Is Islam like a drug? (Hamed Abdel Samad, political scientist)

blinded by my religious beliefs? I don't share many beliefs with these extremist or terrorist outside of the name clearly, I am a moderate for that of a matter. So I am not even speaking of my religious beliefs, and not just talking of these particular extremist, but of extremists and radicals fo all faiths/cultures and that goes with the kkk christianity, the catholic priest, the IRA, the blacks in jail or the high school grad rate and whatever other minority group or a religion/race that you can try to stereotype and generalize on that the root is the the issue that they are christian, muslim, black, white, hispanic, but the roots are usually elsewhere. I just think you are closed in on your worldview and anything else is dismissed as ignorant, fanatical, or blinded when i think majority of the board see you as that

 

Once you "reform" Islam what is next?

Hinduism

Christianity

I was born in India and lived there till I was 11, I still have a lot of family there and I make visits once in a while. Therefore I believe am fairly educated about the region, and anyone who is from India knows that there are quite a few terrorist organizations in India, I mean I may be exaggerating but I believe each state has at least one terrorist organization in it and there are a total of 28 states in India. Majority of these terrorist organizations consists of Hindu's or people who claim to follow the Hindu religion. The most wanted terrorist in India (Veerappan) who was killed a few years ago was Hindu, this guy was India's version of Bin Laden, him and his organizations killed many innocent individuals reports say 120 people at least. Another terrorist organization in the region is The Tamil Tigers who were actually conducting suicide bombings long before any Muslim ever did, they were mainly consisted of Hindus and a few Christians.

I do not see the commonality between the terrorist groups in India being Islam (I mean these people that make up the groups hate Islam just as much as the person who started this thread), rather I see the problem as being lack of worldly and religious education. All of these groups that I have mentioned mainly consist of the lower class of the society that are not educated and the only view of the "world" they have is what they are surrounded with.

Islam just has the misfortune of being under the negative limelight, but if one breaks their mind out of the cocoon created by the media, one will see that the commonality between terrorist organizations is not religion, rather it is lack of education.

 

Wish that were true.

Unfortunately we've got college educated people committing terrorist acts now.

The common thread is actually either explicit and/or ambiguous religious doctrine that provides justification for violence toward others.

 

Hakeem needed some brainwashing to do what he did during Ramadan.

 

Dude, they promise that you can ***** 40 virgins in heaven, if you martyr yourself to fight the infidels.

If you're 25, a virgin, living in your parent's basement ... and someone offers you 40 hot, sexy, women for eternity.... How can you resist that ?

 

My opinion is that the crux of the issue is a clash of religion and economics. Islam is not able to deal with the capitalistic nature of the world. Incentives (or greed) for material gain is basis for evil according to Islam. Hence you see "extremism" in Islam gain significance after western countries' GDPs shooting dramatically higher after WWII.

Islam's literal meaning is "submission to God". It inherently believes that one cannot submit to God if he/she is chasing worldly possessions. With an extremists view, not submitting to God is evil. Hence, capitalism and western society is evil and must be fought.

 

The "center" of Islam, Saudi Arabia contradicts that statement. The Saudi Royal family is one of the greediest worldly families out there.

 

I agree, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is much larger in Arab countries than in the US. Therefore they need something to keep the masses in check ... enter Islamic Radicalism, then they need an enemy to blame for their economic problems .... enter the Western world and Israel.

 

Basically yes.

 

Doesn't Christianity have something similar?

Matthew 6:24 ESV / 23 helpful votes

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Additional information about Materialism according to the bible

 

but isnt life as a whole a series of chemical reactions via drugs?

 

Islam became the terrorists only after the oil was found in their home.

 

Also they only became "terrorists" after they resisted folks taking their land from them in Palestine.

Yeah, Islam can be a drug, but so can Jesus.

There is a reason why many addicts substitute certain types of Christianity for street drugs.

 

as Karl Marx once said...

 

People who still have weird belief systems like religions need to come to their senses, then you will know.

Once you know you wont need to believe any longer and then we can all live in peace.

 

The word Saudi comes from Al Saud. If your country was called "Bush's America" at some point in the future and made into a Christian nation, you can imagine what that would imply about the preceding events which led to the name change. Other "Americans" such as Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians and Chileans would have nothing to do with it. Christians would not have anything to do with the behavior of the Bush family. More importantly, Christianity should not be judged by the behavior of the Bush family, regardless of how the Bush family presents itself in Bush's America.

If one family in Sicily by the name of the Pacinos took control of Italy and the Vatican after oil was discovered there (let's assume that the Vatican is central to Christianity) with the help of North Korean arms and funding, and renamed the place to Pacino Europia, that doesn't mean the actions of that family should have anything to do with Christianity or Europe or Italians, even if they behave like historic Christians and Europeans and Italians, and act as the guardians of these ambiguous qualities.

Islam, FYI, does not and has never recognized nation-states and hence does not recognize any nation-state as its center or its enemy or anything at all. It recognizes the concept of Umma, which is purely a collection of people who see themselves as one group with one goal, and specifically excludes territory and governance.

The area known as Saudi Arabia today happens to contain the central place of pilgrimmage for most Muslims > the Kaaba. Saudi Arabia has only existed during 5% of Islam's life on earth, whereas as the Kaaba has existed for 100% of Islam's life, and in its physical form has existed long before that. It also contains other historic sites related to the Prophet and Islam, only because of the irrelevant and random event of the Prophet being born in the territory known as Saudi Arabia today.

Finally, the royal family of that country are not one of the greediest families in the world by any stretch of the imagination. In any tiny population anywhere in the world you can find a family willing to accept the offer that was made to them. Every territory in the world has had some family in history do the same things to the maximum of their abilities given the same level of power. It just happens that that country is among the last nation-states in the world where people continue to tolerate family rule. Your take a family backed by the strongest government in world history, supported by an unimaginably massive pot of money, strategically partnering with one of the most violent ideological groups in the world and place them on top of the poorest and least widely educated people in the world - it's no wonder how things are, the obstacles are greater than most other people have ever faced. The population were as weak as can be: people were dying of starvation and selling their children into prostitution at that point in history.

So even if as you say, the royal family of that country contradicts that statement, it doesn't matter. Muslims/Infidels are identified as Muslims/Infidels by God, not by people themselves, and not by people around them. This is why Islam has a judgement day - it is a recognition of the absolutely futile exercise of humans making assertions towards whether someone is Muslim or not. That doesn't mean you can't have an opinion about who is and isn't Muslim >> it just means that you can never ever be reasonably certain about your assertion, and therefore you can never act on it. There are plenty of stories which highlight this, such as:

A prostitute in heaven. In an "Islamic country", that prostitute would have been labelled an infidel and executed before she would ever help a thirsty dog.