Thread: Islam. A religion of peace? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by anglocatholic (# 13804) on
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We are constantly being bombarded with news of violence committed by Muslims on TV and in the papers. We also are being told by our political leaders that Islam is a religion of peace.
Is this in fact true?
If we look at the life of the prophet Mohammad, we discover a man who was no stranger to violence.
In Medina he was responsible for the genocide of a Jewish tribe. He also led raids on caravans heading for Mecca where people were butchered.
A study of the Quran yields 109 passages where Muslims are exhorted to kill non-Muslims.
The next few centuries after the death of the Prophet were a jihad killing spree from North Africa to central Asia.
Each year around 100,000 Christians are killed for their faith, millions persecuted, the majority in Muslim lands.
Why are our leaders so insistent that Islam is a religion of peace when the facts speak otherwise?
Why are they so scared to name the real problem? Islam.
Your thoughts.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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Christianity. A religion of honesty?
Posted by anglocatholic (# 13804) on
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Why is it politically correct to be hyper critical of the Church but look at Islam through rose tinted glasses?
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by anglocatholic:
Why is it politically correct to be hyper critical of the Church but look at Islam through rose tinted glasses?
My point was rather that a religion can be about peace but have obnoxiously unpeaceful adherents. Christianity has a plethora of liars, but I do not conclude from this that it is a religion of lies, or that lying is a basic part of the religion.
Yes a lot of violence is being done in the name of Islam right now. If you had looked at Christianity in say the 17th century, you would have seen a very violent religion. You would have been well within your rights to say, "Prince of Peace? That's a laugh." However, that behavior is not what Christianity is about.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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There are parts of the Bible that read like a Conan novel, so....
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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quote:
Originally posted by anglocatholic:
Why are they so scared to name the real problem? Islam.
Your thoughts.
I think blaming all problems on a large and fairly diverse religious group tends to lead to very bad ideas about what the right "solution" to that problem might be.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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Jesus was, I believe, a better person preaching a higher morality than Muhammad.
Clearly peaceful and warlike Christianities, and peaceful and warlike Islams have been constructed by adherents, but both Christians and Muslims have historically found it hard to completely ignore the character of their founders.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by anglocatholic:
Why is it politically correct to be hyper critical of the Church but look at Islam through rose tinted glasses?
Because we've been treating Islam as the "other" for centuries and turning a blind eye to our own sins for at least as long?
Because part of our faith explicitly tells us that we need to deal with the planks in our own eyes?
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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When you have been on the Ship a little bit longer, anglocatholic, you will learn that it is not done to either say anything negative about Islam, or to advocate for Christians currently being persecuted (by Muslims or anyone else).
You are absolutely correct in seeing them as pressing issues which demand discussion, but in the case of the former you will be branded an Islamophobe and American lackey to boot, no matter how nuanced or qualified your comments, and in the case of the latter you will also be branded Islamophobic, along with McCarthyite if you mention persecution in communist countries and, always the final trump card, WHAT ABOUT THE INQUISITION?
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on
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People have been critical about how Islam is expressed with regard to women's/gay rights and religious freedom on the Ship in the past. The problem is:
1) It's very easy to talk critically about Islam when there are no Muslims here to put those Qu'ranic verses in context or explain their faith.
2) However, it's also unfair and runs the risk of bearing false witness to critique Islam or the conduct of Muslims without any present.
3) Many of the criticisms expressed with regard to Islam were also found in or supported by Christians not all that long ago. Christians haven't been much better when it comes to human rights and religious freedom than Muslims have been (and in some areas, like race relations, we've done far, far worse than they have.)
It was only AFTER the Enlightenment established a parallel yet different value system (called modernism/secularism, etc.) and weakened the power of traditional Christianity that Europe and North America's human right records improved relative to Islam.
4) Which Islam are we talking about? There is a huge gulf between ISIS or Al Qaeda, and Muslims for Progressive Values or the Progressive Muslim Union just like there is between the Westboro Baptist Church or the Christian Identity Movement and the United Church of Canada, C of E or Quakers. Few Christians would actively defend the former groups. For every sweeping statement about Islam we make here, you'll undoubtedly find many Muslims who will object to them as well.
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
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quote:
Originally posted by ToujoursDan:
4) Which Islam are we talking about? There is a huge gulf between ISIS or Al Qaeda, and Muslims for Progressive Values or the Progressive Muslim Union just like there is between the Westboro Baptist Church or the Christian Identity Movement and the United Church of Canada, C of E or Quakers. Few Christians would actively defend the former groups. For every sweeping statement about Islam we make here, you'll undoubtedly find many Muslims who will object to them as well.
Precisely.
There are enormous differences amongst the one and a half billion Muslims in the world, including the the little group I know, and have known, personally, and it is incumbent on us to draw careful distinctions, recognise the different ways in which way the Koran can be exegeted, and think about whether moderates and extremists are, or are not, true to Islam - assuming that there is a normative Islam.
This is complex and difficult, but in view of what is happening in places such as Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, it is sheer irresponsible obscurantism to refuse to make the effort because of the off chance that we might hurt someone's feelings.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by anglocatholic:
Why is it politically correct to be hyper critical of the Church but look at Islam through rose tinted glasses?
It's because we're listening to some hyper-politically correct liberal hippy who said that before we think about helpfully taking specks out of other people's eyes, we should take the plank out of our own.
Also, we think our words are more likely to have an effect on Christian and secular violence against Muslims than they are on Muslim violence against Christians. Therefore, we choose which things to talk about that we may do more good and do less evil.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Is that the Jesus who was God's hippy holiday in between killing tens of billions?
Whose followers come a close second?
All the religions of the Book are guilty of believing the myth of redemptive violence. But none more so than Christendom.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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I think the best person to answer the OP is a Muslim - any here? Most of the rest of us have a very sketchy knowledge of the different kinds of Islam, and it is dangerous to generalize in any case. I might say that Christians burned people for a 1000 years, but that would not be the sum total of our knowledge of Christianity.
One of my oldest friends was a Sufi, and he was certainly not violent - but I can't then generalize upon that about 'Islam'. I don't think that 'Islam' exists.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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Well, I suppose this website has its own centre of gravity when it comes to Shipmates perceiving extremism.
But in posting terms, extremism is normally characterised by assertion without verification, assuming "all right-thinking people will agree with me", parroting slogans, ignoring others' arguments, misrepresentation, creating straw men and generally being provocative.
Such behaviour, if consistently demonstrated, just gets any Shipmate the reputation of being a bit of a jerk, and may lead to a formal finding of jerkiness, which normally gets you banned.
I think you can be as critical as you like of Islamic theology (mainstream as well as extreme variants) but, as with Christianity, it is always wrong to assume that theology invariably determines behaviour, or that any theological variant is typical of the whole.
But if you're feeling critical about anything, a well-presented and well-marshalled post is always defensible, in a way in which a more extreme post (as characterised above) never is. I suppose it is true that if your post is some way away from the centre of gravity of opinions of active Shipmates, you'll attract more attention and criticism than otherwise, but that's in the nature of things in any group discussion, whether online or face-to-face.
[ 06. August 2014, 07:58: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on
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I've not read the Koran. A colleague who has tells me that the passages exhorting the slaying of infidels etc. generally end with "... or, you can forgive, because Allah is gracious," with a strong hint that this should be the preferred option.
If that's so then the more shouty nasty kind of Muslim - the one that perpetuates the stereotype - may simply be guilty of scriptural selectivity, and that's not exactly unique to Islam.
Posted by *Leon* (# 3377) on
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An important difference is that Mohammed was a political leader operating in somewhat difficult circumstances in a fairly violent society. The apostles were politically powerless. Once Christianity had political power, violence in the name of (the correct flavor of) Christianity started quite quickly.
Apologists for a peaceful Islam seem to argue that Mohammed was as non-violent as he could be while fulfilling his obligations to the people of Medina given the political situation. That does not mean that his precise political decisions are applicable today.
I compare Mohammed with the apostles as opposed to Jesus because, as a Christian, I obviously believe that Jesus is far more than a prophet. I would like to say that Jesus could have ruled Medina without resorting to force at all. However I'm not at all sure that St Peter would have done as good a job as Mohammed did.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
There are enormous differences amongst the one and a half billion Muslims in the world, including the the little group I know, and have known, personally, and it is incumbent on us to draw careful distinctions, recognise the different ways in which way the Koran can be exegeted, and think about whether moderates and extremists are, or are not, true to Islam - assuming that there is a normative Islam.
All of which is just one more reason why sweeping statements about how the "problem" is "Islam" (such as, for example, the OP) are utterly stupid.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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quote:
Originally posted by ToujoursDan:
It was only AFTER the Enlightenment established a parallel yet different value system (called modernism/secularism, etc.) and weakened the power of traditional Christianity that Europe and North America's human right records improved relative to Islam.
I don't understand why, if this is true, anyone would be a Christian.
quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:
I compare Mohammed with the apostles as opposed to Jesus because, as a Christian, I obviously believe that Jesus is far more than a prophet. I would like to say that Jesus could have ruled Medina without resorting to force at all. However I'm not at all sure that St Peter would have done as good a job as Mohammed did.
Yes, I'm sure St Peter would have made a rubbish conquering warlord.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Lord Jestocost:
I've not read the Koran. A colleague who has tells me that the passages exhorting the slaying of infidels etc. generally end with "... or, you can forgive, because Allah is gracious," with a strong hint that this should be the preferred option.
A Muslim classmate of mine at university gave a talk at the Islamic student society where he argued that the Koran suggests it's ideal to have just one wife, because it says you can have four if you love them equally, and for nearly all men this is impossible.
He was taken aside quietly afterwards and told he would not be asked to speak again.
I would suggest that the reasons the Koran tends to be interpreted conservatively are:
- it purports to be the literal word of Allah, therefore it would make the most sense to take it literally
- many of the cultures where Islam is predominantly practiced are conservative in general. And in countries that are Islamic but less conservative (e.g. Turkey, Lebanon) they tend to interpret it in a way that works for their culture
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
A Muslim classmate of mine at university gave a talk at the Islamic student society where he argued that the Koran suggests it's ideal to have just one wife, because it says you can have four if you love them equally, and for nearly all men this is impossible.
He was taken aside quietly afterwards and told he would not be asked to speak again.
Can you explain why he wouldn't be allowed to speak again. Was his explanation considered too lax, or too conservative?
Part of me thinks that in a society where serial monogamy, fairly high rates of adultery, and broken families are so common it's unreasonable for non-Muslims to condemn polygamy in all circumstances. But there's no doubt that it creates problems of its own.
Apparently, the number of polygamous relationships among Muslims in the UK is increasing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15032947
Posted by jrw (# 18045) on
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I realise that we're all meant to think that Islamophobia (Muslimophobia would be more correct) has 'nothing whatsoever to do with racism', but does anyone seriously believe that this topic would be anything like the issue that it is if most Muslims were white.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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Nope.
Posted by Gildas (# 525) on
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Candidly, I think that if a religion, primarily practiced by caucasians, had been claimed as the inspiration for 9/11, the current pogrom against Christians in the Middle East and Lee Rigby being chopped to pieces by goons with meat cleavers, I think that there might be a certain amount of theological critique going on.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
Candidly, I think that if a religion, primarily practiced by caucasians, had been claimed as the inspiration for 9/11, the current pogrom against Christians in the Middle East and Lee Rigby being chopped to pieces by goons with meat cleavers, I think that there might be a certain amount of theological critique going on.
You'd think so, but no. The usual reaction to things like Tim McVeigh's ties to Elohim City (if you have to Google that, you've illustrated my point) or Eric Rudolph is to claim that they're not "really Christians". In other words the typical reaction to atrocities committed by white Christians is not theological critique, but dismissal.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
A Muslim classmate of mine at university gave a talk at the Islamic student society where he argued that the Koran suggests it's ideal to have just one wife, because it says you can have four if you love them equally, and for nearly all men this is impossible.
He was taken aside quietly afterwards and told he would not be asked to speak again.
I would suggest that the reasons the Koran tends to be interpreted conservatively....
Your friend WAS interpreting the Qur'an conservatively.
He came out with the standard line.
In my 40 + years dealing with Muslims, I've never heard a different interpretation than that.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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quote:
Originally posted by anglocatholic:
A study of the Quran yields 109 passages where Muslims are exhorted to kill non-Muslims.
Whose study? Your study? If so, give me some examples, suras and ayets.
You will find that in every case the context is war - where muslims have been attacked.
Not unlike the christian leaders' exhortations a hundred years ago to this very day.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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AND 109 is a bit extreme - most people find about 5 references.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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I rather like the theory that the prophet Muhammad in fact never existed, that there was no sudden conquest by Arabian tribes, and that Islam is really the result of an elaborate religious-political cover story for Persian conquests of Byzantium invented by Persian rulers who had converted to the Arabian form of the Christian heresy we know as Ebionism.
It's probably bollocks, but I have not so far read a serious academic debunking of these claims, they have been around for a while now, and they do seem to have at least some historical evidence going for them.
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on
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A minor aside to lilBuddha: The original stories about Conan were mostly short stories, not novels.
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on
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Years ago I read an article that said Islam is a mirror to Christianity, showing us who we are - or recently were. What they do, *we* are or recently were doing and claiming to represent God in it - from restricting women's activities and voices to forcing the king's religion on all residents to justifying war to expand the religion.
(The article had a much longer list of simiarities.)
Some today in the West still long for these, if certain "conservatives" are speaking what they actually believe - desire for a "Christian country" that imposes prayers of one kind on all school children and restricts the roles and voices of women at least in church and possibly society.
Maybe part of the plank in our own eye is not recognizing the underlying causes that allowed these abuses to be endorsed as "God's way." Blindness to underlying causes makes it likely equally bad ideas will be endorsed (or are currently being endorsed).
For example, some "conservatives" want what they abhor others wanting (state mandated religion), thinking the use of political or military force to compel (superficial) belief is good so long as it's "our" beliefs being imposed. They see the issue as "whose doctrine is right" instead of "what behaviors reflect God's personality in this life and why do we think that?"
I have friends who insist torture and unlimited prison terms without trial are bad when used against us but good and should be used more against "them" because "they" aren't Christian so "they" are bad people and deserve it. How is that attitude any different than the attitude of the worst of the freedomfighters/terrorists?
Also, whenever we shrug off our own past abuses as "it was just how times were" and "they thought they were doing the right thing" instead of "how could they have thought such a thing!" we are justifying current abusers because for them it's just how times are and they think they are doing right.
We need to use our own abusive past (and present abusive attitudes) to figure out what went wrong that allowed endorsement of abuse, so we have a better chance of preventing abuses in the future ourselves. (Maybe others would take notice and see from our example what their own underlying problems are, and similarly change; but we aren't yet setting an example.)
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
A Muslim classmate of mine at university gave a talk at the Islamic student society where he argued that the Koran suggests it's ideal to have just one wife, because it says you can have four if you love them equally, and for nearly all men this is impossible.
He was taken aside quietly afterwards and told he would not be asked to speak again.
Can you explain why he wouldn't be allowed to speak again. Was his explanation considered too lax, or too conservative?
I'm not sure if lax and conservative are the right terms for this issue! Many of the Islamic students were international and in their home countries polygamy is legal. That is, they fully intended to take more than one wife in the future. So they were not happy to hear my friend's comments and several complained to the group's president.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
He came out with the standard line.
In my 40 + years dealing with Muslims, I've never heard a different interpretation than that.
Are you dealing with Muslims in countries where polygamy is legal?
My roots are in West Africa, many Muslim men I know there have at least two wives. I had a family of one husband/three wives at my wedding.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
I realise that we're all meant to think that Islamophobia (Muslimophobia would be more correct) has 'nothing whatsoever to do with racism', but does anyone seriously believe that this topic would be anything like the issue that it is if most Muslims were white.
White - you mean like the Boston bombers?
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
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If Islam means submission and surrender to God, and Muslims believe their religion to encompass the words of all the same prophets as Christianity does, with one more, then what is said about Islam must reflect on us too. We worship the same God, like it or not, and we know as Christians that the one God requires peace, that God wants us to love our fellow human beings, and that God is calling on Muslims to do the same.
We are right to condemn what some Muslims do in the name of their religion, where it brings God's good name into disrepute. We are right to condemn Christians past and present who have done the same thing.
We would not be right imv to condemn the religion itself unless the majority of its adherents were doing the same, unless there were no 'fruit of the spirit' being produced through its people by the religion, unless God's holy name were continually brought into disrepute by it.
Those of us who have been inspired by attitudes or actions of Muslim brothers or sisters can witness to the fact that fruit of the spirit is often forthcoming from it, and that God's holy name is often promoted as good through it.
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
We worship the same God, like it or not...
We would not be right imv to condemn the religion itself unless the majority of its adherents were doing the same, unless there were no 'fruit of the spirit' being produced through its people by the religion, unless God's holy name were continually brought into disrepute by it.
Without commenting on whether Islam and Christianity worship the same God --
I don't believe all who claim to be Christian worship the same God! Two people can look at the same book and in that sense have similarity, but one sees in it a loving God who embraces all humans while the other sees in it a vicious god who mostly hates "not us" and even among "us" looks for excuses to torture as many people as possible eternally.
Same god? Whole different personality. Not even a family resemblance.
Which is why I often avoid calling myself "Christian" unless I know what meaning the person spoken to hears in that word. *Many* people believe the word "Christian" means a devotee of a brutal and exclusionary god. I worship a different God than that one.
Accidentally happening to use the same word doesn't make it the same god; just like using a different word doesn't make it a different god.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
Candidly, I think that if a religion, primarily practiced by caucasians, had been claimed as the inspiration for 9/11, the current pogrom against Christians in the Middle East and Lee Rigby being chopped to pieces by goons with meat cleavers, I think that there might be a certain amount of theological critique going on.
You'd think so, but no. The usual reaction to things like Tim McVeigh's ties to Elohim City (if you have to Google that, you've illustrated my point) or Eric Rudolph is to claim that they're not "really Christians". In other words the typical reaction to atrocities committed by white Christians is not theological critique, but dismissal.
Yep. Christians need to own their problematic shit, especially white middle-class Western Christians. It's stuff like this which makes me hate the 'Not All Christians' movement as much as the 'Not All Men' movement. It's not OK to pretend that McVeigh et al's theology came out of thin air.
Posted by jrw (# 18045) on
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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
I realise that we're all meant to think that Islamophobia (Muslimophobia would be more correct) has 'nothing whatsoever to do with racism', but does anyone seriously believe that this topic would be anything like the issue that it is if most Muslims were white.
White - you mean like the Boston bombers?
Sorry, I don't see your point.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
I realise that we're all meant to think that Islamophobia (Muslimophobia would be more correct) has 'nothing whatsoever to do with racism', but does anyone seriously believe that this topic would be anything like the issue that it is if most Muslims were white.
White - you mean like the Boston bombers?
Sorry, I don't see your point.
I'm questioning your suggestion that anti-Islam sentiment is primarily racial. In the US it's almost entirely related to the (incorrect) belief that Islam is a violent pro-terrorist religion.
Which religion are "most" of its adherents white? Judaism maybe? I doubt it's true for Christianity.
[ 06. August 2014, 20:24: Message edited by: seekingsister ]
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
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I think too many Americans also think that all Muslims are "brown"* despite the clear falsity of such. Remember that after 9-11, many Sikhs were harassed because ignorant people decided they must be Muslims.
*Not sure what word they would use, because their thinking is so confused.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
I'm questioning your suggestion that anti-Islam sentiment is primarily racial. In the US it's almost entirely related to the (incorrect) belief that Islam is a violent pro-terrorist religion.
I'm sorry, I don't think that's true. I think here in the US there is a horrible strand of racism that is an element in treating Islam as something "other."
Posted by Jon in the Nati (# 15849) on
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I'm with SeekingSister on this. Islamophobia in the US is mainly about the connection in people's minds with terrorism. It is more about Muslims as terrorists who hate America and want to destroy us than it is about Muslims as brown people with weird customs from some other place. Moreover, it seems to come up in some really specific ways (general post-9/11 bigotry, the Murfreesboro and Park51 mosques, the recent fearmongering that Islamic religious law is taking over the country, etc.).
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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I don't doubt that Christians are persecuted in some predominantly Islamic countries.
But the figure of 100,000 Christians a year being killed for their faith?
Where are the reliable figures to back that up?
In some of the countries where Christians have been killed in substantial numbers - Nigeria, Southern Sudan - there has been intercommunal violence where both Muslims and Christians have been killed.
It'd be like saying at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles, 'Protestants are being killed in Northern Ireland ...' without the corollary, 'Catholics are being killed in Northern Ireland ...'
As well as people who were neither.
There's a lot of space between 'There's nothing violent about Islam at all,' and 'Islam consists of nothing but violence.'
The Ship does tend to have a liberal bias, but I don't see radical Jihadism and the behaviour of people like ISIS being shrugged off with a 'get out of jail free' card.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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That said, I am well aware of the dreadful persecution in Mosul at the moment by Islamic State (formerly ISIS) and that has received nowhere near the air-time and media attention that it deserves.
Posted by jrw (# 18045) on
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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Which religion are "most" of its adherents white? Judaism maybe? I doubt it's true for Christianity.
Agreed. But I'm sure the (unconscious?) perception that people have of Muslims in England (I wouldn't know about the U.S.) is that they are mainly dark skinned . However superficial, it makes Muslims palpably different, creating the 'us and them ' mindset. I'd be happy to be proved wrong on this as it would make the world a slightly less complicated place, but racism nowadays is not the black and white (excuse the pun) issue that it used to be. Racism seems to be more subtle now than in the past.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
When you have been on the Ship a little bit longer, anglocatholic, you will learn that it is not done to either say anything negative about Islam,
I think, rather, you will find it is not the done thing to level accusations at Islam that could be made against Christianity word-for-word but aren't.
It's not the criticism of Islam that bugs me. It's the incredible lack of specificity and the inconsistency. Most of the criticisms of Islam I see made on the Ship are almost EXACTLY the same as the criticisms of Christianity that non-Christians can be seen to make outside the Christian thought bubble. Ask a non-Christian whether Christianity is a religion of peace and they will happily bring up the Crusades and the destruction of various New World civilizations in the name of God. They will dig up various Bible passages.
I recall one time when a Shipmate linked to a site that listed all the horrible things in the Quran and said "see? see how terrible it is?" The only problem was, the site he linked to was an atheist site, and the page full of highlighted Quran passages was right next to another page full of highlighted Bible passages.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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Here is a criticism of Islam which cannot be applied to Christianity: in Islam, Muhammad is considered the perfect man and exemplar for humanity.
Posted by mrWaters (# 18171) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I don't doubt that Christians are persecuted in some predominantly Islamic countries.
But the figure of 100,000 Christians a year being killed for their faith?
Where are the reliable figures to back that up?
In short this statistic is not accurate at all. For example it includes deaths from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo which was fueled by a lot more than religion.
A few years back I studied Islam and even read the Quran. One important thing to know is that there is no centralized Islam faith. There are numerous divides of the religion and they differentiate by a lot. The text of Quran is being interpreted very differently all over the world. One can find a lot of fairly explicit parts of Quran which are intolerant and xenophobic. The difference is how do you explain them. That is why the senior Muslim clerics have so much power all over the world. Since I began studying Islam I changed my opinion from very Islamophobic towards very cautious. Nowadays I do not believe that Islam itself promotes violence or anything like that, however I believe that the Muslim faith is relatively easy to manipulate. Obviously the terrorists use the Muslim holly text to manipulate others. Some passages from it, without proper interpretation, can be easily understood as the terrorists want. Which is a great disservice towards the more liberal Muslims.
Some may say that the Christian bible is also easy to incite violence. However most of those passages are found in the Old Testament, to which we have a little bit different attitude than towards the New. The Quran does not have this distinction. All verses are ordered by length which also creates confusion (blame for it one of the first caliphs who centralized Quran and burned all the different versions).
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Here is a criticism of Islam which cannot be applied to Christianity: in Islam, Muhammad is considered the perfect man and exemplar for humanity.
You think the NAME of the perfect man matters, then?
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Here is a criticism of Islam which cannot be applied to Christianity: in Islam, Muhammad is considered the perfect man and exemplar for humanity.
You think the NAME of the perfect man matters, then?
No. I think his character matters.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I rather like the theory that the prophet Muhammad in fact never existed, that there was no sudden conquest by Arabian tribes, and that Islam is really the result of an elaborate religious-political cover story for Persian conquests of Byzantium invented by Persian rulers who had converted to the Arabian form of the Christian heresy we know as Ebionism.
It's probably bollocks, but I have not so far read a serious academic debunking of these claims, they have been around for a while now, and they do seem to have at least some historical evidence going for them.
If it's probably bollocks, why would you expect a serious academic debunking to even exist? I've seen no scholarly refutations of this ground-breaking book, either...
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Here is a criticism of Islam which cannot be applied to Christianity: in Islam, Muhammad is considered the perfect man and exemplar for humanity.
You think the NAME of the perfect man matters, then?
No. I think his character matters.
I see. So Jesus being a perfect man in Christianity is completely different and beyond criticism because he was a GOOD man in your eyes.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Here is a criticism of Islam which cannot be applied to Christianity: in Islam, Muhammad is considered the perfect man and exemplar for humanity.
You think the NAME of the perfect man matters, then?
No. I think his character matters.
I see. So Jesus being a perfect man in Christianity is completely different and beyond criticism because he was a GOOD man in your eyes.
Well yes, Jesus was a good man. Is this controversial around here?
Let me make it simple: My criticism isn't that Islam has a revered founder who is considered the perfect man. As you point out, so does Christianity. My criticism is that the man who is considered by Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity is Muhammad.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Well yes, Jesus was a good man. Is this controversial around here?
It took me precisely one bit of googling to find a demonstration that Jesus is not universally admired. Your perception might be that he was good. My perception might be that he was good. But that isn't the point. The point is that people have differing views of the moral qualities of Jesus just as they have differing views of the moral qualities of Muhammad. The fact that you think Jesus was a good man and Muhammad was bad man doesn't prevent someone else from thinking the exact reverse.
Posted by Jon in the Nati (# 15849) on
:
quote:
My criticism is that the man who is considered by Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity is Muhammad.
You think Muhammad sucks, and the fact that he sucks but Muslims think he is so great reflects badly on Muslims. We get it.
You really showed those Muslims. "Our founder can beat up your founder..."
[ 07. August 2014, 03:37: Message edited by: Jon in the Nati ]
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fact that you think Jesus was a good man and Muhammad was bad man doesn't prevent someone else from thinking the exact reverse.
Well, duh. No kidding. Your point?
quote:
Originally posted by Jon in the Nati:
quote:
My criticism is that the man who is considered by Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity is Muhammad.
You think Muhammad sucks, and the fact that he sucks but Muslims think he is so great reflects badly on Muslims. We get it.
You really showed those Muslims. "Our founder can beat up your founder..."
Our founder owned no slaves, led no armies, ordered no executions. In any contest Jesus would be the one beat up.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fact that you think Jesus was a good man and Muhammad was bad man doesn't prevent someone else from thinking the exact reverse.
Well, duh. No kidding. Your point?
That your criticism is highly subjective and essentially meaningless to anyone but yourself. And certainly not a form of criticism that can be levelled at Islam but not Christianity - which is where you chimed in, claiming that you did in fact have a criticism that was unique.
[ 07. August 2014, 06:00: Message edited by: orfeo ]
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fact that you think Jesus was a good man and Muhammad was bad man doesn't prevent someone else from thinking the exact reverse.
Well, duh. No kidding. Your point?
That your criticism is highly subjective and essentially meaningless to anyone but yourself. And certainly not a form of criticism that can be levelled at Islam but not Christianity - which is where you chimed in, claiming that you did in fact have a criticism that was unique.
This is obscurantist relativist nonsense.
Muhammad is no more the perfect man and exemplar for humanity than Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell.
Islam considers Muhammad to be the perfect man and exemplar for humanity so I criticise it for that.
Christianity does not consider Muhammad to be the perfect man and exemplar for humanity so I do not criticise it for that.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I'm sorry, I don't think that's true. I think here in the US there is a horrible strand of racism that is an element in treating Islam as something "other."
American racism is real (and I've been on the receiving end of it). But Muslims do not make up a sizable portion of the US population and most Americans know very few if any Muslims. If you asked 20 years ago about Muslims most people would point to the Nation of Islam - African-American converts like Muhammed Ali or Malcolm X. Many African-Americans born since the 1970s have Islamic names even if they are not Muslim - Aisha, Jamila, Kareem, etc.
Then of course there were many Bosnian refugees who came in the 1990s, who where white.
Following Islamist terrorist attacks like the first Twin Towers bombing, Al Qaeda, 9/11, etc. Islam became associated with terrorism and that's when the anti-Islam sentiment as linked with Middle Eastern and South Asian people began to grow - because of fears that they want to inflict harm on Americans.
This differs to the UK where the vast majority of Muslims that people come in contact with are immigrants, therefore anti-Islam tends to be tied up with racism and xenophobia.
In sum: Americans weren't particularly anti-Islam before Al-Qaeda/Islamist terrorism because Islam was not significant enough in American society - except as an offshoot of the black power movement.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fact that you think Jesus was a good man and Muhammad was bad man doesn't prevent someone else from thinking the exact reverse.
Well, duh. No kidding. Your point?
That your criticism is highly subjective and essentially meaningless to anyone but yourself. And certainly not a form of criticism that can be levelled at Islam but not Christianity - which is where you chimed in, claiming that you did in fact have a criticism that was unique.
This is obscurantist relativist nonsense.
Muhammad is no more the perfect man and exemplar for humanity than Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell.
Islam considers Muhammad to be the perfect man and exemplar for humanity so I criticise it for that.
Christianity does not consider Muhammad to be the perfect man and exemplar for humanity so I do not criticise it for that.
It is not so much 'relativist' as 'relational' in the sense that the relevant claim is "the leader of our religion is perfect".
If you're going to insist that the particular name of the particular leader of the particular religion is a key component of the criticism, then of course your criticism is going to be unique. Every criticism will be. Claiming that politician X is corrupt will be completely separate from claiming that politician Y is corrupt because politician X is not politician Y. Claiming that Shipmate A broke the rules is going to be completely different from claiming that Shipmate B broke the rules, because they are two different people.
I simply disagree that a criticism of Islam that you're making is somehow fundamentally different from a criticism of Christianity that you're not making, but could be made, just because the name of the leader of Islam is different from the name of the leader of Christianity. Which was the point in issue. Not whether or not I might agree with any specific criticisms of Muhammad. Unless and until you make specific criticisms of the behaviour or character of Muhammad, criticisms that can't possibly be made of Jesus, then the two religions and two leaders are completely interchangeable.
And that's my problem with most criticisms of Islam that are made on the Ship. They are so generic that you can do a quick find-and-replace, removing "Islam, Muslim, Muhammad, Quran" and substituting "Christianity, Christian, Jesus, Bible" and the sentence you end up with still makes perfect sense. It's like a religious algebra. You could create a template sentence with instructions like 'insert name of disliked religion', 'insert name of holy book of disliked religion' etc etc and from it you could generate a huge percentage of the Ship's discourse on this subject.
[ 07. August 2014, 08:50: Message edited by: orfeo ]
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It is not so much 'relativist' as 'relational' in the sense that the relevant claim is "the leader of our religion is perfect".
No, that is not the relevant claim. I specifically said I am not criticising Islam for thinking someone is perfect. There is nothing wrong with thinking someone is perfect, if they are perfect.
quote:
Unless and until you make specific criticisms of the behaviour or character of Muhammad, criticisms that can't possibly be made of Jesus, then the two religions and two leaders are completely interchangeable.
Muhammad owned slaves, led armies and ordered executions. See also my very first post, where I specifically compared the response of Jesus and Muhammad in very similar situations involving women caught in adultery.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
Your very first post that I can find on this thread says this:
quote:
Jesus was, I believe, a better person preaching a higher morality than Muhammad.
Clearly peaceful and warlike Christianities, and peaceful and warlike Islams have been constructed by adherents, but both Christians and Muslims have historically found it hard to completely ignore the character of their founders.
I can't see anything about a woman caught in adultery there. All I can see is a bland "X was, I believe, a better person preaching a higher morality than Y".
You are finally getting onto something with owning slaves and ordering executions though.
Not that Christians have shown enormous evidence of believing that Christianity forbids slavery or the death penalty...
[ 07. August 2014, 09:26: Message edited by: orfeo ]
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
In sum: Americans weren't particularly anti-Islam before Al-Qaeda/Islamist terrorism because Islam was not significant enough in American society - except as an offshoot of the black power movement.
In the eighties there was a notorious Batman storyline in which the Ayatollah Khomeini appointed the Joker as Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations.
Middle Eastern terrorists have been turning up in the American popular culture that's made it to the UK for as long as I can remember. It may have been more anti-Middle Eastern than anti-Islam as such I suppose.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
In the eighties there was a notorious Batman storyline in which the Ayatollah Khomeini appointed the Joker as Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations.
Because the Shah of Iran was a friend to the US, which by the way welcomed a large number of political refugees from Iran in the 1980s. Again - political not racial.
Batman comic books were not mainstream in the 1980s. I was a kid then, it was all TV shows like GI Joe, Transformers, and He-Man. The "odd" kids read comic books (no offense!).
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I can't see anything about a woman caught in adultery there. All I can see is a bland "X was, I believe, a better person preaching a higher morality than Y".
The links from the names Jesus and Muhammad in my post were to the pericope adulterae and to a Bukhari hadith.
Who do you think displayed the higher, truer morality? In which person do we see the light of God's nature? Whose example should we all take as perfect example to humanity?
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
When you have been on the Ship a little bit longer, anglocatholic, you will learn that it is not done to either say anything negative about Islam,
I think, rather, you will find it is not the done thing to level accusations at Islam that could be made against Christianity word-for-word but aren't.
All conceivable aspects of Christianity are criticized, analysed and defended incessantly on the Ship without anyone questioning whether the debate itself is somehow improper, but the same cannot be said for debates regarding Islam, which are invariably choked off on an assumption of bad faith in even raising them.
There is no deep, ethical underlying principle here – it is simply currently fashionable to criticize Christianity and unfashionable to publicly criticize Islam (even if you don’t support it), in the same way as it used to be unfashionable to criticize communism (even if you weren’t a communist, or sympathetic to communism).
It was, and did, involve the fear of being seen to be making any sort of common cause with People Like Them (who naively dislike Islamist extremism and communist dictatorship) instead of People Like Us (who realise that the whole thing is just a bigotted beat-up by the neo-fascist media).
One way of looking at the reluctance to critically discuss Islam or the persecution of Christians, is to imagine a reversal of the present situation.
Suppose that militant groups who explicitly identified as Christian were carrying out indiscriminate terrorism across the world; kidnapping groups of Muslim women; using armed coercion in an effort to impose a repressive, murderous, misogynistic Christian theocracy on various countries, and wherever possible curtailing the freedom of Muslims, under threat of dire penalties, to practise and propagate their religion.
Under those circumstances it would be perfectly reasonable for Muslims to be upset in solidarity with their co-religionists, to openly ask questions about the extent to which these extremists represented Christianity, and to demand that moderate Christians distance themselves from, and condemn, the extremists’ activities.
It would not be reasonable to tell the Muslims that they should just put up and shut up, because extremist Muslims have also acted inappropriately, and because just asking the questions and having the discussion might hurt moderate Christians’ feelings.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
When you have been on the Ship a little bit longer, anglocatholic, you will learn that it is not done to either say anything negative about Islam,
I think, rather, you will find it is not the done thing to level accusations at Islam that could be made against Christianity word-for-word but aren't.
All conceivable aspects of Christianity are criticized, analysed and defended incessantly on the Ship without anyone questioning whether the debate itself is somehow improper, but the same cannot be said for debates regarding Islam, which are invariably choked off on an assumption of bad faith in even raising them.
There is no deep, ethical underlying principle here – it is simply currently fashionable to criticize Christianity and unfashionable to publicly criticize Islam (even if you don’t support it), in the same way as it used to be unfashionable to criticize communism (even if you weren’t a communist, or sympathetic to communism).
It was, and did, involve the fear of being seen to be making any sort of common cause with People Like Them (who naively dislike Islamist extremism and communist dictatorship) instead of People Like Us (who realise that the whole thing is just a bigotted beat-up by the neo-fascist media).
One way of looking at the reluctance to critically discuss Islam or the persecution of Christians, is to imagine a reversal of the present situation.
Suppose that militant groups who explicitly identified as Christian were carrying out indiscriminate terrorism across the world; kidnapping groups of Muslim women; using armed coercion in an effort to impose a repressive, murderous, misogynistic Christian theocracy on various countries, and wherever possible curtailing the freedom of Muslims, under threat of dire penalties, to practise and propagate their religion.
Under those circumstances it would be perfectly reasonable for Muslims to be upset in solidarity with their co-religionists, to openly ask questions about the extent to which these extremists represented Christianity, and to demand that moderate Christians distance themselves from, and condemn, the extremists’ activities.
It would not be reasonable to tell the Muslims that they should just put up and shut up, because extremist Muslims have also acted inappropriately, and because just asking the questions and having the discussion might hurt moderate Christians’ feelings.
I think you're missing the basic qualitative difference between criticising one's own house and throwing stones into a neighbouring one.
You're right: every inch of Christianity is gone over. Because we actually know something about it. The criticisms are specific, which is exactly what I've been talking about.
I've actually learnt quite a bit on the Ship about branches of Christianity somewhat different from my own (Orthodox in particular), because the discussion has had some detail to it.
If someone actually came up with some informed commentary on Islam, then I'd be quite interested, but informed commentary on Islam is horribly thin on the ground around here. I would say I know very little about Islam indeed, but frankly I can't recall the last time someone who popped up to debate Islam actually gave me the impression they knew more about it than I did.
I don't agree with all of what you've just posited would be an appropriate response to Christian terrorists (what, you mean like Timothy McVeigh?). But what you've posited is a darned sight more nuanced than most of what actually occurs on the Ship in relation to Islam.
[ 07. August 2014, 10:22: Message edited by: orfeo ]
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
One of the best arguments I've heard about Islam and whether or not Islam as it is now is faithful to or properly representational of what is in the Koran was made by an Ismaili imam.
He said that Islam is still, in relative terms, a young religion and that to compare it with the other religions "of the book" was to compare a child or teenager to a fully-formed adult and a senior citizen.
What struck me particularly was when he pointed out that Islam now can be viewed as being at the same stage as Christianity 600 years ago. If you look at 15th century Christianity you find the same outbreak of fundamentalist unrest and the same extremism, with the Inquisition as well as the stirrings of reform.
He said the only thing that concerned him was that the fundamentalists in Islam may get such a stranglehold that they prevent any beginnings of debate about whether or not it is possible for Islam to be an interpreted religion, rather than one that follows blindly the Koran and Haddith.
Of course, as an Ismaili he comes from a strand of Islam that is viewed with varying degrees of intolerance by other moslems, but I think he may have a point.
(edited to remove a repetition)
[ 07. August 2014, 10:43: Message edited by: L'organist ]
Posted by mrWaters (# 18171) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
What struck me particularly was when he pointed out that Islam now can be viewed as being at the same stage as Christianity 600 years ago. If you look at 15th century Christianity you find the same outbreak of fundamentalist unrest and the same extremism, with the Inquisition as well as the stirrings of reform.
He said the only thing that concerned him was that the fundamentalists in Islam may get such a stranglehold that they prevent any beginnings of debate about whether or not it is possible for Islam to be an interpreted religion, rather than one that follows blindly the Koran and Haddith.
Islam is much younger than Christianity and this may explain why it is seen as very conservative and even intolerant. I do share the concern over lack of debate inside the religion. Even though there is no overall authority controlling the message, I do not believe there are any major discussions about faith inside Islam. I hope I'm wrong.
A lot of us may consider Muhammad as a immoral man according to our standards. There are proofs for that, however here we come to the cultural relativism. Can we expect other cultures to come together towards the end of history? Obviously not. Clash of civilizations? Possibly...
Baumann writes about the liquid world and liquid modernity. Some may also consider "our world" as postmodern, some even consider it as decadent. Apparently the crude, fundamental version of Islam is a cure for this uncertain world. Maybe because everything is simple for them.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Then they are no different from the vast majority of Christians.
Posted by mrWaters (# 18171) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Then they are no different from the vast majority of Christians.
According to Wikipedia and this page majority of Christians are Roman Catholic. Even with fairly small changes in the church's recent history, the debate is very much alive and has been for decades. Lately the debate started to be openly conducted in Vatican. Additionally about 50 years ago there was a real revolution for the Roman Catholic Church in the form of Second Vatican Council.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mrWaters:
According to Wikipedia and this page majority of Christians are Roman Catholic.
This is an important point - Christianity has global religious institutions. Islam does not.
When some cult leader like David Koresh or Jim Jones claims they are practicing Christianity, we have something to check them against. We can ask the Vatican or Canterbury "Is this Christianity?" RCC/Orthodox/Anglican leadership can openly condemn certain activities and say they are not consistent with the faith and in so doing capture most of what the world understands as Christianity.
Islam has no analogue, so opposition to fringe Islamist claims about the religion comes from a disparate group of people, none of whom has the authority to speak definitively in the eyes of the world's Muslims.
Posted by mrWaters (# 18171) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
When some cult leader like David Koresh or Jim Jones claims they are practicing Christianity, we have something to check them against. We can ask the Vatican or Canterbury "Is this Christianity?" RCC/Orthodox/Anglican leadership can openly condemn certain activities and say they are not consistent with the faith and in so doing capture most of what the world understands as Christianity.
Try checking a small independent Christian Church.
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Islam has no analogue, so opposition to fringe Islamist claims about the religion comes from a disparate group of people, none of whom has the authority to speak definitively in the eyes of the world's Muslims.
Technically a caliph is the person in Islam that has the authority. The newest caliph is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS. Thankfully no one recognizes him so far.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mrWaters:
Try checking a small independent Christian Church.
Every national and global Baptist organization made a pretty public show of disavowing Westboro Baptist Church and reminding the media that it was unaffiliated to any Baptist governing body.
Not saying that stopped them, but if someone says "All Baptists are like WBC" it's pretty easy to refute.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Well yes, Jesus was a good man. Is this controversial around here?
Let me make it simple: My criticism isn't that Islam has a revered founder who is considered the perfect man. As you point out, so does Christianity. My criticism is that the man who is considered by Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity is Muhammad.
Is it the case that Muhammad is considered within Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity? Surely he is considered to be a prophet, as is Jesus?
It is only Christians who consider Jesus to be the Son of God, and therefore perfect. None of the earlier recognised prophets were perfect, far from it!
Posted by Higgs Bosun (# 16582) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Is it the case that Muhammad is considered within Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity? Surely he is considered to be a prophet, as is Jesus?
It is only Christians who consider Jesus to be the Son of God, and therefore perfect. None of the earlier recognised prophets were perfect, far from it!
From what I recall from a day a few years back on Islam from someone from St Ethelburga's, Islam regards all of its prophets to have led a sinless life. That includes Mohammad and Jesus, but also such characters as David. His business with Bathsheba was all made up, it seems.
I finished the day being impressed by the devotion of muslims to their way. For instance, the reason they pray five times a day is to keep themselves closer to God for the times inbetween. However, I was also struck by its lack, there is no grace, there is no relation to the Father, there is no Holy Spirit to be alongside and indwelling.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
In the eighties there was a notorious Batman storyline in which the Ayatollah Khomeini appointed the Joker as Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations.
Because the Shah of Iran was a friend to the US, which by the way welcomed a large number of political refugees from Iran in the 1980s. Again - political not racial.
Batman comic books were not mainstream in the 1980s. I was a kid then, it was all TV shows like GI Joe, Transformers, and He-Man. The "odd" kids read comic books (no offense!).
Also, just speaking as a Batman fan, Batman went kind of....weird in the 80s.
Also the religion which is probably majority-white is neo-Paganism.
Posted by Arminian (# 16607) on
:
Do we turn a blind eye towards the abuses of Islam ? Of course. Why ? OIL
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arminian:
Do we turn a blind eye towards the abuses of Islam ? Of course. Why ? OIL
Who is the 'we' here? Our countries, the Ship, Christianity in general?
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
It might be helpful to read this obituary in light of the rather negative expression in the OP.
Yes, anecdotes are not the whole story, but I'm sure I could find a similar story in the positive light to match every Lee Rigby situation. After all, where did Abou ben Adhem come from?
And you don't have to go very far back in history to see the other side of Christianity: the lynchings in the Deep South of the US were all done by good, white Christians, and you can see that the interactions of Northern Irelanders or Christian (Orthodox/RC) were not always sweetness and light any more than Sunni/Shia splits continue to be.
It seems that the only way to reduce religious violence is to develop societies in which the religions do not really matter.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
I was responding to your last sentence mrWaters about the historically vastly indistinguishable People of the Book. Which is unfair on Islam who has often been far more tolerant, altogther less vile, treacherous, oppressive, murderous.
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
Let's just say that, like the Curate's Egg, every group has its good and bad parts.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I can't see anything about a woman caught in adultery there. All I can see is a bland "X was, I believe, a better person preaching a higher morality than Y".
The links from the names Jesus and Muhammad in my post were to the pericope adulterae and to a Bukhari hadith.
Who do you think displayed the higher, truer morality? In which person do we see the light of God's nature? Whose example should we all take as perfect example to humanity?
You could argue that the latter showed a higher morality whereas Jesus seemed to be condoning adultery.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
If it's probably bollocks, why would you expect a serious academic debunking to even exist? I've seen no scholarly refutations of this ground-breaking book, either...
Or indeed this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Is it the case that Muhammad is considered within Islam to be the perfect man and exemplar of humanity? Surely he is considered to be a prophet, as is Jesus?
It is only Christians who consider Jesus to be the Son of God, and therefore perfect. None of the earlier recognised prophets were perfect, far from it!
From what I recall from a day a few years back on Islam from someone from St Ethelburga's, Islam regards all of its prophets to have led a sinless life. That includes Mohammad and Jesus, but also such characters as David. His business with Bathsheba was all made up, it seems.
I finished the day being impressed by the devotion of muslims to their way. For instance, the reason they pray five times a day is to keep themselves closer to God for the times inbetween. However, I was also struck by its lack, there is no grace, there is no relation to the Father, there is no Holy Spirit to be alongside and indwelling.
Thank you, that's interesting.
If Muhammad was supposed to be perfect along with all of the prophets, and perfection is what people should be aiming for, do we vary in our ideas as to what perfection is?
Surely violent, aggressive behaviour which is oppressive to fellow human beings who are loved by God cannot be a feature of this perfection.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
No He didn't.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
You could argue that the latter showed a higher morality whereas Jesus seemed to be condoning adultery.
Well duh, no kidding. You could argue all sorts of abhorrent things, including that Jesus was acting immorally when he prevented that women being stoned to death.
I know you don't believe that to be true though.
What is it about this topic that causes rational intelligent Christians to be so eager to deny the existence of truth?
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
A Muslim classmate of mine at university gave a talk at the Islamic student society where he argued that the Koran suggests it's ideal to have just one wife, because it says you can have four if you love them equally, and for nearly all men this is impossible.
He was taken aside quietly afterwards and told he would not be asked to speak again.
Can you explain why he wouldn't be allowed to speak again. Was his explanation considered too lax, or too conservative?
I'm not sure if lax and conservative are the right terms for this issue! Many of the Islamic students were international and in their home countries polygamy is legal. That is, they fully intended to take more than one wife in the future. So they were not happy to hear my friend's comments and several complained to the group's president.
It was hard to find the right terms!
It sounds as if the problem at that meeting was cultural before it was theological; the speaker and listeners were Muslims who came from different worlds. Official polygamy must be difficult in the West because Muslim women are influenced by Western expectations of romantic love and exclusivity, along with companionate marriage. Additionally, the demands of Western life make it practically impossible for the average middle class man to support several non-working wives and their children.
Adultery (which is a form of polygamy) is also a part of Western culture, of course. There are British men who live in a discrete wife + mistress situation (which seems to be how it works for the Muslim men in the link I posted before), have a few 'babymothers' who live off the state, or move from one woman to another, perhaps with some overlap. But these situations are usually seen as morally problematic, even if they're accepted as inevitable. The whole polygamy thing must seem less complicated culturally and financially for the sorts of Middle Easterners who can afford to study at British Universities.
Regarding the OP, I suppose Islam promotes 'peace' in the sense that everyone knows where they stand and what's expected of them in a Muslim-dominated culture. Christianity seems more ambiguous, allows more room for interpretation, and hence creates more moral and intellectual confusion. In the long term I suppose that means you simply have to create democracy and secular institutions. I can see why Islamic societies wouldn't necessarily prioritise these developments, though.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
From what I recall from a day a few years back on Islam from someone from St Ethelburga's, Islam regards all of its prophets to have led a sinless life.
Muhammad (PBUH) is not only a prophet, he is The Prophet, the final prophet, the Seal of the Prophets. No further prophet will arise before the end of time and judgment. Abraham's message to the Jews and Jesus' message to the Christians was corrupted, but Muhammad has corrected our misunderstandings. God commands us in the Qu'ran to take Muhammad as our example.
Muhammad is not of course considered the Son of God by Muslims, nor is he considered a child of God (no one is). Islam doesn't put the same overtones on sinlessness as Christianity does, so a claim of sinlessness doesn't equal a claim to divinity.
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Surely violent, aggressive behaviour which is oppressive to fellow human beings who are loved by God cannot be a feature of this perfection.
Why not?
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
A Muslim classmate of mine at university gave a talk at the Islamic student society where he argued that the Koran suggests it's ideal to have just one wife, because it says you can have four if you love them equally, and for nearly all men this is impossible.
He was taken aside quietly afterwards and told he would not be asked to speak again.
Can you explain why he wouldn't be allowed to speak again. Was his explanation considered too lax, or too conservative?
I'm not sure if lax and conservative are the right terms for this issue! Many of the Islamic students were international and in their home countries polygamy is legal. That is, they fully intended to take more than one wife in the future. So they were not happy to hear my friend's comments and several complained to the group's president.
I am curious - do any younger Muslims who are from countries where polygamy is legal get involved in the secular polygamy movement, or is it kept entirely separate? It surprises me that there's no attempt to present polygamy in a more modern light by the Muslims who believe in it.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
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quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
If it's probably bollocks, why would you expect a serious academic debunking to even exist? I've seen no scholarly refutations of this ground-breaking book, either...
Or indeed this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross
From your link:
quote:
To some biblical scholars in Britain, the new book looked like the psychedelic ravings of a hippie cultist. To others, it was merely an outlandish hoax. One described it as reading "like a Semitic philologist's erotic nightmare."
Far out, man!
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I think you're missing the basic qualitative difference between criticising one's own house and throwing stones into a neighbouring one.
You're right: every inch of Christianity is gone over. Because we actually know something about it. The criticisms are specific, which is exactly what I've been talking about.
I've actually learnt quite a bit on the Ship about branches of Christianity somewhat different from my own (Orthodox in particular), because the discussion has had some detail to it.
If someone actually came up with some informed commentary on Islam, then I'd be quite interested, but informed commentary on Islam is horribly thin on the ground around here. I would say I know very little about Islam indeed, but frankly I can't recall the last time someone who popped up to debate Islam actually gave me the impression they knew more about it than I did.
I find your stance quite curious.
You seem to be suggesting that no religions or worldviews except Christianity should be discussed critically on the Ship because we know less about all of them than we do about Christianity.
On those grounds, we would have to disqualify ourselves from suggesting anything negative about fascism/Nazism.
My impression is that a number of Shippies are reasonably knowledgeable about Islam, and if their comments are going to be inevitably mixed up with other comments of the mindless "Yar boo sucks to all ragheads" variety, well, that's the way the Ship operates.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
If it's probably bollocks, why would you expect a serious academic debunking to even exist? I've seen no scholarly refutations of this ground-breaking book, either...
Because there is a considerable amount of historical and linguistic data being used in the argument against Muhammad's existence. I say data here in the limited sense that history, numismatic and linguistics of ancient languages can produce factual claims, and I acknowledge that I do not have any serious background myself to judge this. However, when such data is being used in argument, wrongly, usually some academic can be bothered to say that either the data is false or falsely interpreted. That's not exactly what is happening here though... To quote myself in part from a PM I exchanged about this:
"FWIW though, here's a more serious academic who has come to the same conclusion: Muhammad Sven Kalisch. And another German who is pushing this idea is Professor Ohlig. These ideas are probably outside of the academic mainstream though: Spiegel article.
Again, as I have said, it's probably bunk. But I have not so far seen a direct refutation of the theories. The opponents are not saying things like "It is false to claim that there is no early documented mention of Muhammad". They are rather attacking the counter-sugestions as incompatible with other evidence. So it seems to me that at least there are some serious problems with the early history of Islam, which perhaps have not been discussed enough prior to this challenge."
Personally, I find the convergence of a linguistic claim (the Qur'an may have extensive Syriac language roots) and a numismatic claim (the earliest Caliphate coins show a man holding a cross, with the inscription 'Muhammad', which means 'chosen one' in Syriac) and a military history claim (the Persian empire had the troops and intention to smash Byzantium in the way that early Islamic conquest is supposed to have done, and Persian sources say that they did) to be interesting, at least.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
You could argue that the latter showed a higher morality whereas Jesus seemed to be condoning adultery.
Well duh, no kidding. You could argue all sorts of abhorrent things, including that Jesus was acting immorally when he prevented that women being stoned to death.
I know you don't believe that to be true though.
What is it about this topic that causes rational intelligent Christians to be so eager to deny the existence of truth?
Whose truth?
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by anglocatholic:
A study of the Quran yields 109 passages where Muslims are exhorted to kill non-Muslims.
Whose study? Your study? If so, give me some examples, suras and ayets.
I'd still like an answer to this - maybe you are still doing your research so as to answer.
Maybe you are on holiday.
Or maybe you just lit the fuse and vanised.
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
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Since this is clearly something that is going to go around and around, with most participants saying, roughly speaking, "you don't know what you are talking about" to just about everyone else, could we move it to DH or farther? Please?
Messing up Purg with "facts" that have little to do with anything is not helpful.
It may explain why peace in the Middle East is impossible, of course: not enough people actually believe that the "other guy" is really there at all, what you see is just a cardboard cutout on a sand dune.
I read John Bagot Glubb's (Glubb Pasha) book on the history of the Arab Empires in the 800 AD to 1100 AD era, which was just as depressing as anything today - and the same happens back as far as recorded history goes (including the Bible as some approximation of "history") None of the religions have had any effect on this at all, except to make it momentarily worse.
[ 08. August 2014, 10:50: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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Perhaps some of the material here on liberal and/or reformed approaches within Islam may be helpful.
Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
"FWIW though, here's a more serious academic who has come to the same conclusion: Muhammad Sven Kalisch. And another German who is pushing this idea is Professor Ohlig. These ideas are probably outside of the academic mainstream though: Spiegel article.
That Spiegel article rather backfired here. If his best proof of Muhammad's existence is quote:
How would we, for example, prove the existence of Charlemagne?
then he is on very shaky ground. He then goes on to basically assert that people that long ago did not write fiction... ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
It seems to me that, using his standards, one could claim that there is evidence that Romulus and King Arthur existed.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
What is it about this topic that causes rational intelligent Christians to be so eager to deny the existence of truth?
Whose truth?
Sophomoric nonsense, which I am sure you do not believe.
[ 08. August 2014, 11:34: Message edited by: Demas ]
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Surely violent, aggressive behaviour which is oppressive to fellow human beings who are loved by God cannot be a feature of this perfection.
Why not?
If David's behaviour with Bathsheba is dismissed as a lie so that he can be held up as a perfect human example, surely this indicates recognition of the knowledge that treating people in this way is evil.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Do any younger Muslims who are from countries where polygamy is legal get involved in the secular polygamy movement, or is it kept entirely separate? It surprises me that there's no attempt to present polygamy in a more modern light by the Muslims who believe in it.
In a Muslim country where polygamy is legal there'd be no need for young people to present polygamy in a secular light, would there? They might do so for foreign consumption, perhaps, but do Muslims in those countries really care what secular Westerners think of them?
[ 08. August 2014, 13:29: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Since this is clearly something that is going to go around and around, with most participants saying, roughly speaking, "you don't know what you are talking about" to just about everyone else, could we move it to DH or farther? Please?
Islam isn't in itself a Dead Horse--it doesn't take over discussions all over the ship and annoy everyone--but you can certainly just ignore the thread as one that you figure is going nowhere!.
[ 08. August 2014, 13:34: Message edited by: Gwai ]
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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The only way the Western Left will give a damn about the Iraqi Christians is if the Israelis start bombing them. Of course if that happens, Evangelical Christians in the US and all other Neoconservatives will stop supporting the Iraqi Christians. As Obama is now authorizing air strikes against ISIS, let's hope Israel doesn't find a reason to attack what is left of the Christians in Iraq.
Now, the OP asked if Islam is a religion of peace. Subsequent posts have established that Mohammed is the Islamic ideal man. Given what we know about Mohammed, Islam can't really be a religion of peace if Mohammed is the ideal man. Well, at least, Islam can't be a religion of peace as peace is generally defined. Islam can be a religion of peace if by religion of peace you mean, "we won't be violent if you let us make all the rules and force you to follow them." If that is your definition of a religion of peace, then, yes, Islam is a religion of peace.
Also, I'm still waiting for an apples to apples comparison of Islam and Christianity. The OP gave examples from the life of Mohammed and his immediate predecessors. In response, the tu quo que (Christians do it too) crowd can only come up with examples that happened a 1000+ years after Jesus and the apostles died and partially in response to a few centuries of attempts Islam to conquer Christians. For instance, the First Crusade began in 1099. The Ummayyads began their conquest of Spain in 711 and the Battle of Tours happened in 732.
While I'm at it, the argument about the age of Islam is also self defeating. If Islam needs to evolve before it is as good as other religions, what good is Islam in the first place? Comparing 16th Century Protestants to Muslim fundamentalists is unfair and has not basis in actual history.
Lastly, Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian. McVeigh said he wasn't a Christian. McVeigh claimed, "science was his religion." Calling McVeigh a Christian is as silly as calling Obama a Muslim. After all, Obama's school records from Indonesia clearly list Islam as his religion.
Eric Rudolph is a Christian terrorist. Currently, Mr. Rudolph lives in a supermax prison administered by the supposedly Christian Theocracy that is the United States government. Neither he nor any other Christian terrorist controls large swathes of land in multiple countries.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
the argument about the age of Islam is also self defeating. If Islam needs to evolve before it is as good as other religions, what good is Islam in the first place?
And if Christianity had to evolve before it became as good as other religions, what good was it in the first place?
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
What is it about this topic that causes rational intelligent Christians to be so eager to deny the existence of truth?
Whose truth?
Sophomoric nonsense, which I am sure you do not believe.
You seem to be very sure about what I do and do not believe.
Why is it nonsense to ask about truth and to imply a relativist or pluralist view?
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
What is it about this topic that causes rational intelligent Christians to be so eager to deny the existence of truth?
Whose truth?
Sophomoric nonsense, which I am sure you do not believe.
You seem to be very sure about what I do and do not believe.
Why is it nonsense to ask about truth and to imply a relativist or pluralist view?
Let’s recap the context here.
I gave references to two incidents where Jesus and Muhammad were each confronted with a woman caught in adultery.
Jesus, as we all know, refused to condemn her. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, he said, and when the shamefaced crowd disbursed he told her to go and sin no more.
In contrast, Muhammad ordered the woman brought before him to be stoned, because that is what the text of the Torah demanded. He privileged that bare text not only over the life of the woman but also over the wishes of the Jews to whom the Torah had been given.
My modest contention is that in this comparison Jesus displayed the more moral action; that in this comparison the morality taught by him is truly superior to the morality displayed by Muhammad.
Do you disagree?
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Jesus the Marcionite strikes again. Or not as the case may be.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
the argument about the age of Islam is also self defeating. If Islam needs to evolve before it is as good as other religions, what good is Islam in the first place?
And if Christianity had to evolve before it became as good as other religions, what good was it in the first place?
Christianity would be no good whatsoever if it had to evolve to be as good as other religions. I don't think Christianity had to evolve to be as good as other religions. I suspect most Muslims wouldn't make such a self refuting claim about Islam either.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
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quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Do any younger Muslims who are from countries where polygamy is legal get involved in the secular polygamy movement, or is it kept entirely separate? It surprises me that there's no attempt to present polygamy in a more modern light by the Muslims who believe in it.
In a Muslim country where polygamy is legal there'd be no need for young people to present polygamy in a secular light, would there? They might do so for foreign consumption, perhaps, but do Muslims in those countries really care what secular Westerners think of them?
I said younger Muslims who are FROM countries where polygamy is legal - I meant those living in the UK and elsewhere in the West.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
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BA - all those on the left that I know are deeply concerned for Iraqi Christians, myself included. It may be different in the US, but it's certainly a concern for myself and others I know.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
What is it about this topic that causes rational intelligent Christians to be so eager to deny the existence of truth?
Whose truth?
Sophomoric nonsense, which I am sure you do not believe.
You seem to be very sure about what I do and do not believe.
Why is it nonsense to ask about truth and to imply a relativist or pluralist view?
Let’s recap the context here.
I gave references to two incidents where Jesus and Muhammad were each confronted with a woman caught in adultery.
Jesus, as we all know, refused to condemn her. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, he said, and when the shamefaced crowd disbursed he told her to go and sin no more.
In contrast, Muhammad ordered the woman brought before him to be stoned, because that is what the text of the Torah demanded. He privileged that bare text not only over the life of the woman but also over the wishes of the Jews to whom the Torah had been given.
My modest contention is that in this comparison Jesus displayed the more moral action; that in this comparison the morality taught by him is truly superior to the morality displayed by Muhammad.
Do you disagree?
You are assuming that letting somebody off is more moral than doing what the law says.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
the argument about the age of Islam is also self defeating. If Islam needs to evolve before it is as good as other religions, what good is Islam in the first place?
And if Christianity had to evolve before it became as good as other religions, what good was it in the first place?
Christianity would be no good whatsoever if it had to evolve to be as good as other religions. I don't think Christianity had to evolve to be as good as other religions. I suspect most Muslims wouldn't make such a self refuting claim about Islam either.
Christianity evolved for 1700 years before trying to abolish slavery.
Judaism always forbade slavery.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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No it didn't. Slavery is a part of the OT. Jews participated in the slave trade.
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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And the Iraqi non-Christian victims. Just because they are some sort of weird offshoot of something or other doesn't make them any less worth protecting.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Do any younger Muslims who are from countries where polygamy is legal get involved in the secular polygamy movement, or is it kept entirely separate? It surprises me that there's no attempt to present polygamy in a more modern light by the Muslims who believe in it.
In a Muslim country where polygamy is legal there'd be no need for young people to present polygamy in a secular light, would there? They might do so for foreign consumption, perhaps, but do Muslims in those countries really care what secular Westerners think of them?
I said younger Muslims who are FROM countries where polygamy is legal - I meant those living in the UK and elsewhere in the West.
I don't know to what extent young people from those countries really mix with young non-Muslims when they come to the West. My impression is that they'd mostly hang out with each other, just as the Chinese ones do. (It's a big temptation, because there are so many foreign students now anyway.) What this probably means is that, no, they probably don't really care what secular Westerners think.
Some overseas Muslim men who come to the West to study are open to having relationships with Western non-Muslim women, but they probably realise that it's not in their interests to promote the cause of polygamy if they want to have relationships with most of these women. Most Western women still like the idea of monogamy, even if they don't achieve it.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
No it didn't. Slavery is a part of the OT. Jews participated in the slave trade.
I said Jews - the OT is about 'hebrews', 'Israelites' etc.
Post 70 CE Judaism opposed slavery.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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Still not true
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
My modest contention is that in this comparison Jesus displayed the more moral action; that in this comparison the morality taught by him is truly superior to the morality displayed by Muhammad.
Do you disagree?
You are assuming that letting somebody off is more moral than doing what the law says.
Don't expand the question into a strawman just so you can duck it,
Which religious founder behaved in the most moral way and displayed the superior morality in this specific comparison? Jesus or Muhammad?
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
The only way the Western Left will give a damn about the Iraqi Christians is if the Israelis start bombing them.
My giving a damn about Iraqis is not dependent on their religion.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Judaism always forbade slavery.
Only if you redefine "slavery" to not include slavery.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
If it's probably bollocks, why would you expect a serious academic debunking to even exist? I've seen no scholarly refutations of this ground-breaking book, either...
Because there is a considerable amount of historical and linguistic data being used in the argument against Muhammad's existence.
[...]
Again, as I have said, it's probably bunk. But I have not so far seen a direct refutation of the theories. The opponents are not saying things like "It is false to claim that there is no early documented mention of Muhammad". They are rather attacking the counter-suggestions as incompatible with other evidence. So it seems to me that at least there are some serious problems with the early history of Islam, which perhaps have not been discussed enough prior to this challenge.
Here's something direct: Ohlig's anthology "Early Islam" is reviewed here by Daniel Birnstiel (Institut für Studien der Kultur und Religion des Islam, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main), who calls out numerous detailed faults in the specific historical, linguistic, and numismatic aspects of the Persian-Christian-heresy-conspiracy theory of the origin of Islam. The reviewer agrees that traditional Islamic readings of contemporary sources have been problematic, but apparently concludes that these guys are pretty much full of crap.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
The reviewer agrees that traditional Islamic readings of contemporary sources have been problematic, but apparently concludes that these guys are pretty much full of crap.
Looks like it... I think the linguistic issues are key. If the idea of Syriac roots of the qur'an and the interpretation of Muhammad as title rather than name can be conclusively rejected, then this theory of Muhammad's non-existence is pretty much dead. I would much like to see some response of the defenders of this theory to this.
However, it really seems to be the case that there is a lack of direct evidence from the time of Muhammad's activities, with clear evidence only appearing about 60 years after his death for the first time. I find that rather surprising, to be honest.
Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
The reviewer agrees that traditional Islamic readings of contemporary sources have been problematic, but apparently concludes that these guys are pretty much full of crap.
Looks like it... I think the linguistic issues are key. If the idea of Syriac roots of the qur'an and the interpretation of Muhammad as title rather than name can be conclusively rejected, then this theory of Muhammad's non-existence is pretty much dead. I would much like to see some response of the defenders of this theory to this.
However, it really seems to be the case that there is a lack of direct evidence from the time of Muhammad's activities, with clear evidence only appearing about 60 years after his death for the first time. I find that rather surprising, to be honest.
I am not an expert on any of this but that review did seem to me to be rather nibbling round the edges. And I would love to know how a word on a coin can be "unambiguously" a proper name rather than a title.
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Judaism always forbade slavery.
Only if you redefine "slavery" to not include slavery.
Or if you redefine, as leo has, 'Judaism' and 'always'. (We're back to that Scotsman again.)
[ 09. August 2014, 12:01: Message edited by: Albertus ]
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by JoannaP:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
The reviewer agrees that traditional Islamic readings of contemporary sources have been problematic, but apparently concludes that these guys are pretty much full of crap.
Looks like it... I think the linguistic issues are key. If the idea of Syriac roots of the qur'an and the interpretation of Muhammad as title rather than name can be conclusively rejected, then this theory of Muhammad's non-existence is pretty much dead. I would much like to see some response of the defenders of this theory to this.
However, it really seems to be the case that there is a lack of direct evidence from the time of Muhammad's activities, with clear evidence only appearing about 60 years after his death for the first time. I find that rather surprising, to be honest.
I am not an expert on any of this but that review did seem to me to be rather nibbling round the edges. And I would love to know how a word on a coin can be "unambiguously" a proper name rather than a title.
Based on IngoB's earlier description, I'd say the parts debunked in the review weren't "edges" - they were the foundation for this whole revisionist project.
I'm not at all sure how much weight to give to an alleged lack of direct evidence of Mohammed's activities; is present knowledge of that time and place sufficiently complete that we know of specific items of evidence that are suspiciously absent? That seems like an argument
In any case, this particular hypothesis seems pretty fantastic. For example (as noted in your Spiegel article) if early Muslims were really Persian Christians and Mohammed never existed, it seems very odd that they would make him up and simultaneously demote Christ to such a minor character in the Koran. I find this kind of objection fairly persuasive, if not necessarily conclusive.
Some kind of revision may be justified, but this particular revision seems more than a little wacky.
Posted by Cathscats (# 17827) on
:
I have just seen a picture of a beheaded girl of maybe 4 years of age, from Northern Iraq. So I looked into the ship to see what the shipmates were saying about the crisis in Northern Iraq, for Christians and other minorities. And I find them bickering about the relative merits of two religions. How about prayer and action to help those who need help? ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Based on IngoB's earlier description, I'd say the parts debunked in the review weren't "edges" - they were the foundation for this whole revisionist project.
Perhaps. But of course to say that the theory is debunked is to assign a lot of authority to that review and its arguments, which are rather limited in scope. For example, the argument about Syriac roots of the qur'an has book length, and thus is unlikely to be refuted as a whole simply by one or two errors, even if those in fact really are errors as claimed. The review attempts a rhetorical shortcut there by doubting the qualifications of the author over a few issues. Since I have quite literally no idea about any of this, I would have to see the response from the "revisionists" to this critique to start forming some kind of opinion which side has the better case.
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I'm not at all sure how much weight to give to an alleged lack of direct evidence of Mohammed's activities; is present knowledge of that time and place sufficiently complete that we know of specific items of evidence that are suspiciously absent?
Well, unlike Jesus Muhammad is supposed to have acquired massive status in a political, cultural and military sense during his lifetime. And this is also a over 600 years after Christ, so closer to us in time, and all this happened in what was a rather cultured part of the word (not is some "dark age slums" of Northern Europe). I find it quite amazing then that there doesn't seem to be any direct evidence for his existence until about 60 years after his death. No writings, no inscriptions, no coins, nothing.
I also would say that the story "Persian empire beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire" sounds inherently more likely than "charismatic leader rallies hitherto unimportant Arabian tribes into a veritable military force that then beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire."
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
In any case, this particular hypothesis seems pretty fantastic. For example (as noted in your Spiegel article) if early Muslims were really Persian Christians and Mohammed never existed, it seems very odd that they would make him up and simultaneously demote Christ to such a minor character in the Koran. I find this kind of objection fairly persuasive, if not necessarily conclusive.
True, that seems a bit odd, to say the least. However, the theory seems to be less that it was Persian heretic Christians who did this (I may have contributed to this impression by loose writing), but rather that Islam arose in an eventual Arab take over of what the Persian heretic Christians did. Still, I guess one would expect at least some recorded pushback against the imposition of an Arab "reinterpretation" of a religion for political purposes.
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
The only way the Western Left will give a damn about the Iraqi Christians is if the Israelis start bombing them.
My giving a damn about Iraqis is not dependent on their religion.
Same here, which is why I also give a damn about the Shi'a and Yazidis which seem to be people the right doesn't give a damn about.
[ 09. August 2014, 13:34: Message edited by: ToujoursDan ]
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Still not true
This says that any Jewish involvement was minuscule, marginal but that some pseudohistorians distorted the available research to write anti-Semitic polemics
Might they be your source for that assertion?
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
My modest contention is that in this comparison Jesus displayed the more moral action; that in this comparison the morality taught by him is truly superior to the morality displayed by Muhammad.
Do you disagree?
You are assuming that letting somebody off is more moral than doing what the law says.
Don't expand the question into a strawman just so you can duck it,
Which religious founder behaved in the most moral way and displayed the superior morality in this specific comparison? Jesus or Muhammad?
You still fail to understand that there are differing views about what 'morality' means.
I'll give it one last try:
For some, morality is about upholding law.
Others regard the law as less than moral.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
You still fail to understand that there are differing views about what 'morality' means.
I know there are differing views! In fact I have repeatedly given an example to you of differing views on what 'morality' means in one specific context - Jesus' view and Muhammad's view on whether a Jewish woman caught in adultery should be stoned. What I was trying to get you to answer, and I accept that you won't but I'm not sure why, is whether or not you agree that Jesus' view (viz, don't stone the adulteress) is the better view of what morality is and represents the superior moral teaching.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I also would say that the story "Persian empire beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire" sounds inherently more likely than "charismatic leader rallies hitherto unimportant Arabian tribes into a veritable military force that then beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire."
We know the Persian Empire had just beaten the snot out of the Byzantine Empire and the Byzantine Empire had just beaten the snot back. The Byzantines had just lost Egypt and then reclaimed it and pressed hard into the heart of the Persian Empire, as far as Iraq, prompting a series of coups in the Persian Empire. So it was rather a good time to be a charismatic leader rallying a bunch of hitherto unimportant Arabian tribes. Note also that the conquests largely happened under Umar after Muhammad's death.
Byzantine history itself is apparently short of contemporary accounts in this period.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
No it didn't. Slavery is a part of the OT. Jews participated in the slave trade.
I said Jews - the OT is about 'hebrews', 'Israelites' etc.
Post 70 CE Judaism opposed slavery,
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Still not true
This says that any Jewish involvement was minuscule, marginal but that some pseudohistorians distorted the available research to write anti-Semitic polemics
Might they be your source for that assertion?
Do you even read your own links?
quote:
Thus, the Talmud (circa 200–500 CE) contains an extensive set of laws governing slavery, which is more detailed, and different from the original laws found in the Jewish Bible.
The major change found in the Talmud's slavery laws is that a single set of rules, with a few exceptions, governs both Jewish slaves and non-Jewish slaves. Another change was that the automatic release of Jewish slaves after 7 years is replaced by indefinite slavery, in conjunction with a process whereby the owner could — under certain situations — release the slave by a written document (a manumission). However, historian Josephus wrote that the seven year automatic release was still in effect if the slavery was a punishment for a crime the slave committed (as opposed to voluntary slavery due to poverty). In addition, the notion of Canaanite slaves from the Jewish Bible is expanded to all non-Jewish slaves.) contains an extensive set of laws governing slavery, which is more detailed, and different from the original laws found in the Jewish Bible.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is the only form of slavery that counts.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Cathscats:
I have just seen a picture of a beheaded girl of maybe 4 years of age, from Northern Iraq. So I looked into the ship to see what the shipmates were saying about the crisis in Northern Iraq, for Christians and other minorities. And I find them bickering about the relative merits of two religions. How about prayer and action to help those who need help?
I've started a dedicated prayer thread in All Saints Cathscats.
For action, there are various options, but it would be a tangent to discuss them here. Purg. is a place for discussion and although it might come across as bickering sometimes in the face of tragedy, it's worthwhile to consider the questions raised by events imv.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Based on IngoB's earlier description, I'd say the parts debunked in the review weren't "edges" - they were the foundation for this whole revisionist project.
Perhaps. But of course to say that the theory is debunked is to assign a lot of authority to that review and its arguments, which are rather limited in scope. For example, the argument about Syriac roots of the qur'an has book length, and thus is unlikely to be refuted as a whole simply by one or two errors, even if those in fact really are errors as claimed. The review attempts a rhetorical shortcut there by doubting the qualifications of the author over a few issues. Since I have quite literally no idea about any of this, I would have to see the response from the "revisionists" to this critique to start forming some kind of opinion which side has the better case.
On the other hand, if the mainstream thinks the revisionists are easily-dismissed cranks, you're not likely to see a thorough debate, as mainstream scholars will probably think of better things to do with their time. quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I'm not at all sure how much weight to give to an alleged lack of direct evidence of Mohammed's activities; is present knowledge of that time and place sufficiently complete that we know of specific items of evidence that are suspiciously absent?
Well, unlike Jesus Muhammad is supposed to have acquired massive status in a political, cultural and military sense during his lifetime. And this is also a over 600 years after Christ, so closer to us in time, and all this happened in what was a rather cultured part of the word (not is some "dark age slums" of Northern Europe). I find it quite amazing then that there doesn't seem to be any direct evidence for his existence until about 60 years after his death. No writings, no inscriptions, no coins, nothing.
Without any scholarly background in the field, I'd have a hard time deciding whether the evidentiary situation was "amazing" or not. It would be interesting to know if this is, in fact, seen as a problem of interest to mainstream historians. quote:
I also would say that the story "Persian empire beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire" sounds inherently more likely than "charismatic leader rallies hitherto unimportant Arabian tribes into a veritable military force that then beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire."
Except that then everybody has to totally forget that it was Persian Christians who done it for the next 1400 years - including the Persians themselves. Talk about the awkwardness of missing evidence.
By the way - you don't suppose the Byzantines happen to mention who exactly was beating the snot out of them? I'm imagining a bloody "Watch out for the ..." scrawled in blood on a mosaic somewhere, but trailing off into incomprehensibility...
[E.T.A - Didn't see Dafyd's post.]
[ 09. August 2014, 15:10: Message edited by: Dave W. ]
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Tu quo que crowd here. What, Christians didn't engage in wholesale mass murder until over a thousand years after Jesus? In which alternate universe was this?
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
You still fail to understand that there are differing views about what 'morality' means.
I know there are differing views! In fact I have repeatedly given an example to you of differing views on what 'morality' means in one specific context - Jesus' view and Muhammad's view on whether a Jewish woman caught in adultery should be stoned. What I was trying to get you to answer, and I accept that you won't but I'm not sure why, is whether or not you agree that Jesus' view (viz, don't stone the adulteress) is the better view of what morality is and represents the superior moral teaching.
Comparison is futile, different times, different norms.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Do you even read your own links?
quote:
Thus, the Talmud (circa 200–500 CE) contains an extensive set of laws governing slavery, which is more detailed, and different from the original laws found in the Jewish Bible.
Yes - and did you not read the context that the history of this was based on anti-Semitic slurs?
[oode]
[ 09. August 2014, 17:11: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by Demas;
quote:
In fact I have repeatedly given an example to you of differing views on what 'morality' means in one specific context - Jesus' view and Muhammad's view on whether a Jewish woman caught in adultery should be stoned. What I was trying to get you to answer, and I accept that you won't but I'm not sure why, is whether or not you agree that Jesus' view (viz, don't stone the adulteress) is the better view of what morality is and represents the superior moral teaching.
Actually Jesus' and Muhammad's views on the basic moral issue would seem to be identical – that the woman guilty of adultery should be stoned as the law required. People quoting this passage (e.g., Rob Bell in one of his 'Nooma' DVDs) often overlook that Jesus' response implies precisely that. It's just that he says it in such a way as to give the accusers a serious difficulty in carrying out the sentence. It's not perhaps absolutely clear how 'official' this was – though as I understand it so far, as the accusers had effectively appointed Jesus as judge, and as the person who should have thrown that first stone (the wronged husband) seems to have been absent, Jesus possibly did have the power officially to make such a declaration. But even if it wasn't 'official', people who had clearly set out to make trouble for Jesus would look very much in the wrong if they then acted as if they believed themselves sinless...!
There is then a potential further problem; if the NT account of Jesus is right, he of course was without sin and could have thrown the stone....
The fact is that Jesus here arguably acted immorally,except that as God incarnate he was (a) able to forgive the woman, and (b) knew that he himself would be paying the penalty in her place on the cross. It is that ability to forgive, and by implication to authorise his followers to forgive, that makes the difference here, and gives Christianity the superiority over Islam; not a difference of actual moral rule, but that Islam doesn't have a coherent theology of sacrificial forgiveness. Muhammad did not have that choice of forgiveness according to his theology.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I think the Orthodox might take issue with your understanding of the atonement there, Steve Langton.
I've heard an imam speak on one occasion and he addressed the issue of whether there was 'grace' and forgiveness in Islam. He'd been challenged about it by a vicar friend.
His answer was that there was and he cited various 'midrash' type instances in popular Islamic teaching to illustrate as much.
He didn't proof text from the Quran, though.
I think that it's invidious to make these kind of comparisons ... in terms of peacefulness or otherwise, what we have to go on with any religion is the fruit shown by its adherents. That's pretty mixed in all cases.
I'm a Christian by conviction but my Christianity doesn't necessarily depend on the value, merits or otherwise of anyone else's faith.
Of course, I believe Christianity to be true and Jesus to be the Way, the Truth and the Life ... but that doesn't mean that I make a check-list and tick off which attributes other religious figures and leaders may or may not have.
The bottom line for me, as a Christian is that Jesus is God Incarnate.
The Muslims don't believe that and neither do the Jews. Consequently, I am not a Muslim nor a Jew but a Christian.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
There is a Hell thread about Islamic State at the moment, Cathscats. Started by Demas.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by Gamaliel;
quote:
I think the Orthodox might take issue with your understanding of the atonement there, Steve Langton.
I think you also know from other threads that what I said above is a pretty minimalist statement of my view of the atonement. And I'm not too worried about the Orthodox, more about the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Peter and the NT generally.
by Gamaliel;
quote:
I've heard an imam speak on one occasion and he addressed the issue of whether there was 'grace' and forgiveness in Islam. He'd been challenged about it by a vicar friend.
I'm not disputing that Islam has some concept of 'grace' - otherwise it wouldn't have much hope to offer its adherents, would it? But it is a rather different concept to the Christian doctrine, and I would say precisely because it doesn't have the challenging Christian concept of atonement.
by Gamaliel;
quote:
in terms of peacefulness or otherwise, what we have to go on with any religion is the fruit shown by its adherents. That's pretty mixed in all cases.
I suspect you more than most might guess where I'd go in response to that one - but I'll hold back for now....
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Steve Langton:
[QB] And I'm not too worried about the Orthodox, more about the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Peter and the NT generally.
[QUOTE]
So the Orthodox aren't interested in the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Peter and the NT generally?
That'll be news to them ...
I'm not suggesting that Islam's concept of grace is the same as the Christian one - or Christian ones (plural) ...
There is more than one Christian view of grace.
That's why I cited the Orthodox - as an example of a Christian tradition that certainly has a concept of grace and a concept of the atonement - but one which operates in a different way to the one you are using.
Oranges are not the only fruit.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by Gamaliel;
quote:
So the Orthodox aren't interested in the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Peter and the NT generally?
I don't think I quite said that.... Of course if the Orthodox "aren't interested in the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Peter and the NT generally" I wouldn't have much interest in them and they wouldn't be much use to Jesus either, would they?
I repeat, I don't have a single simple view of the 'atoning work' of Jesus - though I would probably give primary place to the concept of God forgiving our debts. But the 'whole thing' is way beyond our imaginings, surely; we need to use every biblical resource to illumine it for us - even the proverbial 'PSA'. - fruit salad, anybody?
Now can we get back to discussing what I actually did say...?
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Do you even read your own links?
quote:
Thus, the Talmud (circa 200–500 CE) contains an extensive set of laws governing slavery, which is more detailed, and different from the original laws found in the Jewish Bible.
Yes - and did you not read the context that the history of this was based on anti-Semitic slurs?
[oode]
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
He did not read that because it isn't there. The Talmud regulates slavery. Hard to say that after 70 CE, Judaism opposed slavery when the Talmud regulates ownership of slaves. The article also gives multiple examples of Jews participating in the slave trade after the Middle Ages. What the article says is that how much they participated in the slave trade might have been exaggerated. Saying their Jewish participation in the slave trade might have been exaggerated is not saying that Judaism always condemned slavery. As a matter of fact, you've yet to offer one shred of evidence for that assertion.
Posted by Arminian (# 16607) on
:
I wonder what Jewish slavery was like.
Slavery in Roman times wasn't as bad as plantation slavery in the US. If you had a good master you could learn a trade and be housed while you did your apprenticeship, and then buy your freedom. That's why some in Rome didn't mind becoming slaves - which is worth bearing in mind when slavery is mentioned in the NT by Paul.
Today call ourselves free, but if you want to live somewhere and call it your own, you will need a mortgage and have to pay someone for most of your working life for a tiny plot of land. Are we really that much more liberated ?
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arminian:
I wonder what Jewish slavery was like.
Slavery in Roman times wasn't as bad as plantation slavery in the US. If you had a good master you could learn a trade and be housed while you did your apprenticeship, and then buy your freedom. That's why some in Rome didn't mind becoming slaves - which is worth bearing in mind when slavery is mentioned in the NT by Paul.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Agreed!
As for Jewish slavery, there are pretty detailed rules in the Old Testament...
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Comparison is futile, different times, different norms.
Fair enough. Would you agree then that Muhammad ordering the stoning of the woman was a product of its time and place, and although we may not condemn or judge him for reflecting the world he lived in, we should most certainly not take his example in this particular matter as being a good example to follow here and now?
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Much like Samuel's commanding the genocide of the Amalekites in good faith?
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Much like Samuel's commanding the genocide of the Amalekites in good faith?
Well yes. I think that would be a terrible example for someone to follow nowdays.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
But it was OK then? God was cool with that? All the way? Right behind it?
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
But it was OK then? God was cool with that? All the way? Right behind it?
This non-sequitur should be addressed to leo, not to me. He is the one who appears to be arguing that there is no applicable-to-all-times-and-places moral standard we can judge past people by.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
But it was OK then? God was cool with that? All the way? Right behind it?
This non-sequitur should be addressed to leo, not to me. He is the one who appears to be arguing that there is no applicable-to-all-times-and-places moral standard we can judge past people by.
Demas, Demas...you are overthinking your response.
Just go with...
Yes, yes, he was.
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
quote:
Originally posted by Arminian:
I wonder what Jewish slavery was like.
Slavery in Roman times wasn't as bad as plantation slavery in the US. If you had a good master you could learn a trade and be housed while you did your apprenticeship, and then buy your freedom. That's why some in Rome didn't mind becoming slaves - which is worth bearing in mind when slavery is mentioned in the NT by Paul.
Agreed!
As for Jewish slavery, there are pretty detailed rules in the Old Testament...
Roman slavery varied enormously, and at its worst (eg farms, mines) was as bad as, or worse than, antebellum American plantation slavery.
There are two types of slavery in the OT, that of fellow Israelites and that of Gentiles.
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
:
BUT, as usual, there are different kinds, and, therefore, one has to figure out which one is involved in the discussion.
A slave who is seen as human is in a different situation from one who can be mistreated in any imaginable way because he is not really human in the first place - the difference between the Roman case above and the case of the antebellum South.
Judging by some of the political and employment practises, the case of the antebellum South has not really been settled, BTW.
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Roman slavery varied enormously, and at its worst (eg farms, mines) was as bad as, or worse than, antebellum American plantation slavery.
There are two types of slavery in the OT, that of fellow Israelites and that of Gentiles.
There was also the difference between male and female slaves.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Perfectly logical to me.
Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on
:
quote:
We also are being told by our political leaders that Islam is a religion of peace.
What makes them particularly informed to make this judgment.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
BUT, as usual, there are different kinds, and, therefore, one has to figure out which one is involved in the discussion.
A slave who is seen as human is in a different situation from one who can be mistreated in any imaginable way because he is not really human in the first place - the difference between the Roman case above and the case of the antebellum South.
Judging by some of the political and employment practises, the case of the antebellum South has not really been settled, BTW.
There is no difference between slavery in the Roman Empire and slavery in the antebellum South. Slavery was worse for some slaves than others. Romans though no more or less of their slaves than Southerners. My guess is your claim that Southerners didn't see their slaves as human beings rests on a misunderstanding of the 3/5 Compromise.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
At least the Romans had the excuse of living nearly 1800 years before the ante-bellum Southerners.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
But it was OK then? God was cool with that? All the way? Right behind it?
That's what the sacred texts say. And they are the ones we have been given, so whether I like it or not, I am stuck with them, and must trust that despite appearances, the God Who tells us to love and forgive our enemies in the New Testament is the same God as the One in the Old Testament--and that He will make how it all fits together clear in the world to come.
Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on
:
It's allright chaps. It was the good sort of slavery not the bad sort of slavery.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Much like Satan He'll be able to say that it was nothing to do with Him, that was us on our own, don't blame Him. That's how He'll fit it together for me.
And let's say that the OT is a accurate in attributing all the relished, loved violence to God. There is STILL none of that in Jesus, the ONLY way we are to know and emulate God. No matter that He goes in to overdrive in the Apocalypse.
And to the thread, Christianity has predominantly emulated the realpolitik God our ancestors envisaged, not Jesus and as a result we have Islam.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
It's allright chaps. It was the good sort of slavery not the bad sort of slavery.
Amen!
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
originally posted by Martin:
And to the thread, Christianity has predominantly emulated the realpolitik God our ancestors envisaged, not Jesus and as a result we have Islam.
I'm looking for the evidence to support that rather bold assertion.
I'm not finding any.
OK...I'm calling bullshit.
Bullshit!
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
At least the Romans had the excuse of living nearly 1800 years before the ante-bellum Southerners.
Sounds a bit like a variation on chronological snobbery.
In areas such as science and technology, the latest can safely be assumed to be the best, but in ethical matters time is irrelevant.
What could or should American antebellum plantation slave-owners have learned from the example of Roman slavery?
You either believe that slavery is self-evidently morally wrong ( it can be argued that it is inefficient, but that is a separate, economic issue) or you don’t, whether you live in the first or the eighteenth century.
Like you, I do not have the slightest doubt that slavery is wicked and dehumanizing, but were I to meet a slave owner (they exist) who asserted that it was acceptable in the twenty-first century, and so were Roman and American slavery in their day, it would be impossible to demonstrate to him (assuming that it was proving financially viable for him) historically, or rationally, or empirically, that it is wrong.
I happen to believe that many changes, such as our treatment of animals or our attitudes toward the status of women, are a Good Thing, but I can’t “prove” it.
People will try to say that we are more enlightened today, but that is just begging the question.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
It's certainly bullshit that Christianity has emulated the Prince of Peace.
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
It's certainly bullshit that Christianity has emulated the Prince of Peace.
People stand in the way of God's will, they always have and they probably always will, until all changes at the end of time.
Solomon was supposedly the wisest man who ever lived, and he forged good relationships with all around him so that there was peace throughout his reign and everyone prospered. And yet he was a womaniser and was not faithful to God, so that the tribes of Israel were divided after he died. Even he stood in the way of God's will. We have to live with the consequences of our free will. The responsibility is ours, individually and collectively.
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I also would say that the story "Persian empire beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire" sounds inherently more likely than "charismatic leader rallies hitherto unimportant Arabian tribes into a veritable military force that then beats the snot out of the Byzantine empire."
Yes but, as Dafyd has pointed out, the Persian Empire also had just had the snot beaten out of it by the Byzantine Empire. Both empires were exhausted by 628 which explains why the Byzantines lost so much territory and indeed the Sassanids ceased to exist by the end of the following decade at the hands of the Muslims.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
It's certainly bullshit that Christianity has emulated the Prince of Peace.
This is a dodge worthy of an experienced politician.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I happen to believe that many changes, such as our treatment of animals or our attitudes toward the status of women, are a Good Thing, but I can’t “prove” it.
Why not try? ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
As for slavery, I am also of the belief that hierarchy within societies (including serfdom, slavery, monarchy, and so on) is not in itself bad--but I also believe in noblesse oblige, and I do believe that racially-based slavery, and how lots of people wound up slaves in general, and how slaves were often treated in history in general, was ghastly and wrong. I think the Roman and Jewish (OT) approaches were miles better overall than the antebellum US stuff. And, of course, as C.S. Lewis says (with application to all kinds of legal, social hierarchy--he goes on to argue for consensual non-legally binding hierarchy in various contexts such as the church and household),
quote:
I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.
I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.
The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .
The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
—C.S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns
[ 11. August 2014, 13:00: Message edited by: ChastMastr ]
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
It's certainly bullshit that Christianity has emulated the Prince of Peace.
This is a dodge worthy of an experienced politician.
which doesn't make it any the less true
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
:
OK...leo...maybe you can offer some evidence to support Martin's claim. While your at it, perhaps you could offer some evidence to support your claim that Judaism has always opposed slavery. Maybe rhetoric has progressed to the point where tossing out unsupported assertions now counts as a reasoned argument.
Fine
All Socialists worship the devil.
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I think the Roman and Jewish (OT) approaches were miles better overall than the antebellum US stuff.
Well Roman slavery did have more options for slaves to legally escape slavery and for their descendants to reach full citizenship; however, it also had some far worse practices (e.g., slaves being fodder in the gladiator games or all slaves in a household down to the littlest baby being executed if a slave or former slave killed the master). For Jewish slavery we know what the law said but not necessarily much about practice; it does not seem to have had a large slave based economy like the antebellum South or large parts of the Roman Empire.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
As for slavery, I am also of the belief that hierarchy within societies (including serfdom, slavery, monarchy, and so on) is not in itself bad--but I also believe in noblesse oblige, and I do believe that racially-based slavery, and how lots of people wound up slaves in general, and how slaves were often treated in history in general, was ghastly and wrong. I think the Roman and Jewish (OT) approaches were miles better overall than the antebellum US stuff.
A couple points.
- Slavery is an inherently violent and abusive institution. The threat of violence must always be present and credible in a slave's mind to deter escape or revolt. Abusive violence towards slaves isn't a bug, it's a feature.
- Roman and Jewish slavery only look "miles better overall than the antebellum US stuff" because of cherry-picked examples, comparing U.S. agricultural slaves with Roman or Jewish "house" slaves (scribes, cooks, valets, etc.). If you were to do the reverse, comparing the lot of American house slaves to the slaves toiling in Rome's Spanish silver mines or the farms of Sicily you could easily come to the opposite conclusion.
I'm never quite certain of the agenda of those proposing that there are "good" forms of slavery, but it seems a distressingly common position.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
The reviewer agrees that traditional Islamic readings of contemporary sources have been problematic, but apparently concludes that these guys are pretty much full of crap.
Looks like it... I think the linguistic issues are key. If the idea of Syriac roots of the qur'an and the interpretation of Muhammad as title rather than name can be conclusively rejected, then this theory of Muhammad's non-existence is pretty much dead.
The linguistic bits issues are kind of orthogonal to the issue of Muhammed's existence. He could have lived and those issues could still be true. The main issue with any kind of refutal of these issues (as well as those theories of people like Christoph Luxenberg) is that they generally require quite in depth knowledge of very different languages - and there isn't much higher critical study of the Koran to start with.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm never quite certain of the agenda of those proposing that there are "good" forms of slavery, but it seems a distressingly common position.
I don't have a hidden agenda; slavery and other forms of societal hierarchy, in and of themselves, haven't been treated as intrinsically forbidden by either Scripture or Christian Tradition for millennia. However, for the reasons Lewis gives above, I would not suggest bringing it back, and I firmly stand against modern no-choice-in-the-matter slavery. Hell, I even go further in being firmly against the way corporations treat their workers and such to the point where I'm to the left of many US Democrats.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
As for slavery, I am also of the belief that hierarchy within societies (including serfdom, slavery, monarchy, and so on) is not in itself bad . . .
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I don't have a hidden agenda; slavery and other forms of societal hierarchy, in and of themselves, haven't been treated as intrinsically forbidden by either Scripture or Christian Tradition for millennia.
This is a non-sequitur unless you hold "bad" and "forbidden by either Scripture or Christian Tradition" to be identical categories. But yes, you're right. Both Christian scripture and tradition do not see anything wrong with slavery, nor with beating, branding, raping, or killing your slaves. That's a more recent, non-traditional religious position.
So yes, if scripture and tradition are your sole standard for such things I can see why you would classify slavery as "not bad".
[ 11. August 2014, 15:07: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Both Christian scripture and tradition do not see anything wrong with slavery, nor with beating, branding, raping, or killing your slaves.
Can you provide proof for the raping and killing being considered morally acceptable to Christians part?
(If that were true in some Christian society, I would say that it was a blind spot, but that does not make hierarchy in itself bad.)
Again, I point above to what Lewis says.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So yes, if scripture and tradition are your sole standard for such things I can see why you would classify slavery as "not bad".
It's certainly where I try to start when analyzing various things, especially large movements of cultural behavior. It doesn't have to mean that is where I must end, however.
Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on
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Is a discussion on "Not the bad sort of slavery" worthy of it's own thread or has that already been done?
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on
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Beeswax Altar:
quote:
My guess is your claim that Southerners didn't see their slaves as human beings rests on a misunderstanding of the 3/5 Compromise.
I understand the 3/5 compromise quite well enough to see that neither side actually saw the slaves as quite human (just 3/5 of a human, to be precise). The slaves were simply bargaining chips in terms of deciding Rep by Pop and taxation ratios, nothing much to do with their status as people with a right to a political opinion.
And there is quite strong evidence that this idea is still held by many in the Deep South. Blacks are human enough that it is now unpopular to lynch them (since other people find out about that kind of thing) but not human enough to be allowed to vote (if one can find a way to prevent them from voting without them pesky outsiders getting in the way)
Why do you think the GOP has always opposed Obama, even before he took office? We didn't see the same vehemence of opposition to Clinton.
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on
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quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Is a discussion on "Not the bad sort of slavery" worthy of it's own thread or has that already been done?
Various flavours have come up before. I just tried doing an OP and gave up, but there is an anecdote I found depressing.
One of the 18th C people from locally was hung blamed for a slave rebellion.
Seeing the display one of the things that stuck out was their efforts to make church attendance impossible.
I can't fully remember the details but at one point parliament voted that anyone given a ticket had to be allowed to go to church, the colonies response was to make the ticket compulsory and not (really) give any out.
Anyway in a conversation with relatives who:
a) I believe are not willful racists
b) Are Christians
c) Aren't that different from me
I recounted a bit of the story
Within the minute various lines like 'some slaves had it better than some non-slaves' came out.
Academically I suspect it is true from a 'certain point of view'.
But in that context to reach and fix on that line so fast, was a rather blatant and rather scary (presumably subconscious) need to avoid facing something and I'm not quite sure what it was.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Beeswax Altar:
quote:
My guess is your claim that Southerners didn't see their slaves as human beings rests on a misunderstanding of the 3/5 Compromise.
I understand the 3/5 compromise quite well enough to see that neither side actually saw the slaves as quite human (just 3/5 of a human, to be precise). The slaves were simply bargaining chips in terms of deciding Rep by Pop and taxation ratios, nothing much to do with their status as people with a right to a political opinion.
And there is quite strong evidence that this idea is still held by many in the Deep South. Blacks are human enough that it is now unpopular to lynch them (since other people find out about that kind of thing) but not human enough to be allowed to vote (if one can find a way to prevent them from voting without them pesky outsiders getting in the way)
Why do you think the GOP has always opposed Obama, even before he took office? We didn't see the same vehemence of opposition to Clinton.
You are simply wrong. Southerners hated Clinton just like they hate Ovama. I know. I was there. I'm 37. I've spent 30 of those years living in the Deep South. How much time have you spent in the Deep South? How many Southerners do you actually know? How much of what you think you know about the Deep South comes from reading biased sources meant to appeal to those of a certain political persuasion?
Frankly, I think some of your views regarding the United States and the South in particular are just plain bigoted.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
You are simply wrong. Southerners hated Clinton just like they hate Ovama.
I don't know how much it's spread among Southerners specifically, but I think the current GOP crowd despises Obama more than Clinton, and yes, I think there's a powerful racist undercurrent to it.
quote:
I know. I was there. I'm 37. I've spent 30 of those years living in the Deep South. How much time have you spent in the Deep South?
I'll be 47 in just a few weeks and am a Florida native, and while it is ironically not as "deep south" as north of us is, there are still some genuinely ... extreme mindsets here. Areas with huge old Rebel flags waving, areas that seem like just this side of "Deliverance." But I've also seen more overt racism coming from crazy people much further north (or west), like Cliven Bundy, or this f-ing lunatic.
quote:
Frankly, I think some of your views regarding the United States and the South in particular are just plain bigoted.
I've lived in the US all my life, and I certainly think there's a serious problem with racism here. I've been taken aback by things people say when they assume you're "one of them." Horrible.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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Indeed, I had to leave a couple of local Facebook groups devoted to "remember what it was like growing up here in Tampa Bay" sorts of things because the overt racism that burst out of some people sickened and angered me. Some of them were quite proud of having been involved, just a little bit before my time, in the anti-desegregation riots at our local schools--as in, they were proud of fighting to keep racial segregation. Disgusting and evil. ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
So, yeah, it's still very real around here.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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This sort of thing, specifically.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
I don't know how much it's spread among Southerners specifically, but I think the current GOP crowd despises Obama more than Clinton, and yes, I think there's a powerful racist undercurrent to it.
I became obsessed with politics during the Clinton Administration. I was a Republican. We hated Bill Clinton. Let's remember that Bill Clinton was a pot smoking, draft dodging, Communist. Those were the nice things said about Clinton. The extreme version was that Clinton was essentially the head of the Dixie Mafia and responsible for murdering Vince Foster and Ron Brown. The idea that Republicans don't like Obama because he's black is silly. Democrats were going to say it's about race because it makes them feel morally superior. Fact is Republicans don't like Obama because Obama is a Democrat. Imagine that.
quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
I'll be 47 in just a few weeks and am a Florida native, and while it is ironically not as "deep south" as north of us is, there are still some genuinely ... extreme mindsets here. Areas with huge old Rebel flags waving, areas that seem like just this side of "Deliverance." But I've also seen more overt racism coming from crazy people much further north (or west), like Cliven Bundy, or this f-ing lunatic.
Have any of them seriously suggested that black people weren't human? I've never heard that and I've known some very racist people. Not saying you can't find an internet racist claiming black people aren't human. I can point you to a former spokesman for the Green Party of England and Wales that believes his political foes are reptiles.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
I became obsessed with politics during the Clinton Administration. I was a Republican. We hated Bill Clinton. Let's remember that Bill Clinton was a pot smoking, draft dodging, Communist. Those were the nice things said about Clinton. The extreme version was that Clinton was essentially the head of the Dixie Mafia and responsible for murdering Vince Foster and Ron Brown.
I remember. I was there too. Indeed, this was the period during which I actually shifted, near the end of Clinton's second term, from Republican to Democrat. I also saw some old friends of mine shift terrifyingly further and further to the right--at least two of them basically fell in love with Rush Limbaugh and became increasingly venom-infused people overall.
quote:
The idea that Republicans don't like Obama because he's black is silly.
I think that the Republicans who are like this are, indeed, silly, albeit in a toxic and harmful way. That doesn't mean it's all of them, but if you look at things like depicting Obama as a witch-doctor with a bone in his nose as a way of dissing Obamacare, or the constant drumbeat which just kept going about how he's secretly not American and/or secretly Muslim, with all of the "othering" involved there---yeah, it's there, I'm sorry. I wish it weren't.
quote:
Democrats were going to say it's about race because it makes them feel morally superior.
No, many Democrats believe it's about race for a chunk of Republicans because we believe the facts support it.
For God's sake, the moment the rules changed about voting restrictions, a whole lot of places in the South abruptly started rushing through a hell of a lot of Jim Crow laws. That's not racist?
quote:
Fact is Republicans don't like Obama because Obama is a Democrat. Imagine that.
quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
I'll be 47 in just a few weeks and am a Florida native, and while it is ironically not as "deep south" as north of us is, there are still some genuinely ... extreme mindsets here. Areas with huge old Rebel flags waving, areas that seem like just this side of "Deliverance." But I've also seen more overt racism coming from crazy people much further north (or west), like Cliven Bundy, or this f-ing lunatic.
Have any of them seriously suggested that black people weren't human?
What does that have to do with whether these people are racist (or, for that matter, lunatics)?
Posted by Paul 2012 (# 17402) on
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Without wishing to sound preachy, heated exchanges about which denomination or faith has got it right or wrong, whether I am involved or not, often make me think of both Mark 9:33:
"And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?" and John 14:2:
"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
or the constant drumbeat which just kept going about how he's secretly not American and/or secretly Muslim, with all of the "othering" involved there---yeah, it's there, I'm sorry. I wish it weren't.
Again, Republicans said some nasty stuff about Clinton. Democrats said some nasty stuff about Bush. Some of the nasty stuff people say about Obama is racist. My question is if a white Democrat proposed the exact same policies as Obama would Republicans support them. I think the answer is an obvious no.
quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
What does that have to do with whether these people are racist (or, for that matter, lunatics)? [Confused]
Read Horseman Bree's post that I was responding to in the first place.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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What is truly chilling is the general indifference to the situation in northern Iraq in the gulf states and Saudi Arabia.
A quick glance through newspapers from KSA reveals that they're full of stuff about Gaza, lots of space given to the amount of tobacco imported from South Africa, a few small articles about al-Maliki and sweet FA about the Yazidi or the Chaldeans.
The one mention of the Yazidi refers to them as Zoroastrians (not true) who are viewed as devil-worshippers - but that last canard is down to Salafi and Wahhabi imams in any case.
And just in case anyone thinks it will all die down, we should be very afraid that ISIS has over-run Saddam Hussein's former chemical warfare research establishment at Mutthana.
Be very afraid.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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The Saudis are supporting ISIS. Still, the US pretends the Saudis are our allies. Much of US foreign policy is a joke. Isolation gets a bad rap.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
My question is if a white Democrat proposed the exact same policies as Obama would Republicans support them. I think the answer is an obvious no.
Yes but then they'd do like with Clinton and focus on his legitimate bad qualities (everyone has them), like his philandering.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being black, Kenyan, or Muslim, therefore using those are reasons to oppose Obama's policies is in a different category.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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Philandering isn't a reason to oppose somebodies policies either. Lord knows Bill Clinton wasn't the first politician to philander. Republicans oppose Obama's policies because Republicans oppose Obama's policies. If Obama wanted to enact Republican policies, Republicans wouldn't care if he was black, Muslim or Kenyan. Democrats, even the white ones, would call him an Uncle Tom or something similar.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
My question is if a white Democrat proposed the exact same policies as Obama would Republicans support them. I think the answer is an obvious no.
That doesn't mean the presence of racism isn't a serious factor in the way the current GOP is dealing with Obama--and indeed the aggression against him is much stronger than with Clinton. There's a difference between "not supporting" and "trying to block every single thing the man does."
Perhaps it is not the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells but more on a state level, but we are definitely seeing some crazytown-level paranoia about Obama, and it really does have a strong racist tone.
quote:
quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
What does that have to do with whether these people are racist (or, for that matter, lunatics)? [Confused]
Read Horseman Bree's post that I was responding to in the first place.
quote:
Horseman Bree said:
And there is quite strong evidence that this idea is still held by many in the Deep South. Blacks are human enough that it is now unpopular to lynch them (since other people find out about that kind of thing) but not human enough to be allowed to vote (if one can find a way to prevent them from voting without them pesky outsiders getting in the way)
Why do you think the GOP has always opposed Obama, even before he took office? We didn't see the same vehemence of opposition to Clinton.
While it may indeed be a difference if you asked people, "Do you believe that black people are less human?" I'm not sure there is a practical difference between consciously, literally, ontologically seeing other kinds of people as "not quite human" and looking at them as "sufficiently other that we can treat them less well than our kind of people." If you combine this attitude with a serious historical problem in which black people have genuinely been treated as intrinsically lesser beings, exhibited in human zoos, and things like this. And this guy. The Bell Curve. And so very, very much more. And, well, all of this.
I feel like taking a shower now after reading much, much more of that than I planned to. ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Philandering isn't a reason to oppose somebodies policies either.
I agree, but it is still something negative. Being black is not. If you have a morals clause in your contract your employer can fire you for cheating on your wife; they can't fire you for being black though.
Point being: just because GOP goes after Democrats doesn't mean all of their attacks are equal.
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
That doesn't mean the presence of racism isn't a serious factor in the way the current GOP is dealing with Obama--and indeed the aggression against him is much stronger than with Clinton. There's a difference between "not supporting" and "trying to block every single thing the man does."
Perhaps it is not the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells but more on a state level, but we are definitely seeing some crazytown-level paranoia about Obama, and it really does have a strong racist tone.
The Republicans didn't aggressively oppose Bill Clinton! Are you kidding? They freaking investigated every scandal that arose until they found a reason to impeach him!
After that contradict yourself. Mitch McConnel and John Boehner are responsible for opposing Obama's policies. If they aren't opposing Obama because he is black, then congressional Republicans aren't opposing his policies because he's black. Tell me this, which of Obama's policies that Republicans opposed would have passed if Obama had been white? Obama spent the first half of his first term getting Obamacare passed. He had trouble getting that past his own party.
quote:
originally posted by ChastMastr:
I'm not sure there is a practical difference between consciously, literally, ontologically seeing other kinds of people as "not quite human" and looking at them as "sufficiently other that we can treat them less well than our kind of people."
Yes there is. One of the flaws of being a human is to treat people like us better than we treat others. I know several Episcopal churches where a highly educated, upper middle class black lesbian would be treated just as well as a highly educated upper middle class straight white male. How racist white people treated black people for much of the 20th century was no different from the class system that still existed in the UK at the exact same time complete with the paternalism.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
The Republicans didn't aggressively oppose Bill Clinton!
I didn't say that; I said, "trying to block every single thing the man does." Saying that they oppose Obama more isn't saying they didn't oppose Clinton.
quote:
After that contradict yourself. Mitch McConnel and John Boehner are responsible for opposing Obama's policies.
They're not the only ones.
quote:
Tell me this, which of Obama's policies that Republicans opposed would have passed if Obama had been white? Obama spent the first half of his first term getting Obamacare passed. He had trouble getting that past his own party.
He actually accomplished a lot more than that, I'm happy to say; as for what might be in Parallel Universe 2 where Obama was white, I have no idea.
quote:
I know several Episcopal churches where a highly educated, upper middle class black lesbian would be treated just as well as a highly educated upper middle class straight white male.
And that's great! Not relevant to racism still being an issue outside those churches, but great.
quote:
How racist white people treated black people for much of the 20th century was no different from the class system that still existed in the UK at the exact same time complete with the paternalism.
... No. Please take a look again at those links. Were people of different classes in the UK not allowed to drink from the same fountains or use the same restrooms or have voting rights or marriage rights or sit in the front of the bus or... my God, the list goes on. South Carolina's Bob Jones University banned interracial dating until 2000. ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
I don't think we're going to convince each other of each others' positions, so I'm bowing out of the racism discussion on this thread (which threatens to derail it completely), so... have a nice day. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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One, I'm still waiting for evidence the Republicans opposed Obama more aggressively than Clinton.
Two, I can tell you how much more Obama would have accomplished if he was white...zilch. What Republican in the Senate or House would have voted with Obama if he was white and on what? I think that's a fair and obvious question to ask if you are saying the Republicans opposed Obama's agenda because he was black and not because they disagreed with his agenda.
Three, you missed the point of the Episcopal churches that would welcome the highly educated, upper middle class black lesbian. Read it again. Her race, sexuality, or gender might be a hindrance to her being accepted but education and social status surely would.
Four, I don't need to read the links. I'm aware Jim Crow laws existed in the South. I've seen the traces of it. How is that similar to the class system in the UK? Well, there was segregation based on class in the UK. What do you think the phrase upstairs, downstairs actually means? Besides, I've noticed plenty of segregation in the Midwest. I went to a school in East Texas where 25% of the student body was African American. Some students lived over 10 miles from the school. Now, in my blue state by the lake, I lived about a mile from two high schools. One was predominantly African-American and Latino. The other was predominantly upper middle class white people. The first was one of the worst schools in the state. The second was one of the best. Segregation was de facto rather than de jure. So what? Every single one of those affluent white people would have been happy to tell you how so much more tolerant they were than all the racists down South.
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on
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One last reply for me on this for now:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
One, I'm still waiting for evidence the Republicans opposed Obama more aggressively than Clinton.
Sorry, but you can keep waiting: "I don't think we're going to convince each other of each others' positions, so I'm bowing out of the racism discussion on this thread (which threatens to derail it completely), so... have a nice day. [Smile]"
quote:
Two, I can tell you how much more Obama would have accomplished if he was white...zilch. What Republican in the Senate or House would have voted with Obama if he was white and on what? I think that's a fair and obvious question to ask if you are saying the Republicans opposed Obama's agenda because he was black and not because they disagreed with his agenda.
Except what I actually said was: "...I think the current GOP crowd despises Obama more than Clinton, and yes, I think there's a powerful racist undercurrent to it...." "...I think that the Republicans who are like this are, indeed, silly, albeit in a toxic and harmful way. That doesn't mean it's all of them..." "...many Democrats believe it's about race for a chunk of Republicans..." "...and it really does have a strong racist tone..."
quote:
Three, you missed the point of the Episcopal churches that would welcome the highly educated, upper middle class black lesbian.
Not in the slightest; I just didn't think it was especially relevant to whether or not racism was still a serious problem elsewhere. I thought about getting into the classism issue but decided that would be unfruitful and even more derailing than the race discussion has already been on what is, after all, a thread on Islam.
quote:
Read it again. Her race, sexuality, or gender might be a hindrance to her being accepted but education and social status surely would.
And yes, that is a bad thing.
quote:
Four, I don't need to read the links. I'm aware Jim Crow laws existed in the South.
Your choice, but that's not what the links were about.
quote:
I've seen the traces of it. How is that similar to the class system in the UK? Well, there was segregation based on class in the UK. What do you think the phrase upstairs, downstairs actually means?
It was not the same thing, but I've grown weary of this debate.
quote:
Besides, I've noticed plenty of segregation in the Midwest.
quote:
Me: "...But I've also seen more overt racism coming from crazy people much further north (or west), like Cliven Bundy, or this f-ing lunatic...."
Bundy's in Nevada and the lunatic is in Maryland.
quote:
Every single one of those affluent white people would have been happy to tell you how so much more tolerant they were than all the racists down South.
And obviously they would be wrong.
Once last time, as I said before,
quote:
I don't think we're going to convince each other of each others' positions, so I'm bowing out of the racism discussion on this thread (which threatens to derail it completely), so... have a nice day.
Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
How is that similar to the class system in the UK? Well, there was segregation based on class in the UK. What do you think the phrase upstairs, downstairs actually means?
If you want to argue that class-based discrimination in this country was equivalent to segregation, you are going to have to do better than that. As Dickens' Bleak House makes clear, it was possible for a child brought up in the "downstairs" world to be an adult "upstairs". We may (have) be(en) a very class-based society but there was always a lot of mobility between the classes.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
You are simply wrong. Southerners hated Clinton just like they hate Ovama. I know. I was there. I'm 37. I've spent 30 of those years living in the Deep South. How much time have you spent in the Deep South? How many Southerners do you actually know? How much of what you think you know about the Deep South comes from reading biased sources meant to appeal to those of a certain political persuasion?
And as ChastMastr says, you are simply overgeneralizing. I know. I was there. I'm 53, and all 53 of those years have been spent in the South. (Admittedly, not the Deep South. But the Deep South is not the entirety of the South.)
The South is not a monolithic region, where everyone thinks alike—unless it's in preferring sweet tea—or even has the same accent. Even you had gone with "no Southern state went for Clinton or Obama," you' wouldn't be right. (And I'll readily admit that northern Virginia can reasonably considered not Southern.)
Many Southerners, particularly of Republican or tea party persuasion, did not like Clinton and do not like Obama. In many parts of the Southern, they'd be in the majority. But many other Southerners voted for both and support[ed] both.
Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on
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So there was a school age child photographed this week holding up the severed head of another human being. What was the inspiration for that?
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Alt Wally:
So there was a school age child photographed this week holding up the severed head of another human being. What was the inspiration for that?
A toxic mix of victimhood and supremacy leading to the conclusion that you are inherently righteous no matter what atrocities you commit. Mediated through German nationalism and you get Nazis. Mediated through Sunni extremism you get ISIS. Mediated through Christianity you get massacres by Phalangists in the Lebanese Civil War.
Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on
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So there is an underlying causality and in the examples given - Islam, Christianity and Nazism those are just incidental factors?
[ 13. August 2014, 02:45: Message edited by: Alt Wally ]
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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Not incidental factors, no. Belief structures shape and guide the expression and enter into a feedback loop with the dangerous mentality. Nazis didn't stone adulteresses or behead people. ISIS jihadists don't care about racial purity.
Some belief structures seem to work to reinforce a belief that you are special, righteous, but at the same time a victim whose every response against the untermenschen is justified.
I'm also not sure the mentality is the cause. I have to drive along the highway to work, but the highway is not the cause of my trip.
Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on
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Perhaps it's best not to over-think this. The ISIL people may in large part just be psychopaths who enjoy killing people (including principally other Muslims).
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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Its 24 hours since the news broke of the latest murder of a hostage by IS/ ISIS.
Where is the condemnation from Arab heads of state or imams?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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The news is still full of the little boy with cancer. The media can't multitask. They've shown the pictures, but not got round to talking to people outside the government yet.
One of the Guardian's reporters is a Muslim.
[ 03. September 2014, 14:56: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posted by Alwyn (# 4380) on
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quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
.. Where is the condemnation from Arab heads of state or imams?
Does this list of condemnations (including the chief of the Arab League - an association of Arab states - as well as religious leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries) help?
Posted by Lord Clonk (# 13205) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There are parts of the Bible that read like a Conan novel, so....
More like a CANAAN novel! Am I right?
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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I have heard that British imams have been preaching against IS for months; in fact, there has been a fatwa against them. But some imams report that some militants know little about Islam actually.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
L'organist: Where is the condemnation from Arab heads of state or imams?
Once again ...
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Alwyn:
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
.. Where is the condemnation from Arab heads of state or imams?
Does this list of condemnations (including the chief of the Arab League - an association of Arab states - as well as religious leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries) help?
In my part of the world, you can add Malaysia and Indonesia to the list of countries that have condemned ISIS. But with little reporting of it in Australian media.
The fact is our media isn't that interested in anything said in parts of the world that aren't ours or that don't directly affect us. There's a scale (possibly derived from Noam Chomsky??) that measures the amount of column inches (or whatever the web equivalent of a column inch) given to a story. Trivial things that happen locally get the same amount of coverage as very significant things that happen in a remote place that is just a name on a map.
I think this applies to anything and everything. It's not specifically an anti-Muslim bias in the media, more a general priority system. Watching the news on the explicitly multicultural network here, SBS, one is often struck by the difference in their priority system. They do still give some priority to Australian news, but it's nowhere near as pronounced.
Even most of the victims of ISIS, for months and months, are just nameless objects. American journalists are not. They have names, past histories, families, eulogies. They are, in short, relatable.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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I think IS have been decapitating other Syrian rebels and Syrian soldiers for months - have the Western media made a fuss? I doubt it.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think IS have been decapitating other Syrian rebels and Syrian soldiers for months - have the Western media made a fuss? I doubt it.
I certainly saw (on the front page of several online newspapers) mass murders of Syrians and Kurds before the murder of the two American journalists was published.
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think IS have been decapitating other Syrian rebels and Syrian soldiers for months - have the Western media made a fuss? I doubt it.
Yeah, I'm really not quite getting the media angst over the decapitation of these journalists.
As far as terrorist atrocities against westerners go, I was much more disturbed by 9/11, probably because of the Grace Of God factor, ie. it's plausibe that I would visit New York, and quite likely that I'd go to the WTC if I did.
But the journalists who were executed by ISIS were hardly just living out an everyday, milquetoast existence; they had deliberately gone to a very dangerous part of the world, with the intention of experiencing the danger up close.
Now, I do recognize that, to some extent, journalists who go there are "doing it for us", because we all like to read news reports from the middle east(we couldn't have these discussions if we didn't). But still, these were decidedly non-random killings, and that sorta prevents me from registering the kind of horrified grief that some in the western media seem to think I should.
Posted by Demas (# 24) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Yeah, I'm really not quite getting the media angst over the decapitation of these journalists.
Partially for the same reason why police are less than enthusiastic supporters of cop killers.
But it is important. Not killing journalists is an important value, tied into our respect for free and open discussion. The Islamic State aren't killing journalists just for kicks, they know the message they are sending.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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posted by quetzalcoatl quote:
I think IS have been decapitating other Syrian rebels and Syrian soldiers for months - have the Western media made a fuss? I doubt it.
You need to widen your reading: The Times has carried reports of widespread atrocities - beheadings, enslavement, mass rape, crucifixions, etc - for months.
The BBC World Service has carried the same reports.
Granted much of the domestic media haven't given it top billing, but that says more about their news priorities - J Savile, Rolf Harris, Scottish referendum, etc - than what should be of concern in the world.
As for the prospects: An announcement has just been made of the official founding of Al-Qaeda in Asia, based around the Indian sub-continent, under the 'guidance' and leadership of Mullah Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban - that's the chap some of the chattering classes in the UK think we should be negotiating with over our withdrawal from Afghanistan. His organisation has systematically targeted anyone 'guilty' of trying to provide or promote such crimes as female education, vaccination programmes, democratic elections, etc.
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
posted by quetzalcoatl quote:
I think IS have been decapitating other Syrian rebels and Syrian soldiers for months - have the Western media made a fuss? I doubt it.
You need to widen your reading: The Times has carried reports of widespread atrocities - beheadings, enslavement, mass rape, crucifixions, etc - for months.
The BBC World Service has carried the same reports.
Granted much of the domestic media haven't given it top billing, but that says more about their news priorities - J Savile, Rolf Harris, Scottish referendum, etc - than what should be of concern in the world.
As for the prospects: An announcement has just been made of the official founding of Al-Qaeda in Asia, based around the Indian sub-continent, under the 'guidance' and leadership of Mullah Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban - that's the chap some of the chattering classes in the UK think we should be negotiating with over our withdrawal from Afghanistan. His organisation has systematically targeted anyone 'guilty' of trying to provide or promote such crimes as female education, vaccination programmes, democratic elections, etc.
My understanding is that there is always negotiation unless there is an officially declared state of war*, so with bodies like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and IS/ISIL, just as with the various Irish paramilitaries and their political backers, our people will be in contact with theirs. These talks might be face-to-face, they may be open, or they may not, but however evil they are, talks will be sought if they are not already underway.
*Even when there is a war there are special provisions.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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I assume that politicians usually have back channels, even to terrorists, to find out if there is any prospect of a peaceful resolution. In Ireland, this worked; with the Taliban so far, has not worked. But no doubt there are contacts with them.
With IS, there are probably back channels to the Sunni tribes, who are supporting them, kind of asking, come on guys, are you going all the way with these people? Are you interested in some kind of internal Iraqui deal, in which you have quite a lot of power (and oil)?
Well, if they're not doing this, they're idiots. The intelligence people know full well that some of these tribes fought against AQ, so they are for turning again. But not with Maliki in power.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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Some of us would question whether its accurate to say the back-channel talks "worked" vis-a-vis Northern Ireland.
Many concessions were made, some of which are only now coming to light, such as issuing so-called Comfort Letters to bombers and murderers.
Sure, in part of the province the situation is better than 20-30 years ago, but in frighteningly large parts of daily life there has been no change.
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