Lets examine the history of both religions. What religion did ancestors of most Muslims in the Middle East practice prior to Islam. You literally have a point.
Here is what led to that post: I was speaking about extremist Islam/political Islam. Hydhypedplaya responded to that and questioned that there are meaningful parallels. I then listed some parallels, still referring to political Islam/extremist Islam, as clearly stated in the post above. Why do you keep claiming that I was "referring to Islam as a whole" and "all Muslims"? Are you that dense or are you that dishonest, or both? Even if I had been referring to "Islam as a whole", this would still not mean that I would be referring to "all Muslims". See above. Xenophobic? From which perspective? Do you even know what that word means? Did Mohammed kill lots of Jews? Yes Are there passages in the Quran specifically calling for hate against Jews? Yes Do Muslims around the world have almost unanimously unfavourable opinions of Jews? Yes http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/02/04/chapter-3-views-of-religious-groups/ What is xenophobic about stating these facts?
That is so sad that governments use religions to blame for their countries poor conditions. Blame the Jews that Middle Easterners have been pounding sand for 1400 years - and killed off a wonderful culture that embraced the sciences. BTW - you want to know what happens if the Nut Job Tea Party Christians get elected? See the middle east. DD
I don't understand the purpose of the poll. If this is a widely held belief worthy of polling, I must have missed the memo. Supposed members of Islam responsible for the extremism that has created such chaos and grief are a relatively small number of Muslims. Tens of thousands of Jihadists may seem like a large number, but it is actually a tiny proportion of the hundreds of millions who practice Islam. I am using "supposed" because I don't think they are actually religious in the sense of the world of modern Islam, just as the so-called "Christians" who have committed acts of terror in this country, for example, are not people I consider to be Christian. Both groups are mad extremists who have twisted their respective religions into some Medieval bastardization worthy of a bad movie, were they not real and incredibly dangerous. I view these supposed Islamic extremists as Jihadists, which is a term I think differentiates between the actual modern religion and the bizarre lunatics that are trying to destroy the modern world in the name of Islam. In my humble opinion.
I think the distinction here is many of the practices that ISIS and groups like the Taliban engage in are NOT distorting Islam. The Muslims who don't share these practices are the vast majority who just happen to be born into the religion and invoke their natural empathy for moral decisions while just practicing Islam 'culturally' as in praying 5 times a day and attending their local Masjid for community purposes. Many of them just assume that Muhammad's actions and beliefs coincide with their natural empathy.
I just wish that otherwise educated and intelligent people like Deckard would understand what you just posted - reading your post, Deck, you are projecting your own view of how you wish it should be and thereby misunderstanding the scope and severity of the issue. It's so typical of the left's unreflected narrative, and sadly I find it intellectually lazy - from a poster I otherwise respect. "Oh, it's just a tiny fraction of people." What about the hundreds of millions of Muslims who believe that apostates should be killed? These people are not Jihadists. Do you consider that belief in any way acceptable? I find the thought of any ideology making it a rule that people who want to no longer follow it should die deeply disturbing, and immediately disqualifying that ideology/religion from being respectable.
Yup, tea party people are the same type people that runs the governments in the middle east, it is a good thing they are not fully in charge in this country.
Has anyone actually infiltrated a group of moderate muslims and what they talk about amongst each other? No - because you're all fat armchair experts. The culture of fear mongering and silencing anyone who speaks of progress - especially with educated women who choose to speak out - is just as prevalent in moderates as you'd expect in ISIS. Ironic how the same pansies quick to jump on the Anti-Trump Bandwagon for "fear mongering", manipulating the less informed, etc. conveniently ignore moderate muslims do this to a much higher degree within their communities. You really are a bunch of zombies, jumping through whatever hoops the media feeds you.
When you equate all of Islam to Nazism (which you did and now are backing off from) you lose credibility and no one will take you seriously. You try to deflect by lying about what I said 10 years ago when I compared Suicide bombers to Nazis. Talk about being intellectually lazy and dishonest. So now you want to say that 100's of millions of Muslims are Nazis. I think they are bad, but to equate them to Nazis makes me think you don't know much about Nazis and that's surprising given you live in Germany. All in all, you are playing with blurred lines at best in trying to build an association with a world religion to Nazism.
You do know that the term 'religion' doesn't automatically dismiss it as a set of ideas that should be held to scrutiny? A world religion isn't inherently not bad. Just because a large mass of people follow it, doesn't mean it's inherently not a bad set of ideas especially when that large mass of people just happen to follow it due to what vagina they slipped out of. The shear mass of the number of Muslims has no validity or merit to how 'good' a religion is especially when the religion's size is pretty much attributed to birth rates(today) and the sword(before).
I would say 90% of Muslims never made a conscious decision to be Muslim using their own rationality or intellect. That is why I can differentiate between actual Islam and the people who are labeled as followers of Islam.
Then why have historically, groups like ISIS been in the minority. The last major Islamic empire, the Ottomans would bear very little resemblance to today's radicals in totality. You claim that ISIS seems to practice "true Islam" when historically "true Islam" varies upon cultural, political, and economic forces. Seems poor and angry conditions breed more ISIS than other. Economic and political conditions matter more than what they view Muhammad orinally believe in is. Impoverished and angry folks turn to radicals much more than their counterparts.
I really don't judge religions as superior or inferior to one another. I see them as things that people cling to for their own devices/needs. You don't need a religion to teach hate. While you think it comes from the religion, I see that the fact that mainstream Muslims today are peaceful as counter to that argument. Can you critique the Koran? Absolutely. Can you say that Modern day Islam as a practicing religious institution is in dire need of major reformation. Absolutely. But the idea that Islam = Nazism is one that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and is absolutely ridiculous. People will interpret a religion to serve their own devices, that is how it works. Pre-industrialization, human basically thought that women, gays, and different races or cultures were inferior to themselves. This is the basis for global problem of the past and present. While industrialization has helped move the west and now the east forward, there's a big chunk of the world that is left behind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum Funny thing is few posts later you would invoke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman It's very easy to pull statistics out of your ass.
