Bill Maher Ignites Twitter Firestorm With Just 21 Words on Islam

[Nina7777]

110. reconsider

Last edited Thu Aug 21, 2014, 07:12 PM - Edit history (1)

"I am convinced that all things being equal if it were Western civilization that was Muslim and the Middle East Christian, things would be exactly the same. People will use any religion to justify their basest and most violent urges: "

If you are so convinced, then you should seriously reconsider your position. I am completely unreligious and have never been a Christian for a day in my life, but you should recognize that it is nonsensical to claim that random quotes in the Bible equal Christianity. They do not. Christianity has had immense power and influence in certain periods over the last thousands of years, and the fact is, the structure of Christianity does not now and has never encouraged its followed to strive to take the whole Old Testament literally.

In the Old Testament, it says to stone adulteresses and kill children who disobey their parents, but it is a poor argument to claim that because the Old Testament encourages such things, Christianity encourages such things. The fact is that even when Christian theocrats has nearly absolute power over their kingdoms, there has never been any mainstream branch of Christianity that requires adhering to the draconian rules of the Old Testament. Now, you might have some microscopic number of Reconstructionists who do want to take the OT literally, but there are very few of them and thus far, no such denomination has ever held any power or lasted for a long period of time.

On the other hand, every single mainstream branch of Islam has required Shariah law and has required that its 7th century barbaric laws be followed to the last letter. All agree that apostates should be beheaded and that women should be executed for crimes of sexual impropriety. (and yes, in Islam it is permissable to execute ONLY the woman! Her male lover does not need to be executed with her). On the other hand, Christianity has been very consistent in forbidding mass scale executions for sexual crimes. Your belief that if Christians held power in the ME, the ME would be just as filled with stonings and beheadings as it is now makes no sense based on historical evidence. It is not Christians who stone for adultery- not now and not ever, but Muslims require violent and often fatal punishments for adultery in nearly every country where they are a majority and they have done so for all of recorded history.

Christianity has generally corrected itself in terms of human rights violations. The Catholic Church sanctioned the African slave trade, but fervent Christians were foremost among those who opposed slavery and brought it to its end. In the case of Islam, Islam introduced the idea of the African slave trade to the Christian world and to this day has barely made any effort to end arab enslavement of Africans, which still goes on in Suda and Maurutania.

Ultimately, it makes no intellectual sense to equate religions. If ideologies are not identical, then the a priori assumption should be that they are not equal. Islam and Christianity are not identical. They have different primary prophets, were developed in different timeframes and for the most part, were developed in different parts of the world under different historical and environmental pressures. Hence, even if you knew nothing of either of these faiths, why on earth would your starting assumption be that the two are morally equal?