Is Islam an evil religion?

[Bill Thompson]

how is it remotely incontrovertable?
1400 years have obscured many things.

Easy. The left lots of hadiths.

BikerDruid, do you know those funny inspirational images that have thick black frames and a motivational expression in them? Your alias is in one.

 

[bikerdruid]

We have been over this.
Lots of Muslim Scholars cited.
Here is your proof

that's really pretty vulgar.
you will have to do a lot better than that.

 

[Bill Thompson]

The...

Dude do you actually..ya know hanged around muslims? My ex gf is a muslim, some of my friends are muslims, nowhere have they stated to do or act like the way you suggest. And they are definitely good persons (one of my friend´s is a bit of a wise guy, but meh, it happens).

pshaw. Now, tell me, where have I suggested Muslims act some special way you find objectionable?

Are we going through that hog wash again where people who hold a bad belief are thought to be attacked if their belief is attacked? And if someone wants to tell the people that their ideas are wrong, they are a bigot?

Do you know what an abolitionist was? Would you define an abolitionist as a "slavery bigot"?

 

[Bill Thompson]

that's really pretty vulgar.
you will have to do a lot better than that.

It is a lot less offensive as you calling me a bigot.

Since when do you actually click on my links?

There are tons of Muslim Scholars who support the idea of following the widely accepted example set forth by Mohammed when he performed what Western culture would consider to be pedophelia. I gave you those links in Mermi TV.

 

[Robrob]

I asked the Muslim I work with and he told me that if anyone in his family decided to leave Islam he could not do so openly. He would have to quietly stop going the masque but not make a big deal out of it. He could never tell a relative that he was leaving Islam. That would not be possible. That is what my Muslim friend told me.

Sounds like cult mentality to me. I does not sound like religious mentality to me.

Sounds like any religious group ever (and even some non-religious groups).

 

[Giordano]

Bill,

You are not helping your argument by descending into ever more wild rhetorical statements. And please stop pretending to not understand what people have clearly stated and explained multiple times.

My point (before you ask, "what's your point" or say "I don't understand") is this: if you want to argue that some Moslems have dangerous beliefs or have done awful things, no one here would disagree. But if you seek to argue that all Moslems think this way, or that Islam is the only religion that is used to justify evil acts, then you clearly have no ground to stand on. In fact, your posts only demonstrate that your knowledge of Islam has been picked up virtually exclusively from anti-Islamic websites, and is further filtered through a lot of preconceptions. Read more widely, meet a few Moslems- you will be surprised and improved by the experience!

And please, enough of the "Oh, so you are saying it's okay that Moslems are x if other religions are x (except other religions aren't really x, because they only pretend to believe x)" routine. It is not convincing.

 

[A'isha]

I gave you those links in Mermi TV.

Sweet sizzling Jesus on a stick, Bill, it's MEMRI. M-E-M-R-I! The Middle East Media Research Institute!

There's only five letters, and you haven't gotten it correct even once!

 

[Bill Thompson]

I am glad to see you are paying attention and that you are useful. I go for content and meaning over minutia. Thanks for the spell check.

I don't think you should bear false witness and don't support a belief system that does. That is just as bad. Here are just a few lies in the Quran.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7521833&postcount=231

So your argument is we should not convict a double homocide because we let other double homcides slip away? Sorry O.J. Simpson's mom, that ain't gonna fly.

 

[bikerdruid]

Here are just a few lies in the Quran.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7521833&postcount=231

.

you have never answered my question.....
have you read the koran, or just the naughty bits?

 

[Bill Thompson]

Bill,

You are not helping your argument by descending into ever more wild rhetorical statements. And please stop pretending to not understand what people have clearly stated and explained multiple times.

My point (before you ask, "what's your point" or say "I don't understand") is this: if you want to argue that some Moslems have dangerous beliefs or have done awful things, no one here would disagree. But if you seek to argue that all Moslems think this way, or that Islam is the only religion that is used to justify evil acts, then you clearly have no ground to stand on. In fact, your posts only demonstrate that your knowledge of Islam has been picked up virtually exclusively from anti-Islamic websites, and is further filtered through a lot of preconceptions. Read more widely, meet a few Moslems- you will be surprised and improved by the experience!

And please, enough of the "Oh, so you are saying it's okay that Moslems are x if other religions are x (except other religions aren't really x, because they only pretend to believe x)" routine. It is not convincing.

I never said Islam is the only religion used to justify evil acts. But is sure seems to be the only religion today that is the root cause of most religiously motivated evil acts.

I never said that two wrongs make a right. That is what others are demanding is the ethical approach to take.

And the web site that broadcasts tv from the mid east does not seem to be an anti-islamic one. There is no op-ed comentary. It seems pretty straight and unfiltered to me.

Others have insisted that other religions are worse. When I ask them to elaborate it is somehow something they seem to have not really thought out completely.

Sometimes a murderer kills because he is a killer, not because he is a christian. It is intellectually dishonest to use someone's religion to support their motivation when they are motivated by other factors.

The guy in Norway is one example. If he did what he did because of Christianity, why did he bomb other Norwegian Christians?

Also you are missing the important historical and human angle to this issue. For instance, what do you think of this person's perspective regarding Islam?



Others have insisted that other religions are worse. When I ask them to elaborate it is somehow something they seem to have not really thought out completely. Then finally it is something completely nonthreatening like the myth that the right wingers can make abortion illegal.

 

[Bill Thompson]

you have never answered my question.....
have you read the koran, or just the naughty bits?

I read it when I was once seriously considering becoming a Muslim.

My first take is this? Do you know what a brown noser is? I can see that the Quran was written in hard times when people were servants to other people and there was a need to brown nose the master. Here, Allah is the master to brown nose. The tone of the Quran sounds like what a brown noser would say to a master who he really wants to impress him. It is this way right out of the gate:

1:1 In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
1:2 Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,
1:3 The Beneficent, the Merciful.

What, wait a second. God is merciful? and you just said "Beneficent, the Merciful" twice, you brown noser.

It is like what Joesph Smith would have said to a childhood friend before coming up with the whole golden plates idea.
"look at this, look at this passage in the bible. Look, see how absurd it is. I wonder why people believe this stuff. It is exactly like the gold digging scam. People will accept it because you tell them that it is real from a position of authority. It is like we say 'I have a long record of credibility finding gold by reading the vibrations in the rock'. They will believe it because they are told to believe it. You say 'here, this is the word of god'. They will believe it because you told them and they need to. Any doubt that it is real is gone instantly. And any flaw found will be regarded as a flaw in the eye of the beholder"


Since I already knew the Book of Mormon was hog wash, why would the Quran impress me if I applied the same logic to it?


Since I already knew that most of the stories in the Bible never happened, why would the Quran impress me if it simply retold many of those myths?

 

[Johny2x4]

pshaw. Now, tell me, where have I suggested Muslims act some special way you find objectionable?

Are we going through that hog wash again where people who hold a bad belief are thought to be attacked if their belief is attacked? And if someone wants to tell the people that their ideas are wrong, they are a bigot?

Do you know what an abolitionist was? Would you define an abolitionist as a "slavery bigot"?

Well gee I dunno, the entire thread?

As for the rest, I´m not the one painting people in a wide brush. As for the guy in Norway..did you ave a look to his manifesto Of course not, since it would clash with your view of the world.

 

[Bill Thompson]

Well gee I dunno, the entire thread?

As for the rest, I´m not the one painting people in a wide brush. As for the guy in Norway..did you ave a look to his manifesto Of course not, since it would clash with your view of the world.

That is. Humm.... Cannot find a good adjective this morning straight-away..

Anyway, you are wrong.

I never understand how, for example, some kid goes to college that is NOT BYU and takes a class in psychology and then warns his friends that what he thought was a religion he grew up with was actually a cult or otherwise very very bad. If he warns them, he is somehow "anti-mormon" and is "painting people with a wide brush" and is somehow AGAINST the PEOPLE of a religion instead of FOR the PEOPLE of a religion and is trying to warn them that what they are being told is hog wash.

It is the same kind of thing with Islam.

A good friend of mine was fired that I had worked with for the last couple of months because he could not do his job. He could not do his job because of ramadan. He could not concentrate. I think this practice was just a way Mo could suppress people and mske them more submissive. It is a bad thing. But my saying this is NOT being AGAINST a people.

You missed the point in this:

Do you know what an abolitionist was? Would you define an abolitionist as a "slavery bigot"?

I think maybe you do not know what an abolitionist was and you were too lazy to look it up. Best, you figure, to just generalize me without bothering to understand me.

Now, how is that not bad, what you just did? How is that not offensive to me?

 

[bikerdruid]

I read it when I was once seriously considering becoming a Muslim.

My first take is this? Do you know what a brown noser is? I can see that the Quran was written in hard times when people were servants to other people and there was a need to brown nose the master. Here, Allah is the master to brown nose. The tone of the Quran sounds like what a brown noser would say to a master who he really wants to impress him. It is this way right out of the gate:

What, wait a second. God is merciful? and you just said "Beneficent, the Merciful" twice, you brown noser.

It is like what Joesph Smith would have said to a childhood friend before coming up with the whole golden plates idea.
"look at this, look at this passage in the bible. Look, see how absurd it is. I wonder why people believe this stuff. It is exactly like the gold digging scam. People will accept it because you tell them that it is real from a position of authority. It is like we say 'I have a long record of credibility finding gold by reading the vibrations in the rock'. They will believe it because they are told to believe it. You say 'here, this is the word of god'. They will believe it because you told them and they need to. Any doubt that it is real is gone instantly. And any flaw found will be regarded as a flaw in the eye of the beholder"


Since I already knew the Book of Mormon was hog wash, why would the Quran impress me if I applied the same logic to it?


Since I already knew that most of the stories in the Bible never happened, why would the Quran impress me if it simply retold many of those myths?

you know, bill....
this ispointless.
you are obviously fanatical about your hatred.
any further discussion of this matter with you is much like pounding my head against a brick wall.
it is going to feel soo good......
..to stop.
this thread is off the list.
bye.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Oh, he said (Osama bin Laden said) in that famous video tape that the marines found (some conspiracy theorists say it was a hoax but the hoaxers have been debunked) that was abandoned in Afghanistan. In it, he met an Arab friend and he was seen sitting down on the floor bragging and reflecting on the day and the training involved. It was transcribed. I read the transcription.

Then surely you can link to a transcription.

 

[slingblade]

for what's probably the hundredth time in this thread alone:

Almost all religions are something I consider "evil," because almost all of them rely on encouraging wishful, magical thinking for conducting everyday life. I would exclude any that don't do this, and/or don't rely on a god-figure to grant your wishes and provide you with miracles, morals, and moolah.

As for religious people, I prefer to try to judge them as individuals.

I will eagerly admit to a HUGE bias against the religious people amongst whom I was brought up: Fundies. Again, while it's best to judge them individually, there's something about the Fundie mindset, in any religion, that draws the nutters and the Mean People. So, I find Fundamentalism and Fundamentalists to generally be undesirable.

But still, I'm happy to judge them individually, because even amongst the dirt, there are occasional diamonds.

 

[A'isha]

Then surely you can link to a transcription.

He seems to be referring to this videotape.

The only thing that resembles Bill's claims is this part:

The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn’t know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.

Which says that while the hijackers might have been unaware of the details of the operation until it started, they were all prepared for and expecting a suicide mission, and they all knew what was going to happen before taking a single step down the jetways to board their planes.

 

[Minoosh]

A good friend of mine was fired that I had worked with for the last couple of months because he could not do his job. He could not do his job because of ramadan. He could not concentrate.

Well there you go. Proof.

Plenty of religions promote fasting as a spiritual discipline. Lots of people function during Ramadan, which won't sway people who have been convinced by the experience of a guy they knew. Scripture allows exceptions to fasting, and those are interpreted variously from place to place.

Oh yeah, the Islamaphobes say the Qu'ran is not open to interpretation which it certainly is - it's also open to differences in translation which can be considerable.

If you go to a moderately Muslim country this idea that all Muslims are alike and walk in lock-step to identical interpretations of the Qu'ran falls away. This monolithic bogeyman Islam seems not so monolithic anymore. Islamic extremism may be evil but the way Islam is practiced in daily life, no. Go. See. You'll learn.

 

[Mister Agenda]

A good friend of mine was fired that I had worked with for the last couple of months because he could not do his job. He could not do his job because of ramadan. He could not concentrate.

This story seems to have grown since you first told it, Bill. How do you know why your friend was fired? Did he complain that he couldn't concentrate because he was fasting during the day? Did his boss tell you why he fired your friend? Do you work for a company that usually fires so quickly for one month of bad performance (it takes me at least three months to fire someone for poor performance, and I live in a 'right to work' state)?

Or are you speculating about why your friend was fired, and getting carried away?

 

[FireGarden]

Well there you go. Proof.

I hear the sarcasm. But I'll point out Bill's first reference to this swtory:

I have worked for the last few months with a very sweet, kind gentle guy who is also a software engineer. I had him over for dinner and his wife and my son's mom really hit if off.

He put in long hours. He never goofed off. He worked hard. He was qualified. He was educated and had the experience for the job. Yet last Friday (a couple of days ago) he was let go.

I have tried to get his side of the story as to why. If I eliminate all the possible reasons why there is only one thing that I can think of as to why.

Our jobs require us to use our brains more perhaps than any other job. If I was doing what he was doing -- spending this whole month never eating during the daylight hours, I do not think I could do my job. I cannot see how he could have done his job.

If Ramadan effected his capacity do do his job, Islam is an evil religion. He has a wife and a future to prepare for in a tough economy. I am personally impacted by this and it saddens me. I am lead to believe this religion practices this for nefarious reasons to dumb people down so they do not quesion or doubt. It is not a good thing at all. It is not what Allah would want.

Where he doesn't know, but "there is only one thing that he can think of as to why."

A good friend of mine was fired that I had worked with for the last couple of months because he could not do his job. He could not do his job because of ramadan. He could not concentrate.

No longer "If Ramadan...."
So, clearly, Bill has learnt something new about the matter. Yes, definitely, he has.