Activist Atheist divided regarding criticism of Islam

[Carn]

Well, that settles it: you are just making things up to support your preconceived, bigoted prejudices, with little to no honest concern for the truth.

You are making here things up.

In your own words:
"You have a _hypothesis_ at best."

So what i have to demonstrate depends upon what MY hypothesis is and not upon what you think my hypothesis is.

My hypothesis - to formulate it again - is

that a for political issues relevant number of adherents of religions act upon the principles set down by their religions founder or act to emulate them and that therefore the content of the hundreds of years of text can have political effects today

AND

that texts of Islam have due to their content more negative effects in the aforementioned way than some other religions.

Even if the entire last 1400 years not a single government in Islamic countries and/or not a single society acted in the above mentioned way, this would not render the hypothesis wrong, due to the hypothesis only requiring a relevant number of adherents and not governments or majorities to act such way.

Hence, requiring "to show that Islamic society has actually worked the way you assume with some degree of consistency throughout history" is based on a misunderstanding of the hypothesis.

You understand that the relevant issue for my hypothesis would be what i say they are and not what you say they are?

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Sorry, I made the assumption that your hypothesis was not utterly trivial. If some of these supposed negative effects only manifest in a brief window in a 1400-year history, it clearly makes no sense to put significant blame on Islam. But I suppose you can claim a technical, even if completely hollow, victory as long as someone somewhere does something bad and cites the Qur'an.

I mean, it's a great approach to take since it makes it very obvious that bigotry and prejudice, not actual concern for truth, fuels you.

 

[Belz...]

Well, that settles it: you are just making things up to support your preconceived, bigoted prejudices, with little to no honest concern for the truth.

Bigoted? Who's making stuff up now?

 

[David Mo]

I do not consider the words to be synonymous. I asked whether you consider them synonyms.
Oxford dictationary links does not consider them synonyms, as it defines Muslim as:
"A follower of the religion of Islam."
If Islam and Muslim would be synonym, that would be a recursive definition. So the site will only offer that definition, if Islam and Muslim are not synonyms in their opinion.

I recommend you realizing that other people being unable to use language correctly and call for example inhabitants of Irak Muslims instead of Irakis is entirely not my fault. And similar that when i say Muslim i mean Muslim as "follower of Islam" and hence do not imply any nationality or ethnic or "race" and half the world is too stupid to understand that i do not talk about people from some specific country or even from some larger region it is not my fault, although it is my problem.
As you see above, the dictionary you linked treats Muslims and Islam not as synonyms.
Hence, it is at least semantically possible to be Anti-Islam without being Anti-Muslim.

Based on you also presuming i am racist, it seems more like a book "How to constantly misunderstand anything anyone says about Islam, so i can call him racist".
Maybe i should realy read it; such books are often quite some fun to follow the idiotic contortions some people do when setting up strawmans to burn them down.
Actually, it would be yours to show that i did not make such a difference.

But look at post 176. In it i went harshly against Islam and only offered a conclusion for Muslims to draw from my harsh criticism. Hence, i treated Islam and Muslims as being different from each other.

First of all and very important: I don’t consider you a racist. Neither I am. I used “we” in a rhetoric mode. I meant the standard Western mentality that is permeated with racist words and concepts. Sometimes people use them without be aware of it. And these are people that read what you say from their own language. These are those ordinary people that interest me when I am speaking of the pertinence of some public utterances. The People, if you want.

You have read only one definition. Here the two definitions:
Muslim: "A follower of the religion of Islam."
Islam: “The religion of the Muslims”.
How is possible to attack Islam without attack the Muslims that are the believers in Islam? I continue without understand what difference you establish between “Islam” and “Muslim”. Some Muslims could not have Islam as religion? Do you call “Muslim” also the Syrian Christians? Are there some people that don’t believe in Muhammad and are “Muslim”? Please, clarify these concepts.

If you consider Said an idiotic a priori it would be better if you don’t read Orientalism. It is useless to read anything with this strong antagonism.
I will return on your 176 comment later. Not time now.

 

[Carn]

Sorry, I made the assumption that your hypothesis was not utterly trivial.

Sorry to tell you, but nobody i ever discussed this with considered the idea, that some content of hundreds of years old text can have political effect today and that the texts of Islam have more negative effect than other texts in this way due to their content, to be utterly trivial.

Reason is that many so called/real Islamophobes actually claim little else except that such negative effect from content is strong or very strong.

If everybody accepted my assumption as trivial, the only difference between such Islamophobes and all the rest would be the estimation of the magnitude.

And that does not fit the discussions i see; but maybe i am wrong.

If some of these supposed negative effects only manifest in a brief window in a 1400-year history, it clearly makes no sense to put significant blame on Islam.

As forumlated in my presvious post, i do not think i specified if it happens rarely or often.

It at least should be considered to estimate to what the "magnitutude" is.

Cause how to political handle opposing forces guided in their actions to a relevant extent by hundreds of years old texts is different from groups not caring for such texts; and to determine which it is, the "magnitude" is relevant.

I mean, it's a great approach to take since it makes it very obvious that bigotry and prejudice, not actual concern for truth, fuels you.

Frankly, i do not see how it would be bigotry to consider to what extent some hundreds of years old texts have political relevant effects today.

 

[Carn]

How is possible to attack Islam without attack the Muslims that are the believers in Islam?

The same way it can be done with Christianity.

E.g. take the film Life of Brian.

Is it an attack upon today (or 1970ties) human beings being adherents to Christianity?
I would say no.

Can it be considered an attack on - among other things - Christianity? Yes (well, a lot of Christians thought that and even some crew members thought that; though not all).

As a more clear example, if someone suggests, that Jesus was conceived the natural way and his mother made up the story about an Angle and so on, this is no attack on Christian individuals. But it is an attack upon Christianity the faith by effectively claiming it is based on a lie.

And similar, if one claims that Muhammed was just a con man making up religious "revelations" from Allah while going along to further his own desire or maybe out of some mental disorder, one does in no way attack individual muslims. But one attacks the Islamic faith; again by claiming it is based on a lie.

Similar it would be, if one claimed some of what Jesus or Muhammed taught to be plain immoral. Again it is not against any individual muslims or even groups of muslims; it is simply an attack on the faith itself (which has at its core that most/all of teachings of the respective founder to be moral).

I continue without understand what difference you establish between “Islam” and “Muslim”.

The former is the body of thought represented by Islamic scipture and important schools of thought.

The latter are human beings.

Some Muslims could not have Islam as religion?

No, all Muslims have Islam as religion.

Do you call “Muslim” also the Syrian Christians?

No.

Are there some people that don’t believe in Muhammad and are “Muslim”?

"believe" in Muhammed lacks a bit clarity, but i would not think anyone not considering Muhammed to be Allah's messenger would not be a Muslim.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

What's over? You made some incredibly broad claims which you failed to back up with examples across history, or dedicated studies of these particular phenomena.

No more dancing.

People disagree as the what truth consists of, as well as to what behaviors are enabled by knowing or possessing the truth. The challenge is to develop a framework that addresses the relationships involved so as to address terrorism in all its forms, using exactly the same framework, no fudging. Only in this way can we begin to consider the approach fair or equitable. Therefore, prior to proceeding with criticism of any particular creed, one must develop an approach and then see if it can differentiate between cases when violence is more or less likely, without discriminating on the basis of the specifics of only one creed to create the criteria for analysis. This does not impede finding, once the criteria are laid out, that any given creed is more or less likely to inspire a given pattern or behavior.

The framework I am using nowadays I am also using in another thread discussing Christian fascism, and even free market dogmatism. None of the criteria need be changed, and I curse all houses of dogma with the same plague. Fairly.

No, I will not restate the framework; rather, we shall rebuild one here and now. The general goal to identify those ideologies that have been or are violent, and pinpoint why using the same method and criteria for all. The purpose is to gain useful insight into ideologically-inspired terrorist behavior in a fair manner using an unbiased framework, and then and only then discuss what specific areas in any given ideology, such as Islam, may give it a tendency to promote or inhibit behaviors, always using that same framework. (Any criticisms made of Islam so far, then, actually come at the tail end of the above process, which is why it is now necessary to walk through it.)

The starting challenge for you: In the most general terms possible, discuss when truth is violent, and why?

(If examples are used, they should be from both political and religious domains, and citing several cases, so as to illustrate, but not from a sole instance. Nota Bene: My current workload is high and shall remain so for the next few weeks. There may be delays in response. Reason I mention is, there is a veritable ******** of work coming up here, too.)

***
ETA: As to the sweeping generalizations: Buy the book I cited. I believe "mayhem" is not an exaggeration, and is not synonymous with hot war of expansion. Straight from the horse's mouth, no need to take it from me.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

The challenge is to develop a framework that addresses the relationships involved so as to address terrorism in all its forms, using exactly the same framework, no fudging.

That's a first-class ticket to a misleading metanarrative. Ideally, one studies different aspects of a phenomenon using different frameworks to capture the totality of the phenomenon.

But all that is secondary to a sensible grounding in primary (or as laymen, we usually have to be happy with secondary) sources. To what degree one can study a religion as an ideology, the study of how the tenets of that ideology results in certain tendencies in society is a monumental undertaking. A great deal of controversy persists to this day about the effect and nature of some of the most thoroughly researched ideologies, including ones that are far, far less complex and developed than a world religion.

It is overwhelmingly clear that the most important cause of the "violence" you talk about is fairly recent political events and conflicts concerning, essentially, material issues and somewhat generic exercises of power (such as imperialism). I would go as far as to say that these causes are almost completely succesful in explaining the violence. Only once we have identified areas that cannot be easily reconciled with such far more mundane causes does it become interesting and useful to ask questions concerning less concrete influences, such as culture and religion.

That is, unless there is some absolutely overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Studying "radical/political Islam" as a religious phenomenon first and foremost is, in my view, grossly misleading. No one could possibly doubt that religion affects how people think and act, but those effects can only be understood by first carefully studying the more immediate causes of the conflicts. You simply cannot take some generalizing first-principles approach based on your understanding of Islam and directly apply that (or, you can, but it's a terrible approach). Before you even think to study how Islam at large fits into a historical or current event, the event must be carefully contextualized and immediate, major factors must be controlled for.

The type of thinking you propose is how someone like Gibbon ended up with the ludicrous conclusion that Christianity caused the "fall of the Western Roman Empire", or how western academics long contorted themselves into believing the Ottoman Empire somehow managed to "decline" for 300 years straght. It's putting the cart before the horse.

 

[Carn]

No one could possibly doubt that religion affects how people think and act, but those effects can only be understood by first carefully studying the more immediate causes of the conflicts.

Your claim that no one could possible doubt that religion affects how people think and act would be a lot more plausible if not roughly 24-48 hours after nearly each islamistic terror attack someone publically declared that that attack had nothing to do with Islam (or a variation thereof).

Because somebody aware of the possibility that religion affects how people think and act, would consider it possible at first that the terrorist's actions were affected by religion and therefore by Islam and would exclude the possibility only AFTER the evidence allows to discard the possibility.

But 24-48 hours after an attack there is usually insufficient evidence to discard any possibility.

So some people nonetheless proclaiming some act had nothing to do with Islam, seem to operate from the assumption that religion DOES NOT affect how people think and act who carry our terror attacks in a relevant way.

Do you have any other explanation for people declaring before the evidence is avaible that some attack had nothing to do with Islam?

(And i am aware that some other people do the opposite.)

 

[David Mo]

T
The former [Islam]is the body of thought represented by Islamic scipture and important schools of thought.
The latter [Muslim]are human beings.

Muslims are human beings that believe in Islam. Don’t forgot the essential part of the definition.

If some people think that a belief is an essential part of their personality, if you attack their belief then you are attacking both the belief and the believer. The distinction between the man and his essential beliefs is purely formal. If you attack Islam you attack the Muslims. What matters is that the attack be true and respects human dignity. You cannot say that somebody’s belief is stupid without call him stupid. You cannot claim that they believe in a terrorist religion without call them terrorists.

I doubt that what you wrote has been respectful with Muslims:

Mohammed was a pedophilic 7th century war lord; as 7th century (and 6th and 8th and nearly any other centuries) war lords are on any decent ethical scale nearly at the bottom, only a being of supreme evilness would proclaim a 7th century warlord and on top of that a pedophilic one as an excellent pattern for conduct to emulate.

Muhammad was not a “pedophilic” in the modern sense of this word. In Middle Ages the marriage with and between children was a norm among kings, nobles and families. Christian or Muslim. Neither he was a war lord in the same sense that condottieri were. He was an armed prophet in the same way that Aaron, Joshua and other Jewish prophets and kings that are very respected in Western countries.

Imagine that I say:
“Jesus was a hysterical bastard that spent his life with the ridiculous expectation that his actual Father was going to send him a cohort of angels in order to massacre and torture his enemies”.
True or false, this doesn’t seem a good way to begin a debate with Christians.

Child marriage is a plague in some modern Islamic countries. No more that in other countries as India or Ethiopia that are not Muslim people and don’t believe in Muhammad. The causes are other. This kind of marriage is minority and illegal in almost all of these countries and it is fought by relevant personalities. For example, Saudi Princess 'Adelah, daughter of King 'Abdallah and many lawmen that have made and defend the laws against child marriage, like 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Lahim. Many of them consider themselves Muslim people and this is a clear example of the diversity of interpretations inside the Islam even in an ultra-Islamic country. This is an example how the Koran is not literally applied in almost all Muslim countries. It would be impossible. And if some diverse interpretations are possible we have to think how we can support the most liberal of them. Not to attack indiscriminately everybody.

I am afraid that the anti-Islam crusaders that not are able of distinguish between diverse streams inside Islam foster the increasing feeling of identity ultra-Islamist. This would be worse for everybody. Specially for Muslim little girls.
And I am afraid that their understandable hate to the regressive Islam associates them with bad companions without be aware of the implications of what they are doing. I repeat; walls and ghettos. The worst.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Your claim that no one could possible doubt that religion affects how people think and act would be a lot more plausible if not roughly 24-48 hours after nearly each islamistic terror attack someone publically declared that that attack had nothing to do with Islam (or a variation thereof).

Because somebody aware of the possibility that religion affects how people think and act, would consider it possible at first that the terrorist's actions were affected by religion and therefore by Islam and would exclude the possibility only AFTER the evidence allows to discard the possibility.

But 24-48 hours after an attack there is usually insufficient evidence to discard any possibility.

So some people nonetheless proclaiming some act had nothing to do with Islam, seem to operate from the assumption that religion DOES NOT affect how people think and act who carry our terror attacks in a relevant way.

Do you have any other explanation for people declaring before the evidence is avaible that some attack had nothing to do with Islam?

(And i am aware that some other people do the opposite.)

That could either be an expression of that person's convictions or conclusions regarding traditional teachings in Islam and unnecessary killing. Or it could be a correct conclusion regarding the main causes of both radicalization and the emergence of terror groups. Islam is not really relevant in the public discourse regarding the causes of terror attacks, it's a red herring.

 

[Belz...]

Muslims are human beings that believe in Islam. Don’t forgot the essential part of the definition.

If some people think that a belief is an essential part of their personality, if you attack their belief then you are attacking both the belief and the believer. The distinction between the man and his essential beliefs is purely formal.

Yeah but at this point it's a matter of semantics. Someone can make a case that the two are different, another that the differences are irrelevant. But the point is that it is possible to attack the religion without attacking the believers. Satirists have been doing that for millennia. People laugh at the stuff they love all the time.

 

[Carn]

Muslims are human beings that believe in Islam. Don’t forgot the essential part of the definition.

You asked about the difference; Muslims are human beings, Islam is a body of thought. That i is the main and most important difference.

If some people think that a belief is an essential part of their personality, if you attack their belief then you are attacking both the belief and the believer.

That would mean that exclusive criticism of a specific religion is never possible, as any criticism of a specific religion would always also be an attack on the believers of that religion.


In that case i think there should also be some apologies from atheists for a lot of criticism of Christianity during the last several hundred years.

E.g. Life of Brian i mentioned would then require an apology as it was at least perceived by Christians aas an attack upon their beliefs, which according to what you say was an attack on them and therefore an apology is due.

The distinction between the man and his essential beliefs is purely formal. If you attack Islam you attack the Muslims. What matters is that the attack be true and respects human dignity. You cannot say that somebody’s belief is stupid without call him stupid. You cannot claim that they believe in a terrorist religion without call them terrorists.

As said above, then all exclusive criticism of Islam is impossible.

I doubt that what you wrote has been respectful with Muslims:
...
Imagine that I say:
“Jesus was a hysterical bastard that spent his life with the ridiculous expectation that his actual Father was going to send him a cohort of angels in order to massacre and torture his enemies”.
True or false, this doesn’t seem a good way to begin a debate with Christians.

The issue is not whether the criticism is correct or false, but whether and how one would be allowed to bring it into public.

Presume for a moment someone honestly arrives at the conclusion Mohammed was a pedophile or Jesus was a hysterical bastard that ... (pick whichever you like more).

How could one voice that opinion/criticism, that Quran cannot be verbatim from Allah as Mohammed being a pediphilic war lord would never be elevated as an example/Jesus was a hysterical bastard that spent his life with the ridiculous expectation that his actual Father was going to send him a cohort of angels in order to massacre and torture his enemies?


According to what you say it seems someone having such an opinion, is ethically required to not voice it.

And if some diverse interpretations are possible we have to think how we can support the most liberal of them.

Before deciding which "liberal" or for political purposes preferable interpretations one should support and how to support them, one would first need to understand the "non-liberal" interpretations and their effects for being able to identify "liberal" interpretations and helping them counter the "non-liberal".

"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle."

But if one operates in a "islamistic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam" and personally believes this, one is guranteed to fail at knowing the enemy.

I am afraid that the anti-Islam crusaders that not are able of distinguish between diverse streams inside Islam foster the increasing feeling of identity ultra-Islamist. This would be worse for everybody. Specially for Muslim little girls.
And I am afraid that their understandable hate to the regressive Islam associates them with bad companions without be aware of the implications of what they are doing. I repeat; walls and ghettos. The worst.

Yes, such danger exists.

But i do not think it can be countered by acting as if Islam has absolutely nothing to with terrorism. Cause that approach will register with many people as absolutely nuts and then they are more likely to listen to the more extreme "crusaders".

 

[Carn]

That could either be an expression of that person's convictions or conclusions regarding traditional teachings in Islam and unnecessary killing. Or it could be a correct conclusion regarding the main causes of both radicalization and the emergence of terror groups.

And George W. Bush managed a throughful study of traditional teachings in Islam in something like 72 hours?

And nearly all politicians since then managed to do this in 48 hours or less?

We are blessed with realy intelligent and super fast reading leaders also capable of arabic.

 

[Pixel42]

When you criticise any belief you are implicitly criticising those who have chosen to believe it. When you say that you think the belief that the earth is flat is silly you are also effectively saying that flat earthers are silly.

Beliefs are chosen; even someone who is born and raised in a religion has plenty of opportunities to repudiate it and choose another, or none. So yes, if you think they have chosen wrongly then you are criticising their reasoning ability at the very least.

I don't really see what can be done about that. It's surely not a reason to stop criticising beliefs. There are doubtless ways of doing so that piss the believers off more than others, but I can't see any way of doing so without pissing them off a bit.

 

[Carn]

So yes, if you think they have chosen wrongly then you are criticising their reasoning ability at the very least.

But having made the wrong choice/being stupid is usually the only thing falling upon the believer.

E.g. in my criticism post 176 i called Muhammed a pedophile and war lord and concluded based on that that the sura praising him as an example to emulate is not verbatim from the supreme good being; hence, not the entire quran is verbatim from the supreme being.

That is pretty harsh against Muhammed and against whoever was the author of Quran; but against the today believer this is nothing more than a "You have been duped; Ouran cannot be from Allah, look at what a monster the according to Quran supreme example of conduct man named Mohammed must have been; Allah would never say such a thing about such a monster."

So the attack against Islam is not directly transferred to the believer.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

And George W. Bush managed a throughful study of traditional teachings in Islam in something like 72 hours?

And nearly all politicians since then managed to do this in 48 hours or less?

We are blessed with realy intelligent and super fast reading leaders also capable of arabic.

None of that is necessary to conclude that the main causes of the attacks are sociopolitical, or to make relatively vacuous PR statemets about Islam. While the latter may or may not be counterproductive it is certainly defensible with regard to the problem of religious bigotry.

 

[Carn]

None of that is necessary to conclude that the main causes of the attacks are sociopolitical, or to make relatively vacuous PR statemets about Islam. While the latter may or may not be counterproductive it is certainly defensible with regard to the problem of religious bigotry.

And what would you make of the following line of reasoning within a police force:

1. We certainly do not doubt that religion affects how people think and act.

2. In the community we are required to protect about 3000 people have been murdered by suspects claiming themselves to be motivated by religion X, so claiming that the effect of their religion upon themselves was that of incitement to murder or at least encouragement to act so. Furthermore numerous suspects stopped in the process of planing murder also claimed similar things.

Due to 1. it cannot be excluded that the suspects are telling the truth in 2. and that the contents of the religious teachings was a factor in their crime.

Therefore, as a police force sworn to protect the live of the people in our community, we must at least have an eye upon what religious teachings are promoted in religious centers of religion X; this could both help preventing and solving some of those murders with suspects claiming to be motivated towards their crime by some religious teachings of religion X.


The police force never considers to monitor religious centers of religion Y the same way, as no suspects or crimes were ever reported with either admission as in 2. or evidence pointing to something like in 2.


Barring the details that such a surveillance activity might be very carefully managed to avoid violation of laws, do you think that in that basic reasoning there is anything fundamentally problematic?

Or is it just plain and dutiful assesment of the motivating factors of crimes and developing respective preventive activity by a police force?

edit:
And to stress it: Nobody in the police force thinks religion is the only factor; they just think it might be a factor relevant enough to keep an eye on it, as numerous suspects claim 2.

 

[Darat]

And what would you make of the following line of reasoning within a police force:

1. We certainly do not doubt that religion affects how people think and act.

2. In the community we are required to protect about 3000 people have been murdered by suspects claiming themselves to be motivated by religion X, so claiming that the effect of their religion upon themselves was that of incitement to murder or at least encouragement to act so. Furthermore numerous suspects stopped in the process of planing murder also claimed similar things.

Due to 1. it cannot be excluded that the suspects are telling the truth in 2. and that the contents of the religious teachings was a factor in their crime.

Therefore, as a police force sworn to protect the live of the people in our community, we must at least have an eye upon what religious teachings are promoted in religious centers of religion X; this could both help preventing and solving some of those murders with suspects claiming to be motivated towards their crime by some religious teachings of religion X.


The police force never considers to monitor religious centers of religion Y the same way, as no suspects or crimes were ever reported with either admission as in 2. or evidence pointing to something like in 2.


Barring the details that such a surveillance activity might be very carefully managed to avoid violation of laws, do you think that in that basic reasoning there is anything fundamentally problematic?

Or is it just plain and dutiful assesment of the motivating factors of crimes and developing respective preventive activity by a police force?

edit:
And to stress it: Nobody in the police force thinks religion is the only factor; they just think it might be a factor relevant enough to keep an eye on it, as numerous suspects claim 2.

Would seem a bit strange if those murderers didn't come from the same community.

 

[Carn]

Would seem a bit strange if those murderers didn't come from the same community.

Why?

The issue is some potentially "inciting" (at least according to said murder suspects) religious teachings of religion X; if those religious teachings are a risc factor for murder why should the police not check whether these religious teachings also exist in the local religious centers of religion X?

Maybe the result of that will be a something like: "All is fine, in our local religion X centers, these teachings are irrelevant."

But not checking whether some teachings are circulated which are known to be something that motivates murderes, would be strange in my opinion.

And if presuming, that your argument is valid, would a single such murderer or would be murderer then be sufficient justification for such a program, even if the majority of such murderers with somewhat religious motivations are from the outside?

I ask, cause it just happens that the vehicle using murderer of this week in New York, went to some local religious center and also seems to make statements as under 2. in my previous post:
http://www.northjersey.com/story/ne...roversial-nypd-surveillance-effort/819826001/