Ramadan Bomb-a-thon blast wounds 8 soldiers in Thailand

[alpine]

Islam has roots in the mid east, thats the whole problem with islam.

And yet it is practiced differently all over the world. Your focus on the Middle East is important for the history of Islam, but really reduces your ability to understand its modern scale and diversity.

If you know what the mid east that gave birth to islam, it is a geography that daylight can become the darkness in minutes, because of giant sand storms. It lacks of resources (of course except oil) and all climate extremes are seen often.

When this geography produces a religion, unavoidably it is brutal.

You don't really see that in the theology though, that more so comes across in the Quranic depictions of Paradise which is a lush resource filled paradise.



And yet one of the most brutal empires ever to have existed (the Mongol Empire) didn't need Islam to blanket its gains in fields of bones, long before Islam became a part of it.

If Islam is also so brutal then why did Muhammad defy every pre-Islamic Arabic custom and tradition by not putting Mecca to the sword and pillaging it when it surrendered to him? That rather flies in the face of your notion of necessary brutality, particularly when it almost cost him the support of some of his most loyal followers of the day.



And here you are once again only focusing on Arabs and only 20% of the global Islamic population. Seriously, the world is larger than the Middle East.

That's the reason you still can see imams claiming the world is flat, or that you can marry and have sex to a 9 year old, or can have 4 wives and on and on and on...

while it is true that this happens (Yemen, Sudan and Pakistan for example) It also hardly needs Islam. The largest country for child brides in the world is India, and child brides are large issues in Christian Sub-Saharan Africa as well. While they try to root it in hadiths as a justification that desire to do so often is reflective of an already established local tradition of underage marriages.

Your point "why not all muslims are political islamists" is ridiculous. One can easily see the popular support for political islam all over the islamic world. If you are a politician in any of the islam countries, there is no way you will get elected to any office if you are not using islam as a tool for yourself. This is the reality of the politics of islam.

Then how did Muslim majority Senegal vote for a Christian leader immediately after its independence from France? Doesn't seem to correspond well with your blanket statements, and that is why I have a problem with them, they ignore the huge diversity that exists within this world. Senegal was just one example.

You are not smart enough to see the whole point in your last comment. Because it was FRENCH in there rather than ISLAM. Once you allow islam as a politics, then you are screwed. Secular muslim countries did very well in the history, like Turkey. But once the gates of hell break loose with democracy and you let islam in it, then you get ROYALLY SCREWED, like Turkey...

And once again, you have no idea what you are talking about. Lack of understanding of events and their chronology.

 

[Osomir]

You are not smart enough to see the whole point in your last comment. Because it was FRENCH in there rather than ISLAM.

The French didn't appoint him as Prime Minister. He was voted into power by the populace who was and is majority Muslim.

Many African independence movements revolved around either the social concept of negritude, or around the African socialist ideological system. That was true for Muslim majority countries as well.

Also, politics in Islamic countries have not always surrounded islamic discourse, that isn't even true for the country that you are from.

Once you allow islam as a politics, then you are screwed. Secular muslim countries did very well in the history, like Turkey. But once the gates of hell break loose with democracy and you let islam in it, then you get ROYALLY SCREWED, like Turkey...

How is Turkey royaly screwed?

 

[alpine]

You are not smart enough to see the whole point in your last comment. Because it was FRENCH in there rather than ISLAM.

The French didn't appoint him as Prime Minister. He was voted into power by the populace who was and is majority Muslim.

Many African independence movements revolved around either the social concept of negritude, or around the African socialist ideological system. That was true for Muslim majority countries as well.

Also, politics in Islamic countries have not always surrounded islamic discourse, that isn't even true for the country that you are from.

Once you allow islam as a politics, then you are screwed. Secular muslim countries did very well in the history, like Turkey. But once the gates of hell break loose with democracy and you let islam in it, then you get ROYALLY SCREWED, like Turkey...

How is Turkey royaly screwed?

And the revolution in Iran was also led by socialists, and we all know what the result is.

Islam just don't take over overnight. You seem to think this a lot.

There are ways for islam to force itself in to the body, as a virus. It could be with revolutions and/or by more peaceful (!?) democratic ways, like elections. But either way, islam has no competition in any muslim state, because the majority of population in those countries have no world view what so ever. Islam has great offerings for the illiterate majority, like food and virgins in afterlife.

Do you know how much US spend in europe after the 2nn world war to come up with a better offer against the "free food" offer of communists? You think secular forward thinking minority of the islam countries can come any where close to the islamists? Of course not. We see they can not all over the islamic world, because islamists have power all over it.

And how Turkey got screwed, by allowing their islamists go into democratic elections. Islamists did travel street by street, gathering people and telling lies about how secular governments did ruin their mosques and turned them into barns. They get on top of a bus and drive through streets holding a big key in their hands, promising that is the key to heaven, if they voted for them. And you know what happened later on? They WON! And military had to intervene, but they won again 10 years later, but this time, they were able to put the military leaders behind the bars before they could do anything about it. Now Turkey is just another islamic state, where people get beaten to death just because..., they are not muslim enough, just like any other islamic state.

The story of Turkey maybe the saddest probably.

You can not comment on mid east and not be aware of these facts.

 

[hobelim]

that's a problem with the premise though because Islamic institutions aren't set up the same way christian ones are. Catholicism has a much more rigid religious ruling system for its adherents than Islam ever has with perhaps the exclusion of the time of Muhammad himself. There is no Islamic pope, and even fatwas are merely theological speaking, suggestions of worldly individuals, and not divine decree (generally speaking depending on the branch, some minority groups practice it differently).

For as long as the fundamental teaching of the Koran is to do violence there will always be fundamentalists committing violence and moderates standing by with their thumbs up their assess..

 

[Osomir]

For as long as the fundamental teaching of the Koran is to do violence there will always be fundamentalists committing violence and moderates standing by with their thumbs up their assess..

If the fundamental teaching of the Quran is violence then why aren't most Muslims in the world out being violent? Why does the largest international poll on Islamic thought say that Muslims disagree with your opinion in that area?

Your definition and understanding of Islam and how it is practiced by over a billion faithfuls is dramatically too narrow.

 

[Osomir]

And the revolution in Iran was also led by socialists, and we all know what the result is.

That a pretty dramatic oversimplification of the popular uprising in Iran that lead to the revolution. The socialists were but one faction, another very powerful one were landowners and the Ulama, and the massive scale of religious student demonstrations.

Do you know how much US spend in europe after the 2nn world war to come up with a better offer against the "free food" offer of communists? You think secular forward thinking minority of the islam countries can come any where close to the islamists? Of course not. We see they can not all over the islamic world, because islamists have power all over it.

I'm not sure I understand the point you are trying to make, both secular and Islamist governments in majority Islamic countries tend to heavily subsidize basic commodities such as fuel and food. That also wasn't an institution that was created by communists but by western colonial powers as a model of recovery from the Great Depression. (that's how it came about in Egypt, Syria and Iraq for example).

The rest of your post is pretty much a dodge from my previous question.

How do you reconcile your understanding of Islamic populations within democracies with the reality of states such as Senegal (which are democratic and majority Islamic)?

As for Turkey I obviously disagree dramatically with your assessment, especially since I am close to many Turks, and especially since many of the protestors against the current Turkish government are themselves Muslims, but I don't want to get too sidetracked here.

 

[hobelim]

For as long as the fundamental teaching of the Koran is to do violence there will always be fundamentalists committing violence and moderates standing by with their thumbs up their assess..

If the fundamental teaching of the Quran is violence then why aren't most Muslims in the world out being violent? Why does the largest international poll on Islamic thought say that Muslims disagree with your opinion in that area?

Your definition and understanding of Islam and how it is practiced by over a billion faithfuls is dramatically too narrow.

Whether the majority of Muslims are violent or not it is irrefutable that they and the rest of the world are subjected to the ones who are.


As I said, as long as the Koran teaches to chop off heads, hands and feet and beat women there will always be some fundamental genius that comes out of a moderate community and forces people to do what the Koran requires and the moderate majority will do nothing to stop it because they already had their balls crushed and their brains rendered useless by living the life of a hypocrite.


Why are the vast majority not violent? They are presently engaged with their thumbs up their assess.

 

[Osomir]

Whether the majority of Muslims are violent or not it is irrefutable that they and the rest of the world are subjected to the ones who are.

Whether the majority of Muslims are or not though does dramatically disagree with your stance on what Islam is and has to be.

 

[AVG-JOE]

First example coming to my mind is the Sunni -vs- Shiite bullshit.

We've already talked about this though, that doesn't really fit into what you are talking about because the violence base there are based more around political identity and power and not theology.

In parts of the Middle East political structures and parties can tend to revolve around religious lines (like they can revolve around ethnic lines in say Africa), so political violence tends to also be sectarian violence much in the same way that African ethnic violence tends to be expressions of political violence.

On the first paragraph we're going to have to agree to disagree. I know sectarian violence when I see it. It's much too stupid to miss.

Like you said... In parts of the Middle East political structures and parties can tend to revolve around religious lines...

It's a sad day in a nations history when it's political leaders fear the Imams, priests or preachers more than they fear their people. Very sad day.

It's tragic when the government security forces back a clergy political agenda - especially in a land of sectarian divides. Politics technically controls the guns, that's true but, the root blame for the violence in the middle east is a pissed off clergy in control of LOTS of stupid followers of a couple of different spin-offs of a 1700 year old con man.

You can say that the politics is the problem and I agree. But the problem with Middle Eastern politics is the deep involvement of Middle Eastern religion.

 

[Osomir]

On the first paragraph we're going to have to agree to disagree. I know sectarian violence when I see it. It's much too stupid to miss.

Whether or not it is sectarian violence has nothing to do with my point. Perhaps you should reread my argument again? I am claiming that it is sectarian violence because that is how political power structures have historically formed within the Middle East. We don't see such sectarian violence in Western Africa for example even though it tends to be very Muslim majority, instead political violence there tends to take on more ethnic imagery because that is how traditional power structures have been set up there. Neither really has anything to do with theology.

Like you said... In parts of the Middle East political structures and parties can tend to revolve around religious lines...

Right, those religious lines themselves though are historically political. That's how Sunnis and Shias split in the first place. It had little to do with religious theology and more to do with political leadership.

 

[hobelim]

Whether the majority of Muslims are violent or not it is irrefutable that they and the rest of the world are subjected to the ones who are.

Whether the majority of Muslims are or not though does dramatically disagree with your stance on what Islam is and has to be.

Not at all.

The Koran advocates barbaric violence for trivial and irrational reasons. This is irrefutable.

If the Koran is the truth then it is a religious duty to kill non Muslims and even apostate Muslims according to whoever can be the most convincingly devout according to their capacity for barbarism.

If the vast majority are not violent they are either ashamed of their lack of faith and leave the violent stuff for those whose nature it suits, or they are just pretending to be believers to stay alive.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Just what am I 'overplaying?" That Muslim violence continues while non-Muslim "terrorist" is nonexistent?

That's just the thing though a lot of violence in this world has absolutely little to nothing to do with Islam. Take the largest international conflict since WWII which still has small scale associated fighting ongoing. It is in the DR Congo and neighboring countries, which aren't even majority Muslim countries let alone have anything to do with the religion of Islam.

Even most violence that your site would like to classify as "Islamic" violence has much more secular and non-religious roots, as I pointed out with your story on Thailand's southern conflict.

Read this:

Ramadan Bomb-a-thon: Jihad Bombers Strike Somali capital

On pro-al-Shabab websites, the jihadist group said it targeted the convoy because a number of US officials were travelling in it. So Muslims will slaughter Muslims for the glory of allah. "We are behind the martyrdom explosion... The Americans were our main target," its spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters news agency.

Somali capital Mogadishu hit by 'suicide attack' BBC, July 12, 2013

Why wouldn't Al Shabaab attack us? We bombed them under Bush and backed an Ethiopian invasion of their country, then with their emergence as a separate entity we continued to bomb them and hit them with drone strikes. We not only have directly attacked them (and did so first), we backed the occupation of their country by Somalia's oldest enemy: Ethiopia.

And continue to support military coalitions against them (such as Kenya's invasion of southern Somalia).

First generation of Monkeys to respond to violence with education instead of violence in revenge gets to watch their children start a road to the stars.

True Story!​

 

[Osomir]

Not at all.

The Koran advocates barbaric violence for trivial and irrational reasons. This is irrefutable.

Theologically speaking I disagree. I think you are probably falling into a trap that many non-Muslims looking at Quranic scripture do and are trying to read the Quran the same way one would read other holy books such as the bible when the Quran itself isn't a narrative like those other religious texts but deals directly with specific incidents going on at the time and the revelations from god concerning them (especially in post-Hijra scripture). It makes it so that any Islamic theologian should also be well versed in early Islamic history.

I would be happy to discuss any Quranic scripture you'd like. I am fairly familiar with it.

I think it is also rather telling that a vast majority of muslims themselves disagree with your interpretation.

You also seem to be operating under a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

 

[alpine]

And the revolution in Iran was also led by socialists, and we all know what the result is.

That a pretty dramatic oversimplification of the popular uprising in Iran that lead to the revolution. The socialists were but one faction, another very powerful one were landowners and the Ulama, and the massive scale of religious student demonstrations.

Do you know how much US spend in europe after the 2nn world war to come up with a better offer against the "free food" offer of communists? You think secular forward thinking minority of the islam countries can come any where close to the islamists? Of course not. We see they can not all over the islamic world, because islamists have power all over it.

I'm not sure I understand the point you are trying to make, both secular and Islamist governments in majority Islamic countries tend to heavily subsidize basic commodities such as fuel and food. That also wasn't an institution that was created by communists but by western colonial powers as a model of recovery from the Great Depression. (that's how it came about in Egypt, Syria and Iraq for example).

The rest of your post is pretty much a dodge from my previous question.

How do you reconcile your understanding of Islamic populations within democracies with the reality of states such as Senegal (which are democratic and majority Islamic)?

As for Turkey I obviously disagree dramatically with your assessment, especially since I am close to many Turks, and especially since many of the protestors against the current Turkish government are themselves Muslims, but I don't want to get too sidetracked here.

Why do you put Senegal in the middle of the whole conversation now? Why not Turkey? Lets talk about Turkey, which is the perfect example on this subject, rather than Senegal in which probably there is no diversity in religion and all the muslims belong to one extend of the islam which is mostly off of the reach of islam as an institution, much like England getting out of the catholic churches sphere of influence. But that doesn't mean church did not flex its muscles on people as long as it could, does it? So is it logical to put England on the subject or say France or Germany when it is the church you are trying to debate on???

Turkey is the perfect example, why, because islamist government doesn't subsidize food like in any other "secular" dictatorships in the mid east. They hand it out to the ones they will get the votes off of, the poor and uneducated majority. And they don't go it though government channels, they do it through their own organizations, so people receive their food packages not from a government official, but an islamist himself. There is a HUGE difference between a government subsidizing the food and islamists handing it over to people in exchange to their votes. Put the key for heaven on top of that and you are indestructible in any islam state. And you can see that in any mid east country.

Turkish protestors could be muslims, but you can ask the islamists if the see them as muslims or not. Again, the same story of the ahmadiyya muslims of Pakistan, ou can call yourself a muslim all day long, it is what the islam as an institution says what counts, and you can hear islam when you listen to the islamist leader Erdogan of Turkey talking to the crowds:

"They are atheists!"

And the crowd just goes insane, cheering and screaming the famous words: "Allahu Akbar"

just like how they did when they burnt 30+ people alive, in a hotel, just because they were not muslim enough!!!!???? because they were alevi muslims...

And the crowd once again;
"Allahu Akbar"

Having an orgasm watching the scene and making their children watch it also.

Ant this was in 1990+, the so called "space age"????

You like to see the video?

And your protestor friends, there have been people getting killed during the protests. And you know who killed them? The people on the streets. Your friends should realize, they are the minority in their country and as another islamist party official said:
"they should be thankful they are in a democratic country, otherwise we would strangle them to death in a spoon full of water"

This is the democracy in Turkey, the fascist dictatorship of the islamists majority. And apparently this is the best you can get in mid east shit hole...

 

[AVG-JOE]

On the first paragraph we're going to have to agree to disagree. I know sectarian violence when I see it. It's much too stupid to miss.

Whether or not it is sectarian violence has nothing to do with my point. Perhaps you should reread my argument again? I am claiming that it is sectarian violence because that is how political power structures have historically formed within the Middle East. We don't see such sectarian violence in Western Africa for example even though it tends to be very Muslim majority, instead political violence there tends to take on more ethnic imagery because that is how traditional power structures have been set up there. Neither really has anything to do with theology.

Like you said... In parts of the Middle East political structures and parties can tend to revolve around religious lines...

Right, those religious lines themselves though are historically political. That's how Sunnis and Shias split in the first place. It had little to do with religious theology and more to do with political leadership.

So let me ask you this... Are various clergy not calling for various levels of violence over various shit? Do the terms Shiite, Sunni, Sectarian and Violence not all see a lot of common use together in the media? If religion isn't at the center of Middle East violence, why does religion seem to be at the center of violence in the Middle East?

And you're right... the stories coming out of Muslim Africa that involve violence do seem to revolve around more than just religious differences. So what? That just means that Africans are better Muslims than Middle Easterners, ass-u-me-ing the goal truly is a 'religion of peace'.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Interesting graphic, considering Africans may be doing a better job of being Muslim peacefully.

Application of sharia by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


GREEN: Muslim-majority countries and members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation where sharia plays no role in the judicial system.
YELLOW: Countries where Sharia applies in personal status issues (such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody), but otherwise have a secular legal system.
PURPLE: Countries where Sharia applies in full, covering personal status issues as well as criminal proceedings.
ORANGE: Regional variations in the application of sharia

 

[Osomir]

So let me ask you this... Are various clergy not calling for various levels of violence over various shit?

Islam doesn't have a very formal religious clergy in general. Of course you can run into stuff like the supreme council in Iran, but that tends to much more so be the exception rather than the rule. Any Muslim can issue a fatwa it only carries as much weight as the individual's respect among other Muslims though. Often times some of the "fatwas" that we see issued aren't really issued by people who have even been formally trained through academic or religious institutes but merely stem from community leaders such as tribal leaders (Yemen is a good example of that).

Do the terms Shiite, Sunni, Sectarian and Violence not all see a lot of common use together in the media? If religion isn't at the center of Middle East violence, why does religion seem to be at the center of violence in the Middle East?

The problem here though is that violence in the Middle East isn't necessarily that clear cut either. For example, while we saw the ISI engage in massive sectarian violence in Iraq, Osama bin Laden (who was supposed to have ultimate ideological control over them) kept calling on them to stop because it was in violation of their Jihadist ideological system. That didn't stop Al Qaeda in Iraq from doing it though because within the contexts of Iraq, that is how power structures are oriented. So when it came down to overarching Islamist ideological stances or power politics, the ISI chose power politics and ignored bin Laden.

In Yemen you don't have that. Al Qaeda doesn't do the sectarianism and instead you have much stronger tribal and socialist / federalist power divisions so the dividing lines tend not to be sectarian (outside perhaps of the northern Houthi movement, but even that is more likened to a regional nationalist movement more so than truly theological religious one). And in Africa you have it across ethnic populations. The Darfur genocide you have Muslims killing Muslims, but it wasn't religious it was ethnic and racial also it was nomadic vs agriculturalists.

Simply reducing it to religion will ensure that you miss many of the major issues that go on within these societies.

And you're right... the stories coming out of Muslim Africa that involve violence do seem to revolve around more than just religious differences. So what? That just means that Africans are better Muslims than Middle Easterners, ass-u-me-ing the goal truly is a 'religion of peace'.

No it doesn't. It just means that base power structures are institutionally different there.

 

[Osomir]

Interesting graphic, considering Africans may be doing a better job of being Muslim peacefully.

Application of sharia by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


GREEN: Muslim-majority countries and members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation where sharia plays no role in the judicial system.
YELLOW: Countries where Sharia applies in personal status issues (such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody), but otherwise have a secular legal system.
PURPLE: Countries where Sharia applies in full, covering personal status issues as well as criminal proceedings.
ORANGE: Regional variations in the application of sharia

there is no singular shariah code so I'm not sure how much use this is to your point.

 

[Osomir]

Why do you put Senegal in the middle of the whole conversation now?

Because its existence contradicts your argument. So yeah I want you to address the issue of Senegal for me and how you reconcile it with your stance on Muslim populations within democracies.

 

[hobelim]

Not at all.

The Koran advocates barbaric violence for trivial and irrational reasons. This is irrefutable.

Theologically speaking I disagree. I think you are probably falling into a trap that many non-Muslims looking at Quranic scripture do and are trying to read the Quran the same way one would read other holy books such as the bible when the Quran itself isn't a narrative like those other religious texts but deals directly with specific incidents going on at the time and the revelations from god concerning them (especially in post-Hijra scripture). It makes it so that any Islamic theologian should also be well versed in early Islamic history.

I would be happy to discuss any Quranic scripture you'd like. I am fairly familiar with it.

I think it is also rather telling that a vast majority of muslims themselves disagree with your interpretation.

You also seem to be operating under a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

I am open to discussing the Koran with you and I am open to the possibility that I am wrong if you could show me how, however I should also let you know that I know that people are being killed and maimed on a daily basis according to those teachings and I also know that according to the current manual of known species there is no such thing as an atheist apologist for Islam.




And you should be open to the possibility that I am playing with you catandmouse.