Islam in a Nutshell

I simply applied your name recognition logic. If it wasn't as obvious as I thought it was... it was a joke.

I agree and that is why I called you out for trying to compare a Christian making a video with muslims attacking and murdering innocent people. Again, this is not some random obscure event that never happens. This kind of thing happens several times a year in muslim countries. If the majority of muslims disagree with how these extremists act then they need to make more of an effort to publicly condemn them and cut them off from society not try to make excuses for why they act like this.

I disagree with purposefully releasing a cartoon or video that's only purpose is to insult someones religion but as much as it irritates me killing someone, rioting, or threatening to kill someone are not justified.

Ok so let me get this straight one more time. I'm willfully ignorant because I recognize that there is no comparison between a Christian making a video and muslims going on a killing rampage?

Or are you saying that because I'm a Christian? You make your own choice, I could care less what you believe, I don't condemn anyone for their religious choices. I have no doubt what the truth is.

For your reading pleasure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(cleaning_product)

 

Let's hope this trend continues and more Muslims step up to the plate and start condemning violent acts in the name of their religion.

 

Well, you know...about that "hope," ....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/w...ster-offers-bounty-over-anti-islam-video.html

 

well I believe in--keep your friends close and keep your enemy's even closer so you can keep tabs on them
the Koran only preaches love and peace in their own cult not towards any other

 

Here's an interesting discussion: "honor" killings / (revenge) killings ... cultural or Islamic...can you separate the two? [Video is sickening...don't watch if you think the world is all shiny and full of joy.]

How a group would sit back and allow such a thing is beyond me. I guess my Judeo-Christian values differ...as do just about every other religious value system out there (e.g., Hindu, Buddhism, etc).

These people (who see nothing wrong with this behavior) belong in the stone age.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/video-reveals-honor-killing-inside-morsis-egypt/

 

Family Honor is a cultural concept, not a religious one. Until we can separate culture and religion, we cannot have an intelligent conversation about either. If we are looking for reasons to damn Muslims, let's at least stick to religion.

 

There is family honor in many cultures, yet, you don't see the same behavior. Sharia (law), culture, and religion are basically inseparable. I don't see how you can remove some aspect of the culture when it's codified into law and sanctioned by religion.

 

Ah, Islam bashing. It never gets old does it?

I was thinking about this tonight, on one of my commutes. Why is it important for us to point out the flaws, or perceived flaws, in another culture or people?

Americans of European origin, who have never had a negative interaction with a Muslim in their entire lives, who could sum up their total true knowledge of the religion of Islam in three or four sentences, can spend hours bashing the religion and its adherents. Why? Why do we care? If it doesn't happen in our neighborhood, and doesn't affect someone close to us, why do we spend so much time cherry picking every negative piece of information that we can find on the religion? If we have issues with a predominantly Muslim country that affect our national security, why can we not just blow them up without denigrating them?

I think we do it for the same reasons that the Greek writers of the classical period denigrated Persian culture. The Greeks needed something to compare themselves to. After all, you can't be a superior culture if you don't have a lesser culture to compare yourselves to. The Greeks made fun of the Persians for wearing pants, while they themselves wore something resembling a modern day skirt. They were quite sure that the Persians were suspiciously effeminate, and possibly a bit light in the loafers, compared to real manly men - the Greeks; even though homosexuality was an ingrained part of Greek culture at the time. It was a matter of perspective. Sadly, today we know little truth of the Persian empire because most of our information comes from Greek writers. We see the Persians through Greek eyes. I shudder to think what a person two thousand years in our future would think of Islam if all they had to go on were chain emails and forum postings which reference the religion.

The Muslims are our new boogey man. Every culture needs one. During most of our childhoods, it was the Russians. They were evil, they were out to get us, and they were GODLESS! It seems important that our boogey man have a religious component. They can't possibly believe in the same God; or if they do, they don't believe the right things about him. They need to be threatening to us, but beneath us in every respect. They talk funny, they eat funny things, their cultural mores are beneath ours, and it really helps if they wear silly clothes. We truly lucked out with the Muslims. They're so easy.

It seems important also that we assign a catchy derogatory nickname to them as well. Calling them by their proper name just doesn't carry the same impact as slapping a nifty label on them. The Russians were the "Ruskies." The Muslims are of course, the "Muzzies." We've got a ton of them, one for every occasion - Greasers, Spiks, Porch Monkeys, Chinks, Slant-eyes, Slopes, Ragheads - the list is endless. We can even whip up one for our own kind who don't vote the way we do - "Bleeding Heart Liberals," "Freakin Libtards;" or who don't put away as many canned goods as we do - "Sheeple." Of course we can still accuse anyone of being a "commie." That works for almost any occasion. If they don't like hot dogs, they can be a "freakin commie." The targets of our name calling may have expanded since junior high school, but our thought process hasn't changed much. Sadly, a label says far more about the person using it, than it does about the person to whom it is applied.

I was at the wedding of an Indian friend of ours last week, and thought about how ingrained are our cultural habits and perceptions; and how alien they can appear to someone of another culture. She was born in America, and is thoroughly American in every respect. She is even a Christian, though her father is Hindu. Her father is firmly middle class. He owns a small shop, and works hard to provide for his family. They have few real luxuries. He rarely goes to the doctor or dentist because he says that he can't afford health insurance. The wedding though, cost the family about seventy thousand dollars. It was slightly more than his older daughter's wedding cost a few years ago. That one cost him about sixty thousand dollars. He's already saving up for his youngest daughter's wedding. He figures it will be a bit more than this most recent one, and will be here in a few years.

He scrimps and saves every penny he can, never goes out, doesn't receive proper healthcare, they shop at discount grocery stores, all so that he can spend tens of thousands of dollars on his daughters' weddings. It's all about honor. He may have lived in America for decades, and his daughters may be American through and through, but he can't escape the cultural concepts that he was raised with. I was speaking to the bride a few weeks ago, when she was stressing over the cost and complexity of the upcoming wedding. She appeared to be near a nervous breakdown. I suggested to her that maybe she should simplify things a little. Cut back on the catering and entertainment a bit. Trim down the ceremony to just the essentials. She shook her head, sighed, and said, "You just don't understand. If it looks like my father spared any expense, it would damage our family honor for all time. He would never be able to look his friends and family in the eye again." She even drew ten thousand dollars out of her personal savings account to help her father with the expense, but of course that was a fact which must never be known.

We can easily look at this kindly old man and think him a fool for spending every penny he has to his name to give his daughters a grand wedding; but we can never understand what it means to him. We can never understand what family honor means to him, because his is another culture. Being Americans, most of us would never spend a minute trying to understand his culture.

Ah well, at least he's not a freakin Muzzie.

 

I don't see this as any different than the rest of the world bashing rich Americans for having multiple homes. If it's OK to give a person a bye because that's their culture, then the excess of any society is OK.

Sorry....I'm not buying it. There are some behaviors that go against what many deem as natural rights (not Hobbesian). For me to discount another's cultural norms by saying it is barbaric (or stupid) is not being ethnocentric. My perspective is coming from one of natural rights.

So, honor killings are bull$hit because they're stomping on one person's natural rights (life) in favor of someone's cultural rights to have honor. You're right, I don't know the way he feels....and, if that person had been born somewhere else, he wouldn't know either. After all, our religion is determined solely by where we're born.

And, don't you think it's funny that, in general, these "norms" are in favor of males in their hegemonic dominion over women--which, to me, reads that their culture is very insecure. We've already hit on honor killings, but here's a more in-depth account of the practice:

http://www.meforum.org/2646/worldwide-trends-in-honor-killings
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_...or-killing-under-growing-scrutiny-in-the-u.s/

...and that brings up another cultural norm: female genital mutilation. In essence, a MAN doesn't want his daughter to enjoy sex so, he gets some willing women (doesn't want to dirty his own hands) to cut off (sometimes with a broken piece of glass) his daughter's clitoris and labia. Sounds bad, doesn't it...it is....lots of infections...lots of deaths....for an ideal. An ideal which forces one person's wishes on another. You don't really see this happening with boys though......unless you're an aborigine.

To become an aboriginal male, you must go through the Bora--you get circumcised, scarified, maybe you get a tooth pulled or part of a finger cut off. That makes you a MAN!! (But, hey, at least he's not a freakin Aussie)

So, YES, I declare some other culture's norms--not all, just a few--to be barbaric and belonging in the stone age. They go against natural law, especially since a lot of this involves adolescents or young adults.

If some culture still had human sacrifice, I suspect no one would be sticking up for that.


On a personal note: my bestest chum in first grade was a muzzie (still is). We had a lot of the same interests (mainly Star Wars). But, his parents would never let him hang out with other kids--even through high school. They didn't want him to pick up bad habits (yet, they chose to live here??) ....freakin' Pakis. We're still friends, much to his parents chagrin.

I too had many Indian friends growing up (many females) and have attending their weddings. That is a dying aspect Indian culture for this generation I believe (referring to the $$ extravagance and....FORCED marriages, not the funny clothes). And there is the difference: if their dad want's to blow 100k on a wedding, more power to him. It's his money--regardless as to why he's doing it. However, if wanted to force his daughter to marry someone, THAT is a problem. It's one person's pleasure for another's pain. That violates natural law, and, therefore, I have no qualms about judging it, regardless of what culture it happens to be in. It's the behavior, not the culture, that I have the issue with.

 

I can agree with the vast majority of what you're saying, and I am not trying to argue a cultural moral relativity position.

My question remains, Why do we care? And why is it important to us to find only the negative aspects of at least some other cultures?

It's similar to you being on your way home and hearing about a massive earthquake in California on the radio. You live in Virginia, so there will be no fallout from this earthquake that will affect you. There will not be refugees pouring across the border. Your hometown is not going to suffer a tsunami as a result of the quake. You will, in all probability, not even suffer economically because of the quake. But the first thing out of your mouth when you enter the door will be to ask your spouse or roommate, "Hey, did you hear about the big quake in California today?" Why?

What is it in human nature that seems to revel in the misery, or strangeness, or peccadilloes of others? I can name you six Christian televangelists right now that have been disgraced for bad behavior, but I would struggle to come up with the names of two who have not. Why? Because I don't pay attention to the good ones. They're no fun. Who cares about the ones who actually believe in what they are preaching? They don't make the news.

My musings are more about human nature, than they are an attempt to criticize anyone's opinion of a particular culture. I'm just using Christian American attitudes toward Islam as an example. Many Christian Americans, and some non-Christian Americans, are fascinated by Islam. They read news articles about it, post about it on blogs and forums, receive and send emails about it; but how many of them have actually driven to a mosque and attempted to learn a more balanced truth about Islam? How many have searched out a college class on Islam? How many have picked up the Qur'an and said, "Okay, I'm tired of listening to all the cherry picked verses from this thing, I'm going to critically read it, and find out what it actually says." But then, how many have even done that with the Bible?

Why is it more fun to bash something than to understand it? I'm sure that my four year old would smile and say, "Because it just is!" And that is probably the closest that I will come to a genuine answer.

 

For me, I care out of empathy and the knowledge that, if this is acceptable behavior. it may also happen to me. I would not want to be the helpless one getting stabbed for someone else's crime, or having my body mutilated for someone else's idea how the world is. I would prefer to be treated the way I treat others....and that is to be left the f alone, free of someone else's ideas about how I should behave.

This may smack at hypocrisy: me telling someone they shouldn't do some behavior because I deem it inappropriate, but, again, I'm putting myself in the shoes of the one kicking, screaming, begging for their life. I would not want to be in that position and I don't think anyone else should either unless they've done something to deserve it.

 

Obviously, one cannot speak for all, but this is a good example of the mentality of a certain sect of muzzies....maybe a majority. This culture, religion--whatever you want to call it--cannot deal with true freedom: the market-place of ideas--it is all censorship. The irony is, muzzies speak about the hatred of the Jews towards Arabic peoples, but, I just haven't seen this in action. The proof is in the pudding, right. There is no live-and-let-live with muzzies; it is their way or nothing else. When their population becomes the majority, there will be complete dominion.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-gr...ed-vandalizing-anti-muslim-ad-ny-subway-syste

And for every muzzie who thinks this way, there is someone who taught them those values from an early age. I don't think most Americans cared about Muslims or Islam before 9/11 and if the dust would settle, I'm quite sure they would forget about them again in 6 months. Not the radical muzzie though, he wakes up every morning and is seething because you exist. The only question is, what proportion is radical.

 

I actually agree with this lady; if racist garbage is freedom of expression, so is the painting of said garbage. It seems to me that she is performing a civic duty.

I'm not saying you can't find examples of Muslims behaving badly, I'm not saying you can't find examples of idiots committing atrocities in the name of Islam. I am saying that if that is all you are looking for, that is all you will find.

Many years ago, I started a long personal essay on the subject of Christianity. It started out benignly enough - I researched the history of Christianity, the history of the Jews, of Judaism. It was part of my own journey to discover who I was and what I believed in, and due to my immersion in fundamentalist Christianity in my younger years, I needed to thoroughly examine Christian religious beliefs, because they were built into the culture which helped to create who I was.

I found eventually, after several years of on and off writing, that I had long since stopped accumulating historical and meaningful information, and had begun to accumulate a notebook full of hateful people who claimed to be Christians and the hateful things that they did to others. I realized that this was beginning to affect my perception of all Christians, not just the idiots who claim the title unjustly. I stopped, closed the book, and moved on. Eventually, I may go back and edit many of the hateful examples out of it, because I know that those examples don't accurately represent Christianity; they represent hate and ignorance.

If someone claims to actually want to know the truth about Islam, and they have never entered a mosque, and never read the Qur'an, they are a liar. They are lying to themselves, and to anyone who listens to them. You can't know anything about Christianity without actually picking up the Bible and reading it, and finding out what it means to you; not to Joe down the road, and not to the idiots who fill up your inbox with hateful internet garbage, and not to the televangelist who is getting rich through his hypocrisy.

Just as guns don't kill people, neither do religions. What an individual, or group of individuals, decides to do with their interpretation of a religion is what kills people; good old human hate, cloaked in the sanctimonious wraps of religion.

 

You're destroying someone else's property by committing vandalism (a crime) and your reasoning is of the slipperiest of slopes. If it's some BS propaganda, then those ideas will lose out in the "marketplace of ideas."

To sanction such behavior means that it is OK to bust out someone's car window if I don't like their political stickers. I deem them garbage, so, it's OK to get rid of them by destroying another's property.

 

You can say the same thing about muzzies: How many muzzies do you think have investigated Judaism or Christianity with an open mind--read the Bible or Torah...been in a church or synagogue (other than to blow it up)?

 

Until someone proves themselves otherwise, I have to assume that they are what they represent themselves to be. That even goes for politicians.

The man says he is a Christian, he certainly attended a Christian Church (though his pastor had some issues that he still needs to work through), and he was never publicly involved in Muslim activities or worship services. I'd say that he is not a Muslim. In order to be a Muslim, one needs to express, and believe, the Shahada (witness), saying La Allah Ila Allah, Wa Mohammad Rasul Allah (There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the messenger/prophet of God). They also need to observe the remainder of the five pillars of Islam to the best of their ability: The first is the Shahada, second is prayer, third is fasting during Ramadan, fourth is charity, and fifth is a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during their lives, if able. Beyond that, there is a lot of leeway as to what defines a Muslim, dependent upon your sect and local customs.

I have never seen anyone show that Obama regularly attended prayers in a mosque as an adult. I've never seen his name tied to Islamic Charity Organizations, as one would expect of an upwardly mobile Muslim. He says that he is not a Muslim. As far as I'm concerned it's a closed issue, and I'm not sure why it would have ever been an issue. Why would his being a Muslim invalidate him as a candidate for the presidency of the United States any more than his being a Fundamentalist Christian, or a Catholic, or a Mormon, or a Wiccan? How a person chooses to relate to their God is their business as far as I'm concerned.

Short answer, No, he isn't.