http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WLoasfOLpQ&mode=related&search= this woman has some balls giving it to the cleric. i found it pretty interesting and insightful.
I did, and I can tell you that while she makes some decent points that most Muslims would agree with, she is more full of sh** than anything else. Her views are extremely one-sided. She's extremely disrespectful and comes across as someone with a heavy agenda against Islam when she brushes aside the numerous contributions Muslims have made to human civilization. Of course, I have to mention her silly attempt at using out-of-context passages from hadiths and Quranic verses to qualify her argument. Her entire 'message' is lost on her potential audience because her rhetoric and her style comes off as something straight out of your typical anti-Islam propaganda website on the Internet. Are there problems with extremism in the Muslim world? Yes, absolutely, and it needs to be addressed, which is made exponentially more difficult a taske when Muslims are always on the defensive or are being mocked and provoked...it makes my job that much more difficult. Respect is a two-way street. There will either be dialogue or a clash...crap like what this lady spewed (which she has a right to) gives the Arab and largely Muslim audience she just addressed the idea that this IS a 'clash', and that they either 'surrender' and accept the blame or else...her message is clear: you change, you do all the work, you become 'worthy' of our time, then all our problems will be solved. The only 'valid' point she made was that there is extremism in the Muslim world that should be addressed. A big fat "Duh!" for that... Regardless, props to Al-Jazeera for giving her a platform to say what she wanted to say, that BTW is one of my favorite shows on their network. It's very confrontational (that's the entire idea of the show) and usually has two sides with radically different views debating -- or rather screaming -- at each other. It's very controversial too, because it usually touches on topics that are controversial in nature and they manage to ruffle a few feathers from time to time.
Wasn't the muslim religion founded on the premise of violence? Mohammed leading troops to convert people or kill them if they refused?
Umm no. Not from what I have read about Islam. Where did you get that from? I would love to hear your sources. Any muslim on this board wanna refute Longtimefan's claim?
Islam was persecuted by its enemies from the very beginning. The polytheistic Arabs feared the loss of revenue from carvans praying to the idols at Mecca so they attempted to stomp out Islam. The Arabs out numbered the Muslims, and yet the Muslims were victorious. In fact, the evenutal conversion by the dhimmi lead to the fall of the Islamic empires. Why do you fear Islam?
In principle, non-Muslims were to pay jizas, which were made to roughly equate the 'tax' (or the zakat and saddaqas) Muslims paid on annual basis. The goal was not to force people to convert, in fact, much of the land conquered by Arabs in the early years of expansions remained mostly non-Muslim hundreds of years later. Moreover, some of the far corners of the world that now have hundreds of millions of Muslims were never reached by any Muslim army.
Sorry, I didn't mean to state it as fact. My source.. is my ancient history class this summer . I'm going to look for the text book and refresh my memory though, as tigermission's jiza's do sound familiar. However, I distinctly remember thinking that the Muslim religion was essentially founded on violence. I'll see if I can dig up the books. EDIT: I think I left my books in storage, but I'll be back next week and start a new thread or re-visit this one.
I think she is ultimately right. the world is getting smaller and smaller. Whether it is right or wrong, it will not stop human evolution. Through all the suffering, something marvelous is about to happen.
No disrespect, but all history is extremely bias. In your case, you're citing a book that was published in 1991. To me, that would include entirely too much bias to label it as fact. I know my first post in this thread was about material on a text, but I'm not going around telling people they're wrong.
And as I recall, the Muslims were the persecuted minority in Mecca before eventually migrating to Yathrib out of sheer necessity for their security. When they returned to conquer Arabia, it was a bloodless conquest. Fighting and tribal warfare were the norms in pre-Islamic Arabia. This is not analagous to normative conditions in the current global village. The tribe fought for survival or was annihilated. It was a basic reality of life. Islam vanquished this perpetual state of tribal warfare by establishing brotherhood under belief of one God.
I've studied the history extensively. War is a fundamental principle in Islam. It's not a pacifist ideology. That's similar to any great civlization. However, the statement that Islam was "founded on violence" is completely factually incorrect.
I think she hit the nail on the hammer...especially with statements around how no Jew has strapped a bomb on themselves or how no Buddist did harm to Islam and yet the radicals tear down the world's treasures. I will never read the Quron, but when a Muslim says there are many places where it calls for the death of the infidel...the non-believers, which include me...then it does lead credence to the idea that Islam may be more a religion of violence then other religions. I'm not trying to offend you...but the evidence is certainly there.
