http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-09/jakartas-outgoing-governor-ahok-found-guilty-in-blasphemy-trial/8509936

An Indonesian court has sentenced the minority Christian governor of Jakarta to two years in prison for blaspheming the Koran at a trial that undermined the country's reputation for practicing a moderate form of Islam.

In a tense trial that was widely seen as a test of religious tolerance in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, was "found to have legitimately and convincingly conducted a criminal act of blasphemy, and because of that we have imposed two years of imprisonment", head judge Dwiarso Budi Santiarto told the court.

Ahok was charged with blasphemy after he said clerics had used a Koranic verse to mislead voters by telling them that Muslims were not allowed to vote for a Christian. He has denied wrongdoing, and said he was not criticising the Koran, but rather the clerics' interpretation of the verse. The sentence was harsher than expected and will come as a shock to many of his supporters. TV news coverage of the scene outside the court showed some supporters weeping. Prosecutors had called for a suspended one-year jail sentence on charges of hate speech. The maximum sentence is four years in prison for hate speech and five years for blasphemy. Judges said he did it deliberately and did not show remorse. Ahok told the court he will appeal the ruling. Thousands of police have been deployed across the capital in case clashes break out between Ahok's supporters and hard-line Islamists who demanded he be sacked and jailed over the allegations. There was no immediate sign of any violence after the court's verdict.

"Both groups will have the opportunity to demonstrate, but we are taking steps to prevent clashes," national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said earlier.

The Indonesian Government had been criticised for not doing enough to protect religious minorities but President Joko Widodo, a key ally of Ahok, urged restraint over the trial and called for all sides to respect the legal process. Ahok lost his bid for re-election in an April run-off, by far the most divisive and religiously charged election in recent years, to a Muslim rival Anies Baswedan — he will hand over to Mr Baswedan in October.



'Huge setback' for tolerance and minorities

Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch said the guilty verdict against Ahok was "a huge setback" for Indonesia's record of tolerance and for minorities.

"This is bad news for Indonesian minorities," he said. "If someone like Ahok, the governor of the capital, backed by the country's largest political party, ally of the president, can be jailed on groundless accusations, what will others do?"

The tensions whipped up during the Jakarta election have raised concerns about the rising influence of Islamist groups in Indonesia, which is home to sizeable communities of Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and people who adhere to traditional beliefs. The Government said on Monday it would take legal steps to disband Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), a group that seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate, because its activities were creating social tensions and threatening security.

Ahok is a Christian governor for Jakarta in the predominantly Islamic country of Indonesia. He has been regarded as someone fairly free of corruption, or affiliation with corruption, in a notoriously corrupt government. He was favoured to win the election when these accusations were brought forth but regardless of whether or not he would have actually won the election, it is certainly apparent that he was a strong contender for it.

He had accused some of the Imams backing his opponent of misleading the Muslim populace of the region by claiming that Muslims are not allowed to vote for non-Muslims according to Al Maidah of the Qu'arn. To be accused, convicted and sentenced to jail for criticising clerical leaders interpretation of their holy book, not even the book itself, is certainly at odds with a country that purports to practice a moderate form of Islam. I would remind you that this is not Saudi Arabia or any of the countries frequently held up as examples of 'bad' Islamic governments. Indonesia, despite its part in the atrocities of East Timor and internal suppression elsewhere, is supposed to have been regarded as, if not one of the 'good' Islamic states then, certainly one of the 'better' ones.

My personal opinion; being a man accustomed to the liberalism, free speech and freedom of religion that is nurtured and appreciated in most developed secular nations, is that any one should be free to criticise any book, no matter how holy, regardless of how offensive or blasphemous that criticism might be seen as. Certainly that an Islamic nation that considers itself -moderate- cannot forgive a non-Muslim even questioning the interpretation of the books by various clerics points to the conclusion that Islam as a doctrinal faith has a long way to go, either in reformation of the text or reformation of the interpretation of that text, before it can be accepted as compatible with secular society. Laws that allow valid criticism of a faith to be punished, severely punished as we can see, have no place in a society that values the freedom of the individuals that live within it. Censuring opposing views is demonstrably the fast-track route to totalitarianism.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
My personal opinion; being a man accustomed to the liberalism, free speech and freedom of religion that is nurtured and appreciated in most developed secular nations, is that any one should be free to criticise any book, no matter how holy, regardless of how offensive or blasphemous that criticism might be seen as. Certainly that an Islamic nation that considers itself -moderate- cannot forgive a non-Muslim even questioning the interpretation of the books by various clerics points to the conclusion that Islam as a doctrinal faith has a long way to go, either in reformation of the text or reformation of the interpretation of that text, before it can be accepted as compatible with secular society. Laws that allow valid criticism of a faith to be punished, severely punished as we can see, have no place in a society that values the freedom of the individuals that live within it. Censuring opposing views is demonstrably the fast-track route to totalitarianism.

Yeah, these events are straight up fething disastrous for Indonesia.

That said, it's important people don't start with this event and assume it is the normal state of affairs in Indonesia. It is disastrous precisely because it is not how things have operated, but because this may be how they will operate from now on.

The greater context for this is that Ahok was a rising star in Indonesian politics. He was Governor of Jakarta, Indonesia's capital and largest city, a position that normally sets you up for a run at the presidency. The previous Governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, is now president.

After he won election, Ahok was seen as a clear threat to socially conservative elements in Indonesian society. It is important to note that he wasn't just Jakarta's second Christian Governor, he was also its first Chinese governor, so there are racial tensions here in addition to religious ones. It is a reactionary response to Indonesia becoming more accepting of its minority groups. That reactionary response was to organise a lot of conservative Muslim leaders to claim the Koran banned Muslims from voting for Christians. Which led to Ahok's response, challenging this interpretation. Which led to a campaign to misrepresent Ahok's statement, editing it to make it appear that he was challenging the Koran itself, and claiming this was blasphemy and needed to be punished.

All of that is unfortunately run of the mill gakky politics in Indonesia, and in many other countries. What is terrible is that this beat up was able to go to court, and even more shocking was the court finding him guilty. That changed this from being a second rate reactionary response, in to a potentially far reaching change to Indonesian society.

 sebster wrote:


Yeah, these events are straight up fething disastrous for Indonesia.

That said, it's important people don't start with this event and assume it is the normal state of affairs in Indonesia. It is disastrous precisely because it is not how things have operated, but because this may be how they will operate from now on.

Long prison sentences for blasphemy is nothing new to Indonesia.
https://en.tempo.co/read/news/2017/05/10/055874088/Major-Blasphemy-Cases-in-Indonesia


I agree with you that this is regular mudslinging for the country, and that both religious and ethnic tensions are at play here due to Ahok's chinese heritage. That said, it is indicative of how things have been in Indonesia for a long time now. This is merely the most publicised and high-profile incident of it occurring.

I don't see this getting any better any time soon.

China's secularism is less antagonistic towards non domestic Islamism in southeast Asia than the rising tide of Indian Hindu nationalism will be when India starts to flex its regional muscles more.

I may be catastrophizing, but Indian Hindu nationalism could do for the region what Iranian Shiism and the existence of Israel do for the Middle East; catalyse hardcore elements within the Saudi brand of Wahabbism that are present and growing in the region (spread through Saudi backed Madrases propping up all over the place).

It does seem that the traditional holding up of Malaysia and Indonesia as examples of Muslim majority countries which are tolerant and secular is not going to carry water much longer.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 sebster wrote:


Yeah, these events are straight up fething disastrous for Indonesia.

That said, it's important people don't start with this event and assume it is the normal state of affairs in Indonesia. It is disastrous precisely because it is not how things have operated, but because this may be how they will operate from now on.

Long prison sentences for blasphemy is nothing new to Indonesia.
https://en.tempo.co/read/news/2017/05/10/055874088/Major-Blasphemy-Cases-in-Indonesia

Yep. Adding Indonesia to the Do Not Visit list. Right behind Hungary, Venezuela, and Rhode Island. fething Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Bunch of lying liars!

Add Cloudcroft New Mexico. Cloudcroft is actually pretty awesome , but you have to drive through the real world equivalent of Mordor to get there, and it will test the strength of your soul.*


*Luckily I had my soul removed at the orientation in law school-they were running a special and it was free!

Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Yes but you posted it after the post justifying discrimination against New Mexico and vulture population. When driving, they follow you.

One can note the alarming act here. Whats interesting is the post about rising Hindu "nationalism" for lack of a better word.
How is that going to reverb against the (pardon the pun) Chinese Wall? Are we seeing the rise of religious tribalism in Asia, ir is this just a meh event?

Me-sounds like the Imams were using religion to torpedo a less corrupt candidate than the ones they are connected to.

Its not religion...it greed.

Religion being used as a cover for corruption and power plays? Color me shocked!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

That's a lot of nice talk, but when the judgement is made that a religion is inherently intolerant (more so than others), people of that religion will then be discriminated against. That's simply the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. And that's putting aside that everything you said also applies to Christianity and other religions besides. So either the judgement based on that reasoning is not limited to Islam or there is an inherent bias against Islam that is causing it to be selectively applied, which is kind-of my point.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
Long prison sentences for blasphemy is nothing new to Indonesia.
https://en.tempo.co/read/news/2017/05/10/055874088/Major-Blasphemy-Cases-in-Indonesia

What's different is that here it is being applied to a powerful politician who was believed to have the potential to rise even higher. He's a close ally of the president. And now blasphemy laws are used to cut him out of politics.

I agree with you that this is regular mudslinging for the country, and that both religious and ethnic tensions are at play here due to Ahok's chinese heritage. That said, it is indicative of how things have been in Indonesia for a long time now. This is merely the most publicised and high-profile incident of it occurring.

 kronk wrote:

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 sebster wrote:


Yeah, these events are straight up fething disastrous for Indonesia.

That said, it's important people don't start with this event and assume it is the normal state of affairs in Indonesia. It is disastrous precisely because it is not how things have operated, but because this may be how they will operate from now on.

Long prison sentences for blasphemy is nothing new to Indonesia.
https://en.tempo.co/read/news/2017/05/10/055874088/Major-Blasphemy-Cases-in-Indonesia

Yep. Adding Indonesia to the Do Not Visit list. Right behind Hungary, Venezuela, and Rhode Island. fething Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Bunch of lying liars!

Wait, wait, wait. It's not?
*Adds Rhode Island to the list*

 Frazzled wrote:


Its not religion...it greed.

This is true in almost every case across the world. Religion is the wooden horse used to get people on board with ideas that naked greed would not.

edit: fix quote derp

 sebster wrote:


No, the political element is key here. Do you know why the people who pushed this are still angry, and wanting the sentence increased to five years? Because that's the length of time that will ban Ahok from ever running for office again.

I'm not trying to make light of previous blasphemy charges, that law is always abhorrent, but this really is about shutting minorities out of government.

His ethnicity is probably more significant than his religion over all. Indonesia kind of conflates being Malay with being Muslim, so there's a strong religion angle to it to but in for a long time the focus of these things has been on ethnic divisions more than religious ones and having an ethnic Chinese guy coming up like that is pretty new. They're something like 1% of the population and for those who didn't catch it on the news for whatever reason the riots in 1998 were targeted at the government of the time, but the Chinese who are generally resented for the typical reasons you might resent a well off upper class ethnic minority were heavily associated with the problems in the country. Many Chinese-Indonesians left the country after the riots, and its commonly seen as a good thing there.

Nationalism is on the rise in the world again. The last time we stopped its rise involved a world war. What will it take this time?

I wouldn't really say WWII stopped nationalism. There was the whole Cold War thing that followed, and that was pretty nationalistic.

I would say the Cold War was very much about political ideologies, not nationalism. The point was to organise separate nations into trans-national groups that included highly disparate national identities. Both sides had asians, arabs, europeans and africans recruited to their regional power bases.

 Easy E wrote:
Nationalism is on the rise in the world again. The last time we stopped its rise involved a world war. What will it take this time?

Modern nationalism movements we are seeing in politics seem far more on the isolationist (or more accurately anti-global) end. To me it looks like a response to globalization and the difficulties it has brought on a large number of people; citizens want their country to be a bit more cut off from others like it used to be because things were more-or-less better back then for many people. However I don't think globalization is the direct cause though so much as it's benefits went disproportionately to the wealthy and its downsides disproportionately to the middle class. From my perspective I am seeing the idea that the economy is rigged for against the common man becoming more and more accepted. Hell, there's a commercial for potting soil that uses the phrase "so rich you should file a tax return!" This is important because anger tends to be directed to an 'outsider' group, right now that is immigrants but once immigration is cracked down on, walls are built, and unions are left yet nothing gets better I think 'the wealthy' as an outsider group will be the next in line for the rage-dump. Which is all to say that I think the current nationalistic trend is heading towards economic 'civil war' rather than an actual war. At the end of the day, no one thinks WW3 is a good idea.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I would say the Cold War was very much about political ideologies, not nationalism. The point was to organise separate nations into trans-national groups that included highly disparate national identities. Both sides had asians, arabs, europeans and africans recruited to their regional power bases.

True, but those trans-national alliances were forged by ties and bonds deeply tied in with nationalist sentiment. Capitalist nations took pride in being capitalist. Communist nations took pride in being communist. Capitalist nations teamed up with capitalist nations because they were capitalist and opposed communism, even to the point of ignoring major parts of national ideology for the sake of the alliance. It's certainly different from what was going on in WWII, but WWII was also built of transnational alliances that found common groud in ideological similarities while ignoring their differences.

The nature of the Cold War conflict was distinct, but what drove it wasn't such imo. EDIT: Most certainly the US descended into an until then unprecedented amount of nationalistic fervor until the early to mid 60s.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Nationalism is on the rise in the world again. The last time we stopped its rise involved a world war. What will it take this time?

Modern nationalism movements we are seeing in politics seem far more on the isolationist (or more accurately anti-global) end. To me it looks like a response to globalization and the difficulties it has brought on a large number of people; citizens want their country to be a bit more cut off from others like it used to be because things were more-or-less better back then for many people. However I don't think globalization is the direct cause though so much as it's benefits went disproportionately to the wealthy and its downsides disproportionately to the middle class. F

rom my perspective I am seeing the idea that the economy is rigged for against the common man becoming more and more accepted. This is important because anger tends to be directed to an 'outsider' group, right now that is immigrants but once immigration is cracked down on, walls are built, and unions are left yet nothing gets better I think 'the wealthy' as an outsider group will be the next in line for the rage-dump. Which is all to say that I think the current nationalistic trend is heading towards economic 'civil war' rather than an actual war.

At the end of the day, no one thinks WW3 is a good idea.

I think you are correct, but economic war quickly escalates into real war when one side starts losing.

A lot of people didn't think World War I or World War II were good ideas either..... but then they happened.

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:
It does seem that the traditional holding up of Malaysia and Indonesia as examples of Muslim majority countries which are tolerant and secular is not going to carry water much longer.

The secular and tolerant Muslim-majority countries are:
- Albania
- Certainly others but I don't know them .

 Easy E wrote:
Nationalism is on the rise in the world again. The last time we stopped its rise involved a world war. What will it take this time?

Someone to realize that history repeats itself.

Well I couldn't call Albania tolerant, they have so much ethnic tension you could cut it with a butter knife

Not on religious ground though.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

That's a lot of nice talk, but when the judgement is made that a religion is inherently intolerant (more so than others), people of that religion will then be discriminated against. That's simply the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. And that's putting aside that everything you said also applies to Christianity and other religions besides. So either the judgement based on that reasoning is not limited to Islam or there is an inherent bias against Islam that is causing it to be selectively applied, which is kind-of my point.

I advise you to be sure about the point you're trying to make, because 'kind-of' knowing what you think isn't a good look.

I didn't say anything about Christianity one way or the other. Stick to what is actually being discussed, that way you limit the damage you do to your credibility when you get it wrong, which you have. Even if I conceded that it was true that discrimination against individual Muslims would be an unavoidable consequence of criticising the doctrine of Islam, that wouldn't constitute adequate reason to avoid making the criticism. What is true matters. It so happens that it's perfectly possible (in fact it is ultimately necessary) that Islam be open to criticism, satire and parody without Muslims being necessarily discriminated against as a consequence.

The only protection you, or I, or any given Muslim, or anyone else has against the naked abuse of power by malevolent forces, which is what you mean when you say discrimination, is the truth. If you put your eyes out rather than see that which is offensive to you, don't be surprised that you're unable to protest the greater offense which takes place next, you being blind. It's not just intellectual cowardice to suggest that an ideology be spared criticism because of what might follow from the pursuit of truth, it's immoral.

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Not on religious ground though.

Fair enough XD

EDIT: Though I would point out that much like Indonesia, religion and ethnicity in Albania are highly conflated.

 LordofHats wrote:
EDIT: Though I would point out that much like Indonesia, religion and ethnicity in Albania are highly conflated.

I didn't notice anything like this when I was there, and that doesn't seem to be confirmed by Wikipedia. Are you sure?

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

That's a lot of nice talk, but when the judgement is made that a religion is inherently intolerant (more so than others), people of that religion will then be discriminated against. That's simply the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. And that's putting aside that everything you said also applies to Christianity and other religions besides. So either the judgement based on that reasoning is not limited to Islam or there is an inherent bias against Islam that is causing it to be selectively applied, which is kind-of my point.

I advise you to be sure about the point you're trying to make, because 'kind-of' knowing what you think isn't a good look.

I didn't say anything about Christianity one way or the other. Stick to what is actually being discussed, that way you limit the damage you do to your credibility when you get it wrong, which you have. Even if I conceded that it was true that discrimination against individual Muslims would be an unavoidable consequence of criticising the doctrine of Islam, that wouldn't constitute adequate reason to avoid making the criticism. What is true matters. It so happens that it's perfectly possible (in fact it is ultimately necessary) that Islam be open to criticism, satire and parody without Muslims being necessarily discriminated against as a consequence.

The only protection you, or I, or any given Muslim, or anyone else has against the naked abuse of power by malevolent forces, which is what you mean when you say discrimination, is the truth. If you put your eyes out rather than see that which is offensive to you, don't be surprised that you're unable to protest the greater offense which takes place next, you being blind. It's not just intellectual cowardice to suggest that an ideology be spared criticism because of what might follow from the pursuit of truth, it's immoral.

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

So I say that if a holy book being intolerant makes a religion intolerant then Christiantiy, among others, would be also. You respond that I am wrong and Islam is intolerant because their book is. I can see that this has already descended into 'find reasons to justify a pre existing bias' terriorty, so I'll just leave you to continue justifying discrimination.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
EDIT: Though I would point out that much like Indonesia, religion and ethnicity in Albania are highly conflated.

I didn't notice anything like this when I was there, and that doesn't seem to be confirmed by Wikipedia. Are you sure?

IDK. Maybe I'm thinking of somewhere else?

Well, correct me if I am wrong but maybe you were thinking about the whole Yugoslav breakup.
There were some ethnic Albanian involved (mainly in Kosovo I think, not completely sure about it), and there was the “ethnic” divide between Serbs and Bosniak that was very related to religion if I understand things correctly.
Anyhow Albania is a separate country from Yugoslavia, they had a quite different experience during the 20th century because Albania was the one true 100% ideologically pure until the end communist dictatorship which broke relationship first with the USSR when they tried to soften on the communism, then with China when they did the same. They only stopped being a communist dictatorship in 1992.

I'm not saying there is no ethnic tension in Albania (apparently there is some with Greek peoples) but those don't seem to be linked to religion, and from what I found the people that complain the most about being religiously discriminated in Muslim-majority Albania are… Muslims hardliners. And that's definitely not the group I would feel the most sorry for .

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

That's a lot of nice talk, but when the judgement is made that a religion is inherently intolerant (more so than others), people of that religion will then be discriminated against. That's simply the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. And that's putting aside that everything you said also applies to Christianity and other religions besides. So either the judgement based on that reasoning is not limited to Islam or there is an inherent bias against Islam that is causing it to be selectively applied, which is kind-of my point.

I advise you to be sure about the point you're trying to make, because 'kind-of' knowing what you think isn't a good look.

I didn't say anything about Christianity one way or the other. Stick to what is actually being discussed, that way you limit the damage you do to your credibility when you get it wrong, which you have. Even if I conceded that it was true that discrimination against individual Muslims would be an unavoidable consequence of criticising the doctrine of Islam, that wouldn't constitute adequate reason to avoid making the criticism. What is true matters. It so happens that it's perfectly possible (in fact it is ultimately necessary) that Islam be open to criticism, satire and parody without Muslims being necessarily discriminated against as a consequence.

The only protection you, or I, or any given Muslim, or anyone else has against the naked abuse of power by malevolent forces, which is what you mean when you say discrimination, is the truth. If you put your eyes out rather than see that which is offensive to you, don't be surprised that you're unable to protest the greater offense which takes place next, you being blind. It's not just intellectual cowardice to suggest that an ideology be spared criticism because of what might follow from the pursuit of truth, it's immoral.

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

So I say that if a holy book being intolerant makes a religion intolerant then Christiantiy, among others, would be also. You respond that I am wrong and Islam is intolerant because their book is. I can see that this has already descended into 'find reasons to justify a pre existing bias' terriorty, so I'll just leave you to continue justifying discrimination.

The intolerance of Christianity is largely tempered by the doctrine of Grace. The intolerance of Judaism is largely tempered by the fact that it is non universal and doesn't proselytise. There's no equivalent mitigating force in Islam.

Albanians are quite secular and seemed in the 90's in greece to inherently understand that religion is a vehicle of societal integration. The Greek Orthodox Church at the time organized mass christenings and there were many converts to Christianity here.
Then we Greeks started displaying signs of racial discrimination rather than religious one. That unfortunately coincided with the rise of Albanian Nationalism and together with the standard Balkan temperament of everyone in the region led to a pretty nationalist people on a racial angle but not on a religious one.

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

That's a lot of nice talk, but when the judgement is made that a religion is inherently intolerant (more so than others), people of that religion will then be discriminated against. That's simply the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. And that's putting aside that everything you said also applies to Christianity and other religions besides. So either the judgement based on that reasoning is not limited to Islam or there is an inherent bias against Islam that is causing it to be selectively applied, which is kind-of my point.

I advise you to be sure about the point you're trying to make, because 'kind-of' knowing what you think isn't a good look.

I didn't say anything about Christianity one way or the other. Stick to what is actually being discussed, that way you limit the damage you do to your credibility when you get it wrong, which you have. Even if I conceded that it was true that discrimination against individual Muslims would be an unavoidable consequence of criticising the doctrine of Islam, that wouldn't constitute adequate reason to avoid making the criticism. What is true matters. It so happens that it's perfectly possible (in fact it is ultimately necessary) that Islam be open to criticism, satire and parody without Muslims being necessarily discriminated against as a consequence.

The only protection you, or I, or any given Muslim, or anyone else has against the naked abuse of power by malevolent forces, which is what you mean when you say discrimination, is the truth. If you put your eyes out rather than see that which is offensive to you, don't be surprised that you're unable to protest the greater offense which takes place next, you being blind. It's not just intellectual cowardice to suggest that an ideology be spared criticism because of what might follow from the pursuit of truth, it's immoral.

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

So I say that if a holy book being intolerant makes a religion intolerant then Christiantiy, among others, would be also. You respond that I am wrong and Islam is intolerant because their book is. I can see that this has already descended into 'find reasons to justify a pre existing bias' terriorty, so I'll just leave you to continue justifying discrimination.

The intolerance of Christianity is largely tempered by the doctrine of Grace. The intolerance of Judaism is largely tempered by the fact that it is non universal and doesn't proselytise. There's no equivalent mitigating force in Islam.

The concept of "people of the book", and how widely it has been applied historically, seems to disagree with that assertion.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Looks like I made it in before the posts trying to justify discrimination against Muslims. Because I'm sure that people will look at this and try to spin it into something about the whole religion being intolerant.

Those are two different things, you can do the latter, just substitute 'identify as' for 'spin into', without necessarily or even implicitly doing the former.

A critique of Islam, even one which determines the whole religion to be intolerant, is not the same thing as justification or advocacy for discrimination against Muslims.

Insofar as any ideology as self contradictory and incoherent as Islam can be said to be anything, it can be said to be intolerant. You can parse the Koran and the Hadiths and find little bits of justification for a kind of benevolent theocracy (nothing like secularism), but that's as good as it gets, and as bad as it gets is really as bad as it can be; genocide and totalitarian theocratic facism. It's great that the majority of Muslims worldwide don't act in accordance with that. It's not so great that they can't provide a powerful theological argument for not doing so by the lights of their holy books and writings, or the example of their so called prophet.

None of that has anything to do with discriminating against Muslims. At most it's an implicit endorsement of discrimination against Islam as an idea, which is a good thing. If you can't discriminate between ideas you can't know a right action from a wrong one.

Ideas <> People.

That's a lot of nice talk, but when the judgement is made that a religion is inherently intolerant (more so than others), people of that religion will then be discriminated against. That's simply the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. And that's putting aside that everything you said also applies to Christianity and other religions besides. So either the judgement based on that reasoning is not limited to Islam or there is an inherent bias against Islam that is causing it to be selectively applied, which is kind-of my point.

I advise you to be sure about the point you're trying to make, because 'kind-of' knowing what you think isn't a good look.

I didn't say anything about Christianity one way or the other. Stick to what is actually being discussed, that way you limit the damage you do to your credibility when you get it wrong, which you have. Even if I conceded that it was true that discrimination against individual Muslims would be an unavoidable consequence of criticising the doctrine of Islam, that wouldn't constitute adequate reason to avoid making the criticism. What is true matters. It so happens that it's perfectly possible (in fact it is ultimately necessary) that Islam be open to criticism, satire and parody without Muslims being necessarily discriminated against as a consequence.

The only protection you, or I, or any given Muslim, or anyone else has against the naked abuse of power by malevolent forces, which is what you mean when you say discrimination, is the truth. If you put your eyes out rather than see that which is offensive to you, don't be surprised that you're unable to protest the greater offense which takes place next, you being blind. It's not just intellectual cowardice to suggest that an ideology be spared criticism because of what might follow from the pursuit of truth, it's immoral.

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

So I say that if a holy book being intolerant makes a religion intolerant then Christiantiy, among others, would be also. You respond that I am wrong and Islam is intolerant because their book is. I can see that this has already descended into 'find reasons to justify a pre existing bias' terriorty, so I'll just leave you to continue justifying discrimination.

The intolerance of Christianity is largely tempered by the doctrine of Grace. The intolerance of Judaism is largely tempered by the fact that it is non universal and doesn't proselytise. There's no equivalent mitigating force in Islam.

The concept of "people of the book", and how widely it has been applied historically, seems to disagree with that assertion.

As I said in my point about benevolent theocracy being the best you can get, being a "person of the book", even in the most liberal times and places during the Ottoman Caliphate (Andalusian Spain for example) still made you a 2nd class citizen subject to a special religious tax and with strict limits on property ownership, opportunities for high appointment and rights of marriage. That's as good as it gets. It is not coincidental that Iran and Saudi Arabia are different varieties of theocracy, or that the closer to conservative, mainstream orthodoxy the SEA Muslim majority countries come, the more theocratic and less tolerant of non Muslims, women's rights and gay rights they become. If you're looking for evidence, see above.

A year ago you'd have probably led with the assertion that South East Asian Muslims are just as Muslim as Iranian ones, and yet not as inclined towards these illiberal behaviours and attitudes. What's being demonstrated now in an almost perfect natural experiment is that the more Islam you pump into a society, the more chauvinism, religious intolerance and violence you get out. The reason for this causal link is not mysterious, if you've taken the time to study the foundational texts of the ideology and to recognise that no significant theological reformist movement has taken place in Islam since those texts were written. The only schism on par in terms of scale with the Protestant and Reformation movements in Christianity (which directly contribute to the ability of Christians to reconcile some anaemic version of their faith with post Enlightenment liberal democracy) that you can point to is the Sunni/Shia divide which took place almost immediately after the 'prophet' died and amounted to nothing more in philosophical terms than an internecine tribal conflict over the spoils of war.

If you want to talk in isolation about the problems of Christian doctrine, or Judaic/Rabbinical theosophy, I'm here for you, but it wouldn't change the content of the holy texts of Islam. If this were the 1930s I'd be saying that European Catholicism was the most pernicious and dangerous religion in the world because of its open alliance with facism, and I could identify for you the link between Catholic dogma, European anti-Semitism and that alliance. If it makes you feel better for me say at the same time as I criticize Islam that radical Jewish Zionist settlers on the West Bank are half the reason that the two state solution is not attainable and the Israel/Palestine conflict is essentially insoluble, that's your problem. I don't need to contextualise my criticism of an ideology in order to satisfy your childish concerns about discrimination.

I've written one sentence on the discussion and you've already decided my arguments for me. That's pretty impressive.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've written one sentence on the discussion and you've already decided my arguments for me. That's pretty impressive.

I can bench press double my bodyweight, too.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've written one sentence on the discussion and you've already decided my arguments for me. That's pretty impressive.

What's impressive is he went to the effort of writing three paragraphs when just writing 'I think it's OK to discriminate against Muslims' would have saved him the trouble. But then the justifications of bad behavior always take longer to work around the issue while still trying to maintain moral high ground.

One thing not mentioned to this point, in a couple articles I've read on this verdict, is that Ahok maintains that Islamic-based media misquoted him via editing of statements he made, and that he will prove it in appeals courts.

Which leads me to the question:

Was he, as the accused unable to present evidence on his behalf in Indonesia's court system? If he's unable to in 'regular' court, is he more able to in appeals court?

At the end of the day, facing criminal charges for 'blasphemy' is just bs. I can't put it any other way.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've written one sentence on the discussion and you've already decided my arguments for me. That's pretty impressive.

What's impressive is he went to the effort of writing three paragraphs when just writing 'I think it's OK to discriminate against Muslims' would have saved him the trouble. But then the justifications of bad behavior always take longer to work around the issue while still trying to maintain moral high ground.

Criticism of a faith does not automatically lend itself to censuring followers of that faith. That's because people of all colours, creeds, cultures and faiths would generally prefer to be left alone. Your average Muslim does the same thing as your average Christian, they focus on the aspects of the script and faith that appeal to them and their way of life the most. However there is not -nearly- enough 'wiggle room' for an relaxed Muslim as there is for a relaxed Christian. Only a fool would ignore the affects this has on the faithful, compared to their secular counterparts.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7861/british-muslims-survey

Rather, I think, that it is you who is automatically substituting valid criticism of the faith itself for some imagined call that Muslims must be discriminated against. Is challenging the beliefs of someone discrimination? I would think not. People, including Muslims, need to be confronted about the issues of this faith in an open and honest dialogue. One which will never be possible so long as blasphemy laws remain a thing. One that will not be possible where cartoonists that are sued or receive hate mail for their depictions of Judaism and Christianity are instead hunted down and killed for their depictions of Islam.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've written one sentence on the discussion and you've already decided my arguments for me. That's pretty impressive.

What's impressive is he went to the effort of writing three paragraphs when just writing 'I think it's OK to discriminate against Muslims' would have saved him the trouble. But then the justifications of bad behavior always take longer to work around the issue while still trying to maintain moral high ground.

Criticism of a faith does not automatically lend itself to censuring followers of that faith. That's because people of all colours, creeds, cultures and faiths would generally prefer to be left alone. Your average Muslim does the same thing as your average Christian, they focus on the aspects of the script and faith that appeal to them and their way of life the most. However there is not -nearly- enough 'wiggle room' for an relaxed Muslim as there is for a relaxed Christian. Only a fool would ignore the affects this has on the faithful, compared to their secular counterparts.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7861/british-muslims-survey

Rather, I think, that it is you who is automatically substituting valid criticism of the faith itself for some imagined call that Muslims must be discriminated against. Is challenging the beliefs of someone discrimination? I would think not. People, including Muslims, need to be confronted about the issues of this faith in an open and honest dialogue. One which will never be possible so long as blasphemy laws remain a thing. One that will not be possible where cartoonists that are sued or receive hate mail for their depictions of Judaism and Christianity are instead hunted down and killed for their depictions of Islam.

So you say it isn't discrimination and call for a specific subgroup of the population to be confronted in the same paragraph. How about we judge individuals/communities by their own behavior instead? Or we can treat them as being violence-prone because of their religion, which is discrimination even if that were true.

EDIT: Here we go: https://www.vox.com/identities/2015/12/8/9871742/bible-quran-video

konst80hummel wrote:
Albanians are quite secular and seemed in the 90's in greece to inherently understand that religion is a vehicle of societal integration. The Greek Orthodox Church at the time organized mass christenings and there were many converts to Christianity here.
Then we Greeks started displaying signs of racial discrimination rather than religious one. That unfortunately coincided with the rise of Albanian Nationalism and together with the standard Balkan temperament of everyone in the region led to a pretty nationalist people on a racial angle but not on a religious one.

From what I heard, Greeks got a pretty bad reputation in Albania.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So you say it isn't discrimination and call for a specific subgroup of the population to be confronted in the same paragraph. How about we judge individuals/communities by their own behavior instead? Or we can treat them as being violence-prone because of their religion, which is discrimination even if that were true.

...which is discrimination even if that were true.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Let's say we were to accurately identify that a particular community in your country had a serious problem, let's say something completely ridiculous like fringe elements of the group practices live human sacrifice. It is established that acceptance of even encouragement of that practice is a systemic problem in that community. Most don't do it, but they don't harshly condemn it in their holy places and most wouldn't report it to the local authorities if someone they knew had committed or was planning to commit human sacrifice.

Now, if members of the larger community were to condemn this sub-community and demand that the systemic problem in that sub-community be addressed because it flies directly in the face of the values of liberty, fraternity, right to life (etc, etc) that is treasured by most communities living in the country... that is, in your opinion, bigoted?

EDIT: Here we go: https://www.vox.com/identities/2015/12/8/9871742/bible-quran-video

You believe I think the Old Testament to be any less barbaric? At one point God demands that Abraham murder his own son 'just because'. The moral thing to do there would be to tell this cosmic entity to feth right off, God or no.

The problem isn't the verses of Islam, every religion has horrendous stuff like that. It is the absolutism of the Qu'arn. It is perfect. It is the last word of God and cannot be amended, changed or challenged. The faiths own inflexibility was great for the general cohesion of the faith centuries ago, it's why we only have the major Sunni/Shia split instead the plethora of different churches and derivatives following the centuries of Jesus' death. But it now acts as a chain around its own foot in trying to integrate with an increasingly secular world.

The simple fact of the matter is people can rag on about other faiths quite freely, the paedophile cover-ups in the Catholic church, or that the Westboro Baptists are celebrating soldier's deaths because they fight for a country that allows gays to exist. But the moment Islam and those that follow it are called up on the same stuff or worse? Suddenly that's unacceptable and, in countries where Muslims are the majority, it is also illegal.

Nice twisting of my words there. Even if it were true that Muslim people had a greater tendency to violence it would still be discrimination to act against all Muslims. If a person or community is acting amorally or illegally, take action against that person or community. Taking action because of their religion is not only bigotry but illegal.

No-one is saying that 'Muslim people have a greater tendency towards violence'.
If a person or community is basing all their key actions on their interpretation of a religion how do you not reference that religion in any imaginary 'action ' that's taken? How does that action have any permanent effect if the root of the problem is never addressed because our social discourse has become completely black and white?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nice twisting of my words there. Even if it were true that Muslim people had a greater tendency to violence it would still be discrimination to act against all Muslims. If a person or community is acting amorally or illegally, take action against that person or community. Taking action because of their religion is not only bigotry but illegal.

How am I twisting your words? You are outright saying that even if causation is established we can't take action against that because doing so would be bigoted.

Doesn't that sound a little bit bizarre?

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nice twisting of my words there. Even if it were true that Muslim people had a greater tendency to violence it would still be discrimination to act against all Muslims. If a person or community is acting amorally or illegally, take action against that person or community. Taking action because of their religion is not only bigotry but illegal.

How am I twisting your words? You are outright saying that even if causation is established we can't take action against that because doing so would be bigoted.

Doesn't that sound a little bit bizarre?

I literally just said that if a person or group is active wrongly it is appropriate to take action because they acted wrongly. Taking action against a group because they are Muslim is bigoted. How about you explain the benefit of your argument; say we label Islam as inherently intolerant/violent. What then? How exactly does that not immediately translate into descrimination? You'll need to include how this does not occur on a broad scale, and particularly how it will not exacerbate the discrimination Muslims already suffer without that identification being made. There is only one destination that labelling Islam will go.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 plastictrees wrote:
No-one is saying that 'Muslim people have a greater tendency towards violence'.
If a person or community is basing all their key actions on their interpretation of a religion how do you not reference that religion in any imaginary 'action ' that's taken? How does that action have any permanent effect if the root of the problem is never addressed because our social discourse has become completely black and white?

How can Islam be labelled as the root of the problem when the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful citizens?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nice twisting of my words there. Even if it were true that Muslim people had a greater tendency to violence it would still be discrimination to act against all Muslims. If a person or community is acting amorally or illegally, take action against that person or community. Taking action because of their religion is not only bigotry but illegal.

How am I twisting your words? You are outright saying that even if causation is established we can't take action against that because doing so would be bigoted.

Doesn't that sound a little bit bizarre?

I literally just said that if a person or group is active wrongly it is appropriate to take action because they acted wrongly. Taking action against a group because they are Muslim is bigoted. How about you explain the benefit of your argument; say we label Islam as inherently intolerant/violent. What then? How exactly does that not immediately translate into descrimination? You'll need to include how this does not occur on a broad scale, and particularly how it will not exacerbate the discrimination Muslims already suffer without that identification being made. There is only one destination that labelling Islam will go.

Christianity is an awful religion that somehow convinces millions of people that our most basic, and largely harmless, desires are sinful by default.
Judaism is a terrible faith that promotes the God-given righteousness and superiority of a specific ethnic minority over others.
Those are ok criticism's apparently.


But if I point out that Islam encourages violence and is an unflexible dogmatic creed... well suddenly that's discrimination. You need to be aware of the inherent hypocrisy of that stance.

 plastictrees wrote:
No-one is saying that 'Muslim people have a greater tendency towards violence'.
If a person or community is basing all their key actions on their interpretation of a religion how do you not reference that religion in any imaginary 'action ' that's taken? How does that action have any permanent effect if the root of the problem is never addressed because our social discourse has become completely black and white?

How can Islam be labelled as the root of the problem when the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful citizens?

Because most people are better than their religion. Keyword being most.

So we've gotten to the point where you have no argument left to justify bias and are making things up that I didn't say. I'll leave you to it as well.

Every time someone uses the Gatestone Institute as a serious source as puppy cries. Their bias is so blatant that it's sad.

"Sympathises with suicide bombers", for instance. In the actual text, it's made clear that the question revealed that there was sympathy for "suicide bombers fighting oppression", not for suicide in general. Why didn't GI write that in the headline? Because they're dishonest shills who don't care whether their articles are true or not as long as they paint Muslins or Islam in a bad light.

It is indeed important to have a reasoned debate on Islam just like any other religion. Reasoned debate cannot include the Gatestone Institute due to their history of lying or misrepresenting facts.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've written one sentence on the discussion and you've already decided my arguments for me. That's pretty impressive.

What's impressive is he went to the effort of writing three paragraphs when just writing 'I think it's OK to discriminate against Muslims' would have saved him the trouble. But then the justifications of bad behavior always take longer to work around the issue while still trying to maintain moral high ground.

Writing three paragraphs isn't an impressive effort. Maintaining a reasonable tone in the face of stunning ignorance is an impressive effort.

If you'd like to point out where I've said it's OK to discriminate against Muslims or where I've justified bad behaviour, please be my guest. You wanting me to have done that does not make it so.

Ideas <> People. It's really just that simple. Are you critical of national socialism? Is that an explicit or even tacit endorsement of violent discrimination against Germans? Is it even an endorsement of discrimination against living, self avowed neo-nazis? I'm fairly sure the ACLU's position on national socialism is a critical one, and yet they came down on the side of the neo Nazis and the 1st Amendment over the right of a group of them to organise a march through a small town populated mostly by Holocaust survivors. The ACLU lost a lot of members on that proposition, but they did the right thing. You know why?

Ideas <> People.

No matter how hard you fail to understand this, it's still self evident.

AlchemicalSolution, no offense intended, but if you could copy and paste this “ ≠ ” symbol instead of using “ <> ” (if that does correspond to what you meant to write, ofc) it would make me very happy.
Thanks .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
AlchemicalSolution, no offense intended, but if you could copy and paste this “ ≠ ” symbol instead of using “ <> ” (if that does correspond to what you meant to write, ofc) it would make me very happy.
Thanks .

I'm not that easily offended. My understanding is that your symbol means 'not equal to' and I'm trying to say 'exclusive of' so there's a subtle difference there, although I could be wrong as I'm not a mathematician. I would go further than saying that people are not ideas and ideas are not people, I would say that a person cannot be an idea and an idea cannot be a person. It's a metaphysical distinction but I think it's an important one because it makes the same point with greater force and, as you can see, it's a concept people have difficulty with accepting.

There isn't ever going to be an Islamic reformation if we're going to define "Muslim" as "person who adheres strictly to every awful bit of thr Quran". Consider what you said earlier:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

This statement presupposes a static, unchanging Islam. Under such a definition, of course Islam can't ever be tolerant of other religions: it's entire existence would hinge on it being intolerant. I would posit that this is a simplification. There are significant issues with religious intolerance in Muslim countries (especially when we're talking about Wahhabism), but there are also millions upon millions of Muslims that are perfectly fine with other religions that wouldn't count as Muslims under the above definition. If we're going to discuss whether Islam is intolerant or not it's not exactly fair to exclude the more tolerant parts of the religion because they have a different interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith than you do.

The existence of sects like Wahhabism or Sufism would further disagree with the assertion that there haven't been any significant schisms since the Sunni-Shia split (admittedly Sufism is almost as old, but you get the point).

I'd happily condemn Wahhabism as a vile and intolerant ideology, but "Islam" is too broad an umbrella to be of relevance.

What if the turn to Wahhabism/conservatism IS the reform?

 Frazzled wrote:
What if the turn to Wahhabism/conservatism IS the reform?

It's of existential importance that that not be the case.

But what if it is? Its a fallacy that a reform of something means the liberalization of it, and historically we've seen these movements in Islamic history in the past. Plus a major portion of it is driven by similar political pressures as the past (the conflict between Gulf states/region and historic Persia). Both the British and Ottoman Turks had a long history of dealing with conservative movements/figures. Siege of Khartoum ring a bell?

Now other faiths and political systems also have this so I am nt saying Islam is special in that regard, just, what happens if the current reform movement is not the kind the Western Liberal world thinks of as reform?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
There isn't ever going to be an Islamic reformation if we're going to define "Muslim" as "person who adheres strictly to every awful bit of thr Quran". Consider what you said earlier:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

This statement presupposes a static, unchanging Islam. Under such a definition, of course Islam can't ever be tolerant of other religions: it's entire existence would hinge on it being intolerant. I would posit that this is a simplification. There are significant issues with religious intolerance in Muslim countries (especially when we're talking about Wahhabism), but there are also millions upon millions of Muslims that are perfectly fine with other religions that wouldn't count as Muslims under the above definition. If we're going to discuss whether Islam is intolerant or not it's not exactly fair to exclude the more tolerant parts of the religion because they have a different interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith than you do.

The existence of sects like Wahhabism or Sufism would further disagree with the assertion that there haven't been any significant schisms since the Sunni-Shia split (admittedly Sufism is almost as old, but you get the point).

I'd happily condemn Wahhabism as a vile and intolerant ideology, but "Islam" is too broad an umbrella to be of relevance.

When you manage to convince even a substantial minority of Muslims, globally, to join you in that condemnation, we'll have made some progress. The fact that you can't is a serious problem, and it's one that's rooted in the faith itself.

None of the schismatic divisions in Islam have fundamentally reformed the approach to the faith that the individual has available to them, except for Sufism but that's a tiny minority and I'd be actually interested to see data on Sufis in particular, although I'm not aware of any that exists. I wouldn't be surprised to see, for example, that Sufis might be more open to liberal values of tolerance and secularism. If they were, it would constitute evidence of my claim that doctrine is determinative of behaviour, not counterevidence.

There is nothing analogous in scale to the Christian Reformation in the sense of how the individual approaches the religion, i.e in a way which offers an alternative to scriptural literalism. Two Imams can argue over the interpretation of a particular verse of the Koran, or they might historically have argued over which Hadiths were canonical, but neither of them has the authority or the tools to suggest that there might be some other way entirely of apprehending their relationship to the divine, it's just an actuary debate.

Judaism is too parochial to be of concern in the same way. Islam combines the nationalism and xenophobia of Judaism with the messianic zeal, missionary spirit and apocalyptic eschatology of Christianity, without any of the corresponding levers for the release of the social and political energies this builds up.

That's to say nothing of the fact that even by your own lights, it certainly can't be said that Islam is doing anybody any good. Isn't there an opportunity cost to humanity of having 1.6 billion people believe that knowing about the life of a 7th Century Arabian merchant is of substantially greater ethical and metaphysical importance than eliminating malaria? Shouldn't we be free to make this criticism? Don't we, in fact, have a social and moral obligation to make it, repeatedly? Isn't the objection "but you can say the same about Christianity" not only false doctrinally but distracting politically and cowardice intellectually?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
But what if it is? Its a fallacy that a reform of something means the liberalization of it, and historically we've seen these movements in Islamic history in the past. Plus a major portion of it is driven by similar political pressures as the past (the conflict between Gulf states/region and historic Persia). Both the British and Ottoman Turks had a long history of dealing with conservative movements/figures. Siege of Khartoum ring a bell?

Now other faiths and political systems also have this so I am nt saying Islam is special in that regard, just, what happens if the current reform movement is not the kind the Western Liberal world thinks of as reform?

I'm optimistic about this, I don't believe that Islamic orthodoxy will survive contact with modernity any better than Catholic orthodoxy did. This is something for liberal reformists within Islam to do, the only thing we can do is to support and prop up those voices, and the first step in doing that is to recognise that they are endangering their lives by speaking out because Islam is a religion that currently has no well established mechanism for self criticism without violence. There's either going to be a(nother) civil war or a conversation within Islam before it is substantially reformed.

For Westerners to claim that Islam itself is not a problem is to empower the forces that seek to ensure that it is violence and not conversation that is the ultimate arbiter of what the Islam of the future looks like.

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
There isn't ever going to be an Islamic reformation if we're going to define "Muslim" as "person who adheres strictly to every awful bit of thr Quran". Consider what you said earlier:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:

Read the Koran, and get familiar with the Hadiths. The extent to which a Muslim is tolerant of the religion of others is essentially the extent to which he is not a devout Muslim.

This statement presupposes a static, unchanging Islam. Under such a definition, of course Islam can't ever be tolerant of other religions: it's entire existence would hinge on it being intolerant. I would posit that this is a simplification. There are significant issues with religious intolerance in Muslim countries (especially when we're talking about Wahhabism), but there are also millions upon millions of Muslims that are perfectly fine with other religions that wouldn't count as Muslims under the above definition. If we're going to discuss whether Islam is intolerant or not it's not exactly fair to exclude the more tolerant parts of the religion because they have a different interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith than you do.

The existence of sects like Wahhabism or Sufism would further disagree with the assertion that there haven't been any significant schisms since the Sunni-Shia split (admittedly Sufism is almost as old, but you get the point).

I'd happily condemn Wahhabism as a vile and intolerant ideology, but "Islam" is too broad an umbrella to be of relevance.

When you manage to convince even a substantial minority of Muslims, globally, to join you in that condemnation, we'll have made some progress. The fact that you can't is a serious problem, and it's one that's rooted in the faith itself.

What constitutes "a substantial minority", and what consittutes "condemnation"?

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:


That's to say nothing of the fact that even by your own lights, it certainly can't be said that Islam is doing anybody any good. Isn't there an opportunity cost to humanity of having 1.6 billion people believe that knowing about the life of a 7th Century Arabian merchant is of substantially greater ethical and metaphysical importance than eliminating malaria? Shouldn't we be free to make this criticism? Don't we, in fact, have a social and moral obligation to make it, repeatedly? Isn't the objection "but you can say the same about Christianity" not only false doctrinally but distracting politically and cowardice intellectually?

Do 1.6 billion people actually believe that though? This is the crux of the entire issue: "Islam" is not a homogenous blob. Of course you should be free to critizise people's priorities, but again, "Muslim" or "Islam" becomes a ridiculously broad umbrella for such critique. It's intellectually lazy to destroy a good argument by painting with an overly broad brush.

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:


None of the schismatic divisions in Islam have fundamentally reformed the approach to the faith that the individual has available to them, except for Sufism but that's a tiny minority and I'd be actually interested to see data on Sufis in particular, although I'm not aware of any that exists. I wouldn't be surprised to see, for example, that Sufis might be more open to liberal values of tolerance and secularism. If they were, it would constitute evidence of my claim that doctrine is determinative of behaviour, not counterevidence.

That's just not the case. Take the Ibadi branch of Islam for example. It's older than the Sunni-Shiite split and believes that the Quran was created by God in one particular time, rather than co-existing with God as eternal truth. According to the definition you've provided, the Ibadi, just like the Sufi, are not Muslim. The more tolerant strains are there. The more restrictive denominations are more powerful, sure. The mere existence of the Sufi and Ibadi schools, however, is proof that Islam without the regressive elements is still possible, which in turn means that Islam doesn't have to be inherently awful.

If I've understood you correctly I think we can both agree that Wahhabism needs to be countered, and shifts towards denominations like the Sufi and Ibadi encouraged, yes?

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:
My understanding is that your symbol means 'not equal to' and I'm trying to say 'exclusive of' so there's a subtle difference there, although I could be wrong as I'm not a mathematician.

You are indeed right (I am a mathematician, sorta, as you may have guessed ^^), but there are no character to denote that as far as I know. The best I can come with is “Ideas ∩ People = ∅”, which is the formula that is the most likely to be used to denote that two sets are disjoint, and which translate in English as “There is no Idea that is also a Person” (or vice versa it's equivalent).

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 AlchemicalSolution wrote:
My understanding is that your symbol means 'not equal to' and I'm trying to say 'exclusive of' so there's a subtle difference there, although I could be wrong as I'm not a mathematician.

You are indeed right (I am a mathematician, sorta, as you may have guessed ^^), but there are no character to denote that as far as I know. The best I can come with is “Ideas ∩ People = ∅”, which is the formula that is the most likely to be used to denote that two sets are disjoint, and which translate in English as “There is no Idea that is also a Person” (or vice versa it's equivalent).

As a political scientist, I feel I have object. "L'etat, c'est moi" is a thing after all.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
As a political scientist, I feel I have object. "L'etat, c'est moi" is a thing after all.

Are you objecting to AlchemicalSolution's statement, or to the fact I correctly rephrased it mathematically in a fair and accurate manner?
I feel it's the first.
Also the actual quote (according to Wikipedia) was funnier ^^.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also what about “I am the law!”

Well the exact way of mathematically clarifying it is somewhat moot, since (which I mentioned on the first page) there is no functional difference between discriminating against Islam and discriminating against Muslims; the broader populace cannot be expected to respect the difference.

I am not sure what you mean by discriminating against Islam.
Also the broader populace is very bad. Whatever we do they'll screw up :(.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by discriminating against Islam.
Also the broader populace is very bad. Whatever we do they'll screw up :(.

Perhaps better phrased as 'labelling Islam as a religion more violent/intolerant than others is functionally identical to labelling Muslims as more violent/intolerant than others'. This thread alone offers abundant evidence that people are unable to consistently make a distinction--even the two people claiming such have made numerous statements against Muslims even going so far as to say that the Muslim population needs to be "confronted" about the state of their religion. Which is such a ridiculous idea that... Well, you can see why I stopped engaging them.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by discriminating against Islam.
Also the broader populace is very bad. Whatever we do they'll screw up :(.

Perhaps better phrased as 'labelling Islam as a religion more violent/intolerant than others is functionally identical to labelling Muslims as more violent/intolerant than others'. This thread alone offers abundant evidence that people are unable to consistently make a distinction--even the two people claiming such have made numerous statements against Muslims even going so far as to say that the Muslim population needs to be "confronted" about the state of their religion. Which is such a ridiculous idea that... Well, you can see why I stopped engaging them.

But what if Islam in its modern state of evolution actually is more violent and intolerant than its contemporary religions?
Are we supposed to believe that all religions at all points in their evolution are equivalent to one another in terms of support for violence and toleration of outsiders?

We are supposed to judge individuals/communities by their own actions and not by whatever religion they adhere to. Even assuming Islam is somehow worse than others there is no benefit to be gained from making that assumption because of the discrimination it will cause against millions of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
We are supposed to judge individuals/communities by their own actions and not by whatever religion they adhere to. Even assuming Islam is somehow worse than others there is no benefit to be gained from making that assumption because of the discrimination it will cause against millions of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

Well, I certainly agree that if people are to be judged, they should be judged as individuals. But I also think that belief systems should be criticized on their merit as well. Most of us are quick to criticize political systems on their merits, and I don't see why religious systems should be exempt from the same type of scrutiny.

Christianity was reformed immensely due to scrutiny from its critics. I don't think any particular religion deserves exemption, especially when criticism is one of the strongest avenues toward moderation and reform.

There's a subtle but extremely important distinction between criticizing a religion as a whole and criticizing how people act on a religion. Major religions have enough convoluted and self-contradictory segments that following them to the letter is an impossibility. This leaves how members of that religion behave to interpretation, and a given individual/community's interpretation can (and should) be evaluated on its merits. Speaking against, say, the Catholic church's actions in regard to sexual assault by priests is criticizing the actions of a specific group of people within the church. And that criticism is a good thing. Saying that Christianity is prone to sexual abuse of children is not.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There's a subtle but extremely important distinction between criticizing a religion as a whole and criticizing how people act on a religion. Major religions have enough convoluted and self-contradictory segments that following them to the letter is an impossibility. This leaves how members of that religion behave to interpretation, and a given individual/community's interpretation can (and should) be evaluated on its merits. Speaking against, say, the Catholic church's actions in regard to sexual assault by priests is criticizing the actions of a specific group of people within the church. And that criticism is a good thing. Saying that Christianity is prone to sexual abuse of children is not.

I don't know. There's an argument to be had that the Catholic doctrine of priestly celibacy was part of the cause for the child abuse scandals. Sure, it was individuals who committed the crimes, and individuals who covered up the crimes, but the doctrine itself may have played a big role in attracting offenders and potential offenders into the priesthood.

I don't see any inherent wrong in asking what role Catholic doctrine played in the child abuse scandals, nor do I think would most Catholics (except the subset of Catholics that think that Catholic doctrine should be immune to criticism in all cases, but I think that is referred to as being "more Catholic than the Pope").

 jasper76 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There's a subtle but extremely important distinction between criticizing a religion as a whole and criticizing how people act on a religion. Major religions have enough convoluted and self-contradictory segments that following them to the letter is an impossibility. This leaves how members of that religion behave to interpretation, and a given individual/community's interpretation can (and should) be evaluated on its merits. Speaking against, say, the Catholic church's actions in regard to sexual assault by priests is criticizing the actions of a specific group of people within the church. And that criticism is a good thing. Saying that Christianity is prone to sexual abuse of children is not.

I don't know. There's an argument to be had that the Catholic doctrine of priestly celibacy was part of the cause for the sexual abuse scandals. Sure, it was individuals who committed the crimes, and individuals who covered up the crimes, but the doctrine itself may have played a big role in attracting offenders and potential offenders into the priesthood.

I don't see any inherent wrong in asking what role Catholic doctrine played in the child abuse scandals, nor do I think would most Catholics themselves (except the subset of Catholics that think that Catholic doctrine should be immune to criticism in all cases, but I think that is referred to as being "more Catholic than the Pope").

This is where religion differs from politics/government. The latter is all about changing and updating what the rules are in order to improve and adapt, the former is static and more or less unchangeable. Additionally, I would argue that it is not the doctrine itself that caused such issue; after all it didn't say 'thou shalt cover for molesting children' and even then the judgement would fall on the persons who acted, because religion is all about interpretation. After all, the bible does say rather explicitly to kill all people of different faiths yet Christians who tried to act on that would likely be condemned by nearly every church out there.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
there is no functional difference between discriminating against Islam and discriminating against Muslims; the broader populace cannot be expected to respect the difference.

This is everything a person ever needs to know about the censorship mentality, and where it leads.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
This thread alone offers abundant evidence that people are unable to consistently make a distinction--even the two people claiming such have made numerous statements against Muslims even going so far as to say that the Muslim population needs to be "confronted" about the state of their religion. Which is such a ridiculous idea that... Well, you can see why I stopped engaging them.

Ahah it reminds me of the last time I criticized someone for saying something among the line of what you mention,lik “French Muslims need to show more they don't support ISIS” (it was in the French election thread). The very same guy ended up calling me bigoted because I laughed at his statement about Islam “actually being a religion of peace and the islamist are misinterpretating the texts” ^^. Apparently he wasn't able to make the distinction either .

Ex-muslims are usually the best source of criticism of Islam that doesn't confuse Islam and Muslims I think.

 jasper76 wrote:
There's an argument to be had that the Catholic doctrine of priestly celibacy was part of the cause for the child abuse scandals. Sure, it was individuals who committed the crimes, and individuals who covered up the crimes, but the doctrine itself may have played a big role in attracting offenders and potential offenders into the priesthood.

I don't think this is a valid argument, at all. People who rape children don't do it because they're frustrated at not being able to have sex with adults, and plenty of people manage to live a life without sex (whether by choice or by lack of partners) without deciding to go after children instead. And IIRC the actual rates of offense in the Catholic church weren't all that different from the rates for people in similar positions of power over children (teachers, group leaders, etc). The much more important factor was the perceived need to protect the church's reputation above all, suppressing the crimes of its members to avoid bad publicity. And, while you might be able to make a weak argument that doctrines about the infallibility of the church might have contributed to that need to avoid bad publicity, there are plenty of examples of people suppressing similar crimes (Penn State anyone?) for entirely secular reasons.

So, as much as I like to criticize religion, this isn't a very good opportunity for it. There are massive things wrong with the church as an organization in this case, but those are very human problems, not theological ones.

NinthMusketeer wrote:There's a subtle but extremely important distinction between criticizing a religion as a whole and criticizing how people act on a religion. Major religions have enough convoluted and self-contradictory segments that following them to the letter is an impossibility. This leaves how members of that religion behave to interpretation, and a given individual/community's interpretation can (and should) be evaluated on its merits. Speaking against, say, the Catholic church's actions in regard to sexual assault by priests is criticizing the actions of a specific group of people within the church. And that criticism is a good thing. Saying that Christianity is prone to sexual abuse of children is not.

Hoo boy. You want to ignore the huge amount of sexual repression inherent in the Christian faith? Why, because it might cause people to discriminate against Christians?

It is absolutely valid criticism. If you had addressed any of my points that I have raised throughout this thread we might actually be having a discussion. I used the most ridiculous example I could use (Aztec Human Sacrifice) to demonstrate the flaw in your argument that addressing flaws in a religion is a universally bad thing. Instead of responding you have accused me of twisting your words, which is absolutely not my intention. There's no need for me to resort to petty fallacies or complicated wordplay on my end to try and reason with you. Which is all I am trying to do.

I'm just going to try and simplify my argument here. This is my olive branch, let's start from scratch NinthMuskteer.


Religion, in general, is not a good thing. Islam is generally even worse than it's counterparts in regards to espousing violence and intolerance of other religions. This is because of the violent life of Mohammed and the idea that the Qu'arn is the Final word in religion. There are no amendments or further revelations to follow. It does not tolerate criticism.

Criticism, scepticism and an honest freedom to speak one's mind is essential for any religious minority (or majority) to coexist with people of other faiths or lack thereof in a peaceful (and in my preferred scenario secular) society. You cannot have freedom of religion in a society that does not also allow free criticism of religion. Censorship or censuring unpopular criticism is a step backwards, not forwards.

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
This thread alone offers abundant evidence that people are unable to consistently make a distinction--even the two people claiming such have made numerous statements against Muslims even going so far as to say that the Muslim population needs to be "confronted" about the state of their religion. Which is such a ridiculous idea that... Well, you can see why I stopped engaging them.

Ahah it reminds me of the last time I criticized someone for saying something among the line of what you mention,lik “French Muslims need to show more they don't support ISIS” (it was in the French election thread). The very same guy ended up calling me bigoted because I laughed at his statement about Islam “actually being a religion of peace and the islamist are misinterpretating the texts” ^^. Apparently he wasn't able to make the distinction either .

The 'interpretation' of the holy book by ISIS is a cruel, awful and barbaric interpretation used to justify their horrific campaign. But it is a valid interpretation of the texts. Ignoring that ignores the problem. That problem being religion.

Ex-muslims are usually the best source of criticism of Islam that doesn't confuse Islam and Muslims I think.

The problem with relying on ex-Muslims to be the leading voice is threefold:

1) Ex-muslims are hunted down and killed as apostates in Muslim countries. In secular countries they are still socially ostracised by the community to the point of complete exclusion. The number of 'quasi'-Muslims that drink alcohol and pay lip service to their religion is large, the number of actual 'ex'-Muslims that have denounced their faith is very, very small compared to that of other religions.
2) Many Muslims, especially religious leaders and Imams won't even engage in public debates with apostates. Prominent Muslims have outright refused to be on the same discussion board as Ayaan Hirsi Ali for example.
3) This very thread is based on the news of a lengthy jail sentence of a prominent citizen speaking against an interpretation of Islam. And this is in a Muslim majority country that prides itself on being considered 'moderate', having no patience for Wahhabism and other lines of thought.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
But it is a valid interpretation of the texts.

Yeah that's basically what I just said ^^.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
The problem with relying on ex-Muslims to be the leading voice is threefold:

1) Ex-muslims are hunted down and killed as apostates in Muslim countries. In secular countries they are still socially ostracised by the community to the point of complete exclusion. The number of 'quasi'-Muslims that drink alcohol and pay lip service to their religion is large, the number of actual 'ex'-Muslims that have denounced their faith is very, very small compared to that of other religions.
2) Many Muslims, especially religious leaders and Imams won't even engage in public debates with apostates. Prominent Muslims have outright refused to be on the same discussion board as Ayaan Hirsi Ali for example.
3) This very thread is based on the news of a lengthy jail sentence of a prominent citizen speaking against an interpretation of Islam. And this is in a Muslim majority country that prides itself on being considered 'moderate', having no patience for Wahhabism and other lines of thought.

While I obviously see how those are problems, I don't see how those are problems with ex-Muslims being the leading voices.

These people believe that we ought to behave as though belief doesn't effect behaviour. You can't cut through that kind of thinking with reason.

If it looks like jihadists blow themselves up because of the doctrine of martyrdom, if they actually tell us ad nauseam that that is why they're doing it, and they quote the verses of the Koran or Hadiths that explicitly enjoin that behaviour while they cut off the heads of civilians, that's somehow to be regarded as propaganda or lies or a misapprehension of what is really going on.

But when a 'moderate' cleric in London says that they have an interpretation of the texts which brands that behaviour as un-Islamic, they are to be believed irrespective of whether they even attempt to demonstrate what that interpretation is, convincingly or otherwise.

When the only available data on the relationship between specific beliefs and actions shows that globally, a majority of Muslims refuse to condemn suicide bombing in defence of the faith, support the stoning of women for adultery, wish to live under Sharia law and believe that death is the appropriate punishment for blasphemy and apostasy, your reference of that data will brand you as a racist.

The thing to remember though, is that while you can't speak to these people, they don't actually matter. They're unreachable, but you have to keep having the conversation in spaces which are accessible because it's the broad middle, who are perhaps not thinking about this or aren't in contact with the facts, that are open to being educated on the subject. I tend to leave this conversations with an injunction to visit Gallup's website and do some digging on the polling data they took in 2012 from a broad swathe of Muslim majority countries (the ones they were allowed into) which are still the best data we have on the topic. Start there, do some research, form your own conclusions and don't be cowed by accusations of racism or bigotry, the only thing that is achieving is the bankrupting of those terms, it's a totally meaningless thing to be accused of in 2017, which is something that those responsible for beggaring the lexicon in that way are going to have to answer for in coming years.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
This is where religion differs from politics/government. The latter is all about changing and updating what the rules are in order to improve and adapt, the former is static and more or less unchangeable. Additionally, I would argue that it is not the doctrine itself that caused such issue; after all it didn't say 'thou shalt cover for molesting children' and even then the judgement would fall on the persons who acted, because religion is all about interpretation. After all, the bible does say rather explicitly to kill all people of different faiths yet Christians who tried to act on that would likely be condemned by nearly every church out there.

The Bible does not command Christians to kill people of other faiths and as for the topic of priests molesting children, the Bible says they should be excommunicated and not coddled and swept under the rug. The Catholic Church needs to stop pussyfooting around their issues.

I don't normally comment on religious debates as I am an atheist and so I don't get involved.


But the bible does say to kill infidels, here is the passage.

Deuteronomy 17
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant; 17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; 17:5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.

 welshhoppo wrote:
I don't normally comment on religious debates as I am an atheist and so I don't get involved.


But the bible does say to kill infidels, here is the passage.

Deuteronomy 17
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant; 17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; 17:5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.

I think a pertinent point is that present-day Christians don't follow this commandment, which was never aimed at them anyway, nor do present-day Jews, to whom the commandment was purportedly given in the story. These religions have evolved over centuries of time.

Furthermore, many (most?) Christians and Jews believe these stories and moral codes to be mytho-historical artifacts.

That is the Old Testament - aka Torah. Mr. Party "Lets change this water into wine and get this party started!" Time changed that via the Jesus Supremacy Clause.

 jasper76 wrote:


Furthermore, many (most?) Christians and Jews believe these stories and moral codes to be mytho-historical artifacts.

Same with most Muslims and their book.

The problem comes from people living in failed or failing states, or active war zones. People will use any justification for their actions when society is not present.

Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

I'm sure most people will develop a bias against a group of people when that group of people have a trend of terrorism.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

I'm sure most people will develop a bias against a group of people when that group of people have a trend of terrorism.

Do you have a bias against the Patriot movement?

 feeder wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

I'm sure most people will develop a bias against a group of people when that group of people have a trend of terrorism.

Do you have a bias against the Patriot movement?

Are they terrorists?

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

I'm sure most people will develop a bias against a group of people when that group of people have a trend of terrorism.

Do you have a bias against the Patriot movement?

Are they terrorists?

They have a trend of terrorism.

 feeder wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

I'm sure most people will develop a bias against a group of people when that group of people have a trend of terrorism.

Do you have a bias against the Patriot movement?

Are they terrorists?

They have a trend of terrorism.

5 people dead in 3 separate attacks... Sorry, feeder, the Jihadists are higher on my bias list.

I don't condone their terrorism either for that matter.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Violent, unstable countries breed violent, unstable people. Majority groups have a tendency to discriminate against minority groups. Oppressed minorities result in people resisting that oppression.

These things are, and have always been, true in any region of the world regardless of people or religion. That every major case of Muslim extremes falls into those categories, and that those categories are not at all occupied exclusively by Muslims, tells us right off that external examples of behavior aren't valid criticisms of Islam. Which to be fair, a decent number of people understand. The problem comes when these people aren't actually trying to prove anything; they have a bias against Islam and need to find justification. This leads to criticism of the book itself, which is (as we've established) also not a valid argument since all major religions involve a significant interpretive element at their very core. Which then leads to ridiculous arguments and throwing up walls of text to avoid admitting that one has a pre-concieved bias.

I'm sure most people will develop a bias against a group of people when that group of people have a trend of terrorism.

Do you have a bias against the Patriot movement?

Are they terrorists?

They have a trend of terrorism.

5 people dead in 3 separate attacks... Sorry, feeder, the Jihadists are higher on my bias list.

Their death toll and number of attacks is much, much higher. McVeigh is probably the most famous "Patriot".

I don't condone their terrorism either for that matter.

Of course you don't, practically nobody does.

I'm pointing out that as North Americans, we have more to fear from our local (mostly white) nutbars than unhinged jihadists.

If thats what you were trying to do you miscalculated.

9/11
Fort Hood
attempted Times Square bombing
Texas drawing attacks
recruitment center attacks
San Bernardino attack
Florida attack

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Now if you had said the Klan/racists I'd agree, although their power has fallen away.

The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism in America since 9/11 .

Sauce

edit: clarity

 feeder wrote:
The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism since 9/11.

Sauce

Thats your definition. You're conflating neo nazis and the patriot movement. Might as well say "here's a list of alll the white people I disagree with" Thats not right, and doesn't make up the kill count of Islamoterrorists.

Now, if you compared the threat of Islamic terrorism to the cartels, gangs, or generic crime you'd be right. But we're not playing security theater because of fat white guys taking over a Portland ranger station (and a barrel of oil mysteriously "disappearing").

I'll further note those are terrorist incidents just in the US as a threat to US citizens.

 feeder wrote:
The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism in America since 9/11 .

Yeah, let's just ignore the most deadly terrorist attack against the United States in its history, because it's inconvenient for our statistics.

The argument doesn't matter anyway, because the initial assertion that Muslims have a trend of terrorism is false. Organisations based in violent, unstable countries have a trend of terrorism. The vast majority of Muslims are just normal people, and making the argument that they somehow trend to terrorism is exactly the pre-conceived bias I am talking about.

 jasper76 wrote:

 feeder wrote:
The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism in America since 9/11 .

Yeah, let's not include the most deadly terrorist attack against the United States in its history, because it's inconvenient for our calculations.

I take it you didn't try the tasty sauce?

 feeder wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 feeder wrote:
The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism in America since 9/11 .

Yeah, let's not include the most deadly terrorist attack against the United States in its history, because it's inconvenient for our calculations.

I take it you didn't try the tasty sauce?

I don't get the joke.

Anyway, when you're bean-counting terrorist casualties, it's probably pretty darn important to include 9/11 in your count. Perhaps you were quite young then and it seems like some mythologized distant part of history, but it was very be real and only happened less than 16 years ago.

 Frazzled wrote:

 feeder wrote:
The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism since 9/11.

Sauce

Thats your definition. You're conflating neo nazis and the patriot movement. Might as well say "here's a list of alll the white people I disagree with" Thats not right, and doesn't make up the kill count of Islamoterrorists.

Now, if you compared the threat of Islamic terrorism to the cartels, gangs, or generic crime you'd be right. But we're not playing security theater because of fat white guys taking over a Portland ranger station (and a barrel of oil mysteriously "disappearing").

I'll further note those are terrorist incidents just in the US as a threat to US citizens.

It's not MY definition, it's used by the freakin' FBI.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 feeder wrote:
The "patriot movement" is a broad umbrella which includes, among others, far-right militas, doomsday cults, white power groups, and so-called Sovereign Citizens.

They are responsible for something like 70% of the violent extremism in America since 9/11 .

Yeah, let's not include the most deadly terrorist attack against the United States in its history, because it's inconvenient for our calculations.

I take it you didn't try the tasty sauce?

I don't get the joke.

Anyway, when you're bean-counting terrorist casualties, it's probably pretty darn important to include 9/11 in your count.

The article (linked under Sauce) elaborates on why 9/12 is the date used.

 feeder wrote:

The article (linked under Sauce) elaborates on why 9/12 is the date used.

OK...yeah I didn't see the link.

I reject 9/12 utterly. Terrorist attacks by Islamic organizations have been killing Americans since the origination of the PLO.

Again, these pail in comparison to common crime, and cartel/gang violence as a danger to US citizens in the US itself. If you make that argument I agree with you. of course, we're all forgetting the real menace...cats. This is probably straining into the ISIL thread territory so I will withdraw further discussion in this direction.

 jasper76 wrote:

I think a pertinent point is that present-day Christians don't follow this commandment, which was never aimed at them anyway, nor do present-day Jews, to whom the commandment was purportedly given in the story. These religions have evolved over centuries of time.

Furthermore, many (most?) Christians and Jews believe these stories and moral codes to be mytho-historical artifacts.

At the same time, a significant number of Christians discriminate against, and/or hate homosexuality/homosexuals because of the same book in the OT. . . Which is it? Are Christians supposed to follow the whole book, or only the parts that make them feel good?

 Frazzled wrote:
I reject 9/12 utterly. Terrorist attacks by Islamic organizations have been killing Americans since the origination of the PLO.

Again, these pail in comparison to common crime, and cartel/gang violence as a danger to US citizens in the US itself. If you make that argument I agree with you. of course, we're all forgetting the real menace...cats. This is probably straining into the ISIL thread territory so I will withdraw further discussion in this direction.

That's a good point. And your mention of this getting OT too.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

I think a pertinent point is that present-day Christians don't follow this commandment, which was never aimed at them anyway, nor do present-day Jews, to whom the commandment was purportedly given in the story. These religions have evolved over centuries of time.

Furthermore, many (most?) Christians and Jews believe these stories and moral codes to be mytho-historical artifacts.

At the same time, a significant number of Christians discriminate against, and/or hate homosexuality/homosexuals because of the same book in the OT. . . Which is it? Are Christians supposed to follow the whole book, or only the parts that make them feel good?

I don't think I'm in any particular position to tell Christians what they are supposed to believe about the Old Testament. I think the most reasonable thing to believe is that it's a collection of mytho-historical artifacts detailing what various authors/ groups of authors believed about God.

(Incidentally, it's not just the OT which condemns homosexuality. Paul's Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament is also clearly condemning of homosexuality: Romans 1:22-28 (writing about the "irreligious and perverse spirit of men who...hinder the truth") "They claimed to be wise, but turned into fools instead; they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images representing mortal man, birds, beasts, and snakes. In consequence, God delivered them up in their lusts to unclean practices; they engaged in the mutual degradation of their bodies, these men who exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator - blessed be he forever, amen! God therefore delivered them to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural acts for unnatural, and the men gave up natural intercourse with women and burned with lust for one another. Men did shameful things with men, and thus received the penalty for their perversity. They did not see fit to acknowledge God, so God delivered them up to their own depraved sense to do what is unseemly.")

Since we haven't touched on the actual topic for ages, and this thread has a lot of quite reprehensible stuff getting posted in it, I'm going to call it here. Feel free to start a new thread when this bloke gets to the appeals court.