Islam is a religion, isn't it, thus my use of the term religion.
Yes Islam is a religion, but, its not just a religion. It is more than just that.
Islam is not merely a personal faith like Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity.
It also is a complete political ideology and legal system, and that is Sharia law.
It asserts the universal supremacy of Islamic law over every religion, every nation, and every other system of law and government.
Those who do not share its ideology are dismissed as inferiors: infidels.
Can u deny this ?
Similarly, centuries ago, the same was happening to Christianity where the use of that particular religion was to gain power and expand control.
I agree with this. And the reason why Christians were able to overcome that dark period was only because of their ability to Question and to think critical, challenging their own beliefs. The west has come to term with its own errors. They have adopted secularism. Most of them do not believe in the mumbo jumbo of the Bible.
Do you think anythink of this sort is possible with Islam. ?
I dont think so.
The very fact that Islam means submission means it is against free thinking.
Historic events would beg to differ, remember Babri Masjid incident,
You spoke of the Babri Masjid. I know those hindus were no better than those Muslim terrorists who first demolished Ram Temple there without any provocation.
My point is that why instead of identifying the root of the violence and condemning it you find justification for it when the other group act violently.
The reason that mosque was demolished was because it was built after demolishing a temple, on a site that majority of hindus hold in high regards.
Dont you think if Muslims had not demolished that Marvelous temple in Ayodhya first, Hindus would never have demolished that mosque ?.
even now some Hindu extremist kill people albeit infrequently. Similarly, the amount of Dalits being killed in India are a direct result of an extremist mindset.
T-Faz please note that when I accuse Muslims of any violence, I dont actually blame Muslims but Islam for it.
Here in India we have laws and constitution and everyone comes equal under it, In fact dalits have more rights that the so called upper class.
I agree with you that it would be unfair to blame all the mishaps of the society on religion.
There are many crimes that happen due to the humans own wickedness that is often caused by wrong education.
Criminals fill the prisons of all countries whether Muslim or not.
But what if this abusive behavior is not the exception but the norm ?
Muslims have acted like hooligans throughout the history.
They have silenced anyone who has said anything against that thing they call the book of miracles.
How in the world anyone can learn the truth if as soon as someone question the divine clams his head is demanded?
There is no compulsion in Islam,
Sir, religion appeals to emotions therefore for a religious person it is not easy to be objective. All believers are biased.
You cannot believe in something and not be biased.
If you are not biased towards a doctrine you wont believe in it, rather you question it and reject part of it.
Since it is not possible to accept part of a religion and reject other parts of it, especially in Islam that claims to be the perfect religion, if you are not biased, you are not a believer.
You are either pregnant or you are not.
What you tell me about your belief is not Islam.
You cannot call yourself a Muslim and disregard what the Quran asks you to do.
This is what the Quran teaches.
48:13 And if any believe not in Allah and His Messenger, We have prepared, for those who reject Allah, a Blazing Fire!
3:85, If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (All spiritual good).
This is what Quarn says about other religions.
You cannot have it both ways.
Please be honest to yourself and define where you are standing.
That single verse there is no compulsion in religion was said when Muhammad was in Mecca and weak.
How he could compel people when he had no means. That was a convenient thing to say at that time.
what one sect of Islam does cannot be used to label all sects as being similar.
Firstly, there are many various sects in Islam, their understanding and interpretation of Islam varies and not all believe in imposing Sharia globally.
Now this is absurd T-Faz.
Muslims read one quran and they interpret it in so many ways.
I intend to kill and loot, I can find something in the Quran to justify my action. I intend to rape the wife of my non-Muslim neighbor, I find some verses to back up my intention. Heck, recently a Singapore Muslim found some verses in the Quran to justify incest with his daughters and he managed to convince his wives too. What kind of guidance is this that anyone can find anything based on his intentions?
Why this book should be so confusing that each person can interpret it the way he wants? Shouldn't the book of guidance be clear and unambiguous? The laws made by humans are very clear. There is no ambiguity in them. Is Allah less intelligent than humans?
This is very important T-Faz to you as well as all the moderate ones reading this.
Infact I can say this is the crux of my whole point and debate.
Muslims are suffering only because Quran which they believe blindly is an extremely confusing book.
The day Muslims start questioning quran, they will start growing and their societies will become much tolerant.
There are more than Billion Muslims around the world, if they were trying to impose their belief on you through force, you would have noticed the outrage and eventual friction.
They would be doing this still for sure had they not been technologically poor and bankrupt.
As a matter of fact, Muslims had been doing this throughout the history till they were in the powerful situation.
They are not powerful today and therefore talks of tolerance.
The violence stems from a distorted teaching of Islam that was taught to a number of Muslims for political and strategic goals. The problem is that once the distorted teaching becomes the only source of learning, you will always get problems due to lack of understanding and negligience.
In Islam it is the Sharia that is discriminatory.
Many Muslims moved by their conscience tend to be just and fair towards the oppressed minorities of their countries but Islamic laws stops them on their track.
In Islam the non-believers have very few rights.
The life of non-Muslims along with that of women is worth half of that of a male Muslim.
Islam is indeed the religion of discrimination and disqualify.
It takes a blind not to see that. In Islam only Muslim are equal; non-believers are not included.
Lack of understanding and the ability to interpret relgious scriptures.
Doesnt Quran claims itself to be east to understand and east to read. Your this very acceptance is enough to prove that this claim is a lie.
Most of these thing happen around the world, they are not restricted to Islamic countries.
history of Islam is full of bloody wars all instigated by the Muslims. Islam never brought peace and stability to anywhere in the world. It divides the wold in Darul'Islam (house of peace) and Darul'Harb, (house of war) all the non-Muslim world is Darul'harb where Muslims have to make war, kill and convert people to Islam by force.
This is obvious today from Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia to Algeria.
However Muslims keep fighting with each other constantly where they have no one left to fight with. All the killings between the Shiites, Sunnis, in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq/Kuwait are between Muslims.
Islam is intolerant. It does nothing but to make people intolerant ofeach other and kill each other.
In fact Islam can be used as the index of poverty and barbarity. The more a country is Islamic, the more miserable it is.
Similarly, you need to realise that just like your country India, many if not all Muslim countries are third world countries. They have worse practices in Africa too but the spotlight is on Muslim countries nowadays and this is why you hear more of it. That or you are very fond of visiting Anti-Muslim websites, which seems plausible.
Im sure you would agree with me that Muslims are poor.
Have you ever asked why?
Isnt it because they are unproductive?
Isnt this because they are kept in ignorance?
Isnt this because freedom of expression in Islamic countries does not exist, democracy is absent and therefore human minds remain undeveloped?
Doesn't this perhaps tell us that Islam needs to be reformed?
Islam has contributed to reduce your productivity. Because many Western sciences are despised and even banned in many more fundamentalist Islamic countries, ignorance is rampant in these countries.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan children do not go to schools to learn physics and chemistry. They go to Madresa to learn how to perform Vodu, Qosl and Tahara. (the rituals of ablution and toilet cleanliness)
How can they become rich if their people are not competent and competitive with other people?
What you describe is NOT the picture of Islam. It is the picture YOU have of Islam in your head.
The Islamic terrorist have an entirely different picture of Islam in his head.
No money being invested into science, technology and education.
Islam is the very cause of your enslavement. u have to free yourselves from Islam first before u can protect any Interest.
u do not even know what is good for u. u need science, knowledge, industries, cooperation with other nations, democracy, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, equality of gender.
Islam has taken all these from u.
Look at Islamic countries.
See what has happened to u.
Which Islamic country respects the human rights of its people?
Where are Islamic scientists? It is not that there is something wrong with our brain.
When muslims come to non-muslim countries they excel in everything they do. But in Islamic countries they are like a seed sown in bad soil. They rot and never flourish.
In Islamic countries kids waste their time memorizing Quran, a book that they do not understand and learning the Fiqh that teaches them the art of defecation, copulation and urination.
Of course Muslims are victims.
We did have Dr Abdus Salam who won a Noble Prize for his grand scientific achievements and his inspiration was Islam. He also wanted all Muslim states to allocate a small percent of their GDP for science and technology but it did not happen. He then wanted to open education centres in all Muslim countries but that did not happen too because the Muslims are in their dark ages.
Let me answer you this with a rhetoric question.
What high positions Muslims hold in any country?
Muslims do not hold any position anywhere because Muslims generally lack proper education, they are not skilled and they are unproductive. (who would want to hire a Muslim when they have to stop working 5 times a day to perform their prayer?).
Please dont mention Abdus Salam and those Middle Easterners who have distinguished themselves in every field of life and just happen to carry their Islamic name. Not everyone who has an Arab name is a Muslim.
No, something is wrong with Muslims, not all but some.
I believe Taliban is the true Muslim.
I can prove that whatever they are doing is based on Quran. If anyone is accusing them he is denying the Quran.
Precisely here lies the problem.
Those Muslims who know nothing or very little of the content of Quran are generally good decent people and fortunately they are the majority. But those who read the Quran and try to follow it are the terrorists and potential terrorists.
Of course you are not all terrorists.
My best friend is a Muslim and he is not a terrorist either.
There are many saints among Muslims.
I am not talking about Muslims.
I am talking about the teachings of Quran that call for violence. Many of those teachings can supply admonition for the terrorists.
They can find justification for their acts of terrorism, violence and hate.
Try to read few violent verces from quran and read them in their context. You say that these verses are misunderstood, then why dont u change them so no one can misunderstand them.
These are the very verses that the Taliban uses to commit their crimes.
If they are misinterpreted and misunderstood by so many Muslims, then delete them from the Quran.
How can one say Islam is a religion of peace while there are so many verses in Quran that call for killing, maiming and crucifying the unbelievers?
The average Muslim does not know these teachings.
Most of them are very good people. But those who follow these teachings of Quran become Taliban and Bin Ladens. This is what we have to aviod.
Taliban is a product of those harsh teachings of Islam.
They are the people who truly believes in everything that is written Quran and follow that book to the letter.
I am not going to criticize them for trying to live the religion that they believe.
I criticize those Muslims who uphold the entire Quran as the words of God and criticize Taliban for living according to those teachings.
This is hypocrisy.
Islam was never a problem until the Arabic states started to get a lot of oil money. Thus they started to promote their own violent ideology whereby most of the other peaceful and tolerant nations were used as experimentation grounds for violent religious indoctrination.
The violent ideology that your talking about was nothng but Islamic ideology.
And the peaceful and tolerant nations that you are talking about were peaceful and tolerant because they were out of touch with the literal Islam.
It is Islam that encourages the Philippine Muslims to kidnap their Christian countrymen and murder them.
It is Islam that divided India in three pieces and caused the massacre of millions of people.
It is Islam that has plunged Afghanistan in utter barbarity and desolation. It is Islam that made Iranians to reverse the clock and go back 1400 years in time with so much human suffering.
It is Islam that is responsible for ALL the miseries of the Islamic countries. Millions died because of this belief throughout the history and millions are suffering and dieing to keep this cult alive.
Look at it this way, if you have the ability to coerce people into a certain idelogy, you have to relate it to the preceding ideology which was practiced. What happened is that the new violent ideology that was practiced in limited sections became a mainstream ideology because it was heavily promoted and taught around the world.
Again, the new ideology that your talking about was never new.
It could be new to the peaceful and not-so-Islamic people of Pakistan, but the violent ideology was never new.
This violent ideology never had any respect for anyone's religion, culture or identity.
Islamic terrorism is inspired by Quran.
The problem is with Muslims who are incapable to open their eyes and scrutinize the Quran the way the Christians and the Jews have done with their holy books. This is the source of all the problems.
Muslims are blind to truth.
The result is obvious.
You might want to look up various sects of Islam and see if you can find any violence amongst them.
My god, Muslims read one Quran and interpret it in so many ways. Your admittance that so many sects exist in Islam proves it.
Quran claims to be a book of guidance in which there is no doubt and admits no error.
If this book can be interpreted by anyone to suit his or her whims that book is not a book of guidance.
If you consult a map you expect all the information be truthful.
If it guides you sometimes and at other times it misleads you that map of no value to anyone.
If Quran means something to one person and quite another thing to someone else, it fails to be a clear source of guidance to everyone.
By claiming to be an infallible source of guidance Quran becomes a dangerous source of misguidance.
A true book of guidance should not allow itself to interpretations but must be precise and definite.
Your moderate opinions about Islam is metaphorical is not shared by Quran and other Muslims who actually could kill you for trying to introduce bid'a (innovation).
You post was very emotional and lacked reasoning. I thought you were going to be objective about the reasons and causes of extremism, instead I felt like talking to a Islamophobe.
I consider those who believe in Islam honest and good people many of whom are misguided.
Many Muslims agree with me that Islam needs to be reformed and this is my point.
More and more people are discovering that most of the teachings of Islam are not applicable for our times and many are even leaving Islam.
I sincerely believe old teachings of Islam is holding Muslims backward
There are some who still opine Islam can be reformed. They cannot get rid of it and need to cling to it. They want to reinvent a tolerant Islam. I question why. Why we should hold unto something that is false from origin.
The problem is that as long as people like you, who have earned their degrees, uphold Islam as the religion of God and the hodgepodge of Quran as the word of God, the fundamentalists get their confirmation that all the killings that they do by following the explicit teachings of Quran becomes justifiable.
You may be a liberal person and a freethinker, but when you recognize Quran as the book of God, the less educated Muslims do not care to listen to your advice.
They are not interested in your personal views about tolerance, democracy and freedom but they follow what the Quran teaches.
And Quran teaches intolerance.
You are responsible for the rise of fundamentalism, whether you agree with that or not.