Islam and the West
Re: Islam and the West
by Indy » Thu Sep 17, 2015 1:51 pm
I try and be a "tolerant" person but honestly the argument Saz makes is pretty irrefutable. And his point about liberals is one that Bill Maher rammed home last summer, repeatedly.
He asked: how can you call yourself a liberal, which would mean championing things like women's and gay rights and religious freedom--when Islam has no tolerance for any of that? Saz is right when he talks about how do we, in a modern world, even give any cred to a people with such backwards and crazy set of beliefs? Of course, if you do this you can't avoid turning that same magnifying glass on Christianity, which doesn't fare much better.
Although you could easily make the argument that Christians aren't going around flying planes into buildings or beheading people on the Internet... at which point the Muslim guy could point out what about all the Christians that have no problem dropping bombs on Muslims indiscriminately which of course is a tu quoque when used by either side to do what they do. Round and round we go.
Funny ain't it that the common thread is... religion. What was the old saying? Gov't + religion = atrocity. But now we don't even need the gov't.
That's a good observation that Christians, for the most part, "use the same interpretational magic the rest of us use to explain away the crazy evil parts of your religion and stick with the parts that can be done in a few hours on Sunday and don't require chopping or mutilating any limbs." Although even that's fading away as we see the arrival of full-on fundies like Huckabee or the troll in the Kentucky marriage license trainwreck. People who, ironically (and hypocritically), scream the loudest about sharia law yet want to implement the very same thing using their religion.
People's "faith" is only as strong as their ability to withstand those questioning it and with Islam it seems we either get the extreme reaction (Charlie Hebdo) to the simple denial (as in the argument with your friend). Both are bad signs.
Islam can't be fixed from the outside but I don't see anybody on the inside lining up to put an end to heinous things like ISIS. Where are all of them? If you were tainting my religion with your appalling actions allegedly in its name (let's not forget awful groups like Boko Haram) I'd say you need eliminatin', if we're going to have our religion survive. But you never hear it. The only place you do hear it is from the last people you want to--the Christian Bible-throwers, which then just feeds into this whole Christian vs. Muslim worldwide jihad scenario which, if I'm not mistaken, was OBL's great hope when he launched 9/11.
I agree with the idea, which I've put forth myself: put them all on an island and let them all kill each other in the name of their Gods while the rest of us finally live in some sort of peace.
He asked: how can you call yourself a liberal, which would mean championing things like women's and gay rights and religious freedom--when Islam has no tolerance for any of that? Saz is right when he talks about how do we, in a modern world, even give any cred to a people with such backwards and crazy set of beliefs? Of course, if you do this you can't avoid turning that same magnifying glass on Christianity, which doesn't fare much better.
Although you could easily make the argument that Christians aren't going around flying planes into buildings or beheading people on the Internet... at which point the Muslim guy could point out what about all the Christians that have no problem dropping bombs on Muslims indiscriminately which of course is a tu quoque when used by either side to do what they do. Round and round we go.
Funny ain't it that the common thread is... religion. What was the old saying? Gov't + religion = atrocity. But now we don't even need the gov't.
That's a good observation that Christians, for the most part, "use the same interpretational magic the rest of us use to explain away the crazy evil parts of your religion and stick with the parts that can be done in a few hours on Sunday and don't require chopping or mutilating any limbs." Although even that's fading away as we see the arrival of full-on fundies like Huckabee or the troll in the Kentucky marriage license trainwreck. People who, ironically (and hypocritically), scream the loudest about sharia law yet want to implement the very same thing using their religion.
People's "faith" is only as strong as their ability to withstand those questioning it and with Islam it seems we either get the extreme reaction (Charlie Hebdo) to the simple denial (as in the argument with your friend). Both are bad signs.
Islam can't be fixed from the outside but I don't see anybody on the inside lining up to put an end to heinous things like ISIS. Where are all of them? If you were tainting my religion with your appalling actions allegedly in its name (let's not forget awful groups like Boko Haram) I'd say you need eliminatin', if we're going to have our religion survive. But you never hear it. The only place you do hear it is from the last people you want to--the Christian Bible-throwers, which then just feeds into this whole Christian vs. Muslim worldwide jihad scenario which, if I'm not mistaken, was OBL's great hope when he launched 9/11.
I agree with the idea, which I've put forth myself: put them all on an island and let them all kill each other in the name of their Gods while the rest of us finally live in some sort of peace.
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