One Week in Islam: What is Wrong With This Faith???

[Mike Christ]

In the same way a corporation is not a person of itself, to ask what is wrong with a faith is a diversion from the reality of the matter: what you want to ask is what is wrong with these individuals, who happen to agree with each other on a number of things due to similar upbringings.  A man does not become overtly violent the moment he follows Islam; however, individuals raised violently may become involved in this religion, and so it is explained how individuals of X religion or more/less violent than individuals of another religion; the religion is a buffer, it doesn't exist, it only serves to hide the sociopaths of our world through dilution: it's hard to say X group is all violent, and we make the mistake of saying "Well we can't blame all of these people for the actions of a few," perhaps not toward religions or cultures a society despises but more so for their own, when what we really should be doing is classifying these people as a group on their own: we do not have a problem with Islam, or any given faith; we have a problem with sociopaths.

Thus we cannot blame a religion for behavior; the religion does not dictate behavior, it is not a living entity, it is a concept, a product of individuals who agree on a similar set of principles.  If we acknowledge these people operate under a banner, we inevitably get what we have now: a series of nation-states where evil is socialized so as no one person can be blamed (e.g. if America drone-strikes innocents, there is no individual we could ever truly point the finger at; some say the president, some say banks, some say "illuminati", but ultimately it's paid for by the "American people.")  This is how religions, nations, cultures and SJMs (etc.) all tie together: they all act as a shield to protect an individual within a collective from persecution for his actions.  Knowing this, it's a fool's job to insist there is something wrong with a faith as there's always the "exception" within the group who is not as bad as the others, or sometimes downright virtuous (the cornerstone to our collectivist shield.)  This leads to great fights between those who dislike the particular collective (in this case non-Islams, probably predominantly Christian) and those who like/participate in the collective (Islams or supporters of them.)  And vice versa; there's loads of examples of Christians doing naughty things that Islams will always point out, but, as said, the good individuals of a collective always outweigh the bad, so it's impossible to ever call one collective bad without being labelled "intolerant."  So we should see it for what it is: one big group of virtuous people, one small group of vicious people; doesn't matter what beliefs they have, if they're vicious, they're vicious, and I don't associate with vicious people.

Anyway, to answer the question: violent, oppressive childhoods lead to violent, oppressive adults; nix self-awareness, they do only what they're programmed to do, the programmers being their parents for the majority of it (the rest being largely environment.)  Nothing more to it.  If you'd like to see less of these people, make sure you raise your kids as peacefully and rationally as is possible, tell your friends to do the same, and let the vicious people kill each other off.

[Rigon]

In order to claim Christianity is 'just as bad' as an excuse for Islam , the accusers have go back in history several hundred years and then distort the truth. 
If you only beat your wives and honor kill your daughters, then you're a 'moderate' Muslim. A 'moderate' by Islamic standards would be a murderous, misogynistic, raving lunatic by Christian standards.
And let's not forget that we Americans are the ultimate targets for those currently trying to gain control of Iraq and its oil billions. That will finance just about any terrorist attack on America that these fanatics bent on world domination can dream up. Everything has its price, including nuclear weapons.

what is that exactly in the history of humanity?   Nothing or very close to nothing?  No one religion can claim supremacy.  That is kind of the problem in the first place.   Islamic fundamentalists are "thriving" more in today's world.  We should be looking for reasons.   Clearly, believing in Islam alone is not what makes people terrorists.

[sana8410]

And all religions are evil, at the moment it must be said that Islam is particularly ghastly.

In the Middle Ages, when Christianity was doing much the same things this post is condemning Islam, Muslim scholars were making massive advances in astronomy, mathematics and other pursuits.

Societies have a close relationship with their principal religion and mankind will stagnate so long as religions are anchoring them.

I do agree that Islam, if it continues with the present bunch of fanatics leading them, will probably go in reverse.

“Men never do evil so completely  or so joyfully than when they do it from religious   conviction.”  Blaise Pascal.

Bring yourself into the present, look around the world and see what Christian nations have created. Then look at islam and tell me there is no difference? If you still despise the Christian values this country was founded on you are free to move to another nation, maybe one based on atheism.

[Rigon]

And all religions are evil, at the moment it must be said that Islam is particularly ghastly.

In the Middle Ages, when Christianity was doing much the same things this post is condemning Islam, Muslim scholars were making massive advances in astronomy, mathematics and other pursuits.

Societies have a close relationship with their principal religion and mankind will stagnate so long as religions are anchoring them.

I do agree that Islam, if it continues with the present bunch of fanatics leading them, will probably go in reverse.

“Men never do evil so completely  or so joyfully than when they do it from religious   conviction.”  Blaise Pascal.

Bring yourself into the present, look around the world and see what Christian nations have created. Then look at islam and tell me there is no difference? If you still despise the Christian values this country was founded on you are free to move to another nation, maybe one based on atheism.

Tell us what Christian nations?  Maybe you mean nations with a majority Christians.

[sana8410]

Look at the world, the whole world. Now look at the nations that islam has built and compare them to the nations that Christianity built. Where would you rather live and what religion would you prefer to live with?

Actually, Indonesia is pretty peaceful.  They've had a few incidents over the years but Ive never felt anything but safe and welcome in Indonesia.  The people are more friendly to me than they are here at home by a wide margin and Ive been all over the main muslim places like Makassar on Sulawesi.  I love it there.  Id go almost anywhere in Indonesia in a heartbeat.

You see roses and perfection, but that's not the reality. I'm surprised that you are so taken with that country while declaring the US a racist and discriminatory country.


http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/28/indonesia-religious-minorities-targets-rising-violence

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Jakarta,-Islamic-extremists-rise-against-Miss-World-and-anti-terrorist-squad-28840.html

[Rigon]

Look at the world, the whole world. Now look at the nations that islam has built and compare them to the nations that Christianity built. Where would you rather live and what religion would you prefer to live with?

Actually, Indonesia is pretty peaceful.  They've had a few incidents over the years but Ive never felt anything but safe and welcome in Indonesia.  The people are more friendly to me than they are here at home by a wide margin and Ive been all over the main muslim places like Makassar on Sulawesi.  I love it there.  Id go almost anywhere in Indonesia in a heartbeat.

You see roses and perfection, but that's not the reality. I'm surprised that you are so taken with that country while declaring the US a racist and discriminatory country.


http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/28/indonesia-religious-minorities-targets-rising-violence

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Jakarta,-Islamic-extremists-rise-against-Miss-World-and-anti-terrorist-squad-28840.html

And since those articles appeared I can provide you ten articles of violent public and/or school shootings in the United States that have killed more people than in any of those presented in your links.   Should I be saying....what a violent and horrible place the US is?.

[Rigon]

Indonesia has one of the lowest murder rates in the world, substantially lower than the US kc. In fact, it has one of the ten lowest murder rates in the world, way ahead of the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

[umair127]

Religions impact society less than the society impacts religion. The society in question will turn any religion the way that society is going. The Christian religion at the height of the Roman empire reflected that empire's value: peaceful, philosophical, explaining why the Church Fathers don't read like a bunch of ignorant nomads, but rather as educated and sophisticated men. 
But as the empire fell, the Church turned, in part due to necessity to defend itself from the depredations of the invaders, but as much as a reflection of the much harder, much more violent Dark and Middle ages that followed. Religions do not exist in vacuums: they are led by men drawn from the societies in which they exist, and they will be molded by those men.You can compare the early Church Fathers with that Christian monk who wrote, after the sack of Jerusalem, "it was good that the streets ran red with the blood of the Infidel", and noted with pleasure how many Muslim pregnant women were stabbed through the womb, killing both mother and child in a single blow.

[umair127]

When the Middle and Dark Ages ended, and the Renaissance came about (much, in part, to the Arab Caliphates and Sultanates that had preserved the works of Aristotle, Plato and others and passed them, after their conquest of Constantinople to Christian scholars in the west) then the Church reflected the excesses of the Renaissance, both in positive and negative fashion. The Christian Church has certainly impacted the development of Western Europe, but Western Europe's development (Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel comes to mind here: make the connections) impacted the Church far more. KC asks which we'd rather live in--Christian or Islamic countries--with the implication that the religion is responsible for the successful development of Christian countries versus those of Islam, but Diamond's thesis is, trust me, far safer than any psychotic screed that KC might manage to pen.

The same is true of Islam. Islam has followed the development of the countries it has spread to. The military strength of the west was enough to save Europe, the steppes of the lower Russias was enough to prevent massive invasions north after the Mongols and the Golden Khanate, and so Christianity was preserved. But where Islam could spread, it encountered societies barely advanced beyond stone age implements, and had a hard enough job laying the least veneer of civilization on them. And of course, in things like female circumcision, it adopted stone age customs as a consequence, in those areas, of being molded by those societies.

 These societies ranged from the Berbers in Morocco to the Mongols and Turks coming in from the Eurasian plains. Christianity appeared, and was adopted into and radically transformed, by the highest civilization running in the world at that time (China's Han Dynasty having collapsed right about the time Augustus ruled and Christ was born). Islam, instead, bore the brunt of the eastern invasions, and as those semi-civilized invaders were tamed, in order to tame them sufficiently to live amongst civilized Arabs, some of their customs were accepted into Islam. These customs, of course, were those of peoples living an extremely harsh life by comparison with the civilized Romans, so to expect Islam to have been able to adopt, from the Turks or Berbers, the same sort of thought and theology that the Christians were able to adopt from the Greek philosophers is simply silly.

The primary impetus for Islam today is drawn from the alienation, backwardness and repression of the states in which it operates. Saddam wasn't an Islamist, he crushed them, and when his hand was removed, we see the reaction of the people in that country, broken down not along religious lines, really, but amongst their natural ethnicities and territorial locales: it is not religion driving the conflict; it is merely the excuse for various power groupings to dance their way to the ultimate fate of the state of Iraq, as many surmise, a breakup into three states. When the Shia kill the Sunnis, that's not Islam at work, that's politics at work, with Islam being a convenient cloak.

[Wilikon]

http://www.aina.org/news/20140623185542.htm

[rel-oad]

Indonesia has one of the lowest murder rates in the world, substantially lower than the US kc. In fact, it has one of the ten lowest murder rates in the world, way ahead of the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

Indonesia doesn't suffer from the same violence as other muslim countries because it's almost 100% sunni. Other religions have been banned in the name of "keeping the peace".

[zolace]

Islam is growing more radical these days not because Islam is radical in and of itself, but rather because the political situations in many of the Islamic states is growing more and more unbalanced, and it is that which is driving the radicalization of Islam. This is, ultimately, a question of power and resources, both inter Islamic and vis a vis other nation states.

When Islam is at its best, it is everybit as peaceful, as loving, and as good as Christianity. It's just that the situation of the lands in which it is dominant are so poor, and that's not, if Diamond is right, Islam's fault, so it hardly ever gets to be shown at its best these days.

Read some T.E. Lawrence. Get a sense of what Islam is really about

[sana8410]

Look at the world, the whole world. Now look at the nations that islam has built and compare them to the nations that Christianity built. Where would you rather live and what religion would you prefer to live with?

Actually, Indonesia is pretty peaceful.  They've had a few incidents over the years but Ive never felt anything but safe and welcome in Indonesia.  The people are more friendly to me than they are here at home by a wide margin and Ive been all over the main muslim places like Makassar on Sulawesi.  I love it there.  Id go almost anywhere in Indonesia in a heartbeat.

You see roses and perfection, but that's not the reality. I'm surprised that you are so taken with that country while declaring the US a racist and discriminatory country.


http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/28/indonesia-religious-minorities-targets-rising-violence

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Jakarta,-Islamic-extremists-rise-against-Miss-World-and-anti-terrorist-squad-28840.html

And since those articles appeared I can provide you ten articles of violent public and/or school shootings in the United States that have killed more people than in any of those presented in your links.   Should I be saying....what a violent and horrible place the US is?.

The privileged white male speaks. You feel safer there than you do in your own neighborhood, maybe its because Indonesians understand your superior maleness and white privilege. Its not hard to believe you enjoy a country where women are treated as the lesser being and rapes and violent crimes against women are ignored.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/Indonesia-sexual-violence
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/01/21/indonesia-rights-rollback-religious-minorities-women

[Wilikon]

Islam is growing more radical these days not because Islam is radical in and of itself, but rather because the political situations in many of the Islamic states is growing more and more unbalanced, and it is that which is driving the radicalization of Islam. This is, ultimately, a question of power and resources, both inter Islamic and vis a vis other nation states.

When Islam is at its best, it is everybit as peaceful, as loving, and as good as Christianity. It's just that the situation of the lands in which it is dominant are so poor, and that's not, if Diamond is right, Islam's fault, so it hardly ever gets to be shown at its best these days.

Read some T.E. Lawrence. Get a sense of what Islam is really about

Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO (16 August 1888[5] – DIED 19 May 1935)

- ISIS - 2014...

[Rigon]

Look at the world, the whole world. Now look at the nations that islam has built and compare them to the nations that Christianity built. Where would you rather live and what religion would you prefer to live with?

Actually, Indonesia is pretty peaceful.  They've had a few incidents over the years but Ive never felt anything but safe and welcome in Indonesia.  The people are more friendly to me than they are here at home by a wide margin and Ive been all over the main muslim places like Makassar on Sulawesi.  I love it there.  Id go almost anywhere in Indonesia in a heartbeat.

You see roses and perfection, but that's not the reality. I'm surprised that you are so taken with that country while declaring the US a racist and discriminatory country.


http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/28/indonesia-religious-minorities-targets-rising-violence

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Jakarta,-Islamic-extremists-rise-against-Miss-World-and-anti-terrorist-squad-28840.html

And since those articles appeared I can provide you ten articles of violent public and/or school shootings in the United States that have killed more people than in any of those presented in your links.   Should I be saying....what a violent and horrible place the US is?.

The privileged white male speaks. You feel safer there than you do in your own neighborhood, maybe its because Indonesians understand your superior maleness and white privilege. Its not hard to believe you enjoy a country where women are treated as the lesser being and rapes and violent crimes against women are ignored.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/Indonesia-sexual-violence
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/01/21/indonesia-rights-rollback-religious-minorities-women

OK so you want to change the subject, which was "I felt safe in Indonesia".  It was peaceful.  You would like the subject to now be "rights of women in Indonesia"? Lets first put the subject that I was discussing to bed. I felt safe in Indonesia, because as I showed you in the data, the violent crime rate is 8X lower than the US.  That's eight.  As in 8X lower.   I felt safe because I was in fact safer than I am at home.  Have I said that yet?  So now that you were wrong, you would like to change the subject.  OK fine. Are women second class citizens in Indonesia?.....sort of but not completely.  They've had the right to vote since 1945. They can do whatever a man does for the most part (except a man doesn't have to wear a head scarf).  You can see they are protesting in the article you cited kc.  Pictures of them with hands in the air marching in Bali.  It is hard for them to press cases of workplace abuse.  The courts haven't had a favorable ear.  Domestic abuse as well.  These things also happen here.There are even national laws against discrimination of women and minorities they can rely on to demand their government enforce them in local areas that attempt to enact discriminatory or restrictive (head scarf) code.

[noviapriani]

Christianity has grown and Islam has gone backwards.  At least middle eastern Islam has gone backwards.  Because no matter the religion, the people in the middle east are savage, starting with Attilla the Hun.  They are his descendants and they have corrupted Islam.  It is not the way Islam is practiced in most of the rest of the world.  Islam can be peaceful and Turkey is an example.

[Traffic4u]

Islamphobe talked about they didn't know anything about Islam.
We are religion of peace. we are spreading peace around the world.
And the truth is they have killed and massacred moslem.

Find the truth before say anything, or shut up!!!

[Wilikon]

Islamphobe talked about they didn't know anything about Islam.
We are religion of peace. we are spreading peace around the world.
And the truth is they have killed and massacred moslem.

Find the truth before say anything, or shut up!!!

Should the islamophobes embrace the sunnis first or shiites first?  Should sunnis and shiites embrace gay marriage before the islmamophobes as a way to spread peace around the world? 

[Benjig]

Islam is going through the same violent / terrorist stage that the Christian religion went through in the Middle Ages. And for exactly the same reasons - religion used to justify personal agendas.

The Christians largely resisted their own violent period and tried to keep distant from it - think about the Inquisition and pogroms that visited violence on other parties during that period and through the Tudor age. Strangely enough - Islam is going through almost exactly the same with the majority of Muslims opposed to, but powerless to stop, the violent men.

[commandrix]

The problem isn't the faith; the problem is all the radical wingnuts who use it to promote violence. Most Muslims just want to go about their business with no more worry than earning a decent living and it's the wingnuts who hold the power in so many Muslim-dominated countries, or else hide out in caves or try to take over a significant portion of a nation so that they can enforce their idea of Shariah law (however you spell that) who cause something like 90% of the problem...the other 10% being nations who think they can "stabilize" things by overthrowing the existing government.