Should we be offended by Islam?

[magnifier661]

He will never understand any of this. He doesn't want to. He's a lost soul and a lost cause.

LMAO!!!!! Dude, you still don't think Stalin didn't murder millions in the name of Atheism. Why don't you people look shit up before you spout your none sense. At least with Denny, he actually provides links and shit to support his reasoning. You and this other jack, just spit shit out and assume it's right. You've been called out before and had nothing to reply. Maybe you should stop being a sheep and question all forms of beliefs; including your own.

 

[blazerboy30]

We should be offended by all religions

def: religion - Details of belief as taught or discussed
def: atheism - The theory or belief that God does not exist

You offend yourself with your own religion.

This is like playing basketball against a 5th grade girl.

 

[Further]

...

 

[magnifier661]

Mags, my view may differ from other atheists here, but I do agree with you that Hitler and Stalin certainly used science not only to develop the methods of killing, but also as reasons for killing. It was bad science that would never have survived the peer review process, but they did use science, especially in eugenics. I am not as as convinced that their atheistic views were at fault for any of their terrible actions. They were control hungry and resented RELIGION and the power that religion held over the people. Even in one of the quotes that you put up it mentions that they were not at odds with a god but with organized religion. This does not speak to atheism, it speaks to power hungry people wanting to be the one true source of information. You can find countless examples of this in history from the point of view of specific religions also, but in their case they just say all other religions, instead of all religions.

People have to take responsibility for themselves and cultivate their own, and their communities own sense of innate personal ethics. Religion has bastardized ethics and non-religious have bastardized ethics. That's why it's imperative to not base your morals or ethics on a group doctrine, but upon something more difficult to define, what's inherently good or bad. I choose not to steal not because I would end up in hell or because some organization says I should not steal, but because, through good parenting and ethical people around me, I have grown up empathetic to how it feels to have something stolen, and I would not want to cause that type of distress. The more we move away from religion the more people need to have their own sense of purpose and morals.

Well spoken and repp'd. There are the people that don't understand the true motives of the theist approach. This is why I adopted Christianity for myself. It's not because I feel I need to keep the commandments; just the foundation of the belief is based on compassion and forgiveness. I think if the world actually was able to forgive much easier, the world would be a much better place.

In my Christian walk, I choose not to steal, not because I am afraid of what God would do to me. I choose not to steal because I don't want to make my parent disappointed. We all make mistakes and I think forgiveness is the ultimate gift that all man-kind should practice.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

It is the punishment, though.

It's a much more serious offense than (many) actual crimes.

Where, I would ask? If you actually know the answer to this question, then you should know better than to think it's a valid point against Islam as a whole.

What I meant by asking what they would say is that even moderate Muslims have been slow to accept atheism and denounce punishment for apostates.

This appears to be the maxiep argument of "well, I haven't heard Muslims denounce (insert something I disagree with), therefore..."

Look, I don't know your education, background or experience, so I don't want to assume. Maybe you've spent time in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, where things are different than the rest of the Muslim world. In my experience, moderate Muslims and even many conservative Muslims are pretty okay with atheists. They don't understand the concept to its fullest extent and they usually just assume an atheist is just a Muslim that hasn't quite figured it out yet. Neither I nor my Muslim-turned-atheist friends were ever killed over it.

Hoojacks from previous threads seems more agnostic atheist than Muslim, but I would suggest he has many family or friends in the culture. He seems to know the culture pretty well. With that said, I think the overall concept of the Muslim faith isn't as aggressive as you think. It's the radicals that give the religion a bad name.

All of this.

And their actions are in no way related to their beliefs......

Sure they are, but crazy people are crazy and they're gonna use whatever they've got to be crazy with. There's a gun control argument in here somewhere.

Yes. If one takes 9-11 seriously, we should all be offended by Islam.

Please. Should the actions of Timothy McVeigh make us take offense to the United States Declaration of Independence?

 

[huevonkiller]

Secular governments have attacked more people than any private individual.

All religions should be questioned but there are bigger concerns in the world.

 

[speeds]

I don't think it's necessary to get into bona fides regarding who is and isn't qualified to speak to the inclinations of Muslims. I guess mags was trying to support you by dragging that in. My experience with Muslims probably mirrors yours to some extent; most of them that I've known have been intellectuals to varying degrees who have left Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, etc., not Westerners. Maybe it's difficult to put Westerners in the same category as the people in countries you seem quick to want to cast off as fringe. Yet even the gentle Muslims I've interacted with have curiously dark opinions not of Western atheists but of their own people who have turned their backs on Islam.

At least half of Muslims polled in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Nigeria* support the death penalty for apostates. Only one in three people in Indonesia would like to see apostates put to death. These countries have roughly half a billion people between them which represents about a quarter of all Muslims.

The case of Abdul Rahman is important regarding your point of who isn't speaking out against execution for apostates. I assume you're familiar with the case but for the benefit of anyone reading this that might not be he was a Christian convert in Afghanistan (2006) who was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging for apostasy. The Afghan attorney general called for his execution. Hamid Karzai tried to avoid giving an opinion on the case. The chief judge in the case followed Shari'a law in allowing Rahman, while imprisoned, to repent in order to save his life. He refused but his punishment fell through after an onslaught of international media attention and political pressure. Rahman eventually took asylum in Italy. Some Muslims have argued that there in fact is no prescribed Earthly punishment for apostasy in the holy text. Mahmoud Mohammed Taha (1985) could've used their help.

The opportunity for Muslim organizations and figureheads moderate or otherwise to come forward and denounce the sentencing came and went. Instead Rahman's stateside support came mostly from right-wing Christians. A month after his arrest and only after consulting with the Fiqh Council of North America, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) issued a brief statement calling for his release, as did MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council), albeit at an even later date. Clerics wanted his neck stretched.

In countries where religious courts don't take precedence fundamentalists attempt to assassinate apostates in lieu of capital punishment. Naguib Mahfouz and Rashad Khalifa were stabbed (Mahfouz survived). Salman Rushdie's had a fatwā on him for over 20 years. The Mujahideen, Hisbah spies and Mutaween thugs listen in on conversations and await witch hunt accusations in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Indonesia, and Iran. Generally speaking apostasy, specifically but not exclusively public exhibitions (which is to say not keeping it an absolute secret to yourself) of atheism or conversion is tantamount to treason in a Muslim state as it can be warped into attempting to separate other Muslims from their faith.

 

[MARIS61]

There's never been a shortage of murderous, unthinkably evil men(and a few women), slaughtering their path through history.

Some of them believed in magical super-beings.

Some of them believed they themselves were gods.

Some of them were more grounded in reality.

None of that had anything to do with why they killed people.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

I don't think it's necessary to get into bona fides regarding who is and isn't qualified to speak to the inclinations of Muslims. I guess mags was trying to support you by dragging that in. My experience with Muslims probably mirrors yours to some extent; most of them that I've known have been intellectuals to varying degrees who have left Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, etc., not Westerners. Maybe it's difficult to put Westerners in the same category as the people in countries you seem quick to want to cast off as fringe. Yet even the gentle Muslims I've interacted with have curiously dark opinions not of Western atheists but of their own people who have turned their backs on Islam.

At least half of Muslims polled in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Nigeria* support the death penalty for apostates. Only one in three people in Indonesia would like to see apostates put to death. These countries have roughly half a billion people between them which represents about a quarter of all Muslims.

The case of Abdul Rahman is important regarding your point of who isn't speaking out against execution for apostates. I assume you're familiar with the case but for the benefit of anyone reading this that might not be he was a Christian convert in Afghanistan (2006) who was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging for apostasy. The Afghan attorney general called for his execution. Hamid Karzai tried to avoid giving an opinion on the case. The chief judge in the case followed Shari'a law in allowing Rahman, while imprisoned, to repent in order to save his life. He refused but his punishment fell through after an onslaught of international media attention and political pressure. Rahman eventually took asylum in Italy. Some Muslims have argued that there in fact is no prescribed Earthly punishment for apostasy in the holy text. Mahmoud Mohammed Taha (1985) could've used their help.

The opportunity for Muslim organizations and figureheads moderate or otherwise to come forward and denounce the sentencing came and went. Instead Rahman's stateside support came mostly from right-wing Christians. A month after his arrest and only after consulting with the Fiqh Council of North America, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) issued a brief statement calling for his release, as did MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council), albeit at an even later date. Clerics wanted his neck stretched.

In countries where religious courts don't take precedence fundamentalists attempt to assassinate apostates in lieu of capital punishment. Naguib Mahfouz and Rashad Khalifa were stabbed (Mahfouz survived). Salman Rushdie's had a fatwā on him for over 20 years. The Mujahideen, Hisbah spies and Mutaween thugs listen in on conversations and await witch hunt accusations in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Indonesia, and Iran. Generally speaking apostasy, specifically but not exclusively public exhibitions (which is to say not keeping it an absolute secret to yourself) of atheism or conversion is tantamount to treason in a Muslim state as it can be warped into attempting to separate other Muslims from their faith.

I don't think any of us are fully qualified to speak about the inclinations of Muslims (unless we are a Muslim ourselves.) I don't suppose qualification is at issue here, but in what way did we come to our conclusions. I believe that we are colored by our experiences. Yours and mine may be somewhat similar but they have produced two differing opinions on this issue.

I lived in Syria in 2007 and in Morocco in 2009 and 2011 through 2012. I don't pretend to be some expert just because of this, but I do feel as though I have a much deeper understanding of Muslim, Arab, Berber and overall Mediterranean culture than I did after 5 years of studying that part of the world in college. From these experiences, I've come away with a certain impression. It is an impression that I have hoped that the people I've met in my travels have about me and my countrymen: that the common populace, far and away the majority, are not at all as the media portrays them, are not represented by their fringe elements, do not all share the same opinion and (most importantly) are not accurately summarized by the actions and beliefs of their leaders.

So with that in mind, I'll address your other points.

"Even the gentle Muslims" I've encountered also have a dark opinion on their fellow Muslims that lose their faith. In my experience, the punishment metered out was in the form of social isolation, not calls for beheading. But then again, I wasn't unfortunate enough to be living in Afghanistan (or Saudi Arabia, or parts of Pakistan) like Abdul Rahman. The interviews with the locals in that case were pretty damning, but, again, Afghanistan. Those people have gone through more hell in the last 30 years than any of us could ever imagine, so I don't think that their opinions on their already deeply conservative version of Islam comes close to representing a consensus.

Speaking of consensus, I don't trust polls at all. And especially not polls coming out of Middle Eastern countries. Opinions, their flexibility, and how they are formed is a complex system and gasp, different than how it is in the West. Besides, what constitutes public opinion in any society is more complex than asking a percentage of a populace and then extrapolating some numbers. To think that a public opinion poll could accurately summarize hundreds of millions of people is folly.

Regarding Muslims, from what I've surmised, there is a distinction between their public opinions of religion and their private opinions. Outwardly, they tend towards solidarity. Solidarity is very important to the idea of the ummah and is a big piece of how they form their identity. I wouldn't be shocked at all if a Moroccan friend of mine initially supported the Afhganis opinion of putting Abdul Rahman to death (after all, they are Muslims following a specific school of Islamic law and have the right), but after a couple of coffees at the cafe and talking about it, completely reversing his opinion. This kind of thing happened to me all the time. Talk and gossip and public persona are HUGE in every group of Muslims I've ever been around, no matter the country. The default is to say what is expected first, and then to clarify in the long and inevitable conversation that follows.