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FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)
TM99
(8,352 posts)and knows the fundamentals of Islam. 
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts) TM99
(8,352 posts)it helps if you have read more than just the rantings of a New Atheist bigot.
Oh, and yeah, cause all Muslims are the moral equivalent on Nazism and the Koran is so like Mein Kampf.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)That is going by a strict counting of violence and hate words as a percentage of text.
The Quran is also far more explicit in terms of the physical violence to be used.
The Quran + hadiths also have a higher frequency of calling out Jews.
(Stats by Bill Warner on political Islam)
TM99
(8,352 posts)worse than Mein Kampf shows your ignorance and bigotry.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)That you would use such offensive terms shows you are a bigot about your precious opinions.
PS: I used figures. So much for my alleged 'ignorance'. You had no facts to offer.
Bye.
Joe the Revelator
(14,915 posts)I'm pretty sure the Old Testament, fundamentally, is worse that Mein Kampf. The Quran is no book of peace.
TM99
(8,352 posts)That you too would say the Old Testament as a whole is fundamentally worse than Mein Kampf is bigoted ludicrous hyperbole.
You have no conception of that which you are opining.
The Quran, like the Bible, is a complex work showing all aspects of human psychology from the worst to the most sublime.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Are you saying ISIS can't read and understand their own Quran?
Are you a better islamic scholar than the ISIS ideologues?
See how easy it is to ask that type of question?
TM99
(8,352 posts)You shifted the goal post to ISIS. The statement was made by Harris who is a bigot and not someone well versed in the 'fundamentals' of the Koran. His prejudices make him think that he is qualified to do so when he is not.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)The Quran makes the claim it is a perfect book which speaks directly to each individual.
The muslim clergy cannot claim to be an intermediary between the book and folks.
So your interpretation of the Quran depends on the majority rule.
And since the Quran is ambiguous and contradictory, take your pick
But since there are lots of violent passages, you can choose Quran=Clockwork Orange.
Besides, the Quran being as holy and reliable as the Bible and the story of Sleeping Beauty,
anyone can be an expert.
uawchild
(2,208 posts)Sam Harris
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Samuel Benjamin "Sam" Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist. Harris is the co-founder and chief executive of Project Reason, a non-profit organization that promotes science and secularism, and host of the podcast: Waking Up with Sam Harris.[2] As an author, he wrote the book The End of Faith, which was published in 2004 and appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. The book also won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2005.[3] In 2006, Harris published the book Letter to a Christian Nation as a response to criticism of The End of Faith. This work was followed by The Moral Landscape, published in 2010, in which Harris argues that science can help answer moral problems and can aid the facilitation of human well-being.[4] He subsequently published a long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014 and Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue in 2015.
Harris is a critic of religion and proponent of scientific skepticism and the "New Atheism". He is also an advocate for the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and the liberty to criticize religion.[4] Some commentators have claimed Harris's writings encourage aggression towards and intolerance of Muslims, while others have praised his criticism as unapologetically direct and long overdue.[5] Some critics have accused Harris of Islamophobia. Harris and others have said the term is misused and that such labeling is an attempt to silence criticism.[6]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris
The problem is The Koran, like the Bible, does indeed have passages defending and even advocating violence and intolerance of non-believers and "sinners" -- all it takes is a sect like the Wahhabist to demand a "pure" and "original" interpretation of Islam by selecting which passages it deems most important to enforce now and they can use faith as their "justification". It's similar to how right wing Christians selectively choose which "sinners" they want to single out now for their vitriol, like gay people for instance.. So, yeah, the some of the fundamentals of Islam and some of the fundamentals of Christianity in the Old Testament really are intolerant and judgmental and do advocate violence.
svpadgham
(670 posts)As the other two big Judeo-Christian religions. Sam Harris, though he claims to be an Atheist, never makes the connection between the secular influence in modernized nations and a general lack of religiously motivated violence. He singles Islam, because the majority of followers as he perceives it are "different." He doesn't point out that, maybe, having your homeland continually bombed or invaded may have a negative effect and certain powers might use religion to convince the desperate to do some heinous shit. He fails to mention what happened in Bosnia back in the early 1990's and what is ongoing in the Central African Republic. Hell, even the isolated incidents of Christian influenced dumb-fuckery that gets perpetrated here is explained away as "Oh, that person was just crazy. No TRUE Christian...blah...blah...blah." However, their actions were based on biblical principles, and if you take all those isolated incidents and pool them together, they become not so isolated. Even now, based on a shitty sample set consisting of my Facebook network there are a bunch of people ready to send EVERY Muslim to a firey death, and they would applaud the use of nuclear weapons to eradicate the whole of the Middle East with not even a single bit of awareness that there are a shitload of Muslims in Europe and Asia. Sam Harris is a prejudiced dupe who is (I hope) unknowingly doing the religious right's bidding, yet is also doing it willingly with the pretense of it being his own idea.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)Largely in the old testament, which therefore can be used to critique both Judaism as well as Christianity in the same way that Harris is trying to extrapolate an out of context quote to characterize the Koran and Muslims as well.
This sort of cherry picking quotes from any religious text to try and characterize the whole religion as being beholden to those quotes and not the vast majority of other content in there that has so much more value in spiritual teachings is something that if we do with every religious text, we'd drive people in to global and precipitous religious wars and not constructive dialogue on how to solve our world's problems in a humanistic way! Arguably many of these quotes lead to the very destructive ways of the times of the Crusades too!
Some bible quotes:
"Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (I Samuel 15:2-3)
"Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." (Numbers 31:16-18)
"Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished." (Isaiah 13:15-16)
"And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 5)
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;" (Deuteronomy 13: 6)
"Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people." (Deuteronomy 13:8-9)
"Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword." (Deuteronomy 13:15)
"And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain." (Deuteronomy 2:34)
"And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Hesbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city. But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities we took for a prey to ourselves." (Deuteronomy 3:6-7)
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Both are equally insane. With some sane passages.
While the New Testament are the nice pipe dreams of a group of hippies
(with some, rare, very beautiful passages, like the pardon of the prostitute)
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... than the Koran's derivation of the Old testament's origins, from one of the people interviewed here.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124494788
There's a thoughtful discussion from different religious experts here, though I've not had time to go through the whole thing, but I think even reading through just the introduction here, you can see how each of them supports the notion that all of these religions for most of its followers have evolved in to something that focuses on the good teachings and not the out-of-context quotes that drive religious extremists of all of these religions as well as those who want to try to do partisan criticism of other religions besides their own.
I think the point is that we shouldn't be using the actions of extremists and how they justify these actions with their flawed interpretations of these different religious texts as a way to judge all followers of those religions harshly in the same fashion that these extremists SHOULD be judged for their misguided and evil actions as warped individuals. Now there are many that have their own warped "movements" too, whether they be the KKK, ISIS, Al Queda, etc., but just because there are a large group of deluded individuals, doesn't mean they speak for the substantially larger peaceful majorities of those religions that shouldn't be judged harshly for the actions of misguided others.
Perhaps it would be a good time for various religious leaders like the Pope, some religious leaders of Muslim countries like Iran, Israel, and even many of us as agnostics and atheists, etc. to get together in the effort to put forth a statement together to say that the peaceful segments of different religions and those who aren't religious followers but want a peaceful world that treats everyone well stand united against these divisive "religious" groups that want to try and start religious wars that have no place on this planet now if we want the human race to survive, especially when we face a lot of difficulties ahead for everyone with climate change, etc. facing us now.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)It's OK, they're just trying to protect their turf.
1- the comparison between OT and Quran is dumb. The OT's aim was a land title deed of the Hebrews on the land of Palestine. So it's limited in scope (Israel) and time (no more Canaanites to kill).
2- the idea that the Quran is less violent than the OT is wrong. Because the Medinan verses cancel out the Meccan verses. And the violence preached in Medina had the huge drawback of not mentioning limitations in time and space. So nutters like ISIS do have a solid theological ground to do waht they do.
Something the religious experts will never admit.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)I think YOU are helping to protect turf as much as you claim these people are.
I'm not willing to judge ANY of these major religions harshly. There have been religious wars fought by Hindus and Buddhists too. But so many more of the followers of those religions are peaceful too.
All many of us ask here is to not try to get so picky about which religion is more "violent" than the other, when they ALL have parts of their religion that most peaceful followers disregard or want to ignore because they want a world of peace and not one where we fight each other to try and claim our beliefs should be followed instead of others'. That is a big reason why I'm agnostic, as I don't want to exclude the possibility of some sort of real divinity out there, which also can't be disproven either, but I do believe that the human condition and spirit is such that most people on this planet grow up with the notions derived from their DNA that the sentiment of us all to work together as a community is a good thing, which manifests itself in the good parts of the texts of each of these religions. Those that want to disrupt that spirit of community and control it are a minority, and will try to use the extreme elements of any religion they grow up with to rationalize their crap and violence they commit with that rationalization.
Our country contributes to those extremist groups of people getting more power when we attack countries like when we go in to Iraq, or when we help put in the Shah as a dictator in Iran to replace a democratically elected leader (Mossadegh) just to protect the British company that is now BP which could be seen a violation of our democratic principles. Our current day drone attacks where so many innocent civilians are also killed to go after terrorists also fuels more of them being sympathetic to terrorists if we don't try to be more careful on who we direct our retribution towards.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)This joke aside, religions are not all equally violent.
To take Sam Harris's fetish example, a fundamentalist Jain will strive harder not to hurt anyone. In the same way, Buddhism in itself doesn't lead to much violence. The exception of Japanese Shinto Buddhism is due to a nationalistic strain of Buddhism which made the Emperor a god.
Conversely, the Mayan cult which required human sacrifices wasn't nice. Ditto for the Hindu pyre burning (sati) of live widows.
On a scale of 0 to 10, the literal text of the OT and Quran place them nearer to the Mayan cult than to Jainism. And, in practical terms, I suppose it can be argued the Quran leads to somewhat more violence than the OT.
MattBaggins
(7,904 posts)I knew you could do it.
Crunchy Frog
(26,587 posts)and has expressed many other extraordinarily distasteful views. What's his excuse?
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)He's clearly a fundie nut-case.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sam_Harris
Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.
I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.
The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization. We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been hijacked by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran.”
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.
Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so (LIE). Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
We cannot let our qualms over collateral damage paralyze us because our enemies know no such qualms. Theirs is a kill-the-children-first approach to war, and we ignore the fundamental difference between their violence and our own at our peril. Given the proliferation of weaponry in our world, we no longer have the option of waging this war with swords. It seems certain that collateral damage, of various sorts, will be a part of our future for many years to come.
Nobody is more dangerous than one who is so full of himself, such as this ignorant "new atheist" war-mongering bigot.
That is really stupid. An excuse for bigotry. This religion is somehow inherently worse? Welcome to the 14th century.
earthside
(6,960 posts)I've seen these images on social media ... and the one with KKK members and the one with Westboro ... etc.
These messages appear to be a call for inaction.
The disingenuousness is the word "blame".
I'm not blaming all Muslims for what the radical Islamist Daesh did in Paris and Lebanon and Egypt. Except for the Tea Party and extreme right-wing, I don't know who is 'blaming' all Muslims.
But I think even liberals and progressives can say that all Muslims should start demanding that their religious leaders do more than just issue a press release condemning the terrorists. Maybe Muslims of all varieties need to demand that the leadership of their religion start a reorientation that makes this kind of state-sponsored violence unacceptable. (And I think Daesh is sponsored by the Saudi government.)
That is precisely what we tell Christian leaders about groups like Westboro and what mainstream Christians finally said about the KKK -- they have the 'moral authority' to rein-in their theological soul mates, so to speak.
As for the rest of us in the West ... maybe we need to start getting realistic and start pressuring Pres. Obama to start sanctioning the Saudis who fund ISIS; we ought to be honest about Islamic radicals and use the words; we could demand that our government institute a foreign policy that seriously makes Israel and the Arab states accept responsibility for their actions (instead of the U.S. funding both sides); etc.
Turborama
(22,109 posts)
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)Look at these candle light vigils by Muslims that tried to stand together with us after 9/11 too in places like Iran!
*HOURS* after 9/11 in Iran!!!
https://photosiran.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/irans-exceptional-reaction-to-911-attacks-candlelit-vigils-for-the-victims-and-60k-soccer-fans-respected-a-minutes-silence-2/
“Iran’s sympathetic response to the American tragedy has been exceptional for a country under US economic siege for two decades. Only hours after the Sept. 11 attack, President Muhammad Khatami condemned it, as did Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other officials have sent sympathetic messages, including one from the mayor of Tehran to the mayor of New York – the first public official contact between Iran and the US since the 1979 Iranian revolution. […]
More important, 60,000 spectators observed a minute of silence during a soccer match in Iran’s Azadi Stadium, and hundreds of young Iranians held a candle-lit vigil in Tehran.”
In India recently on 9/11:
http://www.indiatomorrow.net/eng/rajasthan-muslim-girls-students-hold-candlelight-vigil-for-911-victims
Our media's F'D up way of presenting us "news" these days is also a big part of the problem too!
svpadgham
(670 posts)I think he/she is suggesting we not follow the xenophobic rhetoric being spewed from all directions. I think the poster is suggesting we don't resort to the same violence that continues this sort of problematic cycle.
treestar
(82,383 posts)merely because they are of the same religion, or the same anything. It's bigotry to put it on them. If a Catholic commits a crime, who says other Catholics are responsible for stopping him next time?
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)Should we treat all Christians as if they are KKK members? HUH?
Response to cascadiance (Reply #5)
Turborama This message was self-deleted by its author.
Response to Turborama (Reply #7)
cascadiance This message was self-deleted by its author.
Turborama
(22,109 posts)Mea culpa due to my reading comprehension fail. I've been in the trenches on FB battling with bigots and outright racists for too long and I'm getting tired. Time to have a rest... 
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... and noted that there was probably something confusing there. Maybe I made myself more clear as well in my response to you to others as well.
Those criminals in Paris were terrorists, much like KKK have been terrorists, and neither of these EVIL groups should be able to hijack a religion to justify their deeds! And we need to constantly stand up for calling them out for being the evil criminals they are and motivated only by misguided and delusional beliefs, and not any kind of proper teachings of our major religions that inspire people in many different ways around the world to do good things. And I say that as an agnostic myself.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)I just blamed everyone. That's a fairly big group.
Blaming all men, women, whites, blacks, Christians, Muslims, rich people, poor people, this, that, everyone has a group they blame for everything. Why? Because the world is complex, and everyone can blame everyone else. We could all blame ourselves, but it's easier to say someone else is the problem, even though I am the problem, we are the problem, you are the problem, and they are the problem.
We're prisoners of history, and slaves to the future.
KG
(28,751 posts)FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts) 
aikoaiko
(34,170 posts)Sorry. Try again.
Turborama
(22,109 posts)aikoaiko
(34,170 posts)My point is that the analogy is weak.
A better analogy would be 'blaming all Muslims for terrorists is like blaming all gun owners for the Sandy Hook shooter'.
LostOne4Ever
(9,289 posts)
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)It was an attack by Islamic terrorists driven by their interpretation of Islam to advance the cause of Islam. Pretending Islam had nothing to do with it is even less rational than pretending all followers of Islam were responsible.
Not all men are murderers. Hell only a tiny proportion of men are; but men commit most murders. Only a tiny proportion of Muslims are international terrorists, but Muslims in recent years at least have committed most international terror attacks.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)It is however, a convenient way to determine who the sub-literate idiots are.
The literate idiots though, will take subtle exception to the original premise and rationalize a conclusion that allows them to yet point fingers (pointing fingers being one of their primary strengths... doing so accurately being one of their primary weaknesses).
Behind the Aegis
(53,959 posts)(more common in my opinion) Blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel (or any "bad Jew du jour"
.
beevul
(12,194 posts)
BlueStater
(7,596 posts)I sure as fuck blame them.
beevul
(12,194 posts)Not a single poster I've seen on this site, excluding a few trolls over the last ten plus years.
So who is it, exactly, that you refer to?
BlueStater
(7,596 posts)So when you say "gun rights supporters", you're just referring to people specifically on this site? In that case, who here has blamed you (since I assume you're a gun owner) or anyone else for mass shootings? If you're not totally against all restrictions unlike, unfortunately, so many other gun owners, then I don't consider you at fault. And what exactly is a "gun rights supporter" anyway? Who on this forum has advocated against your right to own a gun?
I was, but we can expand it to ALL gun rights supporters and the point remains valid.
This really isn't that hard, and you wouldn't be asking me that question, leading me to leave you with this google link, if you regularly payed attention to the phrase 'blood on your hands':
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&biw=1202&bih=841&q=blood+on+all+your+hands+guns+site%3Ademocraticunderground.com&oq=blood+on+all+your+hands+guns+site%3Ademocraticunderground.com&gs_l=serp.3...13660.15354.0.15526.5.5.0.0.0.0.168.430.2j2.4.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..5.0.0.nZj08BdIUlo
Exactly who is it that is against ALL gun restrictions? The nra? Nope. The GOA? Nope.
So who is this exactly, this group of 'so many' who are?
Someone that believes in an individual right to keep and bear arms.
"Ban all guns":
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&biw=1202&bih=841&q=ban+all+guns+site%3Ademocraticunderground.com&oq=ban+all+guns+site%3Ademocraticunderground.com&gs_l=serp.3...36556.38223.0.38397.12.12.0.0.0.0.123.974.11j1.12.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..12.0.0.kqSVAMWcIGc
And of course theres all that talk of the 'Australian solution' which includes confiscation, as a core tenet.
I respectfully suggest, that you familiarize yourself with this issue.
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)Maedhros
(10,007 posts)that was condoning the turning away of Syrian refugees because "Syrians are fighters for Daesh." That's pretty close to calling all Syrians terrorists...
Turborama
(22,109 posts)