Ben Affleck vs. Sam Harris & Bill Maher on Islam

Billy86

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

Nope. Read it again. I said minority religion.

Yes, and if all Muslim religions are batched together under Islam then so are all Christian religions under Christianity if we are to compare like with like. It would make more to say for example Catholicism and Sufism, Sunniism, Shi'ism, etc but nobody seems interested in that.

A major, major failing of these religious debates is that they allow for the compartmentalisation of Christian denominations but feel obliged to lump all of Islam together and attribute the negative aspects (of which there are plenty) onto everyone. If we are doing that, we might as well pop the Westboro Baptist Church, Branch Davidians and all others under the same roof together with Protestants, Catholics, etc and attribute their negative aspects to Christianity in general.

Frank Lee Midere

Billy86 wrote: »

Yes, and if all Muslim religions are batched together under Islam then so are all Christian religions under Christianity if we are to compare like with like. It would make more to say for example Catholicism and Sufism, Sunniism, Shi'ism, etc but nobody seems interested in that.

A major, major failing of these religious debates is that they allow for the compartmentalisation of Christian denominations but feel obliged to lump all of Islam together and attribute the negative aspects (of which there are plenty) onto everyone. If we are doing that, we might as well pop the Westboro Baptist Church, Branch Davidians and all others under the same roof together with Protestants, Catholics, etc and attribute their negative aspects to Christianity in general.

That's, once again, nothing to do with my post. I said American liberals attack one minority American religion Catholicism but not another minority religion; Islam. Whether Islam can be further broken down is irrelevant.

Maher made that point too. Btw they mentioned that 78% of British Muslims supported penalties or imprisonnent for the Danish cartoonists. Remembering that Afflek was star of a movie which would have been seen as offensive to Catholics or Christians ( Dogma ) why is he so sanguine about threats to other people critical of religion?

Billy86

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

That's, once again, nothing to do with my post. I said American liberals attack one minority American religion Catholicism but not another minority religion; Islam. Whether Islam can be further broken down is irrelevant.

Maher made that point too. Btw they mentioned that 78% of British Muslims supported penalties or imprisonnent for the Danish cartoonists. Remembering that Afflek was star of a movie which would have been seen as offensive to Catholics or Christians ( Dogma ) why is he so sanguine about threats to other people critical of religion?

It is completely relevant, because unless you do break down the different types of Islam and identify the pros and cons of them, you cannot do the same with Christianity. If you are willing to break those different branches down, then you get a fair comparison.

Something that is interesting about that 78% figure is that I have looked and looked but cannot find the exact question that was posed to them anywhere, which seems very odd. And like I said originally, Affleck didn't exactly cover himself in glory in that video either.

jank

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Death penalty only applies if an apostate propagates anti Islamic views when he leaves and openly attack the Islamic government while still living under the Islamic state upsetting the Muslim community and basically becoming a threat to the government, but they didn't mention that, and there is NO recorded documents of this ever happing during Prophet Mohammed time since it really doesn't make sense for someone to do this if you feel like you want to propagate your anti Islamic views knowing the laws of the Islamic state you live in leave the country and go somewhere else

Oh, I suppose that makes it OK so to kill someone because they are no longer a Muslim! Put it this way, would it be acceptable for the Church to call on the Irish government to kill anyone and everyone who leaves the RCC and then criticizes it say via a public forum on boards.ie? Are they fair game for execution?

jank

Nodin wrote: »

Actually it was about how the same notions repeat themselves over the centuries. Jews were seen as a corrupting by Luther and by the anti-Semitic right since. Their synagogues were seen as everything from a centre for heresy to HQ for leftism and terrorism, and there were constant accusations about non-integration etc. Catholicism suffered a bit similiarily betimes and Islam gets it today.

We all know and are aware of Anti Semitic dialogue that permeated mainstream Christian Medieval Europe. Yet today today medival customs and practices are alive and well in Musllm countries. Thankfully most of western civilization has gotten over this today due to a period of enlightenment that occurred across the western world. The Muslim world have never gone through this process, hence why Muslim Countries are by and large ****ty places to live if you are a woman/homosexual/a minority.

Keeping with your theme of anti-semitism, it is widespread and rife in todays Muslims world. Jews are not welcome in most of these countries. Holocaust denial is thought in many schools. Many groups advocate the murder of Jews. There is a reason why today in 2014 Sydney that there has to be armed security protecting Jewish childcare centers. Yeap, those 2 years old are such a threat and its not Brent the surfer or Ken the IT guy they are afraid off!

There has always been this cognitive dissonance regards the left and extreme elements of Islam.

crybaby

Sad to see fellow liberals in this thread still afraid to criticize Islam.

It is incredible to finally have someone like Sam Harris articulate a clear and coherent argument against Islam rather than some piece of trash racist burning copies of the Qur'an.

Nodin

jank wrote: »

We all know and are aware of Anti Semitic dialogue that permeated mainstream Christian Medieval Europe. Yet today today medival customs and practices are alive and well in Musllm countries. Thankfully most of western civilization has gotten over this today due to a period of enlightenment that occurred across the western world. .

Yes, thank baby jesus the enlightenment ended anti-Semitism.

The point, which you seem at pains to escape, is that the same witch hunts go on, albeit in different guises.

jank wrote: »

Keeping with your theme of anti-semitism, it is widespread and rife in todays Muslims world. Jews are not welcome in most of these countries. Holocaust denial is thought in many schools. Many groups advocate the murder of Jews. There is a reason why today in 2014 Sydney that there has to be armed security protecting Jewish childcare centers. Yeap, those 2 years old are such a threat and its not Brent the surfer or Ken the IT guy they are afraid off!

There has always been this cognitive dissonance regards the left and extreme elements of Islam.

But there is no "cognitive dissonance" with regards extreme elements. The problem is with the sweeping generalisations and xenophobic/sectarian "enemy within" style comments that come from some parties.

jank

Nodin wrote: »

Yes, thank baby jesus the enlightenment ended anti-Semitism.

The point, which you seem at pains to escape, is that the same witch hunts go on, albeit in different guises.




But there is no "cognitive dissonance" with regards extreme elements. The problem is with the sweeping generalisations and xenophobic/sectarian "enemy within" style comments that come from some parties.

Which parties are these? As usual you try and introduce strawmen into the argument. Just because some right wing neo Nazi's make Islamaphobic comments doesn't mean that a) mainstream society cannot condemn Islamic behavior when it manifests itself into gross human rights abuse and that b) there exists a threat from home grown terrorism. See the 7/7 attacks, Lee Rigby, the Brit who hacked off the heads of Americans, the Australian child who held up the head later to be photographed with it...

There is something perverse and deeply distributing about this ideology that seems to send a large minority into barbaric violence. What left wing liberals in the west try and do is massage it and basically try and shut down debate by drawing the 'its racist' card

Benny_Cake

crybaby wrote: »

Sad to see fellow liberals in this thread still afraid to criticize Islam.

It is incredible to finally have someone like Sam Harris articulate a clear and coherent argument against Islam rather than some piece of trash racist burning copies of the Qur'an.

If Sam Harris is representative of Western liberalism (and he probably is representative of a good portion of it), then count me out.

Few if any are afraid to speak out against fundamentalist Islam. What I'd reject is that Sam Harris or Bill Maher get to define what Islam is when the reality is far more nuanced. They essentially write off 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide (unless they were to stop being Muslims, of course).

jank

Benny_Cake wrote: »

If Sam Harris is representative of Western liberalism (and he probably is representative of a good portion of it), then count me out.

Few if any are afraid to speak out against fundamentalist Islam. What I'd reject is that Sam Harris or Bill Maher get to define what Islam is when the reality is far more nuanced. They essentially write off 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide (unless they were to stop being Muslims, of course).

Harris's argument is more nuanced that what you portray there. They do not write off 1.5 billion Muslims, far from it. What they do say though is that the proportion of Muslims who exhibit Jihadi tendencies is greater than originally thought. Many in the West do not speak out about this because of the fear of being singled out by Muslims or labeled a racist or Xenophobe by liberals. Just have a quick read over the Rotherham case. Its self evident in this thread as well.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

Billy86 wrote: »

Yes, and if all Muslim religions are batched together under Islam then so are all Christian religions under Christianity if we are to compare like with like. It would make more to say for example Catholicism and Sufism, Sunniism, Shi'ism, etc but nobody seems interested in that.

A major, major failing of these religious debates is that they allow for the compartmentalisation of Christian denominations but feel obliged to lump all of Islam together and attribute the negative aspects (of which there are plenty) onto everyone. If we are doing that, we might as well pop the Westboro Baptist Church, Branch Davidians and all others under the same roof together with Protestants, Catholics, etc and attribute their negative aspects to Christianity in general.

The Westboro Baptist Church are brought up an obscene amount of times in debates. Over a thousand mentions of them there. To me it's no different to Godwinning a thread now.

There are about 15 Westboro Baptist Church members, they are absolutely hated by everyone, including all Christans. They've never hurt or killed anyone. They just seem to picket a few soldiers funerals and that's it. They're so irrelevant it's just bizarre they're brought up so much.

suicide_circus

^^^bringing up the WBC as some kind of counter argument to criticism of islamic fundamentalists is lame in the extreme

Billy86

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

The Westboro Baptist Church are brought up an obscene amount of times in debates. Over a thousand mentions of them there. To me it's no different to Godwinning a thread now.

There are about 15 Westboro Baptist Church members, they are absolutely hated by everyone, including all Christans. They've never hurt or killed anyone. They just seem to picket a few soldiers funerals and that's it. They're so irrelevant it's just bizarre they're brought up so much.

Westboro is just one of the first ones that popped into my head, because in truth there are hundreds and hundreds of different branches of fundamentalist, over the top Evangelical and Pentecostal and down right cultist Christian branches, and that's before even getting into the Mormon side of things - and that's without even leaving the USA, whose own laws have often been influenced by Christian pressure groups, also getting the "God" added in to their pledge of allegiance despite being intended as a secular nation.

The fact is that there are hundreds of millions Christians in the world who hold some very dangerous, backwards, and/or oppressive opinions - including several very powerful, prominent figures who bask in the publicity and have extremely large followings. But these peoples views are rarely seen to be much of a threat, or to be representative of Christianity in general; they are typically compartmentalised into their own subsection so as not to tar all or a large chunk of Christians with association to their beliefs and/or actions. Yet this is very rarely the case with Muslims.

Of course I would not be surprised at all to see the reverse of this in several Muslim countries, because showing some of the Christian nut jobs would be an easy way to propagate fear and hate in their people, just as like it does in much of the Western world with Muslims. It's an easy way to keep support, even though it does absolutely nothing to help the situation in the short, medium or long term.

Defender OF Faith

jank wrote: »

Oh, I suppose that makes it OK so to kill someone because they are no longer a Muslim! Put it this way, would it be acceptable for the Church to call on the Irish government to kill anyone and everyone who leaves the RCC and then criticizes it say via a public forum on boards.ie? Are they fair game for execution?

You don't seem to have understood what I have said, he's not being killed for not being a Muslim instead he is being Killed for propagating anti-Islamic views openly and loudly under an Islamic state.

Similarly to people who try to deny the Armenian Genocide which may be either forbidden or enforced in some countries so you cant be living in a country knowing that within its doctrine denying the Armenian genocide is a crime and stage a public speech denying you must be prepared to face the consequence of doing so.

Otherwise a Muslim may leave his religion in accordance with the verse
"There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong." {2/256}
He shall not be prosecuted but if he still wishes to live under an Islamic state he must pay a jizya -approx one dinar per year- a per capita tax in return, non-Muslim subjects are permitted to practice their faith, to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy, to be entitled to the Muslim state's protection from outside aggression, and to be exempted from military service and from the zakat tax levied upon Muslim citizens.

Your example with the church and Ireland doesn't really fit since Ireland is more of a Secular state then a catholic state Instead why don't you mention the Vatican in Rome? do you really think they will let someone openly criticize Christianity on public there? If you look at the era where the church had power over the state you would see that this is what ACTUALLY happened to anyone who dared to Criticize Christianity or the church Galileo being the most notable example.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

Billy86 wrote: »

Westboro is just one of the first ones that popped into my head, because in truth there are hundreds and hundreds of different branches of fundamentalist, over the top Evangelical and Pentecostal and down right cultist Christian branches, and that's before even getting into the Mormon side of things - and that's without even leaving the USA, whose own laws have often been influenced by Christian pressure groups, also getting the "God" added in to their pledge of allegiance despite being intended as a secular nation.

The fact is that there are hundreds of millions Christians in the world who hold some very dangerous, backwards, and/or oppressive opinions - including several very powerful, prominent figures who bask in the publicity and have extremely large followings. But these peoples views are rarely seen to be much of a threat, or to be representative of Christianity in general; they are typically compartmentalised into their own subsection so as not to tar all or a large chunk of Christians with association to their beliefs and/or actions. Yet this is very rarely the case with Muslims.

Of course I would not be surprised at all to see the reverse of this in several Muslim countries, because showing some of the Christian nut jobs would be an easy way to propagate fear and hate in their people, just as like it does in much of the Western world with Muslims. It's an easy way to keep support, even though it does absolutely nothing to help the situation in the short, medium or long term.

There are fundamentalist branches from all religions and cults. It's just that the Westboro Baptist Church are so unbelievably irrelevant it is incredible how much they are brought up. Also the Branch Davidians were very much a one man cult type group, to lump them in with Christians is fairly incorrect.

Ian Paisleys Free Presbyterian Church would be a fair example of a Christian fundamentalist organisation, but again it feels silly to actually compare them to ISIS and the like. There is also unquestionably fundamentalist Jews in the IDF who are a danger to peace.

I would be weary of all fundamentalists, I'm just more concerned by Islamic extremists because of their high numbers and the extent of their violence, Jewish extremists are simply fewer in number and pose a far lower threat to blowing up people in the West, and Christian fundamentalists come in at a distant position when compared objectively. That is my understanding of religious extremes despite the fact Christian fundamentalists have had a far bigger negative impact on Ireland than any other religion.

conorhal

Billy86 wrote: »

Westboro is just one of the first ones that popped into my head, because in truth there are hundreds and hundreds of different branches of fundamentalist, over the top Evangelical and Pentecostal and down right cultist Christian branches, and that's before even getting into the Mormon side of things - and that's without even leaving the USA, whose own laws have often been influenced by Christian pressure groups, also getting the "God" added in to their pledge of allegiance despite being intended as a secular nation.

The fact is that there are hundreds of millions Christians in the world who hold some very dangerous, backwards, and/or oppressive opinions - including several very powerful, prominent figures who bask in the publicity and have extremely large followings. But these peoples views are rarely seen to be much of a threat, or to be representative of Christianity in general; they are typically compartmentalised into their own subsection so as not to tar all or a large chunk of Christians with association to their beliefs and/or actions. Yet this is very rarely the case with Muslims.

Of course I would not be surprised at all to see the reverse of this in several Muslim countries, because showing some of the Christian nut jobs would be an easy way to propagate fear and hate in their people, just as like it does in much of the Western world with Muslims. It's an easy way to keep support, even though it does absolutely nothing to help the situation in the short, medium or long term.

Well give me a call when they start posting YouTube videos of them beheading anybody that disagrees with their interpretation of the bible.
You're making a classic straw man argument, Westboro aren't even a church, they're a one family cult, and the Mormons? Irritating sure, but I don't $h1t myself if they turn up on my doorstep.

It is broadly true that we 'have a problem with Islam' and it's not confined to a couple of whacky subsets, it's a broad problem and any attempt to atomize it and suggest moral equivalencies that with Christian groups smacks of desperation, so too does the relativist tendency to claim that you can't make any broad generalization because you can find a tiny irrelevant exception, things are broadly true of a subject if they are broadly true of a significant proportion of those referred to.
When it comes to the middle east, it is broadly true that Islam is a major problem:


Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/

Not exactly a 'minor problem with a tiny minority or whackjobs' now is it?

Nodin

jank wrote: »

...............

There is something perverse and deeply distributing about this ideology that seems to send a large minority into barbaric violence. What left wing liberals in the west try and do is massage it and basically try and shut down debate by drawing the 'its racist' card

Some parties such as yourself eg "the left and those who call themselves liberal never go near is the fact that Islam has a way of perverting normally right thinking people"

Rawrrr, lefties....................

My name is URL

jank wrote: »

There is something perverse and deeply distributing about this ideology

Says the guy opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and whole rake of other individual liberties based on conservative religious views and ideals.

Or maybe you just use such threads to rant about the liberal left...

Billy86

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

There are fundamentalist branches from all religions and cults. It's just that the Westboro Baptist Church are so unbelievably irrelevant it is incredible how much they are brought up. Also the Branch Davidians were very much a one man cult type group, to lump them in with Christians is fairly incorrect.

The Branch Davidians were an offshoot of Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, they were Christian. The WBC is Christian also, the reason it gets attention is because it works very hard to get that attention (and because Louis Theroux covered then). If you are lumping all of Islam in together then you cannot ignore any of these Christian based movements, no matter how small - because they all add up. Likewise even line but jobs like Timothy mcveigh, Eric Rudolph, Anders Breivik and planet of other terrorists were very vocal about Christianity. Sure they had no direct followers, buy they all add up and I am sure that is something anyone looking to propagate feat against Christianity Cam easily overlook by simply describing them as "Christian" and leaving it at that.

Ian Paisleys Free Presbyterian Church would be a fair example of a Christian fundamentalist organisation, but again it feels silly to actually compare them to ISIS and the like. There is also unquestionably fundamentalist Jews in the IDF who are a danger to peace.

At the same time you could mention the Antibalaka movement in the Central African Republic who have displaced over 400,000 people? In India there are plenty of examples across the different regions of militant Christianity and forced conversions of people. Uganda also had the Lords Resistance Army only a few years ago.

Back in the USA you had the Army of God sending mail bombs to abortion clinics and gay bars less than 20 years ago, as well as murdering abortion providers and sending out hundreds of letter claiming to have anthrax in then in 2001 when everyone was paranoid to bits about that for a while. And while it's far removed from the 6 million members it once had (for context, ISIS has an estimated 80-100,000 members) there are still an estimated 152 branches and 5-8,000 members of the KKK.

But again, for some reason all of these and the who knows how many others that represent intolerance and extremism in Christianity are all carefully compartmentalised as "different" to the rest of the overall religion, while that is anything but the case for Islam. It's all about how each is framed, and the motivations behind those framing really.

Yarf Yarf

Don't really have much time for Sam Harris. He's happy to criticize everything until it comes to the topic of Israel and Judaism, at which point he gets rather shy.

Bill Maher is no better than the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. He just says things for a reaction.

I'd agree somewhat with Affleck in that I do think there is a definite feeling of Islamophobia about the place in recent times. Islam shouldn't be above criticism, but at the same time, I often get the feeling that people are all too keen to paint the entirety of Islam and its followers with the same brush based on what they've seen in Newsnight that evening rather than on any real understanding of the Islamic world, and I'd be willing to bet that the current conflict in the Middle East is not purely religious, but really quite political too. I find too that not only are westerners particularly critical of Islam due to feelings that Muslims "hate the west" (a feeling which is perpetuated by the never-ending coverage of western victims of groups like IS), but they don't seem to realize that more often than not, the real victims of any Islamic extremism are Muslims themselves. I seriously doubt that the very people who are currently being systematically brutalized by the likes of IS are in any way supportive of that kind of extreme and violent ideology.

jank

Nodin wrote: »

Some parties such as yourself eg "the left and those who call themselves liberal never go near is the fact that Islam has a way of perverting normally right thinking people"

Rawrrr, lefties....................

So, care to address any of the points I made or are you making a hobby of playing the man in your one line posts lately?

Dave!

The link in the OP is dead, here's another

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60

jank

My name is URL wrote: »

Says the guy opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and whole rake of other individual liberties based on conservative religious views and ideals.

Or maybe you just use such threads to rant about the liberal left...

I am opposed to Gay Marriage and Abortion now? What other liberties am I opposed to, please do tell and while your at it please find me a post where I was explicit in my opposition to thee measures. Otherwise I would say you are full of **** and instead of debating the topic you are engaging in classic mud slinging of the messenger.

So please, clarify the accusation or I will take it that your are lying.

This ladies and gentlemen is the classic case of refusing to engage in the topic at hand and instead spend your time trying to smear the messenger. Take another example of Sam Harris and his support for the Israeli state. This is used as a way to demean and nullify his opinion no matter who valid the initial argument is.

My name is URL

jank wrote: »

I am opposed to Gay Marriage and Abortion now? What other liberties am I opposed to, please do tell and while your at it please find me a post where I was explicit in my opposition to thee measures. Otherwise I would say you are full of **** and instead of debating the topic you are engaging in classic mud slinging of the messenger.

I'm not going to trawl through thousands of posts to find examples. Anyone else is free to do that if they so wish.

You're never explicit about anything, Jank. Unless it's your hatred of the left. You use threads about abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues to rant about liberals and political correctness. Anyone with a brain in their head would see that as at least tacit opposition to the issues being discussed within such threads.

jank

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

You don't seem to have understood what I have said, he's not being killed for not being a Muslim instead he is being Killed for propagating anti-Islamic views openly and loudly under an Islamic state.

Again, you seem to think that this excuses such grotesque violations of basic human rights, the right to life and the right to free speech. The fact that you try and justify it speaks for itself. In the West having anti christian or anti religious views does not lead one have to fear for their lives. In Islamic states however, the population at large sees it as acceptable for the state to put to death people they disagree with. See Pew research. Horrific stuff tbh.

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Similarly to people who try to deny the Armenian Genocide which may be either forbidden or enforced in some countries so you cant be living in a country knowing that within its doctrine denying the Armenian genocide is a crime and stage a public speech denying you must be prepared to face the consequence of doing so.

Denying the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust may be illegal in some countries but they will not put you to death for it either.

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Your example with the church and Ireland doesn't really fit since Ireland is more of a Secular state then a catholic state Instead why don't you mention the Vatican in Rome? do you really think they will let someone openly criticize Christianity on public there? If you look at the era where the church had power over the state you would see that this is what ACTUALLY happened to anyone who dared to Criticize Christianity or the church Galileo being the most notable example .

I think this is the point. Ireland is a secular state by and large. People can argue about prayers in the Dail, the use of the word 'God' in the constitution or schools that are under the remit of the RCC. However, you will not be put to death by the state if you espouse anti Catholic views. This is true for the West that have a more tolerant and classical liberal attitude towards the state and religion. Islam in contrast has Sharia Law which runs many countries in the world. People are put to death because the live outside of these laws. If Ireland or another western country was run by the laws of the old testament that you would have a point but this is not the case.

You mention the Vatican which is a city state and the only 'country' in the world run by a Christians. When is the last time they put someone to death for being critical of the church? The very fact that you have to mention Galileo (who died 500 years ago) re-enforces my point that the West has gotten over its medieval methods of handling dissent within the ranks. Today in 2014 people are put to death in Islamic states for not being believers. The straw clutching is embarrassing.

jank

My name is URL wrote: »

I'm not going to trawl through thousands of posts to find examples. ...

So, that is a no then. So therefore I accept your retraction and therefore request you to delete your post.

jank

Billy86 wrote: »

Back in the USA you had the Army of God sending mail bombs to abortion clinics and gay bars less than 20 years ago, as well as murdering abortion providers and sending out hundreds of letter claiming to have anthrax in then in 2001 when everyone was paranoid to bits about that for a while. And while it's far removed from the 6 million members it once had (for context, ISIS has an estimated 80-100,000 members) there are still an estimated 152 branches and 5-8,000 members of the KKK.

But again, for some reason all of these and the who knows how many others that represent intolerance and extremism in Christianity are all carefully compartmentalised as "different" to the rest of the overall religion, while that is anything but the case for Islam. It's all about how each is framed, and the motivations behind those framing really.

As I mentioned, if a number of countries adhered to the Old Testament and replicated civil and common law from verses of the bible there would be a direct valid comparison. This does not happen in the West. If Christians were leaving Ireland, the US, Australia to join an extremist Christian state, where they would be trained in the arts of terrorism and then sent forth to bomb abortion clinics around the world, kill non believers then you would have a valid point. This does not happen!

People blowing up abortion clinics or sending Anthrax via the mail are the same as Islamic nutjobs how chop peoples heads off. The thing though is that the latter are marginalized, have no wide spread support and 99% of western people would disagree and be horrified by them. The former however are funded by fellow Arabs and Muslims and enjoy some support in ex pat Muslim communities and of course from Muslims living in Muslims states.

Pointing to Timothy McVeigh and saying that 'Christian/Other' terrorists are just a threat to world peace as Islamic terrorists is the ultimate strawman and people who make that argument need their heads examined.

FrostyJack

Explanation of sorts from Sam. I noticed Ben was unusually agitated even before Sam came out, cutting everyone off and shouting over them. Good entertainment though.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself

Akrasia

conorhal wrote: »

Well give me a call when they start posting YouTube videos of them beheading anybody that disagrees with their interpretation of the bible.
You're making a classic straw man argument, Westboro aren't even a church, they're a one family cult, and the Mormons? Irritating sure, but I don't $h1t myself if they turn up on my doorstep.

It is broadly true that we 'have a problem with Islam' and it's not confined to a couple of whacky subsets, it's a broad problem and any attempt to atomize it and suggest moral equivalencies that with Christian groups smacks of desperation, so too does the relativist tendency to claim that you can't make any broad generalization because you can find a tiny irrelevant exception, things are broadly true of a subject if they are broadly true of a significant proportion of those referred to.
When it comes to the middle east, it is broadly true that Islam is a major problem:


Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/

Not exactly a 'minor problem with a tiny minority or whackjobs' now is it?

This debate raises some very interesting paradoxes.

Nobody disputes the Pew research that indicates some extremely dangerous views by a majority of muslims in some countries, but many are arguing that it's unfair to blame this on the religion of Islam because other countries have muslim populatons that aren't so extreme.

So in other words, stop being racist against muslims, and start being racist against Arabs...

I'm with the broad consensus on this issue. Not all muslims are evil, because most muslims, like most christians don't really think about religion all that much, and just get on with their lives. However, those people of any abrahamic religion, who take the religion the most seriously, are the most likely to hold extremist positions and act on them.

This is why the view of Islam in Ireland and the U.K. is often so negative. We only notice that someone is muslim when they're either covered from head to toe in a Burka or Niqab, or when they're standing on the street corner trying to convert people to fundamentalist islam. Most of the ordinary muslim people are not in our radar, they just get on with their lives like everyone else.

Another paradox about this whole islam thing, is that people who rail against islam all the time, are actually creating more extremists. If the discourse is 'most muslims are extremists' then this normalises extremism (oxymoronically) and turns moderates into extremists.

The better strategy is the one where we constantly emphasise that the vast majority of muslim people are peaceful and do not support violence in the name of their religion, and at the same time, constantly emphasise that those who preach fundamentalist ideologies are extremists, abnormal and in the tiny minority.

This normalises peace, and subconsciously, people tend to gravitate towards positions that are socially normalised. (this is why 30 years ago, most people in ireland viewed homosexuality as abhorrent and 'sinful', and now, most people view homosexuality as natural and perfectly acceptable) The tide of public opinion is more than just a metaphor, it's a powerful sociological force that has real impacts for the better or for the worse.

We need to strengthen international human rights organisations to emphasise the enlightenment values of equality, peace, democracy and personal freedom and use economic and political pressure on fundamentalist states that violate the human rights of their populations. That, of course, is a lot easier said than done.

Billy86

jank wrote: »

As I mentioned, if a number of countries adhered to the Old Testament and replicated civil and common law from verses of the bible there would be a direct valid comparison. This does not happen in the West. If Christians were leaving Ireland, the US, Australia to join an extremist Christian state, where they would be trained in the arts of terrorism and then sent forth to bomb abortion clinics around the world, kill non believers then you would have a valid point. This does not happen!

People leaving for other other countries is not relevant here - American Christian militants don't need to leave their country to join these types of groups, because they have plenty of them in their own country.

People blowing up abortion clinics or sending Anthrax via the mail are the same as Islamic nutjobs how chop peoples heads off. The thing though is that the latter are marginalized, have no wide spread support and 99% of western people would disagree and be horrified by them. The former however are funded by fellow Arabs and Muslims and enjoy some support in ex pat Muslim communities and of course from Muslims living in Muslims states.

That is not entirely correct though. ISIS for example have an estimated strength of 80-100,000 members, which comes to 0.00625% of the global Muslim population of 1.6bn - tiny as a percentage but still very big as a number. The CAR's Antibalaka movement alone has an estimate 72,000 members and as I mentioned has displaced over 400,000 Muslims in a very short period of time. They are heavily armed, in a country that is largely poverty stricken, and their funds to buy these arms didn't just generate megaically. American Christian wing nuts, terrorists and people of considerable influence have also funded a lot of antagonistic Christian groups that have bordered on, if not outright used, terrorism in other countries such as India and spread strong propaganda against their indigenous religions, like Pat Robertson's opinion of Hinduism as "demonic". Pat Robertson and his like have a MASSIVE following amongst the religious right in America, and have speech like that dies nothing but encourage "taking action.

How often do we hear about the Christian extremist Antibalaka movement in the CAR on the news? Or in India? At least some of the panel shows like Have I Got News For You dry attention to the like of Robertson and the Tea Party (bordering on religious extremism themselves in many instances), but the actual 'hard' news programmes pretty much never bring them up at all, and when they do make sure to differentiate them as not representative of Christianity as a whole, while gleefully doing so for Islamic extremist voices as representative of Muslims as a whole (and failing to distinguish their brand of Islam from any others - again, Sufism, Sunniism, Shi'ism, Wahabbism, etc).

Like I said, comparrtmentalising extremists on one side, and painting the other side with a broad brush - fundamentalists, extremists, moderates, liberals, and all others in together.

Pointing to Timothy McVeigh and saying that 'Christian/Other' terrorists are just a threat to world peace as Islamic terrorists is the ultimate strawman and people who make that argument need their heads examined.

I am not saying "Christian/Other" terrorists. I am saying Christian terrorists, and terrorists heavily influenced by Christian doctrines. Not sure why you felt the need to separate that again there, as if to create a distance?

McVeigh was raised a Catholic, had attended KKK meetings (a Christian organisation), and while he distanced himself from Catholicism he maintained that he was a Christian. The Turner Diaries was found in his car after the bombing and was known to promote the book and sell copies at gun shows. This book that is central to the Christian Identity movement, and funny enough in it revolutionaries blow up a federal building as part of a war against the government, which is exactly what McVeigh was also trying to do. There is no straw man here. McVeigh was a Christian terrorist but he was almost never referred to as anything of the sort, rather just as Timothy Mcveigh.

Eric Rudolph (1996 Olympics bomber, also conducted other bombings) was also heavily influenced by the Christian Identity movement and has stated that his motivation was not racial, but religious as well as anti gay and anti abortion. Despite this the media again tended to distance him from the word Christian.

Anders Breivik likewise was a Christian and constantly stated as much, but again I don't recall him being called 'Christian terrorist Anders Breivik' often if at all, despite his crimes being intended as a statement against other religions, immigration and multiculturalism.

If any of these three were Muslim, they would be poster boys for the dangers of Muslim terrorism and the dangers of Islam, and there is simply no denying this. But because they were Christian they were compartmentalised away so as not to tar others with their actions or allow their actions be seen as representative of Christianity. Like I said before, I would genuinely be very interested to see how theblikes of these guys were covered in the media in the Muslim world.