"God loves you more than anything else could possibly love you, and is all forgiving - DISPLEASE HIM AND YOU WILL BURN - loves you more than you will ever know and wants to forgive your sins - ETERNAL FIRE WILL CLEANSE THE UNBELIEVERS - bow down and thank the ultimate lord of lords - YOUR SOUL WILL BE DESTROYED - our savior, amen." — ThE vOiCeS
That's in interesting perspective considering how much attention is given to the most extreme and shocking violent events and groups of the Islamic world; ways in which Islam could be better at preventing violence seem to be least on people's minds — VagabondSpectre
In UK Muslims comprise ~5% of the population, but 20% of inmates in high security prisons. — tom
And let's not forget, there is only one way to guarantee paradise according to Islam. — tom
Jesus as portrayed in the new testament promoted violence by spreading the most insidious and disgusting lie that has ever plagued mankind — VagabondSpectre
I don't think you've read the New Testament. The prevailing message is love and pacifism. — Mongrel
The more you judge, the harder it becomes to understand. The more you understand, the harder it becomes to judge. — Mongrel
I would simply have us seek comparable depth of understanding concerning major religions before we decide to judge one of them as the worst religion of all. — VagabondSpectre
...by depriving yourself of the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness, then you're consigning yourself to a very bad place. It's more a warning than a threat. — Wayfarer
(I don't see any parallel in the New Testament - nowhere are Christians commanded to 'slay the unbeliever', notwithstanding the violence done in the name of Christianity over the centuries.) — Wayfarer
...you can just invite him or her to actually be a Christian. — Mongrel
But if a Muslim holyman wanted to preach pacifism... how would he go about doing that? That's the question that puzzled me for several months. How does religious authority work in Islam? — Mongrel
Indeed. As Sam Harris has said, it may increasingly be the case that the only people who are willing to honestly confront the problem of radical Islam are far-right xenophobes and racists. The left has simply become totally complicit on this issue, making a bizarre set of bedfellows with religious theocrats who hold decidedly anti-liberal views on many issues (so long as said theocrats come from a place where the people are poorer and browner than most people in the West - Christian theocracy would never be tolerated, of course).One source of distortion are those who throw a blanket of political correctness over any possible criticism, meaning that any discussion at all is automatically categorised as racist.
The opposite problem is the various groups who are indeed Islamophobic and who depict it as irredeemably violent and beyond hope of reform. — Wayfarer
if a Muslim holyman wanted to preach pacifism... how would he go about doing that? That's the question that puzzled me for several months. How does religious authority work in Islam? — Mongrel
it may increasingly be the case that the only people who are willing to honestly confront the problem of radical Islam are far-right xenophobes and racists — Arkady
That's correct. That's why I chose my words carefully in my post, and did not say something like 'Muslims don't drink', which would have been incorrect. the actual claim was that Muslims have 'a far lower rate of alcohol consumption', which is entirely consistent with the fact that some Muslims do drink.From what I do know though, alcohol is not uniformly abstained from in the Islamic world. — VagabondSpectre
Is Islam more violent than the other Abrahamic religions? — VagabondSpectre
Is Islam more violent than the other Abrahamic religions? — VagabondSpectre
Something tells me that a large chunk of these inmates "convert" to "Islam" while in a high security prison because it affords you gang like protection. I'm not exactly sure what about Islam makes it work well as the basis for a prison gang culture, but I guess it does. — VagabondSpectre
According to some Muslims, committing suicide and killing innocent people are both sins per the Qu'ran. — VagabondSpectre
Forget the 'in principle' bit. Islam can't recognise things because only agents can recognise things and Islam is not an agent but a loose term for a bunch of beliefs that, like any other bunch of beliefs, has fuzzy boundaries.Islam can't in principle recognise the separation of religion and state — Wayfarer
The question is easy to answer. The answer is No. The difficult bit is the sneaky pre-supposition that Islam is such a philosophy in a way that is not equally applicable to other religions as indicated above. The onus is on the Islamophobe to justify their presupposition.In which case, the question ought to be asked, ought a liberal and pluralistic democratic order accept a political philosophy which is opposed to liberal democracy as a matter of principle? — Wayfarer
For every violent, intolerant quote one can cherry-pick from the Quran, one can find a violent, intolerant quote from the Bible (yes, including the New Testament), — andrewk
So Islam cannot recognise separation of church and state in the same way that Christianity [...] cannot recognise it — andrewk
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