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Forums - General Discussion - I think we should respect all religions (people might not know their friend is devoted to muslim or Chrisitanity etc)

JuliusHackebeil said:
Eagle367 said:

What is so singularly different about Islam. Do enlighten us. This sort of "Islam is savage and barbaric and backwards" used to be much more common. It still exists but when you ask the people that say these things, i never seem to get an answer that is true. So please do tell. 

A few things up front:
Outlining how bad Islam is could still be seen as part of the topic of this thread, since it shows how not every religion should be respected just because.
Outlining how bad Islam is, is not me badmouthing all muslims. Surely some muslims. But my concern is about ideas, convictions and their consequences, not people. (And just to be super safe - I know that there are hundreds of millions of muslims who are super nice people. And I don't have a problem with them.)
Outlining how bad Islam is does not mean I do not sea the bad sides of other religions aswell. The catholic church (just as an example) has a very sorry history of opression, torture, bigotry, homophobia, war, child molestation, etc. 

And this is already my first point: For the catholic church most of these horrendous offences are firmly in the past. For Islam the problematic and downright rotten things happen in the present.

My second point: The catholic church is still backwards in many ways. But that does not matter too much to western societies, since there is a clear break between the church and the government. This is one of the most fundamental ideas of the western world. The emancipation from and separation of the curch from the government. This does not and did not happen in islamic dominated countries because Islam, in many ways, is built to be the government. I read the Qur'an. And in favour of the bibles allegorical stories to give vague moral guidance, much of the Qur'an is just laws. There are multiple detailed sections just about inheritance law for example.
When a country is governed by a text and its laws are directly taken from that text that is hundreds of years old and officially (even though it happened in the past) cannot be edited, that country and its culture almost by definition is backwards.
But who is really in favour of making sharia the law of the land? -A lot of people. % of muslims in favour of islamic law as the official law in their country: Niger 86%, Djibouti 82 %, Congo 74 %, Nigeria 71 %, Uganda 66 %, Irag 91 %, Pakistan 84 %, Afghanistan 99 %, Malaysia 86 %, etc. -This is already hundres of millions of people and the list goes on and on. This is a big problem. Your country cannot be modern, or free, or democratic, or fair, if it is ruled by the church. Data: pew research.

My third point: You cannot be openly gay in many of the islamic dominated countries and expect to have a good or long life. Again from pew: "Publics in Africa and in predominantly Muslim countries remain among the least accepting of homosexuality. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least nine-in-ten in Nigeria (98%), Senegal (96%), Ghana (96%), Uganda (96%) and Kenya (90%) believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society." And: "Overwhelming majorities in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed also say homosexuality should be rejected, including 97% in Jordan, 95% in Egypt, 94% in Tunisia, 93% in the Palestinian territories, 93% in Indonesia, 87% in Pakistan, 86% in Malaysia, 80% in Lebanon and 78% in Turkey."

My fourth point: Misogyny. In many of the detailed laws found in the Qur'an women just get the short end of the deal. I would refer to inheritence laws again, just as an example of many. For the bigger picture there is again some pew reserach data: % of muslims who completely or mostly agree that a wife should always obey her husband: Tajikistan 89 %, Uzbekistan 84 %, Kyrgyzstan 75 %, Malaysia 96 %, Indonesia 93 %, Afghanistan 94 %, etc. Again hundreds of millions of people. The list goes on and on. Completely unacceptable.

My fith point: Criticism and mockery. There is no single religion in the world, there is no single organisation in the world powerful and savage enough that you have to fear for your life if you draw a picture that they do not like. Not a single one, except for Islam. Again from pew: Violence against civilian targets can be justified in order to defend Islam: French muslims 16 % often or sometimes, 19 % rarely; Spanish and British muslims 15 % often or sometimes, 9 % rarely; Nigerian Muslims 46 % often or sometimes, 23 % rarely. Again the list goes on. Hundreds of millions of muslims believe that violence against civilian targets can be justified in order to defend Islam. When so many people are okay to kill innocent people something is majorly wrong with the belief and value system of these people.

My sixth point: Apostasy. Pew: "19 Certain hadith either state or imply that the penalty for apostasy, or converting to another faith, is death. See Sahih al-Bukhari 52:260 and 83:37." And: "Nevertheless, in six of the 20 countries where there are adequate samples for analysis, at least half of those who favor making Islamic law the official law also support executing apostates." And: "In the South Asian countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, strong majorities of those who favor making Islamic law the official law of the land also approve of executing apostates (79% and 76%, respectively). However, in Bangladesh far fewer (44%) share this view. A majority of Malaysian Muslims (62%) who want to see sharia as their country’s official law also support taking the lives of those who convert to other faiths. But fewer take this position in neighboring Thailand (27%) and Indonesia (18%)."

Honestly, I could make many more and more detailed points. But I think the picture is quite clear already. Islam is way worse than a lot of people would like to believe. And it can be an absolut nightmare for women, gays, trans people, free thinkers and critics.

So let's go through these points. If you think islam is built to be the government,  you don't understand Islam. Ask any real scholar about Islam and they will tell you it's decentralized and doesn't mesh well with the modern state at all. Regarding sharia law, you do not seem to understand it. Then again many Muslims don't either. Sharia is supposed to be your own personal code as a Muslim, not a legal thing for society. Sharia is not one thing. It's many things to many people. The legal framework of Islam I'd called fiqh and people study it endlessly and there are variations of how they interpret law. These sorts of differences are why different sects exist. Asking Muslims about Sharia is a useless question. It's just one of these stupid things people chose to focus on much like jihad, which means to struggle and entails anything from struggling against your own personal demons to struggling against oppression. It is not holy war.

Your point about blaming Islam is a little bit confusing seeing as there are oppression and backwardness and all of that in underdeveloped and developing societies.  These societies have backwards views regardless of which religion they follow. Hell the evangelicals have such a sway in US politics and are not exactly separate from the governments in ways people pretend they are and the hindutva are bringing an extremist view of Hinduism to their government and in Myanmar, an extremist view of their religion is also being used to commit genocide against the rohingya. Point is religions are malleable and that might be a critique you can levy. Other factors determine how reactionary people are going to be. For example, Muslims in the US have more progressive values than Christians on average in the US and that is true for Canadians as well. Stability and development create progressive values. Instability and war and such stuff create reactionary ideology. Wahabism wasn't born from the golden age of Islam(because Muslims were way more progress back then) but was born when the colonial powers ravaged across the middle east. It's a new more reactionary interpretation of Islam that did not exist classically. 

Most of your other points also relate to this factor of the less developed countries having backwards values. It is the fault of a lot of societal factors but also the views of the Muslims there. And violence for mockery is wrong but the stats you show also show that a super majority of Muslims in more developed nations are against it. There have been polls that show Christians in the US are far more supportive of violence than the numbers you showed for Muslims in France and other places. With regards to women, Islam teaches about there being no superiority of men. Of course misogynists will ignore those parts.

The apostasy thing is again about interpretations. Christians used to kill people for not being part of their religion,  not just apostasy. But again, these views diminish through progress.  You showed how Afghanistan and Pakistan have such reactionary views. Have you seen the state of those countries? Afghanistan has gone through war after war since the 70s and pakistan has a huge economic problems and has been facing terrorism for decades.

As I have said before, there is nothing uniquely wrong about Islam. The problem of Islam and other religions is that they are too malleable. People can twist them to mean what they want. The things you pointed out are also not unique to Islam. None of them are. And your assertion that it's just Islam in the modern age is also not true. Most Muslims live in underdeveloped and developing countries and that leads to reactionary thinking. You can see it happen to Hinduism in India, Buddhism in Myanmar, Christianity in many African nations, east European nations and the US. What can be the key point to focus on should be the reactionary elements themselves. Islam is followed by billions and has a lot of interpretations but some are just wrong and anti human. The focus should be on those reactionary elements like wahabism, evangelicism, hindutva, etc. I have said this before but it bears repeating,  the problems you described are not unique to Islam, they are a product of instability and underdevelopment. 



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Fei-Hung said:

Used to work for PVE up and down the UK. The simple take here for a lot of which happens across religions is when we do assign something due to religion / race and when we don't. There is an inconsistency.

Black shooter - gang banger
Muslim shooter - Islamist
White shooter - mental health

Take another example: if a Catholic priest grooms kids, is it because he is a Catholic or because he is gay? Or is it because he is a pervert and should be treated as a criminal who happens to be Catholic?

Another example was when I was invited to a Home Office meeting. Someone made a statement that said there is a grooming issue with the Muslim Pakistani Kashmiri community in the north.

So I asked, is it happening because they are Muslim, Pakistani, Kashmiri or in the north or all the above?

At the same time, why was the fact they were part of a drug group being ignored? If you don't look at the source of the issue then you will never be able to get to the bottom of it and there will be never be justice for the victims.

Another example is the likes of ISIS and AlQaeeda. In the Muslim world they are known as Khawarjites. They are not considered Muslim as they are seen to be people who use religion to use violence for political and personal gains. They break serious rules and regulations within the religion. However, the only people who agree they are Muslim and empower them are the group's themselves, their supporters and far right extremists as well as the media and governments who do it for clicks, votes and contracts.

Every religion has made a great contribution to the world as we know it. Everything from hospitals, laws, core science and medicine to food, architecture and entertainment including video games.

We can either focus on the negative and sit here and argue all day or we can get along. You either want cohesion or you don't.

People arguing about forced marriage in Islam let's say, has nothing to do with the religion at all. That is cultural but people are so miseducated to cannot tell the difference or have been brainwashed to believing it is a religious issue.

I agree with you mostly there but some corrections. Daesh and Al Qaeda are wahabists, not khwarijites. They are still muslim but not good muslims, or good human beings and I hope they rot in hell. We as muslims had issues about people calling each other not Muslim and creating a lot of issues so scholars from all sects decided that to be Muslim you just have to believe in one God and the final messenger. Everything else is ancillary. No crime or sin you commit can remove that from you and only God can know since we humans cannot read minds.

But other than that yes, people confuse a lot of cultural problems with the religion. Islam requires consent from the people getting married. Forced marriages are against Islam. And yes people also ignore the material conditions that give rise to reactionary thinking.  And yes people also misunderstand the meaning of words like sharia and jihad.

I think the biggest problem with religions is how bad faith actors can use it to justify atrocities. That there is much malleability that you can do whatever you want and still pull off that aesthetic. Like the military in Myanmar is using Buddhism to genocide rohingyas, Modhi and RSS are using Hinduism to justify oppression, daesh and al qaeda use Islam to kill and murder people, Israel is using judaism to occupy Palestine and have an apartheid state and evangelicals use Christianity for all of their reactionary bs in the US. The reason Christians and Islam seem to have more problematic elements is because they are the biggest religions around. The more people follow something, the more likely there will be bas faith actors in that group trying to use the ideology towards unwanted events.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Fei-Hung said:

Used to work for PVE up and down the UK. The simple take here for a lot of which happens across religions is when we do assign something due to religion / race and when we don't. There is an inconsistency.

Black shooter - gang banger
Muslim shooter - Islamist
White shooter - mental health

Take another example: if a Catholic priest grooms kids, is it because he is a Catholic or because he is gay? Or is it because he is a pervert and should be treated as a criminal who happens to be Catholic?

Another example was when I was invited to a Home Office meeting. Someone made a statement that said there is a grooming issue with the Muslim Pakistani Kashmiri community in the north.

So I asked, is it happening because they are Muslim, Pakistani, Kashmiri or in the north or all the above?

At the same time, why was the fact they were part of a drug group being ignored? If you don't look at the source of the issue then you will never be able to get to the bottom of it and there will be never be justice for the victims.

Another example is the likes of ISIS and AlQaeeda. In the Muslim world they are known as Khawarjites. They are not considered Muslim as they are seen to be people who use religion to use violence for political and personal gains. They break serious rules and regulations within the religion. However, the only people who agree they are Muslim and empower them are the group's themselves, their supporters and far right extremists as well as the media and governments who do it for clicks, votes and contracts.

Every religion has made a great contribution to the world as we know it. Everything from hospitals, laws, core science and medicine to food, architecture and entertainment including video games.

We can either focus on the negative and sit here and argue all day or we can get along. You either want cohesion or you don't.

People arguing about forced marriage in Islam let's say, has nothing to do with the religion at all. That is cultural but people are so miseducated to cannot tell the difference or have been brainwashed to believing it is a religious issue.

It's wrong to blame a religious person's actions based solely on the religion, but it is just as wrong to ignore when religion is clearly complicit.

For example, Catholicism. The Catholic church intentionally shielded pedohiles from liability. Instead of any system of accountability, they moved pedophiles around the country into new positions where they would have access to more children. They continued to advocate practices that would give priests unsupervised access to children, and did nothing to warn anyone. The amount of priests who were accused of child abuse is absolutely staggering. It is too staggering to be a coincidence. Several dioceses have engaged in child abuse so frequently that they have had gone bankrupt from having to pay victims. And those are only the victims who can prove it. Literally billions of dollars worth of child abuse. 

The abuse could not have occured without the practices of the Catholic Church, and the leaders willfully ignoring the issue at best and actively supporting it at worst. I'm not saying the Catholic Church is an organization that was specifically designed to carry out acts of child abuse. But, if one wanted to design an organization to accomplish that goal, they could not have created a more effective system.

So, this is not focusing on the negative or just not wanting to get along. It's about accountability. It's about asking the question "Is this because of the religion?" But instead of just asking it as a rhetorical question, we actually need to find an answer. When the answer is yes, action needs to be taken. 



Eagle367 said:
JuliusHackebeil said:

A few things up front:
Outlining how bad Islam is could still be seen as part of the topic of this thread, since it shows how not every religion should be respected just because.
Outlining how bad Islam is, is not me badmouthing all muslims. Surely some muslims. But my concern is about ideas, convictions and their consequences, not people. (And just to be super safe - I know that there are hundreds of millions of muslims who are super nice people. And I don't have a problem with them.)
Outlining how bad Islam is does not mean I do not sea the bad sides of other religions aswell. The catholic church (just as an example) has a very sorry history of opression, torture, bigotry, homophobia, war, child molestation, etc. 

And this is already my first point: For the catholic church most of these horrendous offences are firmly in the past. For Islam the problematic and downright rotten things happen in the present.

My second point: The catholic church is still backwards in many ways. But that does not matter too much to western societies, since there is a clear break between the church and the government. This is one of the most fundamental ideas of the western world. The emancipation from and separation of the curch from the government. This does not and did not happen in islamic dominated countries because Islam, in many ways, is built to be the government. I read the Qur'an. And in favour of the bibles allegorical stories to give vague moral guidance, much of the Qur'an is just laws. There are multiple detailed sections just about inheritance law for example.
When a country is governed by a text and its laws are directly taken from that text that is hundreds of years old and officially (even though it happened in the past) cannot be edited, that country and its culture almost by definition is backwards.
But who is really in favour of making sharia the law of the land? -A lot of people. % of muslims in favour of islamic law as the official law in their country: Niger 86%, Djibouti 82 %, Congo 74 %, Nigeria 71 %, Uganda 66 %, Irag 91 %, Pakistan 84 %, Afghanistan 99 %, Malaysia 86 %, etc. -This is already hundres of millions of people and the list goes on and on. This is a big problem. Your country cannot be modern, or free, or democratic, or fair, if it is ruled by the church. Data: pew research.

My third point: You cannot be openly gay in many of the islamic dominated countries and expect to have a good or long life. Again from pew: "Publics in Africa and in predominantly Muslim countries remain among the least accepting of homosexuality. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least nine-in-ten in Nigeria (98%), Senegal (96%), Ghana (96%), Uganda (96%) and Kenya (90%) believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society." And: "Overwhelming majorities in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed also say homosexuality should be rejected, including 97% in Jordan, 95% in Egypt, 94% in Tunisia, 93% in the Palestinian territories, 93% in Indonesia, 87% in Pakistan, 86% in Malaysia, 80% in Lebanon and 78% in Turkey."

My fourth point: Misogyny. In many of the detailed laws found in the Qur'an women just get the short end of the deal. I would refer to inheritence laws again, just as an example of many. For the bigger picture there is again some pew reserach data: % of muslims who completely or mostly agree that a wife should always obey her husband: Tajikistan 89 %, Uzbekistan 84 %, Kyrgyzstan 75 %, Malaysia 96 %, Indonesia 93 %, Afghanistan 94 %, etc. Again hundreds of millions of people. The list goes on and on. Completely unacceptable.

My fith point: Criticism and mockery. There is no single religion in the world, there is no single organisation in the world powerful and savage enough that you have to fear for your life if you draw a picture that they do not like. Not a single one, except for Islam. Again from pew: Violence against civilian targets can be justified in order to defend Islam: French muslims 16 % often or sometimes, 19 % rarely; Spanish and British muslims 15 % often or sometimes, 9 % rarely; Nigerian Muslims 46 % often or sometimes, 23 % rarely. Again the list goes on. Hundreds of millions of muslims believe that violence against civilian targets can be justified in order to defend Islam. When so many people are okay to kill innocent people something is majorly wrong with the belief and value system of these people.

My sixth point: Apostasy. Pew: "19 Certain hadith either state or imply that the penalty for apostasy, or converting to another faith, is death. See Sahih al-Bukhari 52:260 and 83:37." And: "Nevertheless, in six of the 20 countries where there are adequate samples for analysis, at least half of those who favor making Islamic law the official law also support executing apostates." And: "In the South Asian countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, strong majorities of those who favor making Islamic law the official law of the land also approve of executing apostates (79% and 76%, respectively). However, in Bangladesh far fewer (44%) share this view. A majority of Malaysian Muslims (62%) who want to see sharia as their country’s official law also support taking the lives of those who convert to other faiths. But fewer take this position in neighboring Thailand (27%) and Indonesia (18%)."

Honestly, I could make many more and more detailed points. But I think the picture is quite clear already. Islam is way worse than a lot of people would like to believe. And it can be an absolut nightmare for women, gays, trans people, free thinkers and critics.

So let's go through these points. If you think islam is built to be the government,  you don't understand Islam. Ask any real scholar about Islam and they will tell you it's decentralized and doesn't mesh well with the modern state at all. Regarding sharia law, you do not seem to understand it. Then again many Muslims don't either. Sharia is supposed to be your own personal code as a Muslim, not a legal thing for society. Sharia is not one thing. It's many things to many people. The legal framework of Islam I'd called fiqh and people study it endlessly and there are variations of how they interpret law. These sorts of differences are why different sects exist. Asking Muslims about Sharia is a useless question. It's just one of these stupid things people chose to focus on much like jihad, which means to struggle and entails anything from struggling against your own personal demons to struggling against oppression. It is not holy war.

Your point about blaming Islam is a little bit confusing seeing as there are oppression and backwardness and all of that in underdeveloped and developing societies.  These societies have backwards views regardless of which religion they follow. Hell the evangelicals have such a sway in US politics and are not exactly separate from the governments in ways people pretend they are and the hindutva are bringing an extremist view of Hinduism to their government and in Myanmar, an extremist view of their religion is also being used to commit genocide against the rohingya. Point is religions are malleable and that might be a critique you can levy. Other factors determine how reactionary people are going to be. For example, Muslims in the US have more progressive values than Christians on average in the US and that is true for Canadians as well. Stability and development create progressive values. Instability and war and such stuff create reactionary ideology. Wahabism wasn't born from the golden age of Islam(because Muslims were way more progress back then) but was born when the colonial powers ravaged across the middle east. It's a new more reactionary interpretation of Islam that did not exist classically. 

Most of your other points also relate to this factor of the less developed countries having backwards values. It is the fault of a lot of societal factors but also the views of the Muslims there. And violence for mockery is wrong but the stats you show also show that a super majority of Muslims in more developed nations are against it. There have been polls that show Christians in the US are far more supportive of violence than the numbers you showed for Muslims in France and other places. With regards to women, Islam teaches about there being no superiority of men. Of course misogynists will ignore those parts.

The apostasy thing is again about interpretations. Christians used to kill people for not being part of their religion,  not just apostasy. But again, these views diminish through progress.  You showed how Afghanistan and Pakistan have such reactionary views. Have you seen the state of those countries? Afghanistan has gone through war after war since the 70s and pakistan has a huge economic problems and has been facing terrorism for decades.

As I have said before, there is nothing uniquely wrong about Islam. The problem of Islam and other religions is that they are too malleable. People can twist them to mean what they want. The things you pointed out are also not unique to Islam. None of them are. And your assertion that it's just Islam in the modern age is also not true. Most Muslims live in underdeveloped and developing countries and that leads to reactionary thinking. You can see it happen to Hinduism in India, Buddhism in Myanmar, Christianity in many African nations, east European nations and the US. What can be the key point to focus on should be the reactionary elements themselves. Islam is followed by billions and has a lot of interpretations but some are just wrong and anti human. The focus should be on those reactionary elements like wahabism, evangelicism, hindutva, etc. I have said this before but it bears repeating,  the problems you described are not unique to Islam, they are a product of instability and underdevelopment. 

I will have a more detailed answer later, but I am too curious not to ask right now:

You say that hundreds of millions of muslims wanting sharia law as the official law of their countries is not a problem, or not real?

And christians in the USA are more okay with and likely to commit violence against innocent civilians to defend Christianity? I am curious about these polls. Could you direct me to one please? Also: even if this was true - the numbers I provided about so many muslims who are okay with violence against civilians are a disturbing problem, no matter who else might also be that crazy.

And Islam does not provide a good framework for misogyony? How is it that it is such a big problem in islamic countries? Are there not countless different parts of the Qur'an that put women beneath men? Is there no connection?

And you say the apostasy thing is about interpretation. Sure. But is seems like hundreds of millions of people have a very bad interpretation of it. That is conviniently not part of Islam?

What would you think are actual problems of Islam then? Many religions have problems unique to them. What is Islams problem? Or are there none?



JuliusHackebeil said:
Eagle367 said:

So let's go through these points. If you think islam is built to be the government,  you don't understand Islam. Ask any real scholar about Islam and they will tell you it's decentralized and doesn't mesh well with the modern state at all. Regarding sharia law, you do not seem to understand it. Then again many Muslims don't either. Sharia is supposed to be your own personal code as a Muslim, not a legal thing for society. Sharia is not one thing. It's many things to many people. The legal framework of Islam I'd called fiqh and people study it endlessly and there are variations of how they interpret law. These sorts of differences are why different sects exist. Asking Muslims about Sharia is a useless question. It's just one of these stupid things people chose to focus on much like jihad, which means to struggle and entails anything from struggling against your own personal demons to struggling against oppression. It is not holy war.

Your point about blaming Islam is a little bit confusing seeing as there are oppression and backwardness and all of that in underdeveloped and developing societies.  These societies have backwards views regardless of which religion they follow. Hell the evangelicals have such a sway in US politics and are not exactly separate from the governments in ways people pretend they are and the hindutva are bringing an extremist view of Hinduism to their government and in Myanmar, an extremist view of their religion is also being used to commit genocide against the rohingya. Point is religions are malleable and that might be a critique you can levy. Other factors determine how reactionary people are going to be. For example, Muslims in the US have more progressive values than Christians on average in the US and that is true for Canadians as well. Stability and development create progressive values. Instability and war and such stuff create reactionary ideology. Wahabism wasn't born from the golden age of Islam(because Muslims were way more progress back then) but was born when the colonial powers ravaged across the middle east. It's a new more reactionary interpretation of Islam that did not exist classically. 

Most of your other points also relate to this factor of the less developed countries having backwards values. It is the fault of a lot of societal factors but also the views of the Muslims there. And violence for mockery is wrong but the stats you show also show that a super majority of Muslims in more developed nations are against it. There have been polls that show Christians in the US are far more supportive of violence than the numbers you showed for Muslims in France and other places. With regards to women, Islam teaches about there being no superiority of men. Of course misogynists will ignore those parts.

The apostasy thing is again about interpretations. Christians used to kill people for not being part of their religion,  not just apostasy. But again, these views diminish through progress.  You showed how Afghanistan and Pakistan have such reactionary views. Have you seen the state of those countries? Afghanistan has gone through war after war since the 70s and pakistan has a huge economic problems and has been facing terrorism for decades.

As I have said before, there is nothing uniquely wrong about Islam. The problem of Islam and other religions is that they are too malleable. People can twist them to mean what they want. The things you pointed out are also not unique to Islam. None of them are. And your assertion that it's just Islam in the modern age is also not true. Most Muslims live in underdeveloped and developing countries and that leads to reactionary thinking. You can see it happen to Hinduism in India, Buddhism in Myanmar, Christianity in many African nations, east European nations and the US. What can be the key point to focus on should be the reactionary elements themselves. Islam is followed by billions and has a lot of interpretations but some are just wrong and anti human. The focus should be on those reactionary elements like wahabism, evangelicism, hindutva, etc. I have said this before but it bears repeating,  the problems you described are not unique to Islam, they are a product of instability and underdevelopment. 

I will have a more detailed answer later, but I am too curious not to ask right now:

You say that hundreds of millions of muslims wanting sharia law as the official law of their countries is not a problem, or not real?

And christians in the USA are more okay with and likely to commit violence against innocent civilians to defend Christianity? I am curious about these polls. Could you direct me to one please? Also: even if this was true - the numbers I provided about so many muslims who are okay with violence against civilians are a disturbing problem, no matter who else might also be that crazy.

And Islam does not provide a good framework for misogyony? How is it that it is such a big problem in islamic countries? Are there not countless different parts of the Qur'an that put women beneath men? Is there no connection?

And you say the apostasy thing is about interpretation. Sure. But is seems like hundreds of millions of people have a very bad interpretation of it. That is conviniently not part of Islam?

What would you think are actual problems of Islam then? Many religions have problems unique to them. What is Islams problem? Or are there none?

Way to not read what I said at all. First of all, just learn what sharia is seriously.  I wrote it out for you. It's misunderstood so damn much. It's not a damn legal framework, it's a personal moral code. The legal framework is fiqh and it's a whole damn thing all on its own. And I said Muslims in the US are less radical than Christians in the US. Read what I wrote. And yes data shows that Muslims in the US are more progressive than Christians in the US. A problem of interpretation means that there are some harmful interpretations. That's it. Did you not read the part about reactionary elements? I talked about wahabism? Did you not read what I wrote at all and just commented based on some buzz words you saw and plucked out and then some skimming around those buzz words? Seriously read what I wrote and then discuss it.

If you want specific problems related to Islam, talk to an expert in Islamic studies. There are schools of Islamic studies all across the world. You are far too ignorant of Islam to comment about problems specific to Islam. You misunderstand the basic terms as is like Sharia.



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Some basic level of respect should be given to all humans, unless they do something to lose it. But, people certainly don't need to pretend that anyone's nonsense beliefs are anything other than nonsense.

So, respect the person, not necessarily their beliefs.



Eagle367 said:
JuliusHackebeil said:

I will have a more detailed answer later, but I am too curious not to ask right now:

You say that hundreds of millions of muslims wanting sharia law as the official law of their countries is not a problem, or not real?

And christians in the USA are more okay with and likely to commit violence against innocent civilians to defend Christianity? I am curious about these polls. Could you direct me to one please? Also: even if this was true - the numbers I provided about so many muslims who are okay with violence against civilians are a disturbing problem, no matter who else might also be that crazy.

And Islam does not provide a good framework for misogyony? How is it that it is such a big problem in islamic countries? Are there not countless different parts of the Qur'an that put women beneath men? Is there no connection?

And you say the apostasy thing is about interpretation. Sure. But is seems like hundreds of millions of people have a very bad interpretation of it. That is conviniently not part of Islam?

What would you think are actual problems of Islam then? Many religions have problems unique to them. What is Islams problem? Or are there none?

Way to not read what I said at all. First of all, just learn what sharia is seriously.  I wrote it out for you. It's misunderstood so damn much. It's not a damn legal framework, it's a personal moral code. The legal framework is fiqh and it's a whole damn thing all on its own. And I said Muslims in the US are less radical than Christians in the US. Read what I wrote. And yes data shows that Muslims in the US are more progressive than Christians in the US. A problem of interpretation means that there are some harmful interpretations. That's it. Did you not read the part about reactionary elements? I talked about wahabism? Did you not read what I wrote at all and just commented based on some buzz words you saw and plucked out and then some skimming around those buzz words? Seriously read what I wrote and then discuss it.

If you want specific problems related to Islam, talk to an expert in Islamic studies. There are schools of Islamic studies all across the world. You are far too ignorant of Islam to comment about problems specific to Islam. You misunderstand the basic terms as is like Sharia.

There seems to be a funny misunderstanding.
You think I don't get Islam. But it actually is the quite reputable pew research center that just does not get it. It is their numbers I provided, not my personal ideas about Islam. I wish pew research center would finaly listen to you about how sharia is just a personal moral code and not a legal framework. Because if they did, they could also tell the tens of thousands of muslims they polled for their survey. They could tell them that Eagle367 has the one truth for Islam hidden away here at vgchartz. They could tell all those people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Malysia, Djibouti, Palestinia, etc. that more than 80 % of the muslims who live there should read your comment and finaly get that they should not want sharia as the law of the land, because it is just a personal moral code.
But until they do I suppose we have to grapple with the reality of the situation. And that situation is that hundreds of millions of muslims around the world want Islam to be the basis and deciding factor of their legal system (I even did not write the word "sharia" this time, I hope that helps). I think it is a weak argument to just say that people like that (the big majority of the countries I listed) have it wrong. They are in fact a big part of the global muslim community. And they should be treated that way. Their beliefs should be taken into account when talking about Islam. So I take them into account. But you don't seem to. You seem to close your eyes to the fact that hundreds of millions of muslims around the world want Islam to be the basis and deciding factor of their legal system. But this is what is going on. What do you do with this very simple fact? Write another comment that is just deflection? Because I really wonder who is not reading whos comments here.

88 % of Malyan muslims say they want religious judges to decide family and property disputes.
81 % of Afghani muslims say they favor corporal punishment for crimes such as theft
89 % of Pakistani muslims want stoning as a punishment for adultery
86 % of Egyptian muslims want the death penalty for apostasy.

This time I even bothered to provide a link: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/#_ftnref6

This is not a problem of some harmful interpretations (as you wrote in your comment that I have read). This is mainline thinking in many different Islam-dominated countries around the world.

And sure, these countries are poor and have bad infrastructure, bad education, high crime rate, etc. This seems to also be one of your points: "The bad things happening in a country stem from it's poor state, not from there being Islam." -But how is it that so many Christianity-dominated South-American countries do not live in the stone age where they favor corporal punishment for theft, want stoning for adultery, want religious judges to decide family and property disputes, and want the death penalty for leaving Christianity? These are dirt poor countries with high crime and many problems of their own. But there seems to be a unique set of problems just stemming from Islam as well, no?



People who are liars deserve no respect. No matter what their reason for lying is.

I believe in airplanes, so I fly. If they actually believed in this amazing afterlife, wouldn't they go there straight away?



OneTime said:

People who are liars deserve no respect. No matter what their reason for lying is.

I believe in airplanes, so I fly. If they actually believed in this amazing afterlife, wouldn't they go there straight away?

Morbidly enough there is some really old documentation about roman soldiers complaining that they cannot kill any more christians. They just came up to the soldiers with the request to be killed. Such crazy strong convictions are seldom now. But that is a good thing in my book. I'd rather take the hypocrites than the ones devaluing life on earth.



JuliusHackebeil said:
OneTime said:

People who are liars deserve no respect. No matter what their reason for lying is.

I believe in airplanes, so I fly. If they actually believed in this amazing afterlife, wouldn't they go there straight away?

Morbidly enough there is some really old documentation about roman soldiers complaining that they cannot kill any more christians. They just came up to the soldiers with the request to be killed. Such crazy strong convictions are seldom now. But that is a good thing in my book. I'd rather take the hypocrites than the ones devaluing life on earth.

The Romans believed in Law and Order.  They were not in the habit of killing Christians without cause (or indeed the Jews or Egyptians in the areas that they had occupied).  So the story sounds like standard Church propaganda.  The point is the same: very few people actually believe in God, but many are very vocal in pretending that they do...