That certainty explains why Muslims invaded Europe in the 8th, then stopped by Charles Martel. Or in the 17th Century, then stopped by Jan Sobieski. Or the enslavement of millions of Europeans up to the 19th Century, then stopped by Stephen Decatur.
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Is it really Islam's teachings that make Musllims violent?
- Thread starter DrZoidberg
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That certainty explains why Muslims invaded Europe in the 8th, then stopped by Charles Martel. Or in the 17th Century, then stopped by Jan Sobieski. Or the enslavement of millions of Europeans up to the 19th Century, then stopped by Stephen Decatur.
untermensche
Contributor
No, it just explains some of the feelings today. 8th Century emotions have diminished somewhat.
repoman
Contributor
Medicine Man
Member
When you consider how-OFTEN the Bible has been copied (as a jobs-program; pre-Gutenberg), I've often wondered what the chances were....that some monk (who'd had a little-too-much o' "the grape") might have announced...."HEY!!!! Look at what I'd made THIS one say!! HA HAAAAAA!!!"
Islam has always been on the warpath to a greater or lesser degree. Why do you figure it has to be due to a variety of external causes rather than the nature of their religion?
AthenaAwakened
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And the crusades were christian, the US fight every war on God's side (just ask 'em) and the kamikaze pilots were buddhist.
what is your point?
Mostly Shinto actually. And those who were buddhist didn't do it in the name of budhism. Pointing to their Budhism would be like pointing at Stalin or Mao's atheism. It wasn't why they did what they did and they didn't use it as part of their message or justification for their actions.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
Nope.
The problem is actually that until the 20th century most Muslim counties were consolidated under the Ottoman Empire, in which their religious and social institutions were more or less stable and productive. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, so did those institutions. European colonialism stepped in to fill the power vacuum, in most cases failing miserably; fifty years of effective anarchy finally gave way to various forms of despotism and/or Islamofascism of the kind that usually reaps a harvest of widespread misery, poverty, radicalism and other pathologies commonly found in failed states.
When you force a large group of people into a state of profound social and economic deprivation, it should be expected that a certain number of them will resort to violence as a reaction to their circumstances (bandits, thieves, gangsters, etc). If that deprivation is localized in a slum district or a ghetto, you get "bad neighborhoods" where crime, corruption and gang/mob violence are increasingly common. When you then expand that deprivation to include nation-sized tracts of land that encompass entire ethnic groups, you get "bad countries," the core of which forms the heartland of international terrorism.
It has to be remembered that the overwhelming majority of terrorist violence is actually directed at local politics. Western media draws attention to the tiny handful of Muslim terrorists but is virtually silent on the millions of Muslim victims.
The problem, then, isn't with Islam as a religion so much as it is Islam as a society. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and incompetence runs rampant in the leadership of Islamic society.
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
But that's what's happening with Arab terrorism as well. It's only a handful of Jihadist terrorist organizations in the world that even have the capability to attack western targets, let alone the motivation. Most Jihadist organizations spend almost the entirety of their energy machinegunning school girls, blackmailing local politicians and decapitating unfriendly journalists.
But the genesis of the Rwandan genocide was good old fashioned racism; religion became a factor only inasmuch as the racists were also deeply religious.
Interestingly, Rwanda's ethnic racism actually originated from European colonialism when the colonial government arbitrarily chose the Tutsis to be the "favorite" and elevated them unilaterally over the Hutus.
Underseer
Contributor
Christians don't get their morals from the Bible and Muslims don't get their morals from the Koran. Religion just tries to take credit for people's natural desire to be good.
The Koran says that it's OK for Muslim men to have multiple wives, yet many (if not most) Muslim countries mysteriously have laws that make polygyny technically legal, but virtually impossible to achieve. They may give lip service to the Koran as the source of all morality and may even believe it, but as with Christians culture seems to be a greater source of morality than religion.
Muslims make all kinds of excuses for not killing infidels. The details of their excuses don't really matter. The fact that they seek and find such excuses in the first place proves that their morals are coming from themselves rather than the Koran, and it proves that they are more moral than the Koran. Just like the fact that Christians find excuses to ignore the bad advice about slavery in the Bible is proof that Christian morals come from Christians, not the Bible and that Christians are more moral than the Bible.
Does religion exacerbate our inherent human tendency for tribalism and all that us-vs-them nonsense? I think so.
Does religion's promise of moral superiority make people less likely to question their own moral decisions? I think so. In fact this may be the biggest problem. Muslims live in a culture in which no one ever ever ever questions Islam to even the tiniest degree, which makes the illusion of moral certainty/superiority that much harder to shatter and makes people that much more likely to decide that any decision they make is moral just because they're Muslim. With such illusions in place, you could be a good person or a monster and you would not know the difference.
The Koran says that it's OK for Muslim men to have multiple wives, yet many (if not most) Muslim countries mysteriously have laws that make polygyny technically legal, but virtually impossible to achieve. They may give lip service to the Koran as the source of all morality and may even believe it, but as with Christians culture seems to be a greater source of morality than religion.
Muslims make all kinds of excuses for not killing infidels. The details of their excuses don't really matter. The fact that they seek and find such excuses in the first place proves that their morals are coming from themselves rather than the Koran, and it proves that they are more moral than the Koran. Just like the fact that Christians find excuses to ignore the bad advice about slavery in the Bible is proof that Christian morals come from Christians, not the Bible and that Christians are more moral than the Bible.
Does religion exacerbate our inherent human tendency for tribalism and all that us-vs-them nonsense? I think so.
Does religion's promise of moral superiority make people less likely to question their own moral decisions? I think so. In fact this may be the biggest problem. Muslims live in a culture in which no one ever ever ever questions Islam to even the tiniest degree, which makes the illusion of moral certainty/superiority that much harder to shatter and makes people that much more likely to decide that any decision they make is moral just because they're Muslim. With such illusions in place, you could be a good person or a monster and you would not know the difference.
Wiploc
Veteran Member
I assume that if they kept sending armies over here to straighten us out, then we'd have plenty of terrorists acting out. People would be asking, "Why don't those Americans denounce their violent radicals?"
The most muslim terror is towards other muslims. It doesnt matter how important you want US to be, US warfare per se is not the cause of muslim terrorism.
Medicine Man
Member
....AND, when people are already struggling with that deprivation....and, their ONLY hope (in their minds), for the future, is a life in the hereafter....it's probably best not to marginalize their faith. When that's the only hope they have....it's best not to rub-their-collective-noses in the possibility their faith is misplaced/wasted.
What better example than America's "christians".
Perspicuo
Veteran Member
A more scientific response: Islam is a factor.
A more detailed response: Islam might be seen as a factor, but it is a post hoc conclusion in most comments I've read on FB (the online funny farm). Take another situation: Was Communism a factor in the making of Latin American 1970s/1980s guerrillas? Or lack of social justice? Or the CIA?
We can find both calls for gratuitous violence and calls for peace in the Qur'an. Just like the Bible, it depends who reads it and how it has been read and commented to you by your religious leaders and family.
A more detailed response: Islam might be seen as a factor, but it is a post hoc conclusion in most comments I've read on FB (the online funny farm). Take another situation: Was Communism a factor in the making of Latin American 1970s/1980s guerrillas? Or lack of social justice? Or the CIA?
We can find both calls for gratuitous violence and calls for peace in the Qur'an. Just like the Bible, it depends who reads it and how it has been read and commented to you by your religious leaders and family.
repoman
Contributor
Is Saudi Arabia a pure expression of Islam?
Much like communists they will say that Mao'z China or Stalin's USSR were not really communist.
Much like communists they will say that Mao'z China or Stalin's USSR were not really communist.
Wiploc
Veteran Member
Originally Posted by DrZoidberg
Is Islam really more violent than other religions and is it really the philosophy/theology of Islam that is the problem?
I assume that if they kept sending armies over here to straighten us out, then we'd have plenty of terrorists acting out. People would be asking, "Why don't those Americans denounce their violent radicals?"
The most muslim terror is towards other muslims. It doesnt matter how important you want US to be, US warfare per se is not the cause of muslim terrorism.
I don't disagree with anything you said. In case you think you're disagreeing with me, I'll try to enlarge on my previous post:
Suppose many of us felt we were losing the culture wars. For instance, suppose American women were starting to dress in bags. And suppose when you order bacon in a restaurant, you were often told, "Sorry, we don't serve bacon. Bacon is haram." No Muslims in sight, but you still can't get your bacon because of their cultural influence. The city council meeting opens with a prayer to Allah.
A lot of Christians would have a feeling of losing, of rightness sliding away. Some of them would act out with violence. Terroristic violence, like Brownshirts. It might be Christian on Christian violence most of the time, and it might have nothing to do with Arabic armies, but it would also not require the bible to change from what it said a few years ago.
The heightened violence would result from a cultural change, not a doctrinal change.
Many Christian voices would be raised against the violence.
And now suppose further that the governor of New Jersey mouths off against Saudi Arabia effectively enough that a coalition army, including France, if you want, invades New Jersey.
My point---one of my points---is that those voices would then tend to be muted, softer, less common, more careful.
Our anti-jihad terrorists would be emboldened, and those speaking against violence would tend to become less motivated and more cautious.
And this effect would not require any specific language in the bible, just as Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't require any specific language in the Koran.
I believe that if they were mostly Christian, and we were mostly Muslim, but the cultural situation remained the same (we keep encroaching, often using armies, and they feel like history is going wrong) then they, in their frustration, would still have a lot of violence.
So my answer to the OP is this: No, it is not really Islam's teachings that makes Muslims violent. I have no reason to believe that the Koran is more violence-inducing than the bible.
Pre-reformation Christianity was about as evil as Islam is today.
The Kamikaze pilots did it out of nationalism, not religion.
J842P
Veteran Member
Not according to the most radical fundamentalists, ironically. Saudi Arabia is this weird alliance between the clerics and a monarchy (the House of Saud). Islamic purists reject rule by a monarch and see the KSA as a horrible perversion, a deal with the devil, so to speak. The United State's relationship with the KSA is was one of Osama bin Laden's main grievances with the USA, the other being the support of Israel.
In an ideal Islamic society decisions are to be made by shura of the Muslim community (the Ummah), meaning consultation by those who would be affected by the decisions. The historical reality is that this almost always meant some monarch or emir consulting with advisers. Some modern Sunni scholars have interpreted this as meaning representative democracy (with some sort of clerical oversight by religious scholars). Ironically, it is Shia Iran that comes closest to this system.
J842P
Veteran Member
Um, post-Reformation Christianity has acted just as barbarically as pre-Reformation Christianity. Reformed Protestants merely reject the Roman Papacy. They are a very eclectic group, but many have been and continue to be quite a bit more radical and fundamentalist that the Catholics.
arkirk
Veteran Member
I believe it was post reformation Christians dropping atom bombs. What are you talking about?
It was post reformation Christians fire bombing Hamburg, Dresden, Baghdad, etc.