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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?




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 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?