Isn't ISLAM such a peaceful and tolerant religion?

[WalterWhite]

Ewww fucking savages

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/15/world/africa/sudan-christian-woman-apostasy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[DieHardBrownsFan]

It brings in flocks of the poverty stricken and brain washes them in their religious schools. The well to do of course stay isolated from them.

[Osiris]

Here we go again...

[Browns149]

It brings in flocks of the poverty stricken and brain washes them in their religious schools. The well to do of course stay isolated from them.

sounds like religions in general

[DieHardBrownsFan]

sounds like religions in general

You are a dumb fucker. So, you're comparing Catholic to Muslim scum? Stupid fucking jerk.

[Westside Steve]

sounds like religions in general

I wouldn't go as far as diehard but no, it doesn't. Sure in history there has been bad behavior associated with various religions but in recent history the bulk the barbarism is among Muslims (not all Muslims but Muslims in barbaric Godforsaken shit holes around the world like the Sudan and many others.)

I blame it more on those aforementioned Godforsaken shit holes than I do on Islam.

Those "people" are feral.

 

WSS

[FairHooker11]

During Thursday's sentencing hearing, a sheikh told the court "how dangerous a crime like this is to Islam and the Islamic community," said attorney Mohamed Jar Elnabi, who's representing Ibrahim.

 

 

 

"I am a Christian," Ibrahim fired back, "and I will remain a Christian."

 

Jesus suffered a false trial too...

 

I'd say Ibrahim is in very good company, but thats the hallmark of a true believer - and will bear the persecution

[MLD Woody]

sounds like religions in general

 

Pretty much. It is just a way to control the masses.

 

Take a step back and look at any religion and it is ridiculous.

[gftChris]

Nobody's trying to defend these actions, clearly they're wrong. But we've been over this before - this isn't what Islam is about, this is what the extremists that are in charge of Sudan are about. No more than it's what Christianity was about when people were being executed for heresy a few hundred years ago.

 

So:

-We have these extreme acts of violence in the name of Islam and occasionally Christianity, coming primarily from third world 'uncivilised' countries - no offence, Osiris - in Africa and the middle east, where Islam is the main religion.

-We have more tolerance from developed countries, where Christianity is the main religion.

 

To what degree is there a causal link between the main religion of an area and the level of extremist views? Or is there another factor at work, potentially the exploitation of uneducated people by using religion as a tool to invoke the mass hysteria needed to be ok with these kinds of education in the population at large. Such a power vacuum as exists in highly unregulated states such as these inevitably attract 'bad' people.

 

Whether Islam is worse than other religions in this way, for attracting 'bad' people is certainly a valid question. For example, it's a lot easier to oppress 50% of the populous right off the bat with Islam, forcing women to stay in doors, removing their right to education etc - although I haven't actually read the Quran (yet, going to get around to it someday, I suspect) so I don't know for certain what it says in this regard.

[gftChris]

And just having a quick look online at the one of the first results for translations in to english, you get:

 

7. The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). - http://www.noblequran.com/translation/

 

As opposed to the next one, which just says:

 

The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray. - http://quran.com/1

 

Which is right? Clearly, if you go with the first one, you can use it to engender a feeling of superiority over the specified religions. "Jews have angered Allah, they must be punished!" Osiris, not sure your arabic level, perhaps you can help us out here?

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Just study your Quran GFT. Perhaps you need a few years in Pakistan.

[Westside Steve]

Oh come now Chris. It's little stupid comparing something that happened hundreds of years ago to today. If that's the case I guess England sucks because they were conquered by Italy.

And America sucks because the people lived mud huts and skin tents and eat each other. We talking about modern day Islam.

(Albeit in less than civilized parts of the world.)

WSS

[gftChris]

Oh come now Chris. It's little stupid comparing something that happened hundreds of years ago to today. If that's the case I guess England sucks because they were conquered by Italy.

And America sucks because the people lived mud huts and skin tents and eat each other. We talking about modern day Islam.

(Albeit in less than civilized parts of the world.)

WSS

I'm not saying 'we did it hundreds of years ago so it's fine for them to do it today' - I'm saying that throughout history people have abused religion for their own ends and this is another example of it.

[Osiris]

Nobody's trying to defend these actions, clearly they're wrong. But we've been over this before - this isn't what Islam is about, this is what the extremists that are in charge of Sudan are about. No more than it's what Christianity was about when people were being executed for heresy a few hundred years ago.

 

So:

-We have these extreme acts of violence in the name of Islam and occasionally Christianity, coming primarily from third world 'uncivilised' countries - no offence, Osiris - in Africa and the middle east, where Islam is the main religion.

-We have more tolerance from developed countries, where Christianity is the main religion.

 

To what degree is there a causal link between the main religion of an area and the level of extremist views? Or is there another factor at work, potentially the exploitation of uneducated people by using religion as a tool to invoke the mass hysteria needed to be ok with these kinds of education in the population at large. Such a power vacuum as exists in highly unregulated states such as these inevitably attract 'bad' people.

 

Whether Islam is worse than other religions in this way, for attracting 'bad' people is certainly a valid question. For example, it's a lot easier to oppress 50% of the populous right off the bat with Islam, forcing women to stay in doors, removing their right to education etc - although I haven't actually read the Quran (yet, going to get around to it someday, I suspect) so I don't know for certain what it says in this regard.

Not offended at all Chris. Lack of civilization (which results from a prolonged period in which their is a lack of resources) is exactly the problem. Around the 1950s in Cairo, when Egypt actually loaned other countries money and the population hadn't yet completely outstripped resources, women walked around in miniskirts and could wear bikinis at the beach. Nowadays you'd only see that with tourists. Since I've had the opportunity to visit over two dozen times over the past three decades, I can attest to the rise of conservatism as resources have become increasingly more scarce.

 

As for the Quran and what it says about women, this is a good primer, I think it might surprise you: http://quransmessage.com/forum/index.php?topic=886.0

 

The million-dollar question is "why is there such a disconnect between text and behavior amongst the some in the Muslim population?" The extent of lack of resources certainly plays a large factor, maybe even the main factor. Lack of resources is everything: no food, no literacy (that is key if you can't read you have to depend on what others tell you the Quran says and not what it actually says).

 

Ask where in the Muslim world we see the most violence and terrorism? Do you see it more in Pakistan? Do you see much from Morocco? The democracies of Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey? Doesn't it seem that countries with more recent and stronger tribal traditions tend to produce most of the stories like the OP posted?

 

Regarding translations, the first thing to remember is Arabic is not an easy language to translate. There are many words that don't have a matching word in English and many variations of words each with a slightly different meaning. This opens the door to the translator editorializing, which is exactly what is happening with the verses you posted.

 

The verse you posted is part of the daily prayers Muslims make and I promise you that it does not say Jews or Christians in Arabic. Now imagine that somewhere in Pakistan a religious "leader" whose cousin was killed in a drone attack uses an Urdu translation with the same editorializing and teaches that version to his villagers, most of whom are illiterate. You can now see how a person can use an editorialized version of the religious text to get "revenge" on the "infidels" who killed his cousin. Since no one in his village can read Arabic, no one can challenge what he is teaching. Now reproduce this in every poor village in the Muslim world.

 

No resources -> no education -> no literacy -> no comprehension.

[Osiris]

Oh come now Chris. It's little stupid comparing something that happened hundreds of years ago to today. If that's the case I guess England sucks because they were conquered by Italy.

And America sucks because the people lived mud huts and skin tents and eat each other. We talking about modern day Islam.

(Albeit in less than civilized parts of the world.)

WSS

It's not stupid when the point is being made that any religious text can be abused to try to incite or justify violence. The texts themselves haven't changed much in the past centuries. If this were a scientific experiment, we would see that since we have seen violence incited and justified from many religions, and therefore conclude that the root cause is not any specific religious text, but rather other variables.

[gftChris]

Osiris - I think we agree that lack of education is a big driver in a lot of what's going on here. Ignorance as they say leads to fear, and we all know fear leads to the dark side.

 

So thought experiment - if the demographics of the religions were reversed, would we see a similar amount of religious/terrorist attacks with the protagonist religions reversed? Number two, since developed countries are coming to the point where they have exhausted their natural resource over the next century - we're getting there pretty shortly with fossil fuels, tin, iron and the rest here - will we see more moral/religious conservatism in those countries, or have we reached a tipping point where we're not going to be 'brainwashed' by religious leaders that are twisting religion to their own ends any more?

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Moderate Muslims in the US Condemn Boko Haram

Posted by Michael Becker on May 15, 2014 in Culture, Email

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Actually, no they don’t.

Enter to win the Family Gun Package Giveaway!

Which brings us to the issue of whether there are any “moderate Muslims.”

U.S. Islamic leaders won’t try to formally excommunicate the Islamist Boko Haram group unless they can meet with its leadership to debate the religious legitimacy of its actions, a spokesman for a leading mosque told

The Daily Caller

.

“There is a great reluctance to excommunicate someone by extension. … It would be like convicting someone in absentia, said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik…”

We certainly wouldn’t want to convict someone in absentia, they should have the opportunity to defend themselves, right? Well, you be the judge. Here’s what Boko Haram’s leader recently had to say.

“There is a market for selling humans,” said Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau. “Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women,” Shekau said in a video

translated by CNN

. Shekau also said pre-teen girls could be forcibly married.

“We would marry them out at the age of nine,” he said, echoing

actions by Islam’s founder

Muhammed, who claimed multiple wives, including a nine-year-old girl named Aisha.

[…]

In a

February video

, Shekau justified his murder of Christians by quoting the Quran.

Can you imagine the outcry in the major media if a so-called Christian justified his murder of, say, an abortion doctor with a Bible verse and a major Christian denomination refused to condemn him and his actions in absentia? It would be above the fold, page one of every major newspaper in the country, and it would lead TV news every night until the denomination backed down AND replaced their insensitive leadership.

Just so you know what Muslim leaders in the US think about Boko Haram,

“Islam is not the problem,” said Ahmed Bedier, a Florida-based Islamic advocate. “We’re tired of people coming on television and asking where does this ideology come from,” Bedier said. “Well, this ideology comes from nowhere,”

he insisted

.

That would be hogwash Ahmed. Boko Haram’s actions come from 13 centuries of Islam. They’re a mirror of Islamic history. Muslims have been butchering and enslaving everyone they can for their entire history. Today is no different.

The problem, gentle readers, IS Islam. Unfortunately, we doubt we’re likely to face up to that reality any time soon.

Related articles

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/05/moderate-muslims-us-condemn-boko-haram/#3o2mKqThzeGpLUoP.99

[medicineman]

If you disagree with me you are a racist. Btw, I am WHITE.

[Osiris]

Osiris - I think we agree that lack of education is a big driver in a lot of what's going on here. Ignorance as they say leads to fear, and we all know fear leads to the dark side.

 

So thought experiment - if the demographics of the religions were reversed, would we see a similar amount of religious/terrorist attacks with the protagonist religions reversed? Number two, since developed countries are coming to the point where they have exhausted their natural resource over the next century - we're getting there pretty shortly with fossil fuels, tin, iron and the rest here - will we see more moral/religious conservatism in those countries, or have we reached a tipping point where we're not going to be 'brainwashed' by religious leaders that are twisting religion to their own ends any more?

Chris, I've always argued that it would be in general. This is humanity and humans generally behave the same way in the same circumstances. To the second question, I think we will see that unless we change the resources we depend on. I think it's natural for people to retreat into religious conservatism in times of stress, so the key would be avoiding that stress. I personally feel the past decade is the toughest time in America that I've experienced and there seems to be a concurrent rise in conservatism in America, but that's just my own anecdotal observation.

[LogicIsForSquares]

The Sudan would still be a backwards shit hole even if they had no state religion.

[The Cysko Kid]

This was sanctioned in a court. A FUCKING COURTROOM OKAYS execution of apostacy for anyone they disagree wth.

 

Anyone who defends these people need their fucking teeth knocked out

A kangaroo court

[Westside Steve]

The Sudan would still be a backwards shit hole even if they had no state religion.

exactly.

WSS

[sadbrownsfan]

The Sudan would still be a backwards shit hole even if they had no state religion.

 

The Sudan and south Sudan have been in and out of civil wars\religous wars for the last 50-60 years...mix in various forms of genocide(religious\tribal\etc)...

[DieHardBrownsFan]

International outrage grows for Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy

Published May 16, 2014

FoxNews.com

Facebook5115 Twitter968 Gplus153

Meriam Ibrahim and Daniel Wani married in a formal church ceremony in 2011. The couple has an 18-month-old son, Martin, who is with Meriam in jail.

International outrage is mounting over the death sentence a Sudanese judge ordered for the pregnant wife of an American citizen — all because she refuses to renounce her Christian faith.

Meriam Ibrahim, 26, was sentenced Thursday after being convicted of apostasy. The court in Khartoum ruled that Ibrahim must give birth and nurse her baby before being executed, but must receive 100 lashes immediately after having her baby for adultery — for having relations with her Christian husband. Ibrahim, a physician and the daughter of a Christian mother and a Muslim father who abandoned the family as a child, could have spared herself death by hanging simply by renouncing her faith.

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"We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam," Judge Abbas Khalifa told Ibrahim, according to AFP. "I sentence you to be hanged to death."

But Ibrahim held firm to her beliefs.

“I was never a Muslim,” she answered. “I was raised a Christian from the start.”

Ibrahim was raised in the Christian faith by her mother, an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia. She is married to Daniel Wani, a Christian from southern Sudan who has U.S. citizenship, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"I was never a Muslim. I was raised a Christian from the start."

- Meriam Ibrahim

The cruel sentence drew condemnation from Amnesty International, the U.S. State Department and U.S. lawmakers.

“The refusal of the government of Sudan to allow religious freedom was one of the reasons for Sudan’s long civil war,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees U.S. policy in Africa, said in a statement. “The U.S. and the rest of the international community must demand Sudan reverse this sentence immediately.”

Amnesty International called the sentence a “flagrant breach” of international human rights law and the U.S. State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by the ruling, which will be appealed.

Khalifa refused to hear key testimony and ignored Sudan's constitutional provisions on freedom of worship and equality among citizens, according to Ibrahim's attorney Al-Shareef Ali al-Shareef Mohammed.

“The judge has exceeded his mandate when he ruled that Meriam’s marriage was void because her husband was out of her faith,” Mohammed told The Associated Press. “He was thinking more of Islamic Shariah laws than of the country’s laws and its constitution.”

Ibrahim and Wani married in a formal ceremony in 2011 and have an 18-month-old son, Martin, who is with her in jail. The couple operate several businesses, including a farm, south of Khartoum, the country’s capital. Wani fled to the United States as a child to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but later returned. He is not permitted to have custody of the little boy, because the boy is considered Muslim and cannot be raised by a Christian man.

Sudan’s penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims into other religions, which is punishable by death. Muslim women in Sudan are further prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, although Muslim men are permitted to marry outside their faith. Children, by law, must follow their father’s religion.

Islamic Shariah laws were introduced in Sudan in the early 1980s under the rule of autocrat Jaafar Nimeiri, whose decision led to the resumption of an insurgency in the mostly animist and Christian south of Sudan. An earlier round of civil war lasted 17 years, ending in 1972. In 2011, the south seceded to become the world’s newest nation, South Sudan.

Sudanese President Omar Bashir, an Islamist who seized power during a 1989 military coup, said his county will implement Islam more strictly now that the non-Muslim south is gone. A number of Sudanese have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they have all escaped execution by recanting their faith. Religious thinker and politican Mahmoud Mohammed Taha — a vocal critic of Nimeiri — was sentenced to death after his conviction of apostasy and was executed at the age of 76 in 1985.

Ibrahim’s case first came to the attention of authorities in August, when members of her father’s family complained that she was born a Muslim but married a Christian man. They claimed her birth name was “Afdal” before she changed it to Meriam. The document produced by relatives to indicate she was given a Muslim name at birth was a fake, Mohammed said.

Ibrahim refused to answer the judge when he referred to her as “Afdal” during Thursday’s hearing.

Ibrahim was initially charged with having illegitimate sex last year, but she remained free pending trial. She was later charged with apostasy and jailed in February after she declared in court that Christianity was the only religion she knew.

The US-based Center for Inquiry is demanding that all charges against Ibrahim be dropped, saying the death sentence is a clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which forbids persecution or coercion of religious beliefs and the right to marry.

“Religious belief must never be coerced and free expression must never be punished, through threat of imprisonment, violence, or any other means,” the group wrote in a letter to Sudan’s UN ambassador, H.E. Hassan Hamid Hassan. “This cannot go unanswered, and the world will not stand for it.”

Fox News' Joshua Rhett Miller and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Stewy]

Nobody's trying to defend these actions, clearly they're wrong. But we've been over this before - this isn't what Islam is about, this is what the extremists that are in charge of Sudan are about. No more than it's what Christianity was about when people were being executed for heresy a few hundred years ago.

 

So:

-We have these extreme acts of violence in the name of Islam and occasionally Christianity, coming primarily from third world 'uncivilised' countries - no offence, Osiris - in Africa and the middle east, where Islam is the main religion.

-We have more tolerance from developed countries, where Christianity is the main religion.

 

To what degree is there a causal link between the main religion of an area and the level of extremist views? Or is there another factor at work, potentially the exploitation of uneducated people by using religion as a tool to invoke the mass hysteria needed to be ok with these kinds of education in the population at large. Such a power vacuum as exists in highly unregulated states such as these inevitably attract 'bad' people.

 

Whether Islam is worse than other religions in this way, for attracting 'bad' people is certainly a valid question. For example, it's a lot easier to oppress 50% of the populous right off the bat with Islam, forcing women to stay in doors, removing their right to education etc - although I haven't actually read the Quran (yet, going to get around to it someday, I suspect) so I don't know for certain what it says in this regard.

 

No more than it's what Christianity AND ISLAM was about when people were being executed for heresy a few hundred years ago.

You get the point and are missing it at the same time.

 

The point is is that Christianty has evolved from the dark ages, Islam has not.

 

Pathetic how dimwit liberals cant bring themselves to flat out condem the barbaric actions of Muslims with no strings attached.. Instead they become apologists...rationalizing, even justifying or excusing the barbaric behavior of Islam with references to how Christianity was...when in fact Islam was the same way, and still is.

That is the issue here.

Get it?

 

I know...I said "dimwit liberals"...pretty redundant.

[The Cysko Kid]

It's pretty rare I agree with Bunker but this is actually one of those oddities.

[gftChris]

 

No more than it's what Christianity AND ISLAM was about when people were being executed for heresy a few hundred years ago.

You get the point and are missing it at the same time.

 

The point is is that Christianty has evolved from the dark ages, Islam has not.

 

Pathetic how dimwit liberals cant bring themselves to flat out condem the barbaric actions of Muslims with no strings attached.. Instead they become apologists...rationalizing, even justifying or excusing the barbaric behavior of Islam with references to how Christianity was...when in fact Islam was the same way, and still is.

That is the issue here.

Get it?

 

I know...I said "dimwit liberals"...pretty redundant.

ALL OF THE SHOUTING!!! AND THE MISSING THE POINT!!!

 

Haha, I'm a dimwit liberal, you got me. I just want the whole country to turn to Islam and then behead me for being an infidel.

 

Let's try this again, shall we? Opening part of the post that you're quoting, that you seem to have ignored:

"Nobody's trying to defend these actions, clearly they're wrong."

How's that for condemning it?

 

You miss the point that I've been discussing with Osiris regarding Islam. It's not that Islam hasn't emerged from the dark ages as a religion - after all, the bible and quran are the same text now as they were a thousand years ago - it's that the majority of countries where Islam is the predominant religion are still massively underdeveloped, with wide spread illiteracy and inability to question authority leading to imams 'interpreting' the religious text in their own way for their own means. Scroll back a bit and you'll see where I'm comparing two translations of the same line in the quran from two different websites. Something like "...and all those that have angered you and all those who have betrayed you..." - one text leaves it like that, another specifically mentions the christians and the jews.

 

Do you get my point? I'm trying to be as clear as I can here. Condemning someone to death for their religion is *never* acceptable. I'm not trying to defend it. It can, however, be understood and explained why these things are happening. The problem comes when we try to equate beheading of christians in Sudan with mainstream islam, which is just a logical fallacy.

 

How about the christians in other countries in africa, where they are the majority, persecuting muslims? I saw a video of a mob carrying a burning corpse of a muslim through the town, having macheted various parts of his body off, and an interview with the guy after who said he even ate some of the dead guy's leg. Clearly, atrocious acts of violence that cannot and should not be defended by any person of sound mind. Yet, I'm sure there are some people somewhere saying that this is the way of christianity, and that's just as wrong.

[Westside Steve]

Chris as you know I fully agree about the barbarism in the uncivilized parts of the world. Still it certainly sounds to me like you are in denial (or just trying to rationalize) if you need to go back to revolutionary crusade pre-roman cro magnon or whatever to draw parallels.

WSS

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Of course they do. African nations are borderline savages who no matter what religion will slaughter and kill.

[gftChris]

Chris as you know I fully agree about the barbarism in the uncivilized parts of the world. Still it certainly sounds to me like you are in denial (or just trying to rationalize) if you need to go back to revolutionary crusade pre-roman cro magnon or whatever to draw parallels.

WSS

But we don't need to, these things are happening today, you just don't hear about it. Things like this from earlier this year, for example.

 

In Uganda, people can be tortured and killed just for being gay, because it's anti-christian. "Both male and female homosexual activity is illegal. Under the Penal Code, "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" between two males carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment and executions/torture are allowed with no legal liabilities for the executioners"

 

But it's besides the point - we don't have to say that Christianity is just as bad in some places to come to the conclusion that the 'muslims' carrying out these acts are not acting on the values of whichever religion they claim to be affiliated with. You get extreme Christians in the US like the WBC, but because it's a civilised country the extremism is less, well, extreme. You can bet that if it were in Africa or some other deprived place, Fred whatsisname would be encouraging his followers to hunt down and kill all the gays and other non-believers.