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Is Islam really the religion of peace their followers claim it to be?


Alan McDougall

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I try to be open minded and as accepting as the next person, but facts are facts. Everyone should be required to read the Torah, Bible, and Koran and say for themselves what they take away from the experience. The Koran is undeniably more aggressive. According to the Koran, during the end times God will leave the Earth only to the Muslims and will tell Muslims himself, "there is a Jew hiding behind this rock, or a Christian hiding behind this tree, which you need to kill." I don't see the same intolerance in other religions.

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I try to be open minded and as accepting as the next person, but facts are facts. Everyone should be required to read the Torah, Bible, and Koran and say for themselves what they take away from the experience. The Koran is undeniably more aggressive. According to the Koran, during the end times God will leave the Earth only to the Muslims and will tell Muslims himself, "there is a Jew hiding behind this rock, or a Christian hiding behind this tree, which you need to kill." I don't see the same intolerance in other religions.

 

You make a valid point, Allah is a negative god, if you read the Koran, you will see over and over again "Allah does not love those who/ that? or "Allah hates those who/that? It is hard to find Allah expressing his love to anyone, in the Koran, and it is always conditional.

 

If we believe in the existence of a God or gods, then Allah is very different from the God of Jesus, who he called Father.

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I try to be open minded and as accepting as the next person, but facts are facts. Everyone should be required to read the Torah, Bible, and Koran and say for themselves what they take away from the experience. The Koran is undeniably more aggressive. According to the Koran, during the end times God will leave the Earth only to the Muslims and will tell Muslims himself, "there is a Jew hiding behind this rock, or a Christian hiding behind this tree, which you need to kill." I don't see the same intolerance in other religions.

 

!

Moderator Note

We have had to warn previously in this thread about making statements that assert facts that may not bear scrutiny. You are quoting a book - please be good enough to provide a reference to the section that you have placed within quotes. I do not recognize it - it reads more like (modern) commentary on Haddith

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Apologies for going all Godwin on the thread, but if we apply Alan's logic uniformly wouldn't this:

 

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.”

[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

 

mean that Christianity is a religion of genocide?

 

* disclaimer: I'm not actually arguing that Christianity is a religion of genocide, but pointing out the inductive logical fallacy that forms the basis of the entire argument.

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Apologies for going all Godwin on the thread, but if we apply Alan's logic uniformly wouldn't this:

 

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.”

[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

 

mean that Christianity is a religion of genocide?

 

* disclaimer: I'm not actually arguing that Christianity is a religion of genocide, but pointing out the inductive logical fallacy that forms the basis of the entire argument.

 

Which goes back to my question of how we decide the question. WHICH IS STILL UNANSWERED.

 

Is it by how people act based on their interpretation of whatever holy book is involved? In that case, I doubt any religion can be considered peaceful.

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I'm sorry, I was just blurting out what I remembered from conversations I had with some of my Muslim friends back in school. This is the actual quote, and you are correct, it is from the Hadith - "The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."

 

I had several very good Muslim friends and we would talk philosophy and religion all the time after bar time and argue about whether Christianity or Islam were right. I would agrue that their religion was all about violence, and they would argue that it wasn't and that the Koran taught that killing anyone that is innocent was wrong. They would say that we, as Christians were pagans because we believed in the Holy Trinity, and on and on and on.... They did say that at the end of the world there was going to be some giant roaming around and that everyone that was good would see that Islam was the true religion and that all others would be killed - this is where I got it from, so I just assumed it was from the Koran, which turned out to be wrong.

 

We would argue about many aspects of each others religions and make fun of each other, but none of us ever took it offensively because we were friends. So, I would definitely say that people are people and that nobody is inherently violent. It is a learned behavior, and I don't think there is a people in the world that haven't succumbed to it at some point in time.


Lol Alan, that would be some radical there!


Apologies for going all Godwin on the thread, but if we apply Alan's logic uniformly wouldn't this:

 

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.”

[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

 

mean that Christianity is a religion of genocide?

 

* disclaimer: I'm not actually arguing that Christianity is a religion of genocide, but pointing out the inductive logical fallacy that forms the basis of the entire argument.

 

I don't recall Adolf Hitler being in either the Old Testament or the New Testament or did I miss the memo that as Christians we now follow the teachings of Hitler?

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I don't recall Adolf Hitler being in either the Old Testament or the New Testament or did I miss the memo that as Christians we now follow the teachings of Hitler?

 

I think you missed the point; i.e. that if suicide bombings in the name of Islam demonstrate that Islam is violent, then genocide in the name of Christianity demonstrates that Christianity is violent and so on. For this reason, the argument falls into the logical fallacy of faulty generalizations and is trivially dismiss-able.

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I think you missed the point; i.e. that if suicide bombings in the name of Islam demonstrate that Islam is violent, then genocide in the name of Christianity demonstrates that Christianity is violent and so on. For this reason, the argument falls into the logical fallacy of faulty generalizations and is trivially dismiss-able.

 

The holocaust was done in the name of Nazism and the purity of the Aryan race, not Christianity. Hitler and the leaders of the SS were certainly not Christian. The Nazi's had clear plans to "purge" Christianity of nearly everything that made it Christian. They were occultic and obsessed with a sort of Germanic Neo-paganism. This is on the level of argument that atheism was responsible for the deaths incurred by Communism.

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Hitler and the leaders of the SS were certainly not Christian.

 

 

He certainly claimed to be: http://ahquotes.tripod.com/

 

My point, was and remains to be that the argument that because person A is motivated to perform action B in the name of ideology C, that B is characteristic of C, is a logically faulty argument.

 

I'm not arguing that the Holocaust makes Christianity evil, I'm using it as an example of why that argument - as applied to ANY religion is flawed - including the fallacious atheism is responsible for Communism argument.

Edited by Arete
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Is Islam a religion of peace? I guess that depends on what you mean by "peace". One can point to any religion and find atrocities, but one can point to any ideology, and find atrocities committed in the name of that belief, even if it was not done in spirit. We typically think of Buddhism as a peaceful religion, but there too atrocities have been committed in its name (see modern day Myanmar), but obviously not in its spirit. If one reads the teachings of Christ, it would be impossible to think that violence committed in its name is following its doctrine. The same with Buddhism. This is not a No True Scotsman Fallacy, because the beliefs of that religion are clearly stated in the words of its founder. We can look to the teachings of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc and see whether or not an action truly follows the teachings of that faith. Imagine if an animal rights activist went out and slaughtered an entire zoo in the name of animal rights. Would anyone logically conclude that just because that individual committed such an action, that this is representative of the beliefs of animal rights activists? Of course not, we must compare the action to the teaching. Beliefs are twisted all the time and this is true of any belief, not just religious ones. The atrocities committed in the name of Political ideology drown those of religion in its blood. People say thing like "Christianity was used to justify slavery"....to some extent, but Christianity was also the driving force behind the abolition of slavery. If you look at nearly every single abolitionist of the times, they were almost all radical Christians. The abolitionists were the Bible Thumpers of their day.

 

So lets get back to the original question of Islam. Is the violence expressed today representative of the teachings of Mohammed? I honestly have not studied the Koran and Hadiths enough to say. I spent many months in Turkey, interacting with the Turks and found many of them to express very peaceful interpretations. In contrast, I spent a year in Afghanistan where I saw the full brutality of Islamic extremism. I'm not even talking about suicide bombers. I'm talking about the oppression of women and a culture that killed and maimed little girls for becoming educated. Is that true Islam or is the true Islam like what I saw in Turkey, where women freely pursued education? I don't know, but I do find many of the arguments that confuse evil in the name of X to be a true representation of X to be grossly misinformed.


 

 

He certainly claimed to be: http://ahquotes.tripod.com/

 

My point, was and remains to be that the argument that because person A is motivated to perform action B in the name of ideology C, that B is characteristic of C, is a logically faulty argument.

 

I'm not arguing that the Holocaust makes Christianity evil, I'm using it as an example of why that argument - as applied to ANY religion is flawed - including the fallacious atheism is responsible for Communism argument.

 

Its not so simple as quote mining speeches of Hitler. Hitler was a brilliant, but evil orator and politician. Whatever was politically expedient, he used to his own ends. A very different picture of the opinion and attitude towards Christianity in the Nazi state can be seen in their actions (overt and covert) and the records of meetings, personal writings of Nazi leaders, etc. The Nazi's tried to subvert Christian teachings to establish what they called "positive Chrisitanity" which was expunged of basically everything that made it Christian and was instead based more Nazi teachings. There was also active persecution of the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church was "international" with no allegiance to any nation.

 

As for the rest of what you say, I wholeheartedly agree, see above.

Edited by chadn737
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If you ask a radical Muslim if his religion of Islam is a religion of peace, he will say of course it is, and if you disagree with his reply he will kill you!

 

Can you possibly respond without resorting to fallacious arguments? And answer the question I asked?

 

The holocaust was done in the name of Nazism and the purity of the Aryan race, not Christianity. Hitler and the leaders of the SS were certainly not Christian. The Nazi's had clear plans to "purge" Christianity of nearly everything that made it Christian. They were occultic and obsessed with a sort of Germanic Neo-paganism. This is on the level of argument that atheism was responsible for the deaths incurred by Communism.

 

Which is on point of Arete's criticism, as I understand it. It's ridiculous to automatically assign to an ideology all of the act committed in the ideology's name, regardless of whether the person committing the act self-identifies or is externally identified.

This is not a No True Scotsman Fallacy, because the beliefs of that religion are clearly stated in the words of its founder.

 

Your case would be much easier to make if religious doctrine weren't so vague and open to multiple (and often contradictory) interpretations.

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If you ask a radical Muslim if his religion of Islam is a religion of peace, he will say of course it is, and if you disagree with his reply he will kill you!

 

I find myself wanting to point out how ridiculous this statement really is, but I know you arrived at this conclusion emotionally, and ridicule will only make you believe it more. I really wish you'd reached this stance intellectually, since there is at least then a possibility of appealing to your rational side.

 

* sigh *

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I find myself wanting to point out how ridiculous this statement really is, but I know you arrived at this conclusion emotionally, and ridicule will only make you believe it more. I really wish you'd reached this stance intellectually, since there is at least then a possibility of appealing to your rational side.

 

* sigh *

 

 

It was a joke! By the way Hitler could not at any stretch of credulity be called a Christan, although he might have used that religion to further his own depraved goals by pretending to be.

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It was a joke! By the way Hitler could not at any stretch of credulity be called a Christan, although he might have used that religion to further his own depraved goals by pretending to be.

 

And how would you feel if a Muslim said the same thing about Osama Bin Laden?

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And how would you feel if a Muslim said the same thing about Osama Bin Laden?

 

Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions and commanded a very strong military, Bin Laden did not. Also, Hitler was angry at the perceived transgressions against the German people, not against Christianity, while Bin Laden was retaliating for perceived transgressions against Muslims.

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And how would you feel if a Muslim said the same thing about Osama Bin Laden?

 

Hitler was an atheist, he even wanted to replace the bible with the "His Testimony"

 

Bin Laden was most definitely a Muslim, he thought his goal in life was to spread the religion of Islam and even have it dominate the world, the comparison you use is ridiculous! Hitler goal was most definitely not to spread Christianity, it was for his Germanic pure race of blond warriors, to conquer the earth and rule it for a thousand years. Both were intelligent despots I agree!

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He certainly talked a lot about that God he didn't believe in.

 

Hitler was a self serving atheist that only referred to god or the gods when it served his evil aims.

 

Wikipedia

 

Adolf Hitler was raised by an anticlerical, sceptic father and a devout Catholic mother. Baptized and confirmed as a child in Austria, he ceased to participate in the sacraments after childhood. In adulthood, he became disdainful of Christianity, but in power was prepared to delay clashes with the churches out of political considerations. It is generally believed by historians that Hitler's long term aim was the eradication of Christianity in Germany.

 

Hitler's architect Albert Speer believed he had "no real attachment" to Catholicism, but wrote that he had not formally left the Church prior to his suicide. The biographer John Toland noted Hitler's anticlericalism, but considered that he was still in "good standing" with that Church in 1941, while historians Ian Kershaw, Joachim Fest and Alan Bullock agree that Hitler was anti-Christian - a view evidenced by sources such as the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Speer, and the transcripts edited by Martin Bormann contained within Hitler's Table Talk.[8] Goebbels wrote in 1941 that Hitler "hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."[9]

 

Hitler repeatedly stated that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on science In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf, he makes religious allusions, but declares himself neutral in sectarian matters and supportive of the separation between church and state, while criticizing political Catholicism. He presented a nihilistic, Social Darwinist vision, in which the universe is ordered around principles of struggle between weak and strong, rather than on conventional Christian notions.

 

Darwinism, and Christianity are mutually exclusive of each other, if you believe the one you must reject the other, Hitler was a fervent believer in evolution and tried to use it to prove the so called master race of Germanic blond warriors (My Comments)

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"Darwinism, and Christianity are mutually exclusive of each other"

The church doesn't think so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution

Or, from another denomination here

http://www.churchofengland.org/our-views/medical-ethics-health-social-care-policy/darwin/malcolmbrown.aspx

"Nothing in scientific method contradicts Christian teaching"

or even

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_evolution

 

And, if that's a significant part of the reason why you think Hitler was an atheist, you might want to think again.

 

 

Of course, Hitler is conveniently dead so nobody can ask what he actually believes.

All we can do is look at what he wrote.

And, since Hitler talks quite a lot about God in his writings, many people would come to the conclusion that he believed in Him.

 

But, in the same way that people can read that the Bible cites Christ as saying "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

and believe that Christ meant

"The laws have changed"

 

those people might believe that Hitler wrote about God because he didn't think God existed.

 

Other opinions may vary.

Interestingly, all the so called evidence for Hitler's "atheism" doesn't actually include Hitler saying (or writing) that he doesn't believe in God.

The stuff that he did write indicates that he did believe (of course he may have lied when he wrote that - he's not known for his honesty. Perhaps he was quite indifferent to judaism, but needed a scapegoat for Germany's problems).

Edited by John Cuthber
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"Darwinism, and Christianity are mutually exclusive of each other"

The church doesn't think so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution

Or, from another denomination here

http://www.churchofengland.org/our-views/medical-ethics-health-social-care-policy/darwin/malcolmbrown.aspx

"Nothing in scientific method contradicts Christian teaching"

or even

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_evolution

 

And, if that's a significant part of the reason why you think Hitler was an atheist, you might want to think again.

 

 

Of course, Hitler is conveniently dead so nobody can ask what he actually believes.

All we can do is look at what he wrote.

And, since Hitler talks quite a lot about God in his writings, many people would come to the conclusion that he believed in Him.

 

But, in the same way that people can read that the Bible cites Christ as saying "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

and believe that Christ meant

"The laws have changed"

 

those people might believe that Hitler wrote about God because he didn't think God existed.

 

Other opinions may vary.

Interestingly, all the so called evidence for Hitler's "atheism" doesn't actually include Hitler saying (or writing) that he doesn't believe in God.

The stuff that he did write indicates that he did believe (of course he may have lied when he wrote that - he's not known for his honesty. Perhaps he was quite indifferent to judaism, but needed a scapegoat for Germany's problems).

 

John if someone said to you that the sun rises in the east at dawn, you will come up with some inane suggestion that it does not! Yes Hitler is dead!!, but we only have to look further than the end of our noses to read the countless accurate historical documents, that detail his exact beliefs, his purposes and goal during his despotic life.

 

To suggest that Hitler might have been indifferent to Judaism, is to ignore the records of history, he hated the Jews and thought of them as subhuman entities on the level of apes, Go back and do a little research before making such a nonsensical remark!

 

Again read what I have been trying to tell you, Hitler sprouted god when it suited and furthered his depraved goals, but to attempt the utterly ridiculous, of suggesting this depraved monster was a Christian , is the height of ridiculous nonsense.

 

This thread is not the place, or thread to debate Christian theology, a religion which you apparently set yourself up as some sort of an authority of, because, you are all always sprouting the bible, from your seeming knowledge of scripture.

 

Again you cherrie pick a tiny segment of the Christian community who have attempted to embrace evolution into their dogma. On the other hand 99.99 of the Christian churches reject evolution as an evil unproved theory. Hitler used god for his own depraved purposes, I have an atheist brother and nearly all he talks about is god, if you mention god, it does not follow that you believe in him! Your logic is sadly lacking, if I said black is black you will come back and say no! sometimes black is white!

 

And why do you persist in posting all those irritating Wikipedia links some of which are not edited or verified as accurate, must I just swallow what is on that website as the gospel truth (for lack of a better phrase)

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"To suggest that Hitler might have been indifferent to Judaism, is to ignore the records of history, he hated the Jews and thought of them as subhuman entities on the level of apes,"

Are you saying that on the basis of what Hitler said?

If so, you should apply the same logic to the other things he said- for example his many references to God.

 

"And why do you persist in posting all those irritating Wikipedia links some of which are not edited or verified as accurate, must I just swallow what is on that website as the gospel truth (for lack of a better phrase)"

do you remember posting stuff from wiki in post 144?

Why are you allowed to cite it, but not me?

 

"Again you cherrie pick a tiny segment of the Christian community"
LOL

"The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.2 billion baptised members."

from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church

 

As you say "Go back and do a little research before making such a nonsensical remark!"

 

And, re "John if someone said to you that the sun rises in the east at dawn, you will come up with some inane suggestion that it does not! Yes Hitler is dead!!"

 

http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Multiple_exclamation_marks

Edited by John Cuthber
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And why do you persist in posting all those irritating Wikipedia links some of which are not edited or verified as accurate, must I just swallow what is on that website as the gospel truth (for lack of a better phrase)

 

 

The irony here is rather thick - YOU quoted wikipedia in the post DIRECTLY above John's. So it's seemingly OK for you to use it as a source, but no ok for others.

 

Also, as has been cited in this thread already, Hitler repeatedly claimed to be Christian and acting on what he supposedly believed was the will of God in Mein Kampf. It was in personal letters he claimed to be using Christianity as a political tool. So ultimately we have contradictory statements from Hitler as to whether or not he was a Christian, and multiple scholarly works debating whether he was or wasn't. You stating that such a debate is "utterly ridiculous" files against the reality of a complex, contradictory situation and seems to be more about your personal convictions than any actual facts.

 

Ultimately, whether or not Hitler was genuinely acting on what he believed to be the will of God, or whether he merely claimed to be is moot. You and Trumptor are avoiding the crux of the argument and engaging in the No True Scotsman fallacy (i.e. A Christian who does something bad isn't a "real" Christian). If it suits you to claim that the actions of Hitler were evil and therefore un-Christian, a Muslim can claim exactly the same thing regarding the actions of Islamic terrorists, as could a Marxist regarding the actions of Stalin, or a Hindu could claim regarding Abhinav Bharat, etc and so on.

 

Ergo, if it's OK for you to claim that the actions of Hitler (or the Crusades, Inquisitions, etc) don't characterize Christianity because they contradict YOUR interpretation of Christian teachings, then it validates the argument for ANY other ideological group.

 

The actions of an individual claiming a certain ideology cannot be used to characterize an ideology - especially with regards to religious ideologies which have multiple interpretations.

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Let's face it, Alan has lost the argument.

Among other things, he lost it when he said "Bin Laden was most definitely a Muslim"

There's genuine debate about that.

 

And, since Islam follows largely the same scriptures as Christianity, whatever you say about one group can be said about the other.

 

I'm not ( as Alan seeks to assert) some sort of authority on the scriptures.

It's just that I have access to the internet, and a search engine finds stuff for me.

This is not some arcane understanding or deep truth, it's just reading the words.

 

 

That's still not as funny as claiming that the Roman Catholic Church is "a tiny segment of the Christian community".

I'm going to be giggling about that one for a while.

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Nope. Islam does not follow the same scriptures as Christianity. Not even close.

 

Muhammad frequently quoted some parts of the Bible but rejected others as corrupted.

 

And besides the Quran (a badly written compilation of several religious books) there are also other sources such as ahadith and biographies of Muhammad (sira) which are equally or even more important than the Quran. What shocked me while reading them is the sharp contrast between Muhammad and other religious figures. Muhammad and his companions used to raid unprepared and unarmed civilians, killing their men and enslaving their women and then sit in prayer right after doing such heinous acts. Considering that at least in theory 1.5 bln people consider this psychopath as their highest authority and try to be like him, the fact that so many people want to detonate bombs and slit throats precisely in his name shouldn't be a surprise.

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