded" and "freedom".
That being said, I'm surprised there wasn't a "boycott" for Chinese or American products instead of French ones. Considering what's happening since forver, Kinda reminds me of Ford and Coca Cola Ban in 1967 that lasted until 1986 here in the GCC.
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I think you're being disingenous with how you're lumping people together. The people who get up in arms about misgendering someone typically aren't exactly the kill-'em-all-if-they-ain't-believe-in-Jesus type. There are plenty of people who get rowdy about misgendering, and there are plenty of people who think killing all Muslims is an acceptable cost for their "freedoms", but I'm not sold that these are generally the same people.
I wasn't saying they are all the same people but really, it doesn't matter. My point is that there's huge double standards when it comes to someone criticizing anything vaguely related to let's say LGBTQ+, Semitic, Black People, various political parties versus something like Arabs, Persians, South Asians (i.e Indians, Pakistani's...etc) and those who are Muslims. One will land you in jail for hate speech while the latter is probably encouraged if not simply ignored more than anything.
The whole recent outrage regarding President Macron had more to do with him openly alienating 1.5 Billion people and the hypocrisy behind it. He essentially dehumanised an entire group into evil extremists who caused all the troubles in the world and that it's in huge crisis. It doesn't help when there's fines against wearing some type of veils or restrictions.
The whole idea of "free open country for everyone" is seemingly flawed when you think about it. Why is x people okay but y people not? If I'm free then why is there off limits or restrictions? Why can't anyone on the street can be a leader of an entire nation? Why corporations are untouchable while citizens are punished for petty reasons? Why do leading nations in the world get away with invading third world nations, genociding them in the name of "freedom", stealing all of their resources and then crippling said nation into dept and chaos.
The funny thing is that as more civilisation are fighting off certain groups like Muslims, the more Muslims starts getting more religious themselves and believe everyone will hate them no mattwr what until they turn into atheist or other religions. it only gets worse from here on.
Yet lumping extremist with average Muslim together is fine i guess? I seen some who also couldn't tell apart Morocco from Oman or India from Turkey Geographical wise. This might be a petty thing but it leads to huge misconceptions about x or y people, culture, beliefs and such.
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I think we're all aware that the current systems are far from perfect. Again, you're taking offence to things that aren't true. While societies may say that their citizens are free, I can't think of a single one that doesn't restrict at least some freedoms. There are reasons for that, and you can agree or disagree with them but if you ever thought that you were totally free then you weren't paying attention.
Why are some people OK and some not? Dunno, depends on the people. There may be a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all.
Why can't anyone on the street be a national leader? See - Trump, Donald.
Why are corporations untouchable? Yes, treating corporations as citizens and allowing them to leverage their significant financial resources as legal and political power hasn't worked out that well and a lot of people think it's awful.
Why are wars? Because the person with the biggest gun is always right.
Welcome to Planet Earth. Things are pretty messed up here, but you'll find that you can usually at least understand how things got to where they are, even if the reasons are dumb and the results are horrible.
You're doing it again. I didn't say that, or anything even remotely like it. I think if you look back through my posts in this thread you'll find that my opinion doesn't even remotely resemble that.
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When he said that France would never have any laws about blasphemy, or offending religion, or against freedom of expression, because it's a secular state... he was actually saying Islam is evil and Muslims are terrorists?
I don't really know what this means. Limits or restrictions on freedom should only be there in order to prevent people from denying other people their freedoms. People in a free society should be free to live without others - and particularly the government - denying their freedoms. Living is a freedom, killing is not.
The freedom to worship as you wish is one you should have, but also one that others should have; their religion should not impact on yours, nor yours on theirs, because you both have the freedom to worship as you wish and not as others wish.
If your religion says you can't draw pictures of your important figures, then you can't do that. It doesn't affect people who don't follow your religion. If your religion says you can't show pictures of your important figures, then you can't do that. It doesn't affect people who don't follow your religion.
The teacher who was murdered chose to show an image of an important Islamic figure - one I presume drawn by Charlie Hebdo - but he is not a Muslim (nor is Charlie Hebdo) so it's irrelevant that Islam forbids it. He did tell all the Muslim students in the class that they did not have to see it if they did not want to, respecting their religion.
The result of doing that was a man who never saw the image, based on the complaints of another man who never saw the image, based on the complaints of another man who never saw the image, based on a report from his daughter in the class who never saw the image because she wasn't in school that day, decided to travel across the country and murder him by sawing his head off with a knife.
This is one man exercising his right to freedom of expression and respecting the religion of others being denied the right to life by someone (and an adult someone; several prominent apologists have called this 18-year old a boy) who also thinks he should not have the freedom of religion and be forced to live under the rules of a religion he doesn't follow.
Freedom isn't at fault here. Absolute arseholes are.
So there you go, you provided my point.
I wasn't referring to you in particular but certain people who says such things on the internet and in real life. I'm sorry if i was blaming you or anyone else.
Didn't France ban Muslim Females wearing religious clothes in the name of "open minded"? How Chinese and Americans are targeting Muslims to fight off terrorism? Xinjiang anyone? War against terror?
Everyone has their own beliefs and that's fine. I have no business in it and I'm fairly sure everyone should agree with that.
BUT
There's a clear difference between simply drawing a photo of Jesus Christ (Isa) compared to someone openly saying that Muslims should be wiped out and banned from entering EU countries. That's not freedom of expression but rather hate speech. It's no different from saying same thing on Jewish/Christian people or deny that the Holocaust never happened or calling Dark Skinned people with racial slurs.
It doesn't help that the Media always shows Muslims/Arabs to be either barbaric evils or greedy rich oil barons. There's no such thing as "normal Arab" or Muslim. It desensitize people into having no problem with discriminate against such groups since they are no longer seen as humans.
I honestly never really cared about this part but what this 18 year old did is NOT acceptable at all. If anything, he gave a bad image for an entire community. If anything, he done something that's considered sinful actually. At the end of the day tho, he's no different from what Alt right wingers have done or what Black Live matters and IRA are doing in their nations.
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Possibly, I don't know. No country has got it truly together when it comes to freedom.
China is an extremely poor example if you're invoking the concept of freedoms.
"Hate speech" is a bizarre construct, because it's incredibly hard to actually define - and laws regarding "hate speech" very much are contrary to freedom of speech. Things that you don't like or want people saying are more important to freedom of speech than only things you do like.
It's important that people are allowed to express things like Holocaust denial, because it's impossible to educate them out of their stupidity if you don't know who they are. If you just lock them up for it, nobody learns anything - and it entrenches their views.
Forgive me if i said something stupid but...
Again, what you're saying is correct regarding freedom of expression. Genuine question: What's the off limits on what's considered Free Speech and borderline Bigotry? Does opinions of some people matters more than others?
And no country will unfortunately.
I honestly think that China aren't that much different compared to what the States and some other 1st world countries have been doing. The difference is that one side is seen as good and other is bad or vice versa like in past conflicts over the history. Axis in WW2 might been seen as the evil force but Allies weren't much better if any to be honest. Same thing goes to the West Vs Soviets during the cold war, hell the recent riots that happened in America made me realize it wasn't the paradise the media been feeding us and so on but this is going WAY off topic.
Again, what you're saying is correct regarding freedom of expression. Genuine question: What's the off limits on what's considered Free Speech and borderline Bigotry? Does opinions of some people matters more than others?
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Disagree that there's a correlation??
Scaff
I'm presenting it as evidence in showing that religion, in those cases Islam, is a factor (I don't really think this is disputable). I'm not really sure how a religion can be a victim of violence when people are going to war in its name - unless perhaps it is being misinterpreted (quite possible)??
I'm not sure what the burden of proof would be to definitively list a religion as causative, in much the same way I wouldn't know when we could say racism is a cause of the disproportionate amount of minorities killed by police in America.
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Scaff
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That your source is only talking about faith generally.
The lack of correlation comes directly from your source, I’ve already quoted it.
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Scaff
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That’s more than evident.
I’m not going to keep repeating the same thing to someone so bigoted they are blind to their own biases.
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Wait a few days and he'll just post the same thing again. It's as if @DLR_Mysterion never went away. Oh, wait...
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But....you're not making sense.
You talk about GPI, then talk about conflicts, then use a conclusion about general religious belief to fit both of these when it can't actually be used for those purposes. I think it's been a good back and forth in this and other threads I've participated in and I've learnt a lot from well articulated arguments but you seem to be resorting to emotion quite frequently (something I've been guilty of, I'll admit) and labelling me without thinking things through. Looking at my position logically I must also be biased against Christianity since I've argued that it is more homophobic than most of the other religions but so far I've never had that charge brought against me - in fact it's been the opposite. I feel the topic of violence is a debate worth having as I fear people are starting to develop a blind side towards Islam and violence committed in its name as it goes against the admirable idea that all religions are equally "good" or "bad" in every respect. Acts like the recent beheadings in Mozambique, however, make me question this belief.
Scaff
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I'm not aware of anyone developing a blindside against it at all, rather a growing wearyness in regard to your repeated and clear bias (or have you forgotten about the 20% of your posts as a minimum fact), your inability to support your repeated claims of 'Islam is the boogieman' (and yes that's sarcasm, not a direct quote), your constant attempts to conflate correlation with causality and your repeated double standards (and no your 'umm but I said Christians were bad homophobes' bone doesn't disprove that at all).
I will be quite frank in regard to this, I do not consider you to be an 'honest broker' on this subject at all.
In all faiths and none, you have an extreme minority that is willing to commit atrocities in the name of that faith, you are attempting to claim that one is far worse than all of the others, yet expect this to be accepted without support (going so far as to express frustration that we had not accepted it blindly as other forums you post on). You make the claim, you back it up, it's not for others to disprove a hypothesis that you have, to date, utterly failed to support.
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Scaff
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How one earth did you miss it when you quoted me doing just that?
As you seem to not be able to understand it when its in a sentence with other information let me isolate it for you.
One token criticism of Christianity doesn't eradicate your double standards in every other area.
And you're right back to it...
Let's see what historians have to say on that claim, shall we?
“European scholars believed that conversions to Islam were made at the point of the sword and that conquered peoples were given the choice of conversion or death. It is now apparent that conversion by force, while not unknown in Muslim countries, was, in fact, rare. Muslim conquerors ordinarily wished to dominate rather than convert, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary.” (Ira Lapidus - A History of Islamic Societies )
“the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.” (De Lacy O’Leary, Islam at the Cross Roads - De Lacy, as well as being a historian was also a minister in the Church of England)
https://yaqeeninstitute.org/hassam-...d-a-critical-look-at-forced-conversions#ftnt8
https://rps.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/kennedy.pdf
Oh and before you quote-mine the Koran, don't forget to include the part that most Islamaphobes exclude (guess why - oh context)
"If one amongst the Pagans ask thee for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah; and then escort him to where he can be secure. That is because they are men without knowledge"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_Verse
Interesting to see (once again) that not only are you seemingly unable to read all the words in quotes you cite but also that you then immediately apply the same double standards! Not only that but also managed to pretty much repeat each of the issues I raised about your posting history on this topic as well (and no, an attempt to pose it as a question doesn't change that at all).
It's quite simple, both of the two largest faiths on earth have used forced conversions, both historically and to a much lesser degree now (as have secular regimes), yet you once again apply it to one faith, and do so in an utterly uncritical, un-supported and biased manner.
Well done for managing to deny the accusations (or plain ignore them), while simultaneously demonstrating them.
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I can't see how it is a token criticism? Homophobia has had a horrific impact on people's lives for centuries, and unfavourable attitudes on homosexuals because of Christianity continue to this day. Why should criticism of this be so different to criticism of a religion's link with violence?
Those are talking about forced conversions; my non-rhetorical question was about the religion's association with military expansion whether by armies or, more latterly, terrorist groups. Muslim armies and conquest has been a thing since its foundation, and creating a caliphate/Islamic state is the raison d'être of many of the groups creating conflict around the world today. I suspect that there were likely periods of peace where caliphates and empires didn't seek to spread further but it remains notable that Muhammad is maybe the only founder of a major religion who did command an army and so this violence has been present in the religion from the outset contrary to (all?) others.Scaff
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Scaff
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Nice attempt to try and deflect it back on me, however if you consider it just as significant an issue and haven’t just used it as a token, then your posting history should clearly show me how wrong I am.
Guess what...
Let’s see, religious leader has a chat with God about his people, sets some rules and then goes on to punish his oppressors and unbelievers violently.
Now I think I may have heard that one before, as it’s also the plot to the Old Testament.
Why on earth do I, an atheist, actually need to point this out to a Christian?
Also still attempting to Ret-Con Christian expansion and empire building I see.
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But I've always argued that, even recently in this thread. The difference is there hasn't been as much pushback as there is with the views on violence. I can only respond to what's posted by others....
There definitely were times where armies marched in the name of God in the Old Testament, but Christianity's founder never had such an army. After Jesus's death Christians were persecuted until they were accepted by the Romans at which point they turned into the persecutors.Scaff
Scaff
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Your posting history tells a very different story.
Oh dear.
Im talking about the founder of Judaism, you know the supposed origin of which Christianity takes as its own origin story in the OT.
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