Activist Atheist divided regarding criticism of Islam

[David Mo]

Unless I change my mind later again, I wanna call it quits.
You do have good points, unfortunately for reasons whose disclosures would open up new avenues of discussions I couldn't acknowledge them and also this is taking lot of time. I din't think I would end up debating all this here.
I see one thing clearly after your last thread, that you do not defend a modernized islam as a dogma to be followed by you. So that makes you un-dogmatic while using the tools of this dogma in proving that it can accept reform. You see it as a more harmonious and preferred option for muslims. While your point requires the same evidences and arguments that the reformist muslims use it was hard for me to distinguish you from them. So you defend a reformed dogma for those who can't do without it altogether, while you have no faith in any version of it. It's my first encounter with this kind of situation. I know I am being repetitive but I am just trying to completely absorb it.
Usually intellectually honest and benevolent people spend their time and energy to show those who can't see the harm in dogmatic thinking, instead of showing them ways to beautify it.
Reform ideas are hooks that catch the religionist back to the dogma at the door when they start seeing problems in it. And in turn support the whole buiding of it by keeping them as tenants only in the upper levels.

I am glad we have reached something like an entente cordiale. Maybe our disagreement was caused by different experiences of Islam. I understand your worrying about the danger of any kind of dogmas based in holy books. Even when the believers are adapted to a context of —relative— tolerance they can regress towards intolerance. Rational conviction is better because it has not a mythical background. I believe, however, that these involutions are not simply inner mental processes. They are decided by the environmental circumstances and the impact that everyday life has on persons. Therefore, I consider that political measures against Islam as a whole that degrade the democratic equality are so dangerous as Islamism itself. We ought to balance our strong advocacy of secularity and basic human rights with the respect towards those Muslims that have choose modernization both in their lives and beliefs. This is not easy because many times people can confuse respect for alien beliefs with support to these beliefs. This is not my case.

Above that, I am concerned with the increasing level of attacks against Islamic community in Western countries. A man is a man independently of other considerations. Irrational shouting against Muslim and immigrants that put them in the same sack of crime, drugs and terrorism physically upset me. Specially when some people claim against intolerance from other intolerance.

AGENT 99: "Oh Max, you have killed this innocent man!"
MAXWELL SMART: “OK, OK, I know. But 99, we are fighting against C.H.A.O.S and we cannot but to lie, torture and kill! We are the good ones!”

Really? The good ones?

 

[winter salt]

Maybe our disagreement was caused by different experiences of Islam.

Not to be rude, but I thought I was the only one here who had those different experiences of Islam. I don't like to share that one big and costly advantage I have over you -sir- so easily.

I understand your worrying about the danger of any kind of dogmas based in holy books. Even when the believers are adapted to a context of —relative— tolerance they can regress towards intolerance.

The most tolerant of them need not to regress towards intolerance to treat me like an alien for my not accepting any god. I am already looked upon with quite some negativity by my cousins I used to be close with. That's bad-enough for me. But this is the nature of having as main identity a religion.

We ought to balance our strong advocacy of secularity and basic human rights with the respect towards those Muslims that have choose modernization both in their lives and beliefs. This is not easy because many times people can confuse respect for alien beliefs with support to these beliefs. This is not my case.

I think the real difficulty here is not the one you stated above, it is to know which muslims chose modernization "both in their lives and beliefs". Is it in the dress code, or are they going to go through regular testing procedures to ensure the stability of their modernized state?
(And how about the ones that are not modernized, should they be denied their basic human rights? Maybe your thought wasn't so well-constructed, I know you don't mean the defult of it..)

Above that, I am concerned with the increasing level of attacks against Islamic community in Western countries. A man is a man independently of other considerations. Irrational shouting against Muslim and immigrants that put them in the same sack of crime, drugs and terrorism physically upset me. Specially when some people claim against intolerance from other intolerance.

That would upset me too, as a human only. It doesn't mean that I am going to stop pecking on their intolerant -or to make it more palatable for you: the intolerant sections of their- scriptures. (And no westerner seem to drive trucks into muslim populated markets where I live).
But let me ask you this. If these people are insulted -while living in the west- because of following a man who married a child (Aisha's own account of the event specifically points to her being a playground child, not as much to her age), or for some other 7th century desert clause of their religion, isn't that a good thing that can leave a real mark in their mind to start questioning the whole thing? I remember a motto I read on someone's avatar that stuck with me a long time "if you don't wanna be laughed at, don't hold laughable beliefs"). So sometimes insult can really serve a person or even a community to turn their eyes into themselves. In the long run it might be quite useful. I mean especially while hundreds of millions of the followers of that religion applause the murdering of cartoonists (instead of acknowledging the freedom of speech they have), where do you draw the line not to insult a muslim who chose to live in the west?


[/QUOTE]AGENT 99: "Oh Max, you have killed this innocent man!"
MAXWELL SMART: “OK, OK, I know. But 99, we are fighting against C.H.A.O.S and we cannot but to lie, torture and kill! We are the good ones!”

Really? The good ones?[/QUOTE]

?

 

[David Mo]

So sometimes insult can really serve a person or even a community to turn their eyes into themselves.

An insult is the best way to start a fight with punches. If you want people get to reason, give reasons

AGENT 99: "Oh Max, you have killed this innocent man!"
MAXWELL SMART: “OK, OK, I know. But 99, we are fighting against C.H.A.O.S and we cannot but to lie, torture and kill! We are the good ones!”

Really? The good ones?

Very difficult to explain this if you don't know Maxwell Smart, Superagent 86.

 

[Carn]

I didn't know in a defensive war there was bounty to be taken.(And women and children slaves).

Sorry, there you fail seriously.

Let me present you a suggestion for a list of those wars, wherein a party did fight an offensive war and wherein this party might - if pressed realy hard - have admitted between the lines that it actually is an offensive war:

The mongol invasions and conquests (well, the later ones).


In all other wars you ever heard about all parties involved would probably always have claimed that their side is fighting a defensive war.

Alexander the Great conquering a territory as large as the roman empire at its height inside 12 years and fighting battles as far away from Greece as India? That was entirely defensive; Persia had lauchned numerous assaults against Greece and to defend against that ongoing threat Alexander had to slaughter some 100000 Persian soldiers and take Babylon; Babylon offered him the crown, so suddenly all of Persia was his rightful terrirtory, so in an ongoing defensive war he had to stamp out any remaining rebellious holdovers from the previous regime and of course some defensive actions near the border to India was necessary.

Roman Empire? They had excellent lawyers who could show beyond a shadow of doubt that it was realy due to defensive issues necessary to burn Cathargo to the ground and salt its soil. Romans only fought defensive wars.

Spanish Conquistadors? They did not start a war, they just held the Aztec ruler as prisoner and amassed wealth when some Aztec priests acted against their prohibition of human sacrifice, which required the Spanish to punish them and then the Spanish were quite busy in purely defensive actions some 3000 miles from home across an ocean.

And how did Hitler say it:
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/returning_fire.htm
"We have now been returning the fire since 5:45 a.m.! [5] (Seit 5.45 Uhr wird jetzt zurückgeschossen!)"

You understand the pattern?

There are no offensive wars (nearly; i still think some mongols might have admitted that fighting in Poland or near Bagdad had not been in the strictest sense defensive).

But since bounty and slaves were made in a lot of wars, these must have happened in defensive wars; hence, bounty and slaves are a normal feature of defensive wars.


Of course, that will happen the opposite side in the discussion little:

"the concept of “yihad” (fight) that can mean a defensive war against those that attack the Islam"

Wonderful; so Islam is so peaceful because Muslims have only a religious duty to fight in defensive wars.

As the number of officially non-defensive wars since the dawn of time might be counted with one or two hands, only having a duty to fight in defensive wars is for practical purposes identical to having a duty to fight in wars.


Actually, this duty makes Islam even less peaceful; because exactly speaking this duty is an individual duty for every able-bodied muslim capable in light of other duties and resources able to join the fight for defending Islam.

Since in every population there are some 1-5% nuts who believe all kinds of crazy political conspiracy nonesense, by feeding these nuts an adequate conspiracy nonsense one can maneuver them into a position that at least from their individual perspective they are due to Islamic law required to join the fight.


And that this is not some crazy outlandish stuff is visible from islamistic terror groups exactly following this recruitment pattern; they refer to some political events/issue, try to show these being a case of an attack against Islam and thereby appeal to other Muslims to join the fight; and if they would succeed to activate the 1-5% nuts also existing among able bodied muslims, they have an adequate pool of fighters for a lot of military activities; fortunately, they mostly do not manage to activate that potential recruitment pool to its full extent.


This by the way also destroys the "oh, they are just mentally ill"-nonesense; obviously, mentally ill people are more easy to be fed some "Islam is under attack, you have the religious duty to fight in this defensive war"-stuff and accept it.

 

[winter salt]

No no, I am in complete agreement about what you say about every war being defensive in the eyes of the warring parties. I actually was afraid that my co-debater while we were exchanging Koranic verses would bring up verses that really really sound like promoting defensive war and I would have to do what you just did, explaining that the attackers also are defensive, in their reasoning only. I just didn't have the necessary tools to effectively explain this, like you just did. Therefore completely avoided it. (Bringing up the verses that talk about defending the faithful in Makka and elsewhere).
But where I said your quote of me I meant to show that it was not -in reality- defensive wars early muslims waged. With the exception of one maybe..(I didn't mean that "bounty is not taken in a defensive war", I said it to show that they actually repeatedly "went" into the lands of their enemy and that makes their claim of defensive war absurd).

 

[David Mo]

(…)
As the number of officially non-defensive wars since the dawn of time might be counted with one or two hands, only having a duty to fight in defensive wars is for practical purposes identical to having a duty to fight in wars.

“Officially” don’t mean truly. “Officially” excuses to start an imperialist war don’t mean that to discover when a war is offensive and when it is not would be impossible. The fact that the Geneva Conventions on war rules have been systematically violated in almost every war don’t make them responsible of this violation.

In the case of Islam, the ulema have declared a “defensive” war —this is to say, a legitimate jihad— by consensus only once in recent times. This means that the jihad concept can be interpreted in a restrictive way that contradicts all claims of the minority terrorist. Support to terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA can be more or less widespread in Muslim countries —it is difficult to quantify, but recent polls show that it is very limited— but it is not directly related to the reading of the Koran. Imperialist wars don’t need the Koran to find an excuse.

Summarizing: Some alternative readings of “defensive” war in the Koran are possible and have been the case in recent years among Muslim authorities. This means that the use of the Koran as excuse for imperialist wars is not as broad as it was in other times —Ummaya caliphate, Turquish empire, etc. It looks as if the recent evolution of Islam was following Christianity: no Crusade has been officially declared in recent years either.

 

[winter salt]

In the case of Islam, the ulema have declared a “defensive” war —this is to say, a legitimate jihad— by consensus only once in recent times. This means that the jihad concept can be interpreted in a restrictive way that contradicts all claims of the minority terrorist.

The sunni Ulema (islamic sholars) you mention didn't use any different source in declaring the Afgan war "a leigitimate jihad" than the "minority terrorist" do to legitimize their attacks elsewhere. There is no contradiction. You should consider these two clauses regarding the jihad,

1.if there is an invader every man is obligated to fight
2.if there is no invader, some men can stay behind.

So with the Afgan war the USA wanted as many muslims fight the Russians as possible therefore Ulema's voice on the issue was heard everywhere. The ulema of today actually do nothing more than quoting 1000 year old books. So I don't even understand why you brought up the "ulema"..

 

[winter salt]

David Mo, I understand your persistence and effort in steering Islamic religion away from the understanding of the jihadists, and it might help Muslims who live in the more civilized West in certain areas of their lives.
But you never addressed my concern about by not being honest about the changeable or unchangeable ugly aspects of it causing generations of Muslims to come stay with the dogma and resulting in many other sufferings for the sake of eliminating a few events of discrimination towards peaceful Muslims that may take place in the modern West.
Is it okay to hide or warp the very strong and negative aspects of a religion that can be very vital data for the 21st century young human beings who happen to be born to religious societies in their decision-making whether this claim of divinity is true or false and can save them a life-time of mental (at the least) anguish. I am talking about generations of people that are not even born yet to the Muslim world. For the sake of protecting a few million Muslims who happened to have escaped from the societies that their religion shaped for more than a millennium and maybe just for enjoying the comforts of life in the "West".
As an intellectual can you feel good about the more extended suffering your approach will cause. Let me be clear on what I mean if you are keen on ignoring this issue.
When I was questioning the religion at a critical moment early in my youth I came across (what a surprise) a book written by the Egyptian apologist for Shariah Mohammad Qutub. And it played a major factor to go even deeper into religion and join religious groups. I was fooled by apologists and I hate them for it today. I wasted my college education and my happy family life for this, it is the main reason I left the country where my family live. To be able to freely re-think everything, by staying away from the religious friends group and by learning English to access information freely. It is a serious business to not show the young people who are at the threshold what religion had been until some apologist re-interpretted it for making it acceptable for the modern era generations. It doesn't make it much less harmful.
You want to hide what Islam is in its cannons, how it was understood and lived until modernism put the pressure on religions to change.
If apologists didn't make the child marriage of Mohammad somehow acceptable for the modern Muslims, or all other palliating interpretations of religious decrees young people would have a lot of data available to them to clearly see the dogma for what it is , for what it has been.
Your idea of help by reform for making life even better for the Modern world muslims help many young lives be destroyed, for generations to come.
I do not respect what you are doing. If you believe Islam is a man-made dogma, why remove or warp data that can show this to countless impressionable young Muslims most of whom are not even yet born, for the sake of the few that live in the West for either the comforts they access there or for escaping their dictatorial societies which their religion shaped in the first place?

 

[winter salt]

You tube:

"Atheist Experience 21.37 with Matt Dillahunty and Muhammad Syed"

Syed @Min 26 : "We need to stop impowering dishonest Muslims."

@Min 39 Reformer Edip Yuksel calls the show and makes an ass of himself..

How interesting (!) it is that this ex-muslim is on the same page with me on most issues, especially on how reformists make the job of people who really want to help Muslims much harder..

 

[David Mo]

The sunni Ulema (islamic sholars) you mention didn't use any different source in declaring the Afgan war "a leigitimate jihad" than the "minority terrorist" do to legitimize their attacks elsewhere. There is no contradiction. You should consider these two clauses regarding the jihad,

My original statement is that the concept of jihad can be interpreted in two ways. I don’t know if you consider this a “contradiction”, but it is clearly shown with your own words.

David Mo, I understand your persistence and effort in steering Islamic religion away from the understanding of the jihadists, and it might help Muslims who live in the more civilized West in certain areas of their lives.
(…)
Is it okay to hide or warp the very strong and negative aspects of a religion that can be very vital data for the 21st century young human beings who happen to be born to religious societies in their decision-making whether this claim of divinity is true or false and can save them a life-time of mental (at the least) anguish. (…)
To be able to freely re-think everything, by staying away from the religious friends group and by learning English to access information freely. (…)
You want to hide what Islam is in its cannons, how it was understood and lived until modernism put the pressure on religions to change.
If apologists didn't make the child marriage of Mohammad somehow acceptable for the modern Muslims, or all other palliating interpretations of religious decrees young people would have a lot of data available to them to clearly see the dogma for what it is , for what it has been.
Your idea of help by reform for making life even better for the Modern world muslims help many young lives be destroyed, for generations to come.
I do not respect what you are doing. (…)

You are not the only one that has been mystified by religion when he was young. I have been indoctrinated in ultra-Catholicism till my teens and I know how to get rid of it.
I am not preaching for the true Islam or hidden anything. I stress the importance of pointing out the risks of a doctrinal interpretation of Islam and I believe that your insistence on proclaiming that it is the only valid, even in order to combat it, is a risk in itself. Your comments are insulting —what the hell you know about my feelings— and erroneous.
Of course, illustration and rationality are the best ways to overcome religions. But you cannot force religious people to read Voltaire if they don’t want to do it. Many people want to remain in a religion and they will not change if you shout again and again that their belief is a ◊◊◊◊. Even on the contrary.

The defence of rationality and the conditional support of modern religious interpretations are not incompatible, but alternative ways that depend on circumstances and the nature of your opponent. That requires some degree of flexibility that you don’t have. It is a pity.

 

[winter salt]

But you cannot force religious people to read Voltaire if they don’t want to do it.

I didn't argue for a strategy to wake up the Religious other then allowing young people to see what religion is and has been.
I didn't argue for a free thinking (which is not a bad thing) propaganda .

I only say that people like you empower dishonest apologists by supporting the idea that a rigid religion of Islam can be reformed by lying to young people who are wavering between rationality and dogma. (That was me at the age of 17, my family didn't indoctrinate me as much as these apologists did). That is harm done to these folks. I don't care so much about the hardcore religionists.

The defence of rationality and the conditional support of modern religious interpretations are not incompatible, but alternative ways that depend on circumstances and the nature of your opponent.

What "alternative ways" there is?
I read a 200-some page book written in 1800s by an Ottoman Muslim scholar detailing tortures of Hell at the age of 16.
I was ready to scrap the whole thing, until I came across 20th century apologist books that convinced me to stay in dogma.

There is either an eternal Hell for rejecting religion or not.

There is no other way no matter how much you modernize it.

Why create road blocks in front of rationality for young people ?

That requires some degree of flexibility that you don’t have. It is a pity.

It is a pity what happens to the hundreds of millions youth in every generation who are deprived from their chance to see what religion is and has been by the modifications and beautification improvised by apologists and their supporters.

I want to hear from you what "alternative ways" there are. Kindly explain it.

 

[aleCcowaN]

@Min 39 Reformer Edip Yuksel calls the show and makes an ass of himself..

"the strongest argument I have [about the existence of god] is the number 19 in the Quran..."

 

[winter salt]

"the strongest argument I have [about the existence of god] is the number 19 in the Quran..."

Edip Yuksel...
He should come here since he is this "formidable" debater.
It really shows how much we can trust his calculations of the 19 in the Koran when he presents himself as this great debater for God while no atheist debater he claims to have debated with took him seriously.
I watched his whole "conversation" with David Silverman. There was hardly any talk about evidence for Allah or Islam. He spent his whole time with a broken English (yes I am saying this because he presents himself as a professor of philosophy in an American college) to explain his #19 "discovery" (actually it was Rashad Khalifa's invention) and Silverman just humored him like he would listen to a kid babbling about.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Edip Yuksel...
He should come here since he is this "formidable" debater.

The most absurd assertion from him is that the 19 stuff in the Quran is "humanly impossible". I wonder what mathematical formation all of these crackpots have had. In the time of bitcoins, they presume of lecturing us on what mathematical prowesses humans are capable or not.

I bet people squeezing Kennedy's assassination from the Bible or the death of pope John Paul the First from Nostradamus' are much keener in math than this 19s folk (and I'm not pretending to claim any superiority for the West as all of them are equally dead wrong)

 

[David Mo]

What "alternative ways" there is?
(...)

There is either an eternal Hell for rejecting religion or not.
There is no other way no matter how much you modernize it.

Why create road blocks in front of rationality for young people ?

(...)
I want to hear from you what "alternative ways" there are. Kindly explain it.

We have already discussed this and I have answered your questions several times. Kindly, I think. You are castled and we can not talk like that.

 

[winter salt]

We have already discussed this and I have answered your questions several times. Kindly, I think. You are castled and we can not talk like that.

I wasn't playing a game.

My positions on,

1. Islam's inpenetrable shield against reform,
2. The evil, apologists, and their supporters like yourself, cause was clear and consistent.

You are the one who kept adjusting your position (I explained how on #518) as you are on a shaky ground. My rebuttals of your wrong ideas about Islam went unanswered.

I thought you were a Muslim apologist for a while during the exchange and when you said you are not I thought you were not that harmful.
I changed my mind on that soon after I realized that you serve the same purpose whether you believe what you say or not.

I think it's important to point to the effects of ideas in the real world. That's why I brought up my past experience with apologists and my disdain for that category.

 

[Thor 2]

We have already discussed this and I have answered your questions several times. Kindly, I think. You are castled and we can not talk like that.

I assume you are talking about the game of chess here and your comment makes little sense in that context. Perhaps you meant "you are in check" or "you are in checkmate". None the less I don't think winter salt is either one.

 

[David Mo]

I assume you are talking about the game of chess here and your comment makes little sense in that context. Perhaps you meant "you are in check" or "you are in checkmate". None the less I don't think winter salt is either one.

Thank you for your clarification.
Yes, it is the game of chess. I was following a Spanish expression. Enrocarse (castle) means to close in yourself. You put your king behind a wall of pawns and the rook, without contact with the outside. It is a solid defensive position but ultraconservative.
Perhaps my translation was too literal.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Thank you for your clarification.
Yes, it is the game of chess. I was following a Spanish expression. Enrocarse (castle) means to close in yourself. You put your king behind a wall of pawns and the rook, without contact with the outside. It is a solid defensive position but ultraconservative.
Perhaps my translation was too literal.

Then "you dug in your heels". Or maybe "you stuck to your guns" (mantenerse en sus trece).

 

[David Mo]

Then "you dug in your heels". Or maybe "you stuck to your guns" (mantenerse en sus trece).

A liked the chess metaphor. It is very expressive. Thank you anyway.