JNathanK wrote:
I'm sick of this bigot. I'm friends with Muslims, and they aren't like his generalizations at all.
Quickest rebuttal to that: if he lived in a Muslim country, he'd be keeping his head down whilst the zealots and bigots run the show. If he didn't, he'd be criminally punished or executed for publicly stating any views that "go against Islam". Muslims who start to criticise the Islamic belief in Islamic countries are likely to end up in serious trouble or dead for doing so. I'm not making this up. Islamic countries are probably the most dangerous places in the world to be for genuinely liberal Muslims who want to speak their minds. Even the likes of fiercely secular Turkey are going backwards now, the legacy of Atatürk being squandered and religious minorities are being persecuted (as they are in many Muslim countries where Muslims are a majority) as Islam rises.
Are they decent human beings? I doubt somewhat whether they truly believe what's written in the Quran then. Do they believe that it's perfectly OK for disgusting old men to marry little six-year-old girls? If they don't (like everyone else), they're at odds with Islam and at odds with millions of their fellow Muslims who praise this kind of behaviour. (Marrying off little girls to old men for them to be raped is quite acceptable in countries like Saudi Arabia.) If they oppose that, they oppose Islam, and they must be slain like other non-believers.
If most Muslims are so fundamentally decent, how do you explain what Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen are like and the flood of Muslim bigots in Western countries? A sizeable percentage of young British Muslims openly support Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists when polled. Most British Muslims support people actually being imprisoned (or worse) for insulting the Quran and the Prophet. What you must understand is that, in many ways, Islam is fundamentally opposed to, well, anything civilised.
I've met many decent Muslims too (and some mental cases - there seems to be a lot of messed up Muslim women out there for some reason). Doesn't change the fact that there are huge, huge problems within Islam though and that's his fundamental point. He's said on many occasions that he doesn't have a problem with ALL Muslims, that he's had many e-mails from Muslims who agree with his basic points. There are a lot of brave people inside Islam that try their best to challenge the bigotry they see but it's an uphill struggle for them, because the hate being preached is pretty mainstream across the Muslim world. There is a massive problem in Western countries with Muslims supporting terrorists and wanting to uproot our freedoms and it's not bigoted to point this out
As he's trying to say here, it's the religion that causes the intolerance of the people within it and the way it's used to hate, threaten, suppress and kill people. If that's something you want to condone, then fine. History won't look brightly on the people who do though. Well, unless we end up with a worldwide caliph, I suppose. And that's not going to happen.
The same is true of Christianity, really - we used to execute people for witchcraft not very far from me (they still do this in Saudi Arabia). Although it's worth noting that Christian terrorism is almost completely non-existent these days, there are still countries that have a serious problem with homosexuality, like in parts of Africa and the Caribbean. Almost the entire Islamic world seems to have a problem with it and in countries where Islam rules, gays are enthusiastically persecuted. In Saudi Arabia they execute gay people, in spite of the fact that homosexuality is so abundantly rife there because of the total gender segregation there. In a society where a person can't do so many normal things, where they can't drink, smoke, masturbate, watch pornography, meet women (in fact, even see women not dressed as a pillar box!) or do anything normal within the law, you're bound to meet some very repressed people. That's why, as I said, homosexuality is so popular there (among men and women I gather) as everyone has sexual needs and desires.
The people you and I know have let their basic humanity win over the intolerance of the religion, and have almost certainly discarded an awful lot of what's in there (much like Christians have - if Christians still lived by what's in the Bible to the letter, they'd be killing people for cursing their parents, for witchcraft, for being unfortunate enough to be raped, worshipping other gods, for having anal sex). If they followed their religion to the letter, they would hate. They would hate everyone. Just as the Nazis did. In fact, the Nazis and Muslims actually had common cause in the 1930s and 1940s due to their shared anti-Semitism - the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem at the time was even on the Nazi payroll as a Muslim ambassador for Nazism.
If you listen to Condell, he has it in for
all religion, even atheists who make a nuisance of themselves He's an atheist himself. He dislikes Christianity almost as much due to his experiences with it growing up. He thinks that religion is a load of nonsense, but it would be fine if that's all it was - nonsense. Condell's problem is that religion is dangerous nonsense because of the way numerous religions use their faith as a political ideology and to influence their country's politics. The situation would nearly be as bad in America if, say, it was a Christian fundamentalist theocracy (though no terrorists, obviously). He wants the religious to shut up, stop forcing their beliefs on everyone else and simply go away. They're entitled to their beliefs as we all are, but they deserve absolutely no special treatment. They should be treated with the same amount of respect as any other belief that is unsubstantiated. Do that, though, and the religious lose their power. It's happened with Christianity when people stopped believing (Judaism is a special case, but there are lots of atheist/secular Jews about) and it will happen with Islam.
I wasn't talking about Muslim extremists, just moderate Muslims I know. They're ok people, and I don't judge them by all the negativity I see in the news, anymore than I judge Christians by Westborough Baptist or the inquisition. Its just counter-productive. Yes, maybe the Quran probably does say some messed up things, just as the Bible says some messed up things. However, to most Christians or Muslims, their religion really isn't about taking people as slaves and killing unbelievers. To them, Islam and Christianity is a religion of peace. Its more about helping the poor and stuff, I don't really see much value in religious systems, but people are born into them, and I think its counter-productive to viciously attack them or lump them in with violent people who claim the same faith. I think these religions distinctions would just become irrelevant over time, but if you directly attack someones deeply held beliefs without acknowledging their humanity, they're just going to react negatively, and nobody will get anywhere.
22 Sep 2012, 6:21 pm
This guy is rather angry.
