Is it really Islam's teachings that make Musllims violent?

[Metaphor]

Luckily for us, the link explores exactly what it means by asking specific questions about specific situations. For example, whether stoning is appropriate for adulterers.

And as one might expect of such a large and diverse group of people, there are wide variations in the responses from country to country on the specific questions. So, I think my point about not assuming we know what it means for all Muslims or any individual Muslim is still valid.

Of course there are variations, whoever imagined there were not? But that isn't the point. In some countries, 80% of Muslims think a human being who committed adultery should be buried to their neck into the ground, and then killed over several agonising hours by being pelted with stones.

The fact that any human being anywhere thinks this is moral and acceptable chills my blood.

 

[Shadowy Man]

And as one might expect of such a large and diverse group of people, there are wide variations in the responses from country to country on the specific questions. So, I think my point about not assuming we know what it means for all Muslims or any individual Muslim is still valid.

Of course there are variations, whoever imagined there were not? But that isn't the point. In some countries, 80% of Muslims think a human being who committed adultery should be buried to their neck into the ground, and then killed over several agonising hours by being pelted with stones.

The fact that any human being anywhere thinks this is moral and acceptable chills my blood.

I agree.

However, the phrase "sharia law" is tossed around in such a way as to make it easy for people to assume that 100% of Muslims believe in stoning adulterers.

 

[arcadia]

It's also easier to assume that since practically no Muslims seem to oppose or even complain or explain about "sharia law". I really don't know much of anything about it; only what the Right Wing Nuts in this country atribute to sharia law. Is there an Islamic equivalent of the ten commandments or someplace else the Empty Beard lays it all out? Or is this mostly a construct of the current Mullahs?

 

[Bomb#20]

Is there an Islamic equivalent of the ten commandments or someplace else the Empty Beard lays it all out? Or is this mostly a construct of the current Mullahs?

You say that as though those are the two options. You might as well ask, of a Supreme Court ruling, whether Roberts cut-and-pasted his opinion from the Constitution or pulled it out of his ass. Islam has a thousand-plus years of legal argumentation under its belt. When anybody challenges them with "But Muhammad didn't say...", those current mullahs can quote some famous widely respected 13th-century scholar at him faster than you can say "Oliver Wendell Holmes".

 

[Bomb#20]

The central issue is what effect Islam's teachings have on the mean and the standard deviation. It's not the 0.01% who want to blow up women and children that are in need of explanation; it's the 50%+ who support punishing blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, adultery, female disobedience, and on and on. So go ahead, explain how that's the Wests's fault.

Well, first we need to look at your 50% plus. According to the research you cited, which unfortunately for you I actually read,

Oh for the love of god! Is that all these discussions are to you, bleeding sports competitions? I take it you're talking about the research Dismal cited. If it actually discredited my 50% plus, that would be fortunate for me. Unfortunately for me, unfortunately for all of us, it doesn't.

Muslims support punishing blasphemy, apostasy homosexuality and adultery only within adherants of their own religion. So people who are self-identifying as Muslim should be held accountable if they break Islamic law. In other words, they believed their religion should be policed. The same research shows a robust support for religious pluralism, to the extent that actively supporting people with other religious beliefs is seen as an inherently good thing.

Since you actually read it, I take it you can actually quote it saying that.[/sarcasm] I actually read it too. It doesn't say that. One of the weaknesses of polls like this is that they only ask the questions they ask. Then interpreters like you and me have to try to fill in the blanks by some sort of extrapolation procedure. When a Muslim says he thinks Christians shouldn't be subject to Sharia, that might mean he thinks it's okay if a dead Christian's estate is divided equally between his son and daughter instead of two-to-one. It does not necessarily mean he thinks a live Christian should be allowed to draw Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. The Pew poll didn't ask about that.

Moreover, let me draw your attention to the fact that Muslims are people too. If some Muslim only supports punishing blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, adultery and female disobedience when committed by Muslims, that does not make him a nonviolent person. That makes him a violent person who targets Muslims.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to the idea that faulty reasoning corrupts people's minds, which is why I'm disagreeing with you. Because you've presented nothing to suggest that ordinary Muslims are any more violent than anyone else, and nothing to suggest that Islam is any more mind corrupting than Christianity, or Fox News.

If you're going to inject yourself into the middle of an ongoing discussion between two other people and start kibitzing, you might want to read the earlier posts and get some context. We weren't arguing about whether Muslims are more violent than anyone else. This is an argument about untermensche having double standards and putting words in Jolly_Penguin's mouth. So don't read one post and decide my contention is whatever it pleases you to read into it. In case you didn't notice, I was the one on the "blame Christianity for murdered abortion doctors" side.

What does produce a predictable outcome is attacking people, rounding them up and torturing them. People will resist this kind of thing with violence.

Yes. And when they "resist this kind of thing" by rounding up and murdering their own country's school girls,

And all of a sudden we're not talking about ordinary Muslims, we're talking about a fanatical fringe. You argued quite eloquantly that we should be ignoring the fringe and looking at the ordinary people.

See above. For the question of whether Islam is violence-inducing we should ignore the fringe. For the question of whether untermensche is applying a double standard we should look at which of acts of violence he blames and which he makes excuses for, wherever that leads us.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Muslims support punishing blasphemy, apostasy homosexuality and adultery only within adherants of their own religion. So people who are self-identifying as Muslim should be held accountable if they break Islamic law. In other words, they believed their religion should be policed. The same research shows a robust support for religious pluralism, to the extent that actively supporting people with other religious beliefs is seen as an inherently good thing.

As Bomb#20 points out, that's not in the poll.

But I have a question: why do you think self-identification is the way they pick their targets of punishment?
Do you think that if someone is raised as a Muslim, but when he's an adult he says he does not believe Allah exists and so he's not a Muslim, most of those who want to punish apostasy wouldn't support punishment in that particular case?

Do you think for apostasy is meant only for people who, as adults, self-identified as Muslims, and then recognized they became non-Muslims?
(Of course, that would still mean forcing non-Muslims who were previously Muslim to shut up and not recognize that they're not Muslim).

Or does the "self-identifying" condition in your claim works for children too, so once a kid raised in a Muslim family identified as Muslim (not that she had much of a choice), then she is punished if as an adult she acknowledges she's not a Muslim anymore?

 

[Togo]

Well, first we need to look at your 50% plus. According to the research you cited, which unfortunately for you I actually read,

Oh for the love of god! Is that all these discussions are to you, bleeding sports competitions?

No. They're faulty arguments. Something I've consistently opposed since I joined the board.

Muslims support punishing blasphemy, apostasy homosexuality and adultery only within adherants of their own religion. So people who are self-identifying as Muslim should be held accountable if they break Islamic law. In other words, they believed their religion should be policed. The same research shows a robust support for religious pluralism, to the extent that actively supporting people with other religious beliefs is seen as an inherently good thing.

Since you actually read it, I take it you can actually quote it saying that.[/sarcasm] I actually read it too. It doesn't say that.

From the section 'Democracy and Religious Freedom'
...non-Muslims in their country are very free to practice their religion and consider this a good thing.

I note that the Median % here are some of the highest in the entire article.

One of the weaknesses of polls like this is that they only ask the questions they ask. Then interpreters like you and me have to try to fill in the blanks by some sort of extrapolation procedure.

Fortunately, my quotation comes from the questions actually asked.

Moreover, let me draw your attention to the fact that Muslims are people too. If some Muslim only supports punishing blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, adultery and female disobedience when committed by Muslims, that does not make him a nonviolent person. That makes him a violent person who targets Muslims.

And noone is arguing that Muslims can't be violent. But I'm going to ask, again, if you have any evidence whatsoever that Muslims are any more violent than christians.

If you're going to inject yourself into the middle of an ongoing discussion between two other people and start kibitzing, you might want to read the earlier posts and get some context. We weren't arguing about whether Muslims are more violent than anyone else. This is an argument about untermensche having double standards and putting words in Jolly_Penguin's mouth.

I feel no reluctance whatsoever in interrupting in order to bring the focus back to the OP. As far as I can tell the reason why untermensche's conduct became a topic of discussion because people we unable to deal with the points he was making.

 

[Togo]

Muslims support punishing blasphemy, apostasy homosexuality and adultery only within adherants of their own religion. So people who are self-identifying as Muslim should be held accountable if they break Islamic law. In other words, they believed their religion should be policed. The same research shows a robust support for religious pluralism, to the extent that actively supporting people with other religious beliefs is seen as an inherently good thing.

As Bomb#20 points out, that's not in the poll.

Unfortunately it is.

But I have a question: why do you think self-identification is the way they pick their targets of punishment?

Becuase the punishment is for being a bad Muslim, and thus changing what it means to be Muslim. There's anther Pew research paper which was linked to the first one:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/...ics-society-interfaith-relations/#hostilities
That covers this in more detail.

Do you think that if someone is raised as a Muslim, but when he's an adult he says he does not believe Allah exists and so he's not a Muslim, most of those who want to punish apostasy wouldn't support punishment in that particular case?

I can't be certaib, since that wasn't covered. However, it isn't punished by any Muslims I know, which is a considerable variety. What does happen is the family gets ashamed and upset, and that in itself a cause problems, exactly as when a christian religious family has an atheist child. I don't want to imply that those situations arn't serious - they are - but they're common to several relgions, as a brief sweep of the atheiest converstion experiences section of the forum will show.

Some cultures do of course punish those who renounce their beliefs, and you can see in this various religious and secular communities around the world. This may be anything from a full-blown criminal trial through to simply distrusting those who's beliefs aren't fully understood.

Again, if you think there's something unique to Islam going on here, then you're welcome to provide evidence for it.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Why does it matter if Islam pushes people to be violent and intolerant more than Christianity does (or has)? "They do it too" isnt an excuse we would normally accept.

The title of the OP is a good question, and the answer is clearly yes; Though it is not the only factor, Islam is most definitely a big one. Why dance around that on a freethought atheist board?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Becuase the punishment is for being a bad Muslim, and thus changing what it means to be Muslim. There's anther Pew research paper which was linked to the first one:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/t...s/#hostilities
That covers this in more detail.

That does not answer my question. My question is why you think they use the self-identification criterion as a means to determine who is a Muslim.

For example, it is apparent that some people accused of apostasy state that they are atheists, or Christians, etc., but they will all be punished anyway. If the punishers adopt the self-identification criterion, then they're punishing someone who, by their own criterion, is not a Muslim.

I suppose you might say that the criterion is "once self-identified as a Muslim after reaching adulthood, always a Muslim" (even if a person is in fact not a Muslim), but why do you think the criteria is like that, and does not count people raised as Muslims as "always Muslim", even if they never identified - at least as adults - as Muslims? And why do you think they care if a person reached adulthood when self-identifies as a Muslim, assuming they do care about the self-identification criterion?

I can't be certaib, since that wasn't covered. However, it isn't punished by any Muslims I know, which is a considerable variety.

What is covered is that they want to punish people for apostasy. Why do you think that only people who once identified as Muslims when adults are to be punished if they stop being Muslims?

As for the Muslims you know, do you know of any Muslims who would not punish people raised as Muslims but who become non-Muslims as adults, but who would in fact want the death penalty (or at least some other harsh punishment) for someone who, say, is raised as a Muslim, self-identifies as a Muslim as an adult, but then stops being a Muslim?

If your answer is "no", then it seems clear to me that the Muslims that you know do not provide evidence that the Muslims who replied to the poll make a distinction based on whether an apostate ever self-identified as a Muslim as an adult.

Purely for example, this woman was accused of apostasy, even though it seems she was raised as a Christian, and didn't self-identify as a Muslim.

My question is: why do you think that all or at least most or a significant percentage of the people who respond to the poll and favor the death penalty for apostasy, would refrain from favoring such punishment on the basis that a person was only raised as Muslim, but failed to identify as a Muslim as an adult?

What does happen is the family gets ashamed and upset, and that in itself a cause problems, exactly as when a christian religious family has an atheist child. I don't want to imply that those situations arn't serious - they are - but they're common to several relgions, as a brief sweep of the atheiest converstion experiences section of the forum will show.

Christian families in present-day Western countries do not seem very similar, but leaving that aside, that sort of reaction from Christian families is common regardless of whether the person identified herself as a Christian for a while after becoming an adult, or, say, stopped identifying as a Christian when she was 12, 13, or 14.
Why would you think that the sort of Muslim reaction we're talking about (i.e., support for the death penalty) would be based on whether a person self-identifies as a Muslim as an adult?

Some cultures do of course punish those who renounce their beliefs, and you can see in this various religious and secular communities around the world. This may be anything from a full-blown criminal trial through to simply distrusting those who's beliefs aren't fully understood.

Again, if you think there's something unique to Islam going on here, then you're welcome to provide evidence for it.

I don't think violence like that is unique to Islam, of course. But I seriously doubt the people who disagree with you in this thread believe that Islam is the only religion that has the problem of promoting violence against innocent people.

The question here never was whether Islam is the only religion that makes its adherents violent.

That aside, there is a considerable difference between the problem of people who mistrust those who abandon their beliefs, and people who favor executing, imprisoning, canning, etc., those who abandon their beliefs.

 

[ontological_realist]

That aside, there is a considerable difference between the problem of people who mistrust those who abandon their beliefs, and people who favor executing, imprisoning, canning, etc., those who abandon their beliefs.

Backward societies tend to give more physical punishment than advanced societies.

 

[Bomb#20]

Purely for example, this woman was accused of apostasy, even though it seems she was raised as a Christian, and didn't self-identify as a Muslim.

It gets worse, if that were possible. In some countries, particularly Iran, you can be considered to inherit apostasy. A lot of Baha'is have been executed for apostasy because their religion is an offshoot from Islam. The notion that self-identification is the customary criterion for deciding other people's religion is projection.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Purely for example, this woman was accused of apostasy, even though it seems she was raised as a Christian, and didn't self-identify as a Muslim.

It gets worse, if that were possible. In some countries, particularly Iran, you can be considered to inherit apostasy. A lot of Baha'is have been executed for apostasy because their religion is an offshoot from Islam. The notion that self-identification is the customary criterion for deciding other people's religion is projection.

I didn't know about that one. I guess they could support that with a rationale based on their classification of apostates:

In Islam apostates (murtadd) are classified in fitri murtad (a person born to at least one Muslim parent who is not a Muslim, though of course they're still classified as Muslim), and milli murtad (Muslim converts who reject Islam).

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irtidad
http://www.al-islam.org/organizations/AalimNetwork/msg00228.html
http://ex-muslim.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Apostasy_Report_Web1.pdf

So, I reckon it might go like that:
A person born to a Muslim apostatizes, but they're still classified as Muslim - just bad Muslims, fitri murtad -, so their sons and daughters are also Muslims, and so on. I don't know whether they actually use that rationale to punish them, though. Maybe they just come up with another unreason to kill people.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Purely for example, this woman was accused of apostasy, even though it seems she was raised as a Christian, and didn't self-identify as a Muslim.

It gets worse, if that were possible. In some countries, particularly Iran, you can be considered to inherit apostasy. A lot of Baha'is have been executed for apostasy because their religion is an offshoot from Islam. The notion that self-identification is the customary criterion for deciding other people's religion is projection.

Hmm... but Iran is a fascist state with the same relation to Islam as Nazi Germany had to Christianity. It's just a tool to manipulate and oppress. When Iran's constitution was drafted putting Khomeini at the top, the plan was for Khomeini to guarantee democracy. He would only put his nose into politics if things were going astray. Nobody had envisaged him swooping in and becoming a de facto dictator. Calling Iran an Islamic state is like calling Nazi Germany a Christian one. While true on paper, few of the faithful would agree.

Bottom line, Iran is not a good example of what an Islamic state is and it really doesn't matter how they chose to interpret the Koran or how they judge on anything. It still doesn't prove that any of that was inevitable. With the same logic, an atheistic government doesn't automatically lead to the country turning into China or USSR.

And we don't need to wonder about how an Islamic state would be. There are plenty of Muslims in the west who vote. We know how they vote. So we know most of them are pretty fucking far from being any kind of extremist.

 

[untermensche]

Hmm... but Iran is a fascist state with the same relation to Islam as Nazi Germany had to Christianity. It's just a tool to manipulate and oppress. When Iran's constitution was drafted putting Khomeini at the top, the plan was for Khomeini to guarantee democracy. He would only put his nose into politics if things were going astray. Nobody had envisaged him swooping in and becoming a de facto dictator. Calling Iran an Islamic state is like calling Nazi Germany a Christian one. While true on paper, few of the faithful would agree.

You can say this till you're blue in the face.

It makes no difference to those with the mentality that the ways things are is the only possible way they could have been.

To them the Muslim world is the way it is entirely because of Islam and not because of countless contingencies that have nothing to do with religion.

Contingencies like a CIA overthrow of the elected leader in Iran or support of Saddam Hussein's attack of Iran and eight year war.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Hmm... but Iran is a fascist state with the same relation to Islam as Nazi Germany had to Christianity. It's just a tool to manipulate and oppress. When Iran's constitution was drafted putting Khomeini at the top, the plan was for Khomeini to guarantee democracy. He would only put his nose into politics if things were going astray. Nobody had envisaged him swooping in and becoming a de facto dictator. Calling Iran an Islamic state is like calling Nazi Germany a Christian one. While true on paper, few of the faithful would agree.

You can say this till you're blue in the face.

It makes no difference to those with the mentality that the ways things are is the only possible way they could have been.

To them the Muslim world is the way it is entirely because of Islam and not because of countless contingencies that have nothing to do with religion.

Contingencies like a CIA overthrow of the elected leader in Iran or support of Saddam Hussein's attack of Iran and eight year war.

I'd say you've got a causation/correlation problem. Who the fuck knows?

 

[untermensche]

You can say this till you're blue in the face.

It makes no difference to those with the mentality that the ways things are is the only possible way they could have been.

To them the Muslim world is the way it is entirely because of Islam and not because of countless contingencies that have nothing to do with religion.

Contingencies like a CIA overthrow of the elected leader in Iran or support of Saddam Hussein's attack of Iran and eight year war.

I'd say you've got a causation/correlation problem. Who the fuck knows?

I do know.

I know that overturning the Iranian democracy had nothing to do with religion.

The US supported Iraqi attack of Iran had nothing to do with religion either.

I do know that more than religion is a contingent factor in the Muslim world.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I'd say you've got a causation/correlation problem. Who the fuck knows?

I do know.

I know that overturning the Iranian democracy had nothing to do with religion.

The US supported Iraqi attack of Iran had nothing to do with religion either.

I do know that more than religion is a contingent factor in the Muslim world.

Then what is your point?

As you point out, without the Iran-Iraq war there is no way that the ayatollah would be able to make such a tight grip on the country as he did. Following the revolution civil society in Iran collapsed. It had to be built from scratch. The main proponents of revolution and it's strongest supporters throughout was the urban liberals. Upon taking power the ayatollah found himself in a political apparatus populated with such liberals. They weren't going to have any new dictatorship and had the power and clout to stop Khomeini. But the Iran-Iraq war gave the ayatollah a full eight years where he had free hands to plot and scheme at his hearts content. During the war national unity was crucial, the liberals knew it, and the ayatollah exploited this fully. As history has shown, he cleverly outmanoeuvred all the liberals to the point of making himself supreme autocrat. Apart from the fact that the ayatollah was an important symbol of anti-shah resistance none of this had anything to do with religion.

The current ayatollah, Khamenei, comes from the same little group of power-hungry friends. there was zero shift in power politics after the demise of Khomeini. That little clique have saturated the cabinet with their friends equally only interested in maintaining power, and share it among themselves brotherly. They're treating all of Iran as their own little private party chest. It's reached the point when they're not even bothering hiding it. Everybody knows.

None of this has anything to do with Islam.

 

[Togo]

That does not answer my question. My question is why you think they use the self-identification criterion as a means to determine who is a Muslim.

Because they support both punishment for Muslims who don't follow the faith, and religious pluralism.

For example, it is apparent that some people accused of apostasy state that they are atheists, or Christians, etc., but they will all be punished anyway.

Some people do lots of stupid things. Is that typical of Muslims?

I suppose you might say that the criterion is...

I could, but that would generalising about a global religion. I very much doubt there is a single criterion.

It seems like you're trying to build a case for Islam killing those who try to leave, but you don't have any evidence for it and you don't know enough about the religion to argue for it, so you're trying to extraploate it from my arguements. That's not going to work. If you want to know more about the religion, you need to find out more about the religion.

As for the Muslims you know, do you know of any Muslims who would not punish people raised as Muslims but who become non-Muslims as adults, but who would in fact want the death penalty (or at least some other harsh punishment) for someone who, say, is raised as a Muslim, self-identifies as a Muslim as an adult, but then stops being a Muslim?

Not for stopping being Muslim. But for claiming to be Muslim while not actually following the faith, yes, I know people who would support very harsh punishments. Some people have very little tolerance for half-way house co-religionists. However, it's a pretty rare view, and tends to be focused amongst those who come from countries that don't have a strong or cohesive legal system outside of religious law.

Purely for example, this woman was accused of apostasy, even though it seems she was raised as a Christian, and didn't self-identify as a Muslim.

Indeed not. A controvertial decision by any lights, which is why there were Muslims protesting it. You might want to consider the point that the woman claimed not to have renounced Islam, but that she never was Muslim in the first place. This means that the court that was trying her had no jurisidction over her case, or over her marriage or over her. Which was to someone on the opposite side of the recent Civil War. Which was between the government, which is attempting to set up a cohesive central legal sytem based on Sharia law, and non-Muslims in the periphary who were resisting the government's authority.

So here we have a woman denying the government has ever had legal jurisdiction over her, who married outside the government's legal system, one of the people they'd been fighting for decades. And you think this is about words in a book?

Some cultures do of course punish those who renounce their beliefs, and you can see in this various religious and secular communities around the world. This may be anything from a full-blown criminal trial through to simply distrusting those who's beliefs aren't fully understood.

Again, if you think there's something unique to Islam going on here, then you're welcome to provide evidence for it.

I don't think violence like that is unique to Islam, of course. But I seriously doubt the people who disagree with you in this thread believe that Islam is the only religion that has the problem of promoting violence against innocent people.

The question here never was whether Islam is the only religion that makes its adherents violent.

No, the two questions are in the OP
Is Islam really more violent than other religions and is it really the philosophy/theology of Islam that is the problem?

You're desperately trying to ignore them, because you don't have any evidence that Islam is more violent, nor can you demonstrate that it is more violent than other religions. And if it isn't more violent than other religions, it can't be the features unique to the philosophy/theology of Islam that is the problem.

And that's getting in the way of discussing features of Islam that you find distressing or disturbing.

That aside, there is a considerable difference between the problem of people who mistrust those who abandon their beliefs, and people who favor executing, imprisoning, canning, etc., those who abandon their beliefs.

That certainly would be an issue, if it were a feature of Islam, rather than particular cultures. Can you demonstrate that it is?

 

[untermensche]

None of this has anything to do with Islam.

My point.

To say religion is the driving force is nonsense.