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[Kinitari]

Reread his post.

Also, the biggest bit of bullshit was the democracy part. Did you miss that one?

Thanks for the #3, read that wrong - makes more sense now. And kinda makes less sense now. Anyone can interpret the Koran as it is, they just like.... read it. What I think he means is shut up the clerics who do it so it's more of a like... in-house activity? And even then thats silly.

And I don't know how I missed the whole make Arab countries a democracy thing, that furthers my point about the west (or at least some people in it) having this ridiculous "do shit our way".

Lrn2read me =/

 

[perryfarrell]

Good article in the OP (even though I don't think very highly of Sam Harris's attacks on religion).

Christianity is accustomed to being criticized and ridiculed (e.g. Piss Christ, Maria with elephant dung, etc), Islam not yet. It's time they catch up. Free speech is important.

I'm also not sure about the central claim of the piece, "Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society." Would need to see some more evidence for that.

WTF with the responses, though. Posters kicking and screaming in wild outbursts of irrationality--attempts at character assassination, ad hominem, just plain awful reasoning. WTF?

 

[Count Dookkake]

Good article in the OP (even though I don't think very highly of Sam Harris's attacks on religion).

Christianity is accustomed to being criticized and ridiculed (e.g. Piss Christ, Maria with elephant dung, etc), Islam not yet. It's time they catch up. Free speech is important.

I'm also not sure about the central claim of the piece, "Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society." Would need to see some more evidence for that.

WTF with the responses, though. Posters kicking and screaming in wild outbursts of irrationality--attempts at character assassination, ad hominem, just plain awful reasoning. WTF?

That wasn't supposed to be any more insulting than using a rock or a piece of wood.

 

[Azih]

It is probably not as bad as you might think. I've had an Iranian law partner and I work with another Muslim right now.

Oh wow I know exactly what you're talking about, my best friend is Black and I totally know what the niggas in the hood are all about My brotha.

Do you know about Maher Arar? Do you know about Project Thread? The Toronto 18? I am *blessed* to be where I am but I know the attitudes that mark me as more of an outsider than other immigrants so *don't* tell me you've got insights into being muslim in the west THAT A MUSLIM IN THE WEST doesn't have. Did you not Read the Star Article I posted? Do you not see how attitudes like Sam's allow people to accept or even encourage those kinds of sham trails? The feeling of being besiged with your very presence in society questioned?

Well guess what . . . you are not gonna get a lot of sympathy from me on all this

Who's asking for sympathy? I'm telling you why the original article was a pile of shit and why I am freaking OUTRAGED by it. Though I will note that empathy is what leads to mutual understanding. Not writing one big long slur of an article and then being shocked that the people being slurred don't like it. The OP article and expecting muslims to act a certain way to prove their chops leads to feelings of marginalisation and defensiveness and does nothing to enhance dialogue, fuck it damages it.

As I said in an earlier post, I agree that Sam went too far and is generalizing.

Extremely huge understatement. And could you tell that to the rest of the people who read that article and went away thinking *GREAT ARTICLE, DESCRIBES MUSLIMS TO A FREAKING TEE* Thanks a fucking lot Sam.

Of course, it is easy for me to see those points since I'm not a believer and I'd like religion out of all politics.

No it is easy for you to *talk about* those points because you weren't called child raping, wife beating, far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormons, forced marrying, honor killing, female circumcising, terror supporting, beheading video filming, genocidal anti-semitic barbarians who exalt suicide bombing and depict Jews as "apes and pigs". I mean GOOD LORD. LOOK AT THAT SENTENCE. Are you really surprised that every muslim here is focusing on those unfounded insults and responding to Phlegm's defense of said unfounded insults and explaining to Yang that taking the example of Senegal and applying it to every muslim what ever lived is not exactly a reasonable thing to do by any stretch of the imagination? PLUS with the added benefit of being mugged by the RELIGION LOL crowd when you try to explain why that's not Islamic behaviour .

Sam is more nuanced in his complaining . . . I think his calling for speaking out is very different from the counter-productive speaking by the hardcore Christian-right that just say things like "Islam is Satanic."

Are you defending Harris by saying he's got more nuance than the HARDCORE CHRISTIAN RIGHT? Fuck me the only reason that Harris doesn't use the adjective Satanic is becuase he probably doesn't belive in Satan. He throws pretty much every other invective at the muslim world in that EXTREMELY counterproductive article of his.

And I talked about the one valid point in Harris' article. I'll repost it:

Moderate muslims can't really agree with the sentence "There is too much kowtowing to muslims that riot and threaten to behead people and also muslims are pedophile wife beaters"

You'll find pretty much every muslim here nodding along with agreement at the start of that statement and then ending it with mouths open in horror thinking "What. The. Fuck. Just happened here?" And that statement is freaking tame compared to the actual article

It's like going "I wonder why those misogynistic deluded moron muslims don't agree with what we're saying about them. They must be terrorists". And from the past few days on GAF I get the impression that that's the actual train of thought of a lot of people here.

 

[Phoenix]

Where? Really.

Texas, Alabama, Mississippi

Those are the ones that come to mind recently

 

[Phoenix]

I didn't read the whole damn thread but I read a large part of it. I even remember you giving the example of the generalizations in Sam Harris' article.

Recently, I tend to avoid such threads though. It's just tiring to read the same old thing again with nothing resolved in the end. It's like the whole creation vs evolution debate.

You might want to actually read this one because this isn't an "if we didn't have religion the world would be a better place" thread as your post implies.

 

[avatar299]

Azih, you do know the point of the article was to critique the lack of courage western media has when it comes to offending muslims, right?

Texas, Alabama, Mississippi

Those are the ones that come to mind recently

Show me the laws, in the book that gives white people full disclosure to kill black people in those 3 states.

 

[Karakand]

What's wrong with polygamy? humans are made so one man can inseminate plenty of women. It seems logical that he would marry them to support them, ensure its children are his own and protect them together. What's wrong with it again?

As stated, with the species 1:1 at sex ratio (give or take) it's a bad idea from a social order perspective.

The Western liberal conception of individual autonomy. If you prefer an authority-based hierarchical patriarchy and need lots of family labor for economic success, have at it. I think there's a place in Texas that needs replacement guys to 'inseminate plenty of women.'

Why would it have to be a patriarchy? Hell if the ratio was 3:1 in favor of women it would be a matriarchy more than anything else (if the society continued to use traditional western democratic political systems).

And of course the Irish never tried to kill anyone over a political cartoon... I guess it's a good thing no one ever dared make a cartoon insulting Guinness.

:lol :lol

 

[Azih]

Azih, you do know the point of the article was to critique the lack of courage western media has when it comes to offending muslims, right?

Moderate muslims can't really agree with the sentence "There is too much kowtowing to muslims that riot and threaten to behead people and also muslims are pedophile wife beaters"

You'll find pretty much every muslim here nodding along with agreement at the start of that statement and then ending it with mouths open in horror thinking "What. The. Fuck. Just happened here?" And that statement is freaking tame compared to the actual article

 

[Kabuki Waq]

Azih, you do know the point of the article was to critique the lack of courage western media has when it comes to offending muslims, right?

:lol

yea I am sure that was his intention.

 

[Zerachiel]

The FLDS analogy seems to cut across Harris' point. We don't feel the need to lump the fundamentalist, polygamist, child-marrying sect with the rest of Mormon religion, even if the polygamists get some backing from Mormon doctrine.

I suppose I just tend to view it on a case-by-case basis. Certainly, the faith which we append the name "Islam" has done a lot of harm to a lot of people, but I've also met many for whom it has not. We can go round and round arguing about which one is more prevalent, but that's not a question that particularly interests me. I will fight against the negative aspects- the litany of sins, the honor killings, the female genital mutilation, the violence, and the lack of respect for free speech. If we can get rid of those, I don't give a damn whether you pray to Mecca five times a day.

 

[Zerachiel]

And oh god What is this shit? I'm not even glancing at this article anymore.

I'm not saying that it's a part of Muslim doctrine, but there's no doubt that individual Muslims do indeed practice polygamy and other reprehensible things:

For example, although Afghan law permits polygamy, American men will not be allowed to marry multiple women.

http://kabul.usembassy.gov/marriage.html

 

[Azih]

I'm not saying that it's a part of Muslim doctrine, but there's no doubt that individual Muslims do indeed practice polygamy and other reprehensible things:

Honestly it wasn't the polygamy that insulted me as much as the forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating attacks. I think polygamy is weird but I don't see anything wrong with it if there's no coercion and agreed to by consenting adults.

 

[proposition]

What exactly makes polygamy reprehensible in itself?

 

[Chairman Yang]

What exactly makes polygamy reprehensible in itself?

Nothing. It's polygamy for men exclusively that's reprehensible.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

It's funny how Islam was considered a peaceful religion for the last thousand years and after 9/11 we are the root of all the trouble on earth.

Who told you that shit? islam primarily spread through conquest. There's been times when europe was barely hanging on by a thread against enroaching islamic hordes.

Intolerance is the eighth deadly sin.

Tolerance is how much of a beating something can take before it collapses.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Honestly it wasn't the polygamy that insulted me as much as the forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating attacks. I think polygamy is weird but I don't see anything wrong with it if there's no coercion and agreed to by consenting adults.

I just wish there was better data available. Based on my anecdotal evidence, there's a serious problem with wife-beating in the Muslim communities that I've interacted with, but I know anecdotal evidence isn't particularly useful (especially because your anecdotal evidence is presumably different).

 

[Guileless]

"Whatever the case, polygamy is not an activity whose effects are restricted to the bedroom and consenting adults. Rather, it seems to corrupt civil society as a whole, destroying education, individual rights and the rule of law – in other words, the foundations of democratic governance. Just as with slavery, to which polygamy was compared in the presidential election of 1856, even a single instance can fundamentally alter a society." DMN

Any of you notice the freak shows these polygamist sects are? Are they backwards because they are polygamists, or are they polygamists because they're backwards? Either way, no thanks. I'm sure we can all come up with some hypothetical situation involving a guy who can't decide on two girls where polygamy sounds kind of nice and ignore all of the empirical evidence about the conditions of polygamous societies and the children they produce. Eventually, the old guys who are the most ruthless will be divvying up prepubescent girls for forced marriages and will probably perpetuate their rule by some sort of theocracy where God gives them the authority to keep deciding the outcomes of other people's lives according to their sexual whims.

 

[lastendconductor]

Nothing. It's polygamy for men exclusively that's reprehensible.

But polygamy for women doesn't make sense. Marriage is just social and legal enforcement of "exclusivity of reproduction rights" with a certain subject; women don't benefit from bonding with several men at the same time, so why should they? (note that I'd approve of allowing that too, although I find it quite useless ).

 

[Zerachiel]

Yeah . . . something like that.

Fuck you. Do you seriously think something incendiary like that is going to add to the discussion in any way shape or form? Do you think that appealing to people's fears is going to make rational consideration of the problem any easier? Back up your arguments with facts, not bullshit emotional appeal.

Also repeating the bullshit accusation of honor killings which has been debunked plenty of times on GAF. Nothing on the authour but why oh why do Gaffers just lap it again and again when it is repeated.

Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier
By Sadie Gray

A 17-year-old Iraqi girl was murdered by her father in an honour killing after falling in love with a British soldier she met while working on an aid programme in Basra, it has been claimed.

Rand Abdel-Qader was stamped upon, suffocated and stabbed by her father, then given an unceremonious burial to emphasise her disgrace. Police released her father without charge two hours after his arrest.

"Not much can be done when we have an honour killing case," said Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police. "You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws. The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn't hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten."

A total of 47 young women died in honour killings in the city last year, Basra Security Committee told an investigation into Ms Abdel-Qader's case by The Observer. This is believed to be the only case of an honour killing involving a British soldier.

The MoD had no official advice for troops on how to behave with Iraqi women. The serviceman involved would not have been told that any relationship with her could put her life at risk, the paper said.

Ms Abdel-Qader, a student of English at Basra University, had struck up a friendship with a 22-year-old British infantryman known only as Paul five months before her murder in March.

She was believed to have last seen him in January, and the pair, whose relationship was innocent, only ever met while working at the aid station. The soldier was helping deliver relief to displaced families as part of his regimental duties. Ms Abdel-Qader was a volunteer worker.

On the day her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, was told of their friendship by a friend, he accused her of having an affair with a British soldier and killed her in front of his wife, Leila Hussain, and their sons.

"I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away from her. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life," Ms Hussain said. She then left her husband and has since divorced him. She has received threats from her husband's family and is in hiding. She now works for an organisation campaigning against honour killings.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...iraq-for-loving-a-british-soldier-816301.html

But sure, reports of honor killing are bullshit.

Look, I can understand the instinct to circle the wagons when you perceive something intrinsic to your identity being attacked, especially when there are a bunch of bigoted asshats who will lump you in with these barbarians. It's natural, and you can see it happen here on NeoGaf almost every time someone starts criticizing video games. But you're not doing anyone a favor,not your co-religionists, and certainly not those who are victimized by this violence by turning a blind eye to it in an effort to secure a PR victory for your side. This happens. Maybe it's not Islam's fault, but the fact that Muslims do things like this is not at dispute. Join the rest of us in condemning them, as you would a Muslim rapist or a Muslim murderer.

EMPHASIS ON THE BOLDED. Must of the Islamic world is Third World. Take a look at the kind of horrific shit that happens in Christian Africa and Latin America. The common thread isn't the freaking religion, it's the uneducated POVERTY.

Like I said, I don't really give a shit whether it's Islam or poverty (though I'm fairly mistrusting of theories that tie everything back to economics). Whether it is or not though: can we agree that forced marriages are a reprehensible practice? Can we agree that, whether or not these people feel that it's a part of Islam, that struggling against these barbaric practices is noble? That we ought not allow respect for their religious beliefs or culture prevent us from improving things there?

And, as has been stated, when immigrants from these third-world countries try to bring these reprehensible practices to our shores, our governments act like we must respect their religious beliefs, and whenever anyone dares to criticize them, Muslims the world over circle the wagons at any slight to their group.

Incidentally, I'm not entirely convinced that polygamy is evil (I've got a lot of sympathy with the poly community here in the west). I do find the patriarchal implementation of polygamy distasteful, but I don't know enough about it in Muslim countries to decide one way or the other on it. I do know that it's unwise sociologically, since, given an equal birth rate, one man and many women marriages mean many men with no marriages at all... which leads to an undercurrent of disaffected young males who have no chance at finding a woman to marry. People with a wife and kids don't tend to blow themselves up in coffee shop.

"Whatever the case, polygamy is not an activity whose effects are restricted to the bedroom and consenting adults. Rather, it seems to corrupt civil society as a whole, destroying education, individual rights and the rule of law – in other words, the foundations of democratic governance. Just as with slavery, to which polygamy was compared in the presidential election of 1856, even a single instance can fundamentally alter a society." DMN

Any of you notice the freak shows these polygamist sects are? Are they backwards because they are polygamists, or are they polygamists because they're backwards? Either way, no thanks. I'm sure we can all come up with some hypothetical situation involving a guy who can't decide on two girls where polygamy sounds kind of nice and ignore all of the empirical evidence about the conditions of polygamous societies and the children they produce. Eventually, the old guys who are the most ruthless will be divvying up prepubescent girls for forced marriages and will probably perpetuate their rule by some sort of theocracy where God gives them the authority to keep deciding the outcomes of other people's lives according to their sexual whims.

Your theory doesn't seem to match up with those who practice polygamy and polyandry as aids to sexual liberation. More information here: http://www.polyamory.org/

 

[Kabouter]

I just wish there was better data available. Based on my anecdotal evidence, there's a serious problem with wife-beating in the Muslim communities that I've interacted with, but I know anecdotal evidence isn't particularly useful (especially because your anecdotal evidence is presumably different).

If we were just going anecdotally I would have to say that most Muslims are racist and otherwise discriminating assholes. But luckily I'm not dumb enough to think that my experiences are representative of a religion practiced by what? 2 billion people? On the other hand, most of GAF seems to want to turn a blind eye to any such people existing. And continue the path of doing everything to not offend any Muslims in any possible way.

 

[Azih]

But sure, reports of honor killing are bullshit.

Shit I can't belive I am posting this link AGAIN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
Sam Harris' smear on *Muslims* as an Honor Killing people is intellectually completely dishonest. It's a practice of *certain* regions and *certain* cultures regardless of religion and for Harris to paint all of Islam with that brush is unfounded and that everybody in this thread freaking expects muslims to be apologetic or feel responsible for the actions of a criminal few shows just how complete the smear job is.

And THIS?

Join the rest of us in condemning them, as you would a Muslim rapist or a Muslim murderer

What the fuck makes you think we don't condemn those actions. What in the holy shit do you expect us to do? Mention it every god damn sentence?

"Man Gta4 is a great game. As a Muslim I say Honor Killing is bad and should be condemned"

"Ryan Renolds sure is lucky, I hope he doesn't kill Scarlet Johnasson becuase you know I may be Muslim but I think Honor Killing is bad, Really".

The claim and the implication that criticising that fucked up OP article is equivalent to TURNING A BLIND EYE to the problems that do exist is insane.

AGAIN: Moderate muslims can't really agree with the sentence "There is too much kowtowing to muslims that riot and threaten to behead people and also muslims are pedophile wife beaters"

You'll find pretty much every muslim here nodding along with agreement at the start of that statement and then ending it with mouths open in horror thinking "What. The. Fuck. Just happened here?" And that statement is freaking tame compared to the actual article.

The OP article is poisonous to a degree that it can't be ignored in this thread. Yes, it really is.

Edit: *cough* I don't know what lopaz is talking about.

 

[Fularu]

They say "Ignorance is bliss" This article is the epitome of it. The writer is clueless, as is the OP

It's hard to get more fail out of an article and a single thread title.

 

[Guileless]

Many people fortunate enough to live in stable, prosperous democracies enjoy sexual liberation in the form of the polywhathaveyou of their choice. We were born in the right place at the right time. It is easy for us today to say it's fine because live in an individualist culture that has long outlawed polygamy and made individual marriage choice and romantic love foundations of society. But the places that never quit doing it....not so much.

 

[Kinitari]

But sure, reports of honor killing are bullshit.

Look, I can understand the instinct to circle the wagons when you perceive something intrinsic to your identity being attacked, especially when there are a bunch of bigoted asshats who will lump you in with these barbarians. It's natural, and you can see it happen here on NeoGaf almost every time someone starts criticizing video games. But you're not doing anyone a favor,not your co-religionists, and certainly not those who are victimized by this violence by turning a blind eye to it in an effort to secure a PR victory for your side. This happens. Maybe it's not Islam's fault, but the fact that Muslims do things like this is not at dispute. Join the rest of us in condemning them, as you would a Muslim rapist or a Muslim murderer.

This hurts my head. You seem very intelligent, and you have some really good points - but then you seem to contradict yourself. Maybe you just are misunderstanding him as well - I am pretty sure him, and pretty much EVERYONE in this thread is not defending or backing Terrorism/Violence/Oppression whatsoever - the issue is the desire people seem to have to associate this with some sort of religious doctrine, rather than a cultural/environmental situation. But when you LABEL them as a -Muslim- Rapist or a -Muslim- Murderer you are immediately associating the crime with the religion, which is an unfortunately common misconception. The situation isn't the religion like the OP's article says - the situation is third world countries, and how ridiculously MESSED up they are, religiously led or not.

If we were just going anecdotally I would have to say that most Muslims are racist and otherwise discriminating assholes. But luckily I'm not dumb enough to think that my experiences are representative of a religion practiced by what? 2 billion people? On the other hand, most of GAF seems to want to turn a blind eye to any such people existing. And continue the path of doing everything to not offend any Muslims in any possible way.

Do you really think most gaffers aren't afraid of offending Muslims? You are mentioning the racist and the discriminatory - these are not traits unique to Muslims, these are traits unique to Humans. When situations arise and someone is BOTH Muslim and a Racist, there are some people who blame it on Islam - and then there are going to be people who defend Islam. That is just going to happen, irregardless if it's Islam, Christianity or Judaism - my issue isn't that people are blaming Islam or any other religion, my issue is people are getting up in arms when people are DEFENDING Islam, like they should be condemning it alongside everyone else.

 

[lopaz]

irregardless

nooooo

 

[ice cream]

Uh, don't a lot of Muslims practice polygamy, etc. as listed in the article? Whether these things are sustained by Islam may be in question; whether they happen at all is not.

Aren't there lots of Christians in jail?
OMG

 

[soul creator]

just a general query relating to religion and its effect on people...(not necessarily related to the article by itself)

If religion is regularly credited as a philosophy/way of life/viewpoint that can change people's lives for the better, isn't it also theoretically possible for the opposite to happen as well? There seems to be general notion that anytime someone does something bad that seemingly has a religious slant, then they obviously weren't practicing the "real" version of it, and it's wrong to judge the religion based on those actions, and of course it was just evil men twisting religion for their own means.

But if someone says their life has changed for the better as a result of a religion, then the religion almost always gets credit for it, and this is then a clear example of the good that religion can bring about, and these are in fact the true versions of the religion.

Of course, the difficulty always comes from how you're actually supposed to define the "real" version of a religion in the first place, especially when you're dealing with texts from a completely different time period. But isn't it a fair statement to say that a religion/philosophy/culture can be both good and bad, and its "worth" should be open to the same criticism as anything else?

And at the end of the day, doesn't the fact that "religion" varies wildly in so many different cultures and environments show that the notion that some eternal unchanging god handing down the religion to some prophet is pretty much unlikely?

 

[Kinitari]

just a general query relating to religion and its effect on people...(not necessarily related to the article by itself)

If religion is regularly credited as a philosophy/way of life/viewpoint that can change people's lives for the better, isn't it also theoretically possible for the opposite to happen as well? There seems to be general notion that anytime someone does something bad that seemingly has a religious slant, then they obviously weren't practicing the "real" version of it, and it's wrong to judge the religion based on those actions, and of course it was just evil men twisting religion for their own means.

But if someone says their life has changed for the better as a result of a religion, then the religion almost always gets credit for it, and this is then a clear example of the good that religion can bring about, and these are in fact the true versions of the religion.

Of course, the difficulty always comes from how you're actually supposed to define the "real" version of a religion in the first place, especially when you're dealing with texts from a completely different time period. But isn't it a fair statement to say that a religion/philosophy/culture can be both good and bad, and its "worth" should be open to the same criticism as anything else?

And at the end of the day, doesn't the fact that "religion" varies wildly in so many different cultures and environments show that the notion that some eternal unchanging god handing down the religion to some prophet is pretty much unlikely?

It's so hard for me to reply to this, because I more or less agree with you entirely. It's frustrating especially arguing Science with Religion, because it usually just ends up in a complete moot point, as faith does not need any proof to back it up, like science does. Frustrating indeed.

 

[Yaweee]

nooooo

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/irregardless.aspx

Internet forum speak is hardly standard English.

 

[Azih]

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/irregardless.aspx

Internet forum speak is hardly standard English.

I don't know what you, or lopaz are talking about, no sir.

 

[lopaz]

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/irregardless.aspx

Internet forum speak is hardly standard English.

I can has peins?

 

[Napoleonthechimp]

By offending Islam you are offending the fastest growing religion on earth, also the one with the biggest single denomination on earth.

Oh, noes! They're everywhere so we better shut our mouths or else they'll come and get us!

 

[Zerachiel]

Shit I can't belive I am posting this link AGAIN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
Sam Harris' smear on *Muslims* as an Honor Killing people is intellectually completely dishonest. It's a practice of *certain* regions and *certain* cultures regardless of religion and for Harris to paint all of Islam with that brush is unfounded and that everybody in this thread freaking expects muslims to be apologetic or feel responsible for the actions of a criminal few shows just how complete the smear job is.

I didn't mean to imply that honor killing is unique to Muslims, or that all Muslims practice honor killing, nor do I feel that Sam Harris was implying that either. All I am saying is that it is practiced in some Muslim countries, and the fact that they are Muslim and that some people there feel that it is supported by Islam should not preclude us from criticizing it or trying to change it (a position which, I imagine, you would agree with.

And THIS? What the fuck makes you think we don't condemn those actions. What in the holy shit do you expect us to do? Mention it every god damn sentence?

"Man Gta4 is a great game. As a Muslim I say Honor Killing is bad and should be condemned"

"Ryan Renolds sure is lucky, I hope he doesn't kill Scarlet Johnasson becuase you know I may be Muslim but I think Honor Killing is bad, Really".

The claim and the implication that criticising that fucked up OP article is equivalent to TURNING A BLIND EYE to the problems that do exist is insane.

AGAIN: Moderate muslims can't really agree with the sentence "There is too much kowtowing to muslims that riot and threaten to behead people and also muslims are pedophile wife beaters"

You'll find pretty much every muslim here nodding along with agreement at the start of that statement and then ending it with mouths open in horror thinking "What. The. Fuck. Just happened here?" And that statement is freaking tame compared to the actual article.

The OP article is poisonous to a degree that it can't be ignored in this thread. Yes, it really is.

Edit: *cough* I don't know what lopaz is talking about.

Well, mentioning your distaste for it would be germane in a thread where it is being discussed. But you're right, and I apologize for my earlier behavior: you have nothing to apologize for here. Because Islam isn't a monolithic entity, and because there is nothing to say that the Islam that you practice is in any way the same Islam that they practice, save in name, you have no more obligation to condemn than they do.

This hurts my head. You seem very intelligent, and you have some really good points - but then you seem to contradict yourself. Maybe you just are misunderstanding him as well - I am pretty sure him, and pretty much EVERYONE in this thread is not defending or backing Terrorism/Violence/Oppression whatsoever - the issue is the desire people seem to have to associate this with some sort of religious doctrine, rather than a cultural/environmental situation. But when you LABEL them as a -Muslim- Rapist or a -Muslim- Murderer you are immediately associating the crime with the religion, which is an unfortunately common misconception. The situation isn't the religion like the OP's article says - the situation is third world countries, and how ridiculously MESSED up they are, religiously led or not.

I had no intention of associating the crime with the religion. I would condemn gamer murderers or gamer rapists equally as much, and it would not imply that I felt that the one had anything to do with the other.

 

[Azih]

I didn't mean to imply that honor killing is unique to Muslims, or that all Muslims practice honor killing, nor do I feel that Sam Harris was implying that either. All I am saying is that it is practiced in some Muslim countries, and the fact that they are Muslim and that some people there feel that it is supported by Islam should not preclude us from criticizing it or trying to change it (a position which, I imagine, you would agree with.

The only thing I don't agree with in there is that I do believe that Sam Harris was associating the practice with Islam very strongly. He only felt the need to qualify Islam or Muslim *once* in that whole screed and did he qualify Islam with 'Extremist'? Hell no he qualified it with TRADITIONAL.

But you know what the crazy thing is? Muslims do regularly criticize these practices and try to change it.

You know how?

By claiming they're forbidden by Islam and showing how and why by referring to the Quran and the Sunnah.

 

[ice cream]

Polygamy (in favor of men, not in favor of women), underage marriage, and wife beating are all supported by the Qur'an and/or Hadith, either by direct injunction or by example (i.e. if the Prophet did it and Allah didn't object, it must be okay).

"and/or Hadith"
You do know there isn't just one Hadith, theres many, theres trusted ones and ones that aren't very trusted?
Just shows how much you know.

 

[AmMortal]

[im]http://www.allamericanblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/cartoons/08.jpg[/img]



Yeah, unfortunately. They're nothing but populists.

You haven't seen those cartoons have you?

 

[Phoenix]

Show me the laws, in the book that gives white people full disclosure to kill black people in those 3 states.

As soon as you show me where in the response chain to the OP that ANYBODY said that.

There are still parts in America where black people are kill because they don't like them.

Where? Really.

 

[Pellham]

Everytime I hear how Islam is a religion of violence I think about those 60,000 women that were raped by Christians for no reason during the crusades.

Were they stoned to death afterwards by their men for being defiled?

What exactly makes polygamy reprehensible in itself?

Personally I wouldn't have a problem with polygamy if it weren't for the fact that it's inherently sexist (only a man can have 4 wives, a woman cannot have 4 husbands, and you can't have a mix of genders). But w/e, polygamy is probably the least of the concerns that people have with islam anyway.

 

[Kabouter]

You haven't seen those cartoons have you?

I'm guessing he has.