Bill Maher and Sam Harris arguing with Ben Affleck about Islam

You haven't been around enough Christian conservatives in this country if you believe this. Half my Facebook news feed is anti Muslim bigotry(as a veteran I obviously have several veteran friends). And no they are not just criticizing the ideology but advocating kicking all Muslims out the country etc... things you deny. There are hundreds of Muslim hate pages on facebook mostly hosted by right wingers and unfortunatly many of my Marine brothers follow them. That is why liberals tend to be very careful with Islam. They don't want to propagate the hate.

 

so where do they get these practices from? Since the mosque is the only thing available to them, that must be the source of their violent beliefs, no? Are several of the previously mentioned practices not supported by the Quran/Hadiths? How can you say that it is not an Islam itself that is the problem, when the practices themselves are supported by the very book that defines Islam?

 

And then there are people who are educated and were born and raised in secular nations and Islam was all it took for them to go overseas and fight for a group of mad men and women who behead journalists and rape women.

 

These questions are similar so I will address them simultaneously.

Let's look at Christianity. Today, it's not considered a particularly violent religion is it? But if you go back to the middle ages, Christianity was considered the religion of the barbaric. Not only did they kill others, but they killed one another - for things such as denying Christ as recently as a few hundred years ago, "anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him." - Moses

Ironically, Islam was once the enlightened world, where they considered the lands of Christianity uncivilized! Imagine that.

Religion is in and of itself nothing more than a vehicle. Man uses it for their own aims. You can use it for peace or for violence. Christianity and its history is proof of that - agreed?

So that brings us to Islam. You look at Islam in a place like Malaysian - a modern, thriving country. They don't kill people there for leaving the religion, nor do Muslims seek to rid the land of non-believers. Why? If Islam is inherently violent, how can there be peaceful Muslim communities?

That is the flaw in both of your logic. Not that Islam isn't in need of reform. It is. Just as Christianity once was. But it's not the religion itself that inspires these views, it's the backwardness and isolation of the communities. The horrible education levels. The poverty. Many of these practices existed in these lands far before Islam came into the picture. Islam itself isn't the sole source to what we see in these polls.

The people in the mosques who preach these crazy views are teaching what they have been indoctrinated with. It's not like you read the Koran and these views spontaneously come about. People who convert to Islam here in the states do not turn violent. If Islam was inherently violent then even peaceful mosques would be churning out spontaneously radicalize. No, it takes indoctrination. Islam is areas where this sort of backwardness has been in place for centuries. Many primitive cultures were violent. Native Americans were extremely violent and brutal towards other tribes and their own women for instance.

The problem with these places isn't Islam. It's modernity. They are caught in ancient civilization. They have been left behind. And that is the views we are seeing. Yes you have to break the indoctrination and understand why that is happening. There are these radical and very backward clerics that run the religion much like the Catholic Church use to be. They capitalize on world events and a perceived threat to further indoctrinate people.

You have to go after that. Go after the clerics that preach this garbage. Condemn the acts as backwards. Pressure gov'ts to modernize and join the 21st century. That will start to slowly make a difference. Integration, economic growth, education - these are the things that fight against generational indoctrination.

You have to fight the backwardness. The religion will reform when it realizes that it has to in order to stay relevant to the changing landscape of the people.

 

Serious revisionist history.

BTW there are Muslim converts in the US who have become extremist and there are Muslims who are educated and lived a comfortable lifestyle and became extremist. Education and poverty are not the only factors with extremists. There is explict text in the Quran that glorifies Muslim "warriors".

 

We're talking about radicalism, and Malaysia is not producing those radicals. You aren't reading what I am saying. The people who have been radicalized here were done so by radical people. They didn't spontaneously become radical.

I'm not talking about the poll here. I'm talking about indoctrination.

Native Americans show that non-religious primitive cultures are radical in nature often times. That is what I am saying. You can't blame everything on Islam because that's a gross oversimplification.

 

You aren't interested in even considering what I am saying. So forget it, there's not point to this discussion. It was a mistake to try.

 

I never understood how you rationalize your statement that they believe in religious freedom AND death for apostasy. Once you see that you have to basically disregard whatever they consider religious freedom.

 

This is one of the most ignorant and factually inaccurate posts on this forum in years.

 

Malaysia isn't producing or supporting radical Islamists?

Are you sure you are informed enough on the topic?

 

I'm also not sure how you could possibly describe Native Americans as "non-religious".

 

You can't engage in an honest intellectual debate here - this thread and debate is useless.

 

You sir are amazing, well said!

 

You've ignored the entire substance of my argument and nick pick on details as a means to distract from the overall case I am making.

I'm not even talking about the definition of what radical is!

 

Great post. And I tried to echo the same sentiment in the other thread about the Christian Woman being executed for blasphemy. Ignorant, stubborn and backward clerics around the Muslim world, ESPECIALLY overseas are the main villain when it comes to all that negativity that surrounds Islam. It's a major problem that only PROPER education on Islam, the Quran and the time of the Prophet will fix.

American born Muslim scholars like Yasir Qadhi, Nouman Ali Khan and converts to Islam like Suhaib Webb, Yusuf Estes, Siraj Wahhaj, Khalid Yasin, Hamza Yusuf and others are working to try and enlighten not only Muslims in America but also the ones overseas that are not getting taught properly. They have studied and gained degrees in Islamic Study, and Law and the Arabic language and are MUCH more credible then some local town Imam in impoverished Afghanistan or towns in Pakistan and Iraq and Iran that are all grumpy and pessimistic and become zealots trying to influence the folks around them without true proper knowledge.

These modern scholars and those like them go overseas and have talks and lectures and discussions and basically school the people there on proper Islam. They get met with hate from the stubborn, rigid old-school Imams and Scholars from the locality that are actually a detriment to Islam. Those old grumps don't like folks coming to them and saying, "Hey you're doing it wrong, dummy". So even those modern scholars I mention get death threats, and "you're going to Hell" and "You're ruining Islam" catcalls.

So again, the internal problem and struggle of Islam today are NOT the Teachings (Quran/Hadith) they are the TEACHERS, the old, grumpy, stubborn, vocal, unsophisticated, GROSSLY UNQUALIFIED, Imams and wanna-be scholars who give their congregation a sh!tty inaccurate version of Islam.

 

Some of this is true, however, you are only addressing part the problem, and completely absolving religious directives and doctrine of its fault and blame. That is a disservice to the situation. Many of us recognize the role that poverty, lack of education, etc. play in creating a volatile culture, but for you to dismiss the role of religion as an impetus is ignorant and dangerous. Don't give cover to toxic ideas and beliefs simply because racism and religious persecution exist.

P.S. Want to know why the Arabic world tumbled from the intellectual, scientific, and economic mountaintop of civilization? The answer is fundamentalist Islam took hold. That historical record, in and of itself, basically disproves your assertion right off the bat. You had a rich, prosperous, educated, thriving mecca that was decimated by a poisonous idea. So, clearly there is more to this equation than "advanced society = immune to crappy religions".