Here’s some encouragement from the Koran for non-Muslims:
Sura (8:55) - Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve
Sura (48:29) - Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves
Sura (9:30) - And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah… Allah (Himself) fights against them. How perverse are they!
Sura (8:12) - I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them
Sura (9:123) - O you who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness
Sura (5:33) - The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement
(via)
Ah, the “religion of peace”…. Yeah, right.
World’s 2nd largest, and fastest growing. WE NEED, to step up the game in challenging these folks.
The success of Islam’s growth is a result of its ruthlessness. The live-and-let-live religions are the ones that don’t make it.
Yet I’m sitting in a university, in my Modern Middle East class, where I’m told extremism, or in effect jihad, is not Islam’s fault.
The problem with being liberal is that sometimes it gets so limp-wristed and leftie that it’s actually embarassing and denies reallity… Still, it’s better that being a Republican :-)
Which I have great disdain for at times too. Both sides of the arguement are missing basic facets of reality. Its really quite depressing, not the politicial parties, fuck them, the ideological camps which become dogmatic in and of themselves.
The harsh reality as I see it is that you cannot have a liberal wing of a doctrine based on a text like the Qu’ran (or the Bible / Torah, for that matter) without a staggering amount of self-deception. Those documents were designed to inspire fundamentalism, that was the whole point of their creation. Liberal Islam (or Christianity or Judaism) cannot exist without radical / fundamentalist Islam (or Christianity or Judaism) also existing. It’s just human nature.
Some people will think they have the ultimate truth and be all quietly smug about it, while others will think they have the ultimate truth and see it as their right to violently slaughter anybody who points out that they’re wrong. Even out of all of the Abrahamic religions (and they all tacitly condone violence in their own names, let’s be honest), Islam is still the most barbaric – because it is so up-front about slaughtering “infidels”.
Incidentally, while I’m ranting, can I just say:
Fashion Muslims, I F***ING HATE YOU. Spoiled, middle-class white kids who call themselves “Muslim” to shock their parents, who occasionally say a “salam alaykum” like it’s oh-so-clever and sophisticated – you’re all SUCH wankers. At least people born and raised as Muslim have the excuse of being indoctrinated from birth, but you lot just like to feel superior and persecuted like it makes you a great thinker or something. Arseholes, the lot of you. /rant.
Incidentally, do you get fashion-Muslims in America and on the continent, or is it just a British thing?
I haven’t met any. There are many middle eastern people in the DC area, but in my experience, that is their heritage; they did not convert to be Muslim.
And, by the way, many of them are very “American” or “western.” Lots of fashionable middle eastern people go out to clubs and party/drink all night long. They are very dominant on the club scene here. I found that odd because I thought that Muslims aren’t supposed to drink. (for example, the famous DJ pair known as Deep Dish, or Ali and Sharam, are from this area)
Custador, I don’t think we understood each other, I couldn’t agree with you any more.
I have seen quite a few around chapel hill, most of them women who say its empowering to their rights to hide their hair and face because Islam teaches about inner beauty or something
“Even out of all of the Abrahamic religions (and they all tacitly condone violence in their own names, let’s be honest), Islam is still the most barbaric ”
Islam is still in it’s maturation phase. It will grow less violent in a few hundred years, just as it’s father Christianity did, and it’s grandfather Judaism. Just be patient.
Or maybe we can all come together and set a part of the world as fundieland. Then we can just ship all of them (Osama bin-laden, Sarah Palin, and all other abrahamic and non-abrahamic religious nutjobs) there where they can blow each other up in the name of the true god/gods and let the rest of us get the f**k on with our lives.
We are the minority unfortunately. =(
We’d fare better if we moved to Scandinavia…
Oh no. Not…not my fingertips. Oh man. Couldn’t live without those.
I know how you feel. I mean, the head is one thing, but the fingertips? Damn! Time to convert to Islam, I guess. :/
Cue accusations of taking things out of context/extricating concepts from the cultura milieu of the time/inability to understand things not in the original Arabic/not understanding the subtleties of islamic theology/islamophobia/western bias/being an imperialist crusader zionist/etc. in 3… 2… 1…
At the risk of being taken as a wishy-washy liberal by Custador, the mis-use, for want of a better word, of the Quran by it’s followers has far more to do with culture than Islam itself. This is based of my experience of Muslims I know and the stark contrast between those that were brought up in a more progressive society and those that weren’t. I don’t see it as that different from Christianity in western cultures with Christians cherry picking those bits they like and discarding those that they don’t. The ironic part is that the most devout of them is also the most liberal in removing the “it’s not meant to be taken literally” parts from the Quran and the less devout are the ones most keen on treating women like second class citizens, chopping peoples hands off and stonings for adultery (women only of course). The worse part is the women almost seem brain washed in to thinking that the behaviour of their husbands is acceptable.
Sharia Law. That is all.
Nope, you’ve lost me me … can you expand on your comment?
Eh…Don’t really feel like it right now, sorry. I’vegogt a long day ahead of me. If no one else has explained it by tomorrow I’ll get back to you.
One of the prime doctrines of Islam is the idea that Sharia law is the perfect way to run a civilization. Sharia law is essentially levitical law, except they don’t have the excuse of a new and old testament. This is where the ideas that women are property, killing non-believers, blasphemy is a capital offense, etc. come from.
As for the most devout being liberal you have it completely backwards. To be devout follower of a religion is to actually believe what its holy texts say and to follow them. That is why fundamentalists are called fundamentalists. They believe in the fundamentals of their religions, while liberal religious people have rejected many of the fundamentals because they are obviously wrong.
So, Sharia law, as espoused in the Quran, directly leads to all of the atrocities of Islam. Unless they deny their holy book they cannot have a liberal society.
That is why not one single muslim country is liberal (even Turkey is incredibly repressive)
No I don’t have it backwards; devout does not equal fundementalist … when it comes to the actual leg work of not drinking, praying, taking out loans i.e the bits the actual require some self sacrifice that’s what I call devout. When you just cherry pick the bits you like they don’t effect your life but do others that is not.
Would you say that the Pope isn’t a devout Christian?
Read Mark D’s link below. Not so much “misuse” as “excuse”, I feel.
I think that was probably the point I was trying to make i.e. any religion can be used to pretty must justify any behaviour if you twist it enough so what’s most important is the culture not the religion itself.
I wasn’t very clear there; I mean that the Qu’ran genuinly does “justify” the actions of extremists. Moderate Muslims are the ones who are not following what the Qu’ran says, extremists follow it to the letter.
Actually, in that same vane, Westboro Baptist Church are probably among an extreme minority which genuinly does behave exactly how the Bible implies that a Christian should. Religion, hey? That’s what you get for being a couple of thousand years behind the times.
It’s not often that I agree with Berlusconi but when he described Islam as backwards he was right. We are lucky in the West that we’ve managed to create institutions that reined in the powerful religious organisations, managing to suppress the worse excesses of the various Churches.
The next time God writes a book, I would advise that he be more explicit in stating which parts are to be taken literally, and which are not. Being omniscient, he really can´t be excused for not anticipating all the arguments (not to mention death and destruction) that His lack of forsight causes. So far He´s had three goes at writing a down his rules, and I´m still none the wiser as to what He wants me to do. I am I supposed to be nice to everyone, or am I supposed to kill everyone? Hopefully He´ll be bringing out a new text, with all the corrections and clarifications soon, so everyone can settle down.
His editors are really bad and his publisher is really slow. Personally I think he should both self-edit and self-publish.
Three? What about Joseph Smith?
You suppose to kill everyone but you should be nice to them while you do it and explaine that it for their own good and because god love them.
“Strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them!”
Just promise me you’ll start with the striking off my head part first.
It’s been my experience once you strike off my head, I don’t mind the fingertip part so much.
Thanks.
To which they reply “Trust us”.
Its not as good as Watchmen, but its a fun, quick read.
http://islamcomicbook.com/comics/english/pdfs/MBOE-HIRES.pdf
An excellent examination of the more repugnant and insane passages in the qu’ran.
I wonder what the Koran would be like if Mohammad had taken a modern course in anger management and also one on communication skills.
Let’s just say that the man was more than rough around the edges. He was sharp and thorny.
I agree that most atheists have ignored islam for a long time. I know I don’t deal with it myself both because muslims don’t argue with me, and because I don’t know much about it.
When I do find a muslim trying to assert that he knows the real truth I have to help him out. Most of the time this happens when one argues with christians (say on youtube) and muslims jump in saying “yea, christianity is evil, that’s why you should all be muslims”.
We just have to be careful to not jump in the “kill all muslims and arabs” camp.
There’s not enough angst here- read up on the history of the Arabic slave trade. I first became aware of it when I saw a Chinese scroll depicting Middle Easterners bringing black slaves as tribute to the Emperor of China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
I agree with Jabster, any religious book can be cherry picked to mean everything and its opposite.
Probably Islam was so successful in keeping people backwards because is very pervasive (ie, “pray five times per day” etc…)
The huge commitment required means that nobody that has spent his life in rituals will readily accept that s/he wasted her entire life.
Disbelief is made too much of a frightening option.
Then again, all the Muslim I met were really good people, not especially bothered by religion (both drunk alcohol, but one didn’t eat pork meat).
“Probably Islam was so successful in keeping people backwards …”
That’s the big question and my answer is yes it does but I’m willing to listen to other arguments as I have to except that the communciation sources in the UK are biased. Take the latest Pat Robertson outburst, if they had been a British based Muslim our press would have had a field day.
“Then again, all the Muslim I met were really good people, …”
I wish I could say the same. Some of the ones that I’ve met were far from it but this seems to be more releated to the cultural background than being a Muslim in itself.
I think it’s also education. My neighbours on both sides are Muslim PhD students, and they’re both very nice people in every sense – but I get the impression that Islam is just something they have to do because it’s expected of them, rather than that they actually have any personal feelings invested in it.
I also think it’s mixing with others of different views and realising that they are not all the infidels that they may have been told they are …
Religion is for the weak minded.
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What do you guys think of this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011500653.html
France is really taking some concrete steps in making a stand against some vital parts of the Islamic culture & in a way it seems warranted from the French viewpoint as well.
I think what France has done is good, because it doesn’t prevent people from being Muslims, but it does quite clearly state that women in France must be treated as equals, and that indoctrinating them from birth that they must wear the burqa in unacceptable and will not be tollerated.
It is very difficult, because a lot of Muslim women actually want to wear the burqa – but I would argue that it is only because they are societally conditioned to want to do so. In the short term, that means that a lot of women in France are going to be denied the right to dress how they’d like, but in the long-term I think it’s going to mean that Muslims will assimilate into French society much more succesfully and that the cultural opression of women which is so often associated with Islam is going to be less prevalent in France than elsewhere.