I am Mixed About Islam.

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You are Muslim I take it?



The point is that Islamists (and particularly jihadis) do not see it that way. They see 9:29 as meaning that violence is acceptable at all times.

That's why thousands of people a year are murdered all over the world because of this interpretation. And it's not one that liberal Muslims can easily refute, and the extremists know this. And the liberal types know this too, which is why many Muslims quietly leave Islam after weighing up the doubts in their mind. And it's not just the hatred towards kuffar that might send them in that direction, or the calls to jihad, or the calls not to take Jews or Christians as friends. It could be the misogyny. It could be the provably false scientific claims that the Quran makes. (For the scientifically-minded, that's a major trigger towards questioning the religion.)



I can. And I often do.

That's because most of these people basically ignore or have abandoned the hateful, supremacist ethos behind the Quran. They have recognised that it doesn't help them to fit in with British society, and they want to become much like the rest of us. They happily have Christian and Jewish friends, they might go to mosque but aren't obsessive about it, they might drink alcohol occasionally (or at least not mind those who do). These types I have a lot of time for.

I would like to see secularist and liberal Muslim voices. Unfortunately, these are rarely the people we see trotted out as they are not seen as 'authentic' or 'genuine' spokespeople for Islam and Muslims. I would love to see more Taj Hargeys (he's an Oxford imam who I have a lot of time for - his clarity of thought and plain speaking is extremely welcome; unfortunately, much of the local Islamic community despise him) and Maajid Nawazes and Ed Husains (smearing of Hirsi Ali excepted). Instead, we get bigoted blowhards from the Muslim Council of Britain and the Ramadhan Foundation.



So when two Muslim men slaughter a British soldier on the streets of London, and quote the relevant passage from the Quran holding a cleaver stained with blood, what are we supposed to think? Especially as I never hear a concrete or definitive repudation of said verses. All we hear are excuses from the same backward voices about this being nothing to do with Islam.

When we hear attack after attack on Muslim minorities like the Ahmadis, gays, Israelis, Christians in Africa and in Pakistan etc etc, all scrupulously backed up by scripture, what are we to think?

Do we listen to these people who state quite clearly and categorically why they are doing it and what gives them that justification? Or do we just pretend it has nothing to do with Islam, as many Muslims would like?

In this vein: I have more in common with Maajid Nawaz and Taj Hargey than white left-wing apologists, appeasers and enablers. Ed Husain, for example, is a former Islamist. He would know his stuff.

Put it this way: if it was Christianity and Christians were massacring people quoting their book as justification, I'd want to find out if what the terrorists say checks out. Similarly, if a Jewish terrorist massacred others, I'd be worried if there was also considerable ideological justification in their book for him to do that. If, when Baruch Goldstein had massacred Muslims in 1994 in the Cave of the Patriarchs, that there were a considerable proportion of the Israeli population agreed with him - silently or not, or gave any kind of excuse or justification, or even attempted to put the blame elsewhere - I'd be worried.

And that's the problem with Islam. It does call for death to apostates. It does call for Jews to be murdered on Judgement Day. It does say that a Muslim woman's word is inferior to that of a man. It does tell its followers not to befriend Jews and Christians, and it does call them the descendants of apes and pigs. Muhammad did marry a six year old child, and imams here have offered to perform child marriages. It's there for everyone to read. Even watching clips from Arab TV, you can understand how the Islamic references come into play.

(I haven't mentioned female genital mutilation deliberately, as it doesn't seem to be an Islamic practice per se.)

Just because you don't like kafir pointing it out doesn't mean it's not there. Edward Said would have hated the modern era.

And as for Jews: there does exist some rather nasty, barbaric and murderous stuff in Jewish religious teachings. That is never taught in Jewish schools today, and any rabbi caught teaching it would be considered a total freak and would never be let around children again. Can you say the same about schools like Al-Madinah?

Jewish fundamentalist hands are not clean in parts of Israel. Elements of the Ultra-Orthodox exhibit some awful bullying behaviour.

You can say the same about fundamentalist Christianity in the U.S too if you like. That said, the issues with Christianity and Judaism are still extant, but they are not quite as serious.

As a secularist, I am against state funding of religious schools. You want to teach your children about Jesus Christ, or Allah, or Buddha? Fine; do it in your own time or pay for your kiddywinks to be indoctrinated.



I can't actually think of that many British Muslim public figures here that I would call genuinely liberal. Perhaps four or five off the top of my head. There might be more, but I can't remember them. Interestingly, there are British Muslim figures that I can be very much in agreement with one minute, then the next minute I want to stove their head in. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a good

I'm being serious when I say that we see very few genuinely liberal Muslims, those that really are asking for greater reform within Islam. They're often frozen out as a voice, because they aren't seen as reflecting genuine Muslim concerns. The 'moderate' bigots and blowhards are given centre stage, and the liberals are made to feel unhelpful and unwelcome.

When I decry 'moderate' Muslims, I mean the kind of people that say, "Oh, this or that terrorist attack is terrible, but it's nothing to do with Islam/the West's policy of imperialism is to blame/there is a massive rise of Islamophobia" blah blah blah. A simple rejection of the Islamic doctrine of armed jihad and a rejection of all forms of violence will do.



Can I ask why you're quoting a Pew Research survey from five years ago? The most recent one is 2013.



"Their" or "my"?



Islam is as Islam does.



No, I'm not saying that. There is a peaceful Islam, and it's reflected in the hearts of peaceful Muslims, because - like Christians - they (try to, depending on where they live) ignore or reject the more violent and unacceptable parts of their religion. You won't get many Christians today arguing for brutally violent punishments for offences that today would be seen as trivial. That's sort of the point.

Christianity and Judaism has moved on and is essentially not much of a threat (in most cases) to secular society today in Europe. Islam is still struggling with what is at the root of what it teaches. Muslims have a choice. They can do as the Christians did and cherry-pick and make nice. If they did that, you would have far less hassle from people because there would be little to complain about.

Religious beliefs become a problem not when they're simply in someone's head (unless they get to a point where it's indistinguishable from mental illness) but when people take things from their book and inflict them on others.

I come from a part of England where we used to execute witches based on religious superstition. Although we've turned it into a sort of tourist attraction, we're still embarrassed about it.

There is also a violent one, and it doesn't come from nowhere. In a sense, there is "two Islams". The scripture originally is peaceful(ish), but then turns violent, supremacist and aggressive because of Muhammad's journey from Mecca to Medina and his triumphs.. Thank heavens that most Muslims don't behave like this!

Basically, it's Islamic literalism that's the problem. And that, unfortunately, is extremely popular in comparison with other religions.



Yes. It's called criticism, debate, mockery, ridicule, lambasting, whatever. All of these are acceptable, because it's free speech. Muslims have every right to argue back, of course. Just as you're doing now. What they don't have the right to do - and we don't have the right to do either - is to shout people down.

Muslims should be protected. Meaning that anti-Muslim abuse in the street, violence, arson or anything of that nature is never acceptable under any circumstances. That said, Islam should be debated and studied from a critical viewpoint and, where necessary, debunked. We should hold firmly to our secular principles and, in fact, a good deal of the problems that we have in the West is caused by Western society's failure to see off Islamist demands.

Have you ever heard of a writer named Ibn Warraq? He has written several books on Islam; he is takfir. He rarely makes public appearances and when he does, there is a heavy police presence. I will be buying his books and reading them soon.

Christianity is rubbished online and offline every day, in newspapers, in books, parodied on TV shows and in music. You can't move for someone having an irreverent take on Christianity. There are atheist societies that regularly lampoon Christianity. Catholicism is an absolute laughing stock amongst millions of people in the West (the Internet is overflowing with jokes about the Pope and paedophile priests). Do you know what response Christians and Jews have to the mountains of critical, mocking, deriding, insulting and offensive stuff that is said about Christianity and Judaism every day,.

Nothing, that's what. Christians simply ignore it. Their faith is strong enough to withstand all that mockery. There are many Christian secularists as well these days - in fact, I'd say the default position of many British "Christians" is secularity. (Oh, and by the way - pushy Christians really get on my tits.)

I'd like to see more Muslims take up that baton.

I'd like to see Islam undergo that same treatment. I want to see Muslims open to the same critical scrutiny and, where appropriate, mockery and derision of their religion and what it leads some to do as everyone else gets. I want an end to blasphemy taboos. I don't want to see them mistreated, but I do want That, I think, and the strengthening of a less segregated and more integrated Britain,



The literal interpretation of Islam causes thousands of deaths each year. Isn't that quite enough for you?

It's clearly a very plausible interpretation, otherwise groups like Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabab, Boko Haram etc etc wouldn't exist.

As I say, it's not the only interpretation. But literalism is a very powerful one that isn't easy for others to rebut.

I can't be bothered answering the rest of your message, because it's late and I've been spending hours on it.

As for your dawahganda, I share a video by Anne Marie Waters, an Irish born secularist campaigner, now former Labour activist and supporter of the rights of Muslim women:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQjZHFnmADQ[/youtube]

Okay, tequila, I'm not going to quote your post, as it would take up entirely too much space. I will just say a few things. Tens of thousands of deaths are the result of Muslim extremism. There are now around 2 billion Muslims in the world. So let's do some simplified math.

Most attacks by Muslims cause more than one death, but for this example we will pretend that each death is caused by 1 Muslim extremist.
Let's assume 100,000 people are killed in a year by extremists.
There are 2,000,000,000 Muslims world-wide.
That means that even in this worse than worst case scenario, .005% Muslims are extremists who caused the deaths of others.

Here are some other numbers for comparison:
In the US in 2012, there were 14,827 murders. The US population was approximately 313,000,000 people. Using the same assumption of one person murdered = one murderer, that puts .0047% of the US population as murderers.

Using the same formula, here are the percentages of murderers for a few other non-Muslim countries (all using 2012 numbers):
Mexico: .024%
Columbia: .034%
Mongolia: .0087%
Russia: .010%
Greenland: .019%
Bermuda: .012%
British Virgin Islands: .009%
Nigeria: .012%

How does this fit in to your views on the majority of Muslims?

Last edited by sonofghandi on 10 Oct 2013, 8:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Now that the Talmud is mentioned I came to think of a scene in The Sopranos.

Schlomo: "... as the Talmud says-"
Soprano: "I don't give a s**t what he says!"

Why do people care what scripture says, when there is no evidence that is actually divinely inspired? Until that is established I consider it all nonsense and not worthy of debate.

Just for the record, I have no religious affiliation. There are few religions (past or present) that I have not delved into in great depth. It is a subject that I find fascinating. I also dig into philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropoly, and cultural studies foir the same reasons. I don't actually own a TV anymore, and only occasionally spend a Saturday watching things on Hulu (but not much lately, the length of the commercial breaks are really starting to annoy me). I spend most of my time reading. I usually spend the time reading textbooks (mostly theoretical and modern physics at the moment), technical manuals, religious writings, scientific and medical journals, federal regulations, and things that have become public under the FOIA. I also spend quite a bit of time reading opinion pieces from scholars and experts on subjects that I am currently devouring.