"Bronze Age Death cults"/Cockneygeezer

[David Johnson]

Sam has got into a real mess on this forum with his views of Islam and Muslims. Given he is only interested in spewing out insults in my direction rather than address the points I raise, I will explain why he is in a mess of his own making.

Sam hates Islam and has described it as a "Bronze Age death cult". Yet he has refused to explain why, if his view is correct the overwhelming number of British Muslims who believe in the Koran have not followed this "death cult" and attacked the British unbelievers in huge numbers.

The problem Slater has is as follows:
1. Either Islam is not a "Bronze Age death cult" and British Muslims for example are overwhelmingly peaceful in their dealings with their non-Muslim neighbours or
2. Islam is a "Bronze Age death cult" and British Muslims are not true believers.

Both views seem nonsensical. What Slater doesn't highlight is that I or anyone else could pick out equally violent passages from Christian beliefs which is your argument, Cockneygeezer. . For example, the Old Testament talks about genocide against the non-believers and the stoning of women to death for adultery etc. etc.

So if the Muslims in this country overwhelmingly keep the peace in a multi-faith country, it is equally true that British Christians keep the peace in a multi-faith country despite the violence and hatred towards other faiths shown in the Old Testament.

Why is that?
The simple answer is education. The majority of British Muslims who work in the NHS etc were invited here in the decades after the World War II when there was a huge manpower/skill shortage. They were the most educated from their own countries. British Christians too are generally well-educated compared to what is often referred to as "the THird World".

In medieval times in England, the power of the church was all consuming and terrifying. In many countries in Asia where there is no education for the overwhelming majority, no welfare system, no jobs, abject poverty and squalor (bit like Liverpool, Argie) etc. religion plays an overwhelming part as it did in Britain in medieval times and it is in those countries where the literal statements in the Koran are taken verbatim whereas the overwhelming majority of British Muslims do not have a similar attitude.

SO why has radical Islam which has a hatred of non-believers developed? It is fed by:

1. Abject poverty, total lack of education and sgualor in many countries.
2. People joining radical Islamist group as a way of getting a regular meal and staying alive.
3. A complete dislocation of some Muslim kids in the west between their faith and the society they find themselves living in. So many of their actions like Syria are motivated initially by the same sort of thoughts that drove British lads to go and fight the Fascists in Spain in the 1930s. And there is a feeling almost that it is an act of rebellion which much older radical Islamists take advantage of with their brainwashing.
4. Seeing innocent Muslims bombed to fuck in a huge range of countries by the West in the last 30 years or so.
5. Muslim governments who pay lip service to more literal versions of Islam in order to help control the population. So while the poor adhere to the various tenets of Islam, the rich and powerful do what they want in private.

So in short, Cockneygeezer your perception is, I think, correct. There is good and bad in all faiths and the reasons why radical Islam has become a problem is outlined above.

So if Slater was less concerned with vomiting insults and more on trying to understand what the Pew Report actually does say in a balanced way i.e. in one of its key tables, religious persecution by individuals and groups is from a population perspective most prevalent in non-Muslim countries, he may be able to take a more rounded view.

[cockneygeezer2009]

I did write out a long answer to this post but my PC froze and i lost it all !furious!

"So if Slater was less concerned with vomiting insults and more on trying to understand what the Pew Report actually does say in a balanced way i.e. in one of its key tables, religious persecution by individuals and groups is from a population perspective most prevalent in non-Muslim countries, he may be able to take a more rounded view."

Very difficult to take a rounded or objective view if you are prejudiced against Islam. Regarding Islam i agree with your points mentioned above and also state that the Quran is what i call bastardised by fundamentalist muslims who themselves want to declare war on 'non believers' and seek a world full of their type of Islamic belief.

The problem is these fundamentalist Muslims are in the minority of Muslims worldwide not the majority. God? help us if Muslim fundamentalists ever became the majority of Muslims.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]Regarding Islam i agree with your points mentioned above and also state that the Quran is what i call bastardised by fundamentalist muslims who themselves want to declare war on 'non believers' and seek a world full of their type of Islamic belief. [/quote]

Bastardised? How do you know what's bastardised? How does anyone know? Are you God, Allah or a prophet with that knowledge or are you guessing?

It is not for you to state, what is bastardised, literal, metaphorical or misinterpreted. Only God/Allah or one of their messengers can decide that.

[David Johnson]

"It is not for you to state, what is bastardised, literal, metaphorical or misinterpreted. Only God/Allah or one of their messengers can decide that."

More confused thought from Mr. Slater. In reality, all religious faith and their fundamental documents whether they be the Bible or the Koran are open to interpretation.

Here is Sam's post from a different thread.

"the Quran is infallible. If it explicitly gives permission for something, that's it."

That obviously is not the case because as I have stated elsewhere, either British Muslims are not true Muslims because the overwhelming majority of them do not go around slaughtering unbelievers or the Koran is open to interpretation and British Muslims are overwhelmingly agreeing with a less violent interpretation than the literal statements in the Koran.

And Sam disproves his own argument about everything being literal in a separate post "One passage gives you the right to rape, the other passage tells you to not give in to lust......you can both love your neighbour and pluck out his eyes at the same time."

What decides whether you do one thing or the other? Interpretation. Like all religions their holy books can be interpreted for evil acts e.g. killing a non-believer and being kind to all human beings.

[Sam Slater]

And ignore snidey Dave's comments. His post does not in any way contradict my comments to you.

Only God/Allah/a prophet knows. Not you. Not me. Not weasel Johnson. Nobody.

Only Allah knows if a peaceful Muslim is the right kind of Muslim. Only God knows if abortions are ok. Only Allah knows if Sunnis blowing up Shia mosques is the best thing they can do with their lives. Only God knows if his priests fiddling with young kids isn't so bad.

Remember that when someone says....."but they're not real Muslims/Christians." They don't know - fact.

My argument is with scriptures that can be used to justify anything the reader wants.

[David Johnson]

Slater argues

"My argument is with scriptures that can be used to justify anything the reader wants."
"
Which is exactly what I stated in my post and it is the same with all faiths.

"What decides whether you do one thing or the other? Interpretation. Like all religions their holy books can be interpreted for evil acts e.g. killing a non-believer and being kind to all human beings."

Less vomiting of insults and more understanding of my post would help your grasp of what is being argued, Samuel.

[frankthring]

While not wanting to get into some heavy and complicated debate, I feel,
David, that the reasons you give for the growth of militant Islam in your
piece on 07-06 is rather too modernist and glib. It hardly goes anywhere
to explain militant Islam in historical terms. Just 330 years ago militant
Islam led the Turks to the gates of Vienna. Just think if the Austrians had
lost how the history of Europe would have changed as Ottoman armies
launched into Germany or France ! Going back to my own period of study -
the 19th century - the British Empire was constantly at war with various forms
of militant Islam, from the Wahhabis on the north-west frontier stirring up the
tribesmen in over sixty expeditions from 1849-1946, to the Sudan under the
Mahdi and his successor, the Khalifa Abdullahi 1883-98 to Somaliland,
where Sayyid Mohammed Abdille Hassan fought us constantly 1899-1921. Let
me be clear, all this fighting was in the name of Allah (the Mahdi said he
would fight until the Queen of England and President of the USA became
Moslems).
So there is absolutely nothing new in what we are seeing from Al Qaeda. Of
course large numbers of Sunni and Sufis want to live in peace. This is a
reasonable thing. But Islam is unquestionably a more militant religion than
Christianity and a large wing of it refuses - will go on refusing - to live in
peace with Western values.

[David Johnson]

"the British Empire was constantly at war with various forms
of militant Islam," and "But Islam is unquestionably a more militant religion than Christianity"

Are you being ironic, Frank or even too modernist or glib?

The secret is in the term....British Empire. How did British troops end up in the Sudan and the North West frontier that you reference? How did the likes of Belgium, France, Britain etc. control pretty much the whole of Africa and Asia?

Did they get off at the wrong stop?