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Merged What the quran really says.

@metacristi

I agree with one point you make, namely
History points out that we have to open Islam to a criticism on a par with that of Christianity and Judaism, even if this might produce the total collapse of this religion).​
I have no quarrel with that, as I have no quarrel either with applying that principle to the Catholic or Jewish religions. The rest of what you state is nonsensical or irrelevant.

It was pointed out by Blackstone in 19th century, that in their ideology Catholics exalted the Pope above local state authority, and so they did. That their Church tended to create a politicised state religion, and so it did. That such religious states imposed Catholic doctrine as state law, with the full support of the Church, and that is perfectly true, and deplorable, and Islam does all these things too, as I state.

But it turned out contra Blackstone that disparaging and marginalising RC inhabitants of the UK, or invading and going to war with Catholic countries, was no remedy for the evils represented by RC state religions, and simply made matters worse, and that such marginalisation and persecution, and demands that Catholics abjure their religion before enjoying full rights had the function of scapegoating peripheral populations within the UK. In the nineteenth century, it was Catholics in the UK who were oppressed by the state, not the reverse.

Likewise, it is the local Muslim population which is marginalised in the U.K. now, and Muslim countries which are being invaded by Western powers, or usurped by a Western imperial client, Israel. The propaganda that says, this is the fault of Muslims, derived from the essence of their religion which they must explicitly deny and abandon, is pure scapegoating, exactly as was applied to Jews and (in Protestant countries) Roman Catholics, in the past.

But that Muslim states should be secularised, yes of course, just as France was secularised in and after 1905, and to a large extent the Republic of Ireland, has fortunately been in recent decades. The Bush and Blair invasion will of course do little or nothing to secularise Iraq. The annexation of Golan by Israel will do nothing to secularise the Golani Muslims. The very opposite will be the inevitable result.
 
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abaddon said:
Truly is it not said...

2:458 Truly, the early moth shall reap the benefits
2:459 for as the moth is silent the worm is tardy
2:460 Thus shall the silent moth feast on the tardy worm

And your moral lesson is???
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The early moth catcheth the worm and verily doth devour, digest and defecate him (or her)!!!!
 
Originally Posted by Peregrinus View Post
Suddenly we find the age of a vehicle is one of the finer points in theology or philosophy?

[Kumar:] True in religion. Things become odd and obsolete.

And for the nth time we see irony does not play well on the ISF stage.
 
Craig B said:
This is pure apologetics: secularism is deeply Christian?

Nonsense. Christianity lost state power to enforce itself, while Islam retained it more effectively. Not only do I admit that, I hypothesise why that should be so, and call for it to be ended. But secularism is no more Christian than it is Islamic.

I have also said that it doesn't matter as far as our treatment of Muslims living among us is concerned. I indicate that anticatholicism resembled modern islamophobia, and history has demonstrated that it was superfluous. I said that was my prime point, and you have not addressed it, contenting yourself with another irrelevant course of Christian apologetics.

The danger arises when religion coalesces with the state. Apart from that, let Muslims or Roman Catholics believe what they want, because secularisation is not promoted either by invading countries or by demanding that believers abjure their religious affiliation before they will receive the same treatment enjoyed by their fellow citizens.
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I agree 99.9 percent with this. With some tiny reservations. Christianity has always been able to point to 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". This one line has allowed the church to abdicate authority when it is inevitable that they will lose it. From my understanding, there isn't anything similar in the Koran that Muslims can point to.
 
Craig B said:
@metacristi

I agree with one point you make, namely
History points out that we have to open Islam to a criticism on a par with that of Christianity and Judaism, even if this might produce the total collapse of this religion).​
I have no quarrel with that, as I have no quarrel either with applying that principle to the Catholic or Jewish religions. The rest of what you state is nonsensical or irrelevant.

It was pointed out by Blackstone in 19th century, that in their ideology Catholics exalted the Pope above local state authority, and so they did. That their Church tended to create a politicised state religion, and so it did. That such religious states imposed Catholic doctrine as state law, with the full support of the Church, and that is perfectly true, and deplorable, and Islam does all these things too, as I state.

But it turned out contra Blackstone that disparaging and marginalising RC inhabitants of the UK, or invading and going to war with Catholic countries, was no remedy for the evils represented by RC state religions, and simply made matters worse, and that such marginalisation and persecution, and demands that Catholics abjure their religion before enjoying full rights had the function of scapegoating peripheral populations within the UK. In the nineteenth century, it was Catholics in the UK who were oppressed by the state, not the reverse.

Likewise, it is the local Muslim population which is marginalised in the U.K. now, and Muslim countries which are being invaded by Western powers, or usurped by a Western imperial client, Israel. The propaganda that says, this is the fault of Muslims, derived from the essence of their religion which they must explicitly deny and abandon, is pure scapegoating, exactly as was applied to Jews and (in Protestant countries) Roman Catholics, in the past.

But that Muslim states should be secularised, yes of course, just as France was secularised in and after 1905, and to a large extent the Republic of Ireland, has fortunately been in recent decades. The Bush and Blair invasion will of course do little or nothing to secularise Iraq. The annexation of Golan by Israel will do nothing to secularise the Golani Muslims. The very opposite will be the inevitable result.
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Well once again you ignore the clear differences between Islam and the other 2 main Abrahamic religions (perhaps subscribing also to the often heard assumption that Islamic religious reasons are seldom primary for the violent actions of muslims) whilst letting the impression that there is a huge difference between the Catholic and Protestant worldviews. You present an argument based on historical examples, unfortunately without these (hidden) assumptions your conclusions do not follow. Given that they are all either false or on very shaky grounds I'm afraid the historical examples you present are indeed not relevant to our discussion. Those attacking Catholics were wrong and that's all we can draw from there.

Finally there is factual evidence that Islam went downward in the last 70 years, exactly when they were left to 'clean their own rubbish'. Your hypothesis has already been tested for 70 years, it's not that it is a new hypothesis, let's wait more. Indeed at the end of colonial rule, in the 1930s and 1940s, the modernists-Westernizers were influential in the societies of the Middle East. What happened to them next? They were gradually eliminated by the traditionalists and islamists to the point that many adherents had to move to the West.

What will happen in the West itself if we continue to basically protect islam with all costs from rational criticism? Not that difficult to tell given the evidence of the last at least 40 years (this if muslims become at least sizeable minorities in the West and the same narrative about an extremely benign islam remains intact). What will happen with the basic values of Enlightenment in the West itself? Where will move the Islamic modernists then? America? And after that?

Honestly it's not rocket science to see that the present approach toward Islam (coupled with mass islamic immigration, islam considered extremely benign etc) leads, quite probably, at least to an Europe where some key values of Enlightenment are lost. The half-sharia states can easily move to the West. If you haven't yet realized rational people do not want this to happen. Good luck secularizing Islam via your approach then, it won't be easy to overcome the main problem outlined by me elsewhere.


PS neither is valid that I apologize for Christianity for I don't, I merely follow Reason wherever it leads but I am not shy to strongly criticize what deserve to be criticized (by the way is this guy also an apologist for Christianity?).
 
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Two common friends were fighting. One: we will walk and reach destination. Other, we shall go by Mercedes car. Various POVs and logics were argued but no solution. Third bit clever passerby came, listen their arguments and told, why don't you walk upto some distance, which you can cover comfortably, call car there and go further by that car. Problem solved, aurguments over and frienship continued.
 
Kumar said:
Two common friends were fighting. One: we will walk and reach destination. Other, we shall go by Mercedes car. Various POVs and logics were argued but no solution. Third bit clever passerby came, listen their arguments and told, why don't you walk upto some distance, which you can cover comfortably, call car there and go further by that car. Problem solved, aurguments over and frienship continued.
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And your allegory attempts (rather opaquely) to explain just what? :confused:
 
@Craig

To conclude, the Muslims are not the 'new Jews (or Catholics) of Europe (Britain respectively*)'**, if we were to follow your logic till the end then we should refrain from (strongly) criticizing even the sect Aum Shinrikyo. Unfortunately not 'anything goes' at this level, being 'poor' or 'minority' does not automatically mean that the associated ideologies have to be protected with all costs. The happy thing is that we can make a rational decision of what 'goes' or not, even if still considered fallible, especially in the case of ideologies (like islam unfortunately, at least based on existing evdence) which proved systematically to be incapable to fully accommodate Modernity.

Secondly you say that you agree with the criticism of Islam. The problem is that at the practical level you never prove that. To remember you how many times you labelled me, and others for that matter, an 'islamophobe' just for advocating the view that islam needs a real Islamic Enlightenment (acting against poverty, education levels etc do not suffice)? I'm sorry but you are basically on the same level with the cultural relativists on this site, incapable to understand that a conjecture like 'Muhammad. The Desert Warlord / Islam inherently violent & discriminatory' is a legit direction of research and a necessary part of any rational critical thinking of Islam (at the Academic Quranic criticism level included, if 'Jesus the proto-zealot' / Christianity inherently violent' is legit in spite of its huge weaknesses then even more this is valid for the above mentioned conjecture). Weak criticism of Islam is not the best approach I'm afraid, history shows this plenty, Islam needs also the counterpart of the Radical Enlightenment (otherwise it is very probable that the liberal forces will remain on long term very fragile and having to do huge concessions to Islam).

Sure there are some who use the argument outlined by me for vested interests, going well beyond the preservation of Enlightenment values (even neo-Nazis), but this does not invalidate it. Stopping the strong rational criticism of Islam altogether is not the solution here.


* neither can we insist too much on the discrimination of Catholics by some in the England of the past (we should strongly criticize even Newton!) if we think that in the historical context (albeit making clear that it was not something good), what counts is that after the wars on religion the Christian world was firmly on a path of avoiding religious wars and giving the same rights to other religious denominations (even more valid during Modernity, after the first decades of the 19th century, this in spite of some opposition)

** not a great surprise that the Jews (or Catholics) did not create much problems for the secular state, especially if we take in account the worldviews of these religions; one cannot extend this automatically to Islam, unfortunately we deal here with a quite very different worldview + impact at the practical level (on average in the population), it would be a huge lie to claim that Islam gives to the unaided Human Reason more or less the same value as in the other 2 Abrahamic religions or that it is not much more militant than them
 
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Kumar said:
Two common friends were fighting. One: we will walk and reach destination. Other, we shall go by Mercedes car. Various POVs and logics were argued but no solution. Third bit clever passerby came, listen their arguments and told, why don't you walk upto some distance, which you can cover comfortably, call car there and go further by that car. Problem solved, aurguments over and frienship continued.
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Why it can not be by taxi/horsecarraige?
 
metacristi said:
(by the way is this guy also an apologist for Christianity?).
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I know him from a previous blog, Armarium Magnum which I consulted from time to time during a long thread on this forum about the existence of a historical Jesus, which on the whole I am inclined to accept.

From your link, which I have also seen before, he is clearly an apologist for Christianity, which doesn't mean that he is a Christian. Are you mixing the two concepts up? Anyway I find him rather nasty, as I suppose readers of your link may agree; not because he's an apologist for Christianity - I've met nice examples of them - but his response to the pertinent question “Why are you sometimes rude or sarcastic on this blog?” is unpleasant, as is his arrogance in "I know the Bible very well thanks, probably better than you".
 
Kumar said:
Two common friends were fighting. One: we will walk and reach destination. Other, we shall go by Mercedes car. Various POVs and logics were argued but no solution. Third bit clever passerby came, listen their arguments and told, why don't you walk upto some distance, which you can cover comfortably, call car there and go further by that car. Problem solved, aurguments over and frienship continued.
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Definitely all involved are maroons!!!!!!!!!
 
Kumar said:
Just feel, practically.
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Feel means nothing in medical/academic papers. You just refuse to learn how it must be done if you want to have the slightest chance of being accepted, much less published/having your assumed work
accepted/published
 
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