*islam

Adding video to channels (Islam) - requested by kulpims.

*doublepromote

Double-Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, September 30th, 2014 11:01am PDT - doublepromote requested by eric3579.

He makes some very good points.

I would like to ask him what support there is in Islamic texts for these "barbaric practices".

And yes, there's some fairly awful stuff in Christian and Judaic texts too, but surely that just means we should be criticizing all religions instead of giving Islam a pass.

*talks

What he's claiming is that religions are not ideologies; that their doctrines don't influence the behavior of their followers or the cultures where they're adopted. Because, hey, "it depends on what you bring to it; if you're a violent person your islam, your judaism, your christianity, your hinduism is going to be violent."

That is frankly, and I use this word seriously, stupid.

His points are, on the face of it, correct. However, the whole question here is whether religion itself creates these issues or if they are inherent in society. One might argue that they are inherent, but that would be incorrect. The fact of the matter is that the more a society is based on science and secularism, the more peaceful and prosperous they will be. See pre-McCarthy United States or Sweden or Canada today.
So I agree with him that painting a large brush across all Muslim countries is idiotic, but at the same time, we can do that quite successfully with secular countries. They are, quite simply, more moral countries. And for those of you who want to argue that Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia were extremely secular and atheist, I urge you to re-evaluate the evidence you have of this. Nazi Germany was distinctly religious in numerous ways, including in the deep relationship they had with the Catholic Church. And it would be easy to succeed on the argument that Soviet Russia, while appearing atheist to the outsider, worshiped an altogether different kind of religion: communism.
While Reza is correct that not all Muslims or their countries are violent or willing to subject women to numerous horrors, they are certainly more likely to than secular countries.

Yeah I gotta agree. I can see why Reza is pissed. I agree that Bill is painting with broad strokes here. But still. It's religion. Doesn't matter which religion you're talking about. Deal with it. This is what happens when you believe in imaginary friends. people take shit too far, they take "holy" writings too literal.

Americans may want to try and pat themselves on the back but there are plenty of Christian extremists out there Hitler was Christian, Timothy McVeigh was Christian. The moderates immediately go to the "no true scottsman" fallacy.

Im reminded again of the analogy I made earlier. Comparing religions is like comparing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One may have technically caused more death and destruction than the other, but they're BOTH pretty fucking horrible.

There is this phenomenon where you have all these people who claim to be of a certain religion yet have radically different views. so they are simultaneously able to claim they're all right and all wrong at the same time, whichever is most convenient to them at any given moment.

Of course there are peaceful and extreme of every religion, but yet they all claim to be of that religion just because they don't share your particular flavor of that religion doesn't mean you get to casually dismiss them at will.

again we have the issue of religion cherry picking what it likes and ignoring what it doesn't.

I think he has a point, I really do, however he's too dismissive of the whole problem. He claims there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world, and only a few countries are actually extremists. He mentions 3 in the video. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. We know there are a few others (like Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc), but let's talk of these 3 only.

I actually added them up. The population in those 3 countries alone, is 300 million people. That's 20% of the 1,5 billion Reza Aslan mentioned.

At LEAST 20% of the muslims in the world are extremists (and this is a low number). This is not a fringe ideology for muslims. It is a big portion of them.

I think you missed the whole point of the video. When you say "Muslims" are you referring to people who live in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, or Canada? Because you're going to find wildly different rates of violence (towards women or otherwise) based on where those people are practicing their religion. In fact I'd wager you'd find more Christians and atheists beating their wives in a country like Canada than you would Muslims--probably for reasons that have nothing to do with religion (alcohol or substance abuse, history of being abused themselves, etc.).

Why do "Muslim countries" seem more violent or more violent towards women? Maybe because of the fact that the ones that are most talked about in the news have majority populations that live literally like it was 500 years ago? Or maybe because the ones that pop up in the news frequently (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, etc.) are controlled by autocratic regimes that rule with an iron fist and are far more concerned with keeping power than promoting democracy and human rights? Or maybe because of local tribal practices that pre-date Islam and have continued until today (i.e. female genital mutilation)?

If you're going to compare countries, then compare apples to apples. Compare Saudi Arabia to 1500s England in terms of the rights of women and religious freedom, because Saudi Arabia is an Islamic monarchy much as 1500s England was a Christian monarchy. Compare human rights in a developing country like Indonesia to early 1900s U.S., where other religions were ostensibly tolerated but Christian norms were de facto.

But comparing human rights in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan to the modern U.S. and then generalizing the results to all "Muslim" countries is, as Reza mentioned, just stupid.

Unless you've been there and talked to all 300 million inhabitants of those three countries, how can you be sure they are all frothing at the mouth extremists ready to kill or die for Allah? I suspect a lot of those people could be just keeping their heads down for the sake of keeping their heads attached to their bodies. So I find that estimate of 20% to be at least questionable, and even if true it leaves another 80% who may be no worse than your average Christian and just want to get on with their lives.
Fact is, many people don't like things that are complicated or nuanced, we like our issues best when they have clear good guys and bad guys, so we get horseshit headlines like "Does Islam Promote Violence?". Our media institutions are all too happy to push this false dichotomy for the sake of ratings and to serve other agendas that would rather have us looking out for Islamic boogeymen than more common and domestic variety.

Did he actually mention population figures? Indonesia has a population of 250 million, and Turkey has 75 million, compared to about 28 million in Saudi Arabia.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I like Bill Maher, but this guy is spot on. "unsophisticated" is exactly right in describing Bill's view on this. "Bigoted" would be fair, but I know Bill has it in for all religions so I guess I wouldn't go that far.

He's exactly right...

When you read the bible, it's goes from wrath and brimstone to absolute love and forgiveness. Taken as a whole, it's a contradictory mess, which is why there are umpteen different types of christianity each with their own twist.

The KKK, for example, committed terrible crimes based on their interpretation of the bible... Did the bible make them do it, or were they already set on violence and cherry picked the parts of religion that justified it?

And he's right about he Buddhists brutally murdering Rhakines (coincidentally, Muslims) in SE Asia at the moment...

I feel like the problem isn't necessarily religion, but rather dogma. It just so happens that religion is full of dogma. The fact that Islam contains an attempt to immunize itself against reform serves to make it more dogmatic, as reformists can be shown, in black and white, to not be observing the religion as it was intended.

Dogma creates incredibly extreme behaviour. Once people believe they hold an absolute truth, almost anything becomes justifiable. It isn't limited to religion, as evidenced by the 20th century's forays into communism, but it is clearly present in religion, and particularly in Islam.

Comparing Canadian Muslims with Saudi Muslims is a false comparison, as I expect everyone can see. There really is a difference between living in a country as an extreme minority, versus living in a country as a member of the extreme majority. Nevermind living in a theocracy based on the religion. It's a completely different environment, and if people didn't behave differently, they wouldn't be tolerated very long.

It would follow, therefore, that everyone would choose their religion according to their own temperament and there would be no regional grouping of belief.

Would you say, for example, that catholicism in ireland has had no effect on its prevailing culture and no part in the various atrocities that culture has inflicted on the people unfortunate enough to be born into it?

Islam is particularly poorly placed to distance itself from the actions of its adherents. It's a common, but not really excusable, error to generalise from christianity's 'contradictory mess' and necessity of invention in interpretation to what in reality is islam's lamentably direct instructions to its followers.

The difference between countries like turkey and saudi arabia, though turkey's hardly a shining beacon of freedom, is secularity and proximity to more enlightened neighbours. Arguing that some muslims are like this and some muslims are like that is preposterously mendacious when the mean truth is: the less religious people are, the more ethical they are.

To a certain extent, but unfortunately a charismatic (or dictatorial) leadership, or even parents passing on their belief systems to their children, can create or enforce ideals that can shape society. Many people still adhere to religion because "that's the way it's always been", not because the religion actually fits their personal ethics...

In general, I do actually agree with you in regards to the concept that secularity tends to lead to enlightenment, but there are plenty of secular countries that are authoritarian/despotic (North Korea being a shining example), violent and considerably backwards compared to countries which have a high proportion of religious people and freedom. Unfortunately, enlightenment leads to arrogance as well.

The continual push by the media/politicians etc to classify Muslims as a homogenous whole smacks more of an attempt to play on xenophobia and racism than any factual evidence.

Particularly when the enlightened country making the most noise about it has "In God We Trust" printed on their currency. Compound that with provoking and polarising moderate Muslims by marginalising and insulting them? Enlightenment does not preclude gross stupidity.

A simple look at the US (secular mind you) shows stark differences between the north and the south, red states and blue states etc. You're proposing that 1.5 bn people (that would be ~5 times more people than the entire population of the US) spread across most countries in the world are somehow tightly aligned purely because they share a religion that is as varied as any other in the world?

And the mean truth? The arrogance and presumption of "enlightened neighbours" are part of the reasons why certain countries are as they are...

Iran is a classic example. The US (all enlightened and shit) engineers the coup that deposes a democratically elected Prime Minister hailed as a leading champion of secular democracy. And when the Shah was overthrown, it was by fundamentalists lead by Ayatollah Khomeini, ushering in an era of strict theocracy and an abiding hatred of the US.

Your last paragraph highlights the problem perfectly. We have two media reporters, deliberately or ignorantly, disseminating false information which would probably lead to discrimination against Muslims. How ethical is it to incite an entire country to hate over the actions of a tiny percentage of the whole? How ethical is it to ignore humanitarian disasters in countries which have no strategic or natural resource value (and places where no white people have been beheaded)?

And when presented with empirical truth, how ethical is it to refuse to accept it?

It would be more correct to consider religion one of many paths leading away from enlightenment than secularism as one leading toward it. That would usefully sidestep the sophistry involved in the rebranding of oppressive but secular ideologies as a special kind of religion. Secularists don't need to account for the actions of other secularists any more than people who aren't thieves need to answer for arsons committed by other non-thieves. Muslims, conversely, have signed up for a particular club with a particular set of club rules and practices; they are accountable.

Islam is a homogeneous whole, as much as a global movement can be. Its foundational text is intact and whole, not arbitrarily selected from masses of contradictory documents of dubious provenance. That text explicitly rejects the possibility of interpretation or allegory and there's an established, foolproof mechanism for resolving contradictions. It has a single author, really a single author rather than the fiction of the will of god being channelled through the accounts of various liars, a single founder, and a single exemplar.

The popular view of islam as "a religion that is as varied as any other in the world" is unarguably born from ignorance. It's about as variable as scientology, and substantially less reputable.

That's not what he's saying at all.

The bible, or the Quran, or many other texts, just like historical events as they were, or works of literature, or other even historical texts as complex as this often have contradictory ideas. The US constitution is founded on a set of beliefs and ideas that almost all of us subscribe to, yet there are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, pragmatists, etc. all deriving very different ideas from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and more. The reason this is true is because those values often come into conflict, and can outright contradict each other. Freedom vs security, equality vs prosperity, I could go on and on.

With the Bible, you have Catholics, Protestants, subdivided into a plethora of different religions in their own right under the umbrella of Christianity. You have the running joke even within Catholicism that American Catholics aren't really Catholics at all. Not only do different Christians interpret the bible differently, the amount they count on the bible varies between fundamentalists like Jehovah's Witnesses who take the bible extremely literally to extremely secular Christians who have absolutely no problem discarding any part of Christian doctrines when scientific evidence proves otherwise.

You have Christians who act as saintly as Mother Theresa to mobsters.

That's just Christianity. There are extremist Islamic groups that sound more like the Westboro Baptist Church than other Muslims.

But within Christianity, there's "honor thy mother and thy father" and "thou shall not kill". What if your parents are murderers?

That's a crude, and obvious example of conflicting values, but the 10 commandments are simple rules that don't completely resolve every situation.

What's stupid is to believe that you can know about a person's specific ideology just by their religion. Does their religion play a role in their ideology? Absolutely, but how it impacted their ideology has much more to do with their experiences, their natural tendancies, etc. than necessarily their religion. If you grew up in a mob family, honor thy mother and father was more likely the lesson you took from the Bible than thou shall not kill.

And if you look around you, this is plainly obvious. Even look within yourself. We're all a melting pot of lessons and ideas we've learned from school, personal life experiences, our religious beliefs, our parents, our socio-economic backgrounds, our friends, etc. That's why you are different from everyone of your religion, your friends, who you went to school with, your socioeconomic class, etc.

So many holes in your argument.

You're cherry picking the parts of Nazism to fit your anti-religious views. You even made the argument that Russia was dogmatically atheist, which isn't a true characterization of Russia then, either.

The simple fact of the matter is racial supremacy had what was seen as extremely scientific underpinnings with a foundation of Darwin, which then was applied to Social Darwinism, etc.

You had Nazi scientists who were going around the world literally measuring people's skulls, with the assumption that Germans had bigger brain pans, and that must explain why they're the master race.

Those ideas sure as hell weren't religious.

The simple fact of the matter is that there were secular and religious arguments against Nazism, as there also were secular and religious arguments in favor of it at the time.

It's very difficult to argue that the evil of Nazi Germany rose due to the level of dogmatic behavior within Germany. Prior to Hitler's rise, Germany was considered a Western European modernized, industrialized country, and for the time well educated, as was France and Britain. It was far more like Britain and France than it was to Russia.

An even better counterargument - who was the most modernized, secular, educated people in Southeast Asia, and therefore should have been the least likely to instigate war according to your logic? Japan, yet they became an imperial, aggressive power.

The rise of Nazi Germany is something I studied quite a bit of, and boiling it down to how dogmatic the people were is not only overly simplistic, it's not remotely historically accurate. It completely factors out the god awful mistake the Treaty of Versailles from WWI was, the common particular disdain for Jews at the time (some due to religious conflict, for Nazis it was more about race), the dependency of Germany on US loans, which dried up when the Great Depression began, the scientific trends in thought at the time, etc.

Those all converged.

And the reality is that "Muslim" countries are more likely to subject women to numerous horrors simply because more Muslim countries have not modernized their economies yet. Hey, just like every other religion. The reason we treat women well is we've had an industrialized economy far longer, and even then, the speed of it was often circumstantial. Women's rights in the US took a quantum leap forward because of women being needed for labor in WWII (same reason the Civil Rights Movement started so relatively soon after WWII as well).

You are empirically incorrect. You are proposing an impossible scenario, that somehow 1.5bn world wide are perfectly aligned, have some say over the actions of all the other people simultaneously and ergo bear some responsibility for any actions committed under the broad umbrella of "Islam"...

http://enews.fergananews.com/articles/2698

To speak of “Islam” as a homogenous phenomenon is analogous to speaking of “Christianity” as a single whole that includes Catholics and Orthodox, Protestants and Copts, and countless other sects, including such marginal ones as the Mormons, the Scientologists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Of course, we never do so, because we intuitively recognize that the label loses all meaning when forced on to such a diverse group. We seldom have such qualms, however, when it comes to Islam, even though the label “Islam” covers just as wide a spectrum of geographic, cultural, and sectarian diversity as the label “Christianity.” If anything, it is even more internally diverse than Christianity, which crystallized around an institutionalized Church from the very beginning. In Islam, such an institution never developed. There is no religious hierarchy and no single individual qualified to pass final judgment on questions of belief or practice. Within thirty years of the death of the Prophet, the Muslim community had split on matters of doctrine. Since then, there have been multiple and simultaneous sources of authority among Muslims. Authority is located not in church councils and such, but in individuals who derive their legitimacy from their learning, piety, lineage, and reputation among peers. This gives Islam a slightly anarchic quality: authoritative opinions (fatwa) of one expert or one group can be countered with equally authoritative opinions, derived from the same sources, of another group, or one set of practices devotional practices held dear by one group can be denounced as impermissible by another. In more extreme cases, such conflict of opinion can turn into a “war of fatwas,” fought out, in the modern age, in the press or in cyberspace. (If Islam were held in a more positive light in the West today, this diversity would be described as a “free market of ideas”!) To speak of Islam as a homogeneous entity ignores this fundamental dynamic of its tradition.

This pluralism extends to the most basic level of belief. The major sectarian divide in Islam, between Sunnis and Shi‘is, goes back to the very origins of Islam. The two doctrines evolved in parallel, and therefore it is incorrect to see in them an orthodox/heterodox divide. All Muslims share a number of key reference points (the oneness of God, loyalty to the Prophet and his progeny, the need to prepare for the Hereafter, to take a few examples), but they have been played upon in different ways by different sects and movements. Nor do the two sects exhaust the diversity, for they both have many branches and various theological and legal schools within them, while many modern ideological groups straddle the divide between the two sects.

Or
http://wasalaam.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/the-myth-of-homogeny-in-islam/

I could provide link after link, discuss Sunni vs Shia, or any one of the innumerable other sects (70+ iirc), discuss Islams war with itself throughout history etc, all demonstrating that you are wrong.

You are portraying (demonising actually) Islam in the same way the two morons in the video are, by making all Muslims responsible for any action committed by a Muslim. You talk about enlightenment, but your post reeks of bigotry, hardly the hallmark of an enlightened person, right?

Incidentally, the "popular" view of Islam is of a homogenous group of people, us vs them, a group to be afraid of, or to attack. The average person on the street (ie. plumb ignorant, much like yourself) would not be aware of just how complex it is, far more so than Christianity. It's exactly why the talking heads who got schooled kept trying to make out that Islam was homogenous, and were proved wrong...

But give it your best shot trying to shoot down the considered opinions of Phd's, scholars, philosophers etc if you want to continue to make a fool of yourself.

@Asmo

You ought to be careful about accusing others of ignorance when you have to resort to googling "islam homogenous" and spamming us with the first links you find. Oh my, talk about making a fool of yourself.

All the PhDs in the world can't alter reality; personally I'd be suspicious of the intellectual credentials of anyone who wasted their career on so vacuous and puerile a subject. Every widespead philosophy will inevitably factionalise to some extent; this is hardly relevant where the objections are to its core tenets and universal beliefs. Remind me, which of the major sects is the good one?

Incidentally, I skipped over this before but the claim that there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world is an outright lie. Most of that number are muslim in the same sense that winston smith is a loyal supporter of ingsoc.

It's tedious to have to continually restate the case against islam in every discussion where the lazy and dishonest leap to the defence of an ideology they've failed to adequately research. Suffice to say that any liberal, modern thinker who had, say, read the qur'an, or looked into the life and character of mohammed, or talked to muslims about what they actually believe, which is never what they reveal to unsympathetic ears; would hesitate before condemning all anti-islamic sentiment as bigotry.

Jews have the old testament.
Christians have the old testament and new testament.
Muslims have the old testament, new testament, and yet a newer testament.

All 3 share the old testament.
The 'violence promoting' scriptures are found in the old testament - which all 3 have in common.

Reza is right.
If people want peace, the religious of them simply ignore the violent edicts of their religions.
If they want to be violent, the religious of them legitimize it with excuses from their religions.

He's also right about the national hypocrisy. Al-Qaeda at the time of 9/11 was a pet organization of members of the Saudi royal family.
But instead of going after the Saudis (who also today finance ISIS), we go after 2 countries that are unrelated to the attack.

Look at today's irony. Assad in Syria (who we wanted deposed because he was friendlier to Russia than the U.S., and allowed Russian bases on Syrian soil [in the middle east]) is now fighting ISIS, while we ally with the Saudis who are supporting ISIS.

We also didn't mind supporting the Mujahedin (Jihadi fighters) in Afghanistan when they were fighting our enemy. We had no problem throwing Afghanistan into the dark ages when it suited us.

Ultimately, extremist Islam is a foil, meant to rouse western people's emotions. As national policy, we don't _actually_ do anything to stop it, we just use it as an excuse to do whatever else is of national interest.
Who would be the boogey man if extremist Islam was gone? We need a boogey man if we want to keep excusing and paying for a large military. People simply don't have the foresight and patience to maintain a strong military without someone scaring them into support. Particularly now, when we don't have the manufacturing capacity to quickly build a large military.

However, Reza is ignoring Turkey's and the Pacific islander's Muslim problems. Indonesia and the Philippines have extremist Muslim organizations doing attacks home (Philippines also has Christian terrorists). Turkey is a large source of Muslim fighters pouring into Syria.



The various related religions also have historical developmental differences.

Jews were for a long time in such minorities that they did not have the political capability of waging any campaign of violence. They were either too small, or too busy being occupied by European powers (Rome, etc).

Christians did have a long period of majority, starting around 400ad when Rome decided that a good way to control/pacify any dissent within the empire was to make the empire 1 religion and make Rome the head of that religion. They elected Christianity as the state religion, forced everyone in the Roman empire to convert, and you had a continent's worth of Christians.
This included north Africa and Middle East - and is when Jews (by now called Palestinians) were forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity (**and few hundred years later forced to convert from Christianity to Islam).

Although, Christians had the benefit of the Inquisition(s) to temper their enthusiasm for Christianity. A large part of the population was killed for consorting with the devil. Once it got so bad that everyone knew someone who had been convicted and killed - and everyone was sure that those killed were innocent, it cast a large doubt on Christianity as whole. People questioned if the devil even exists, or if it's all a sham. The distrust and resentment paved the way for the eventual birth of Deism and Empiricism. A time when the scientific method and physical observation started to take over.

Islam is still a young religion. They still have to experience their religion becoming all powerful, and the inquisitions that inevitably come from absolute power. The one good thing about Islamic extremism is that it makes the people living under those conditions more likely to suffer. Once the suffering becomes so pervasive that everyone is suffering, the people will start to dislike/distrust their religion, and the extremism will resolve itself from the inside out - like it did with Christianity.

The bigger problem would be if things are 'too tolerable', and the religion grows more extreme (no one is inclined to say 'no'). The biggest problem would be if the religious leaders 'solve' the balance issue, and manage to stabilize the oppression at a level that is as extreme as it can be while still being permanently sustainable. Then the religious leaders can live the life of power without the threat of deposition.

-scheherazade

Ah, ya caught me, I'm undone... X D

Doesn't actually change anything though, does it? Your established "facts" (ie. made up stuff) do not require any significant research to debunk. You've provided no supporting evidence other than your own beliefs anyway (what, a google search too hard for you? =)

I punched in "Islam is homogenous" and surprise surprise, the entire front page were articles saying it's not. And the next page. And the next... Professors, clerics, scholars, philosophers, random comments, books, absolutely nothing to support your contentions. Hell, I couldn't even turn up one of those classy Euro-white power type pages.

How embarrassing. Even the open and unashamed bigots don't seem to support you...

But it doesn't actually matter if the evidence comes from a simple google search looking for articles, or from noted and lauded professors who have spent their lives researching the issue. You are a classic fundamentalist, as bad as any Muslim or Christian extremist. Your world view is uncompromising, based on belief and completely resistant to alteration when factual information is presented that undermines your propaganda.

I loved this line though...

It's tedious to have to continually restate the case against islam in every discussion where the lazy and dishonest leap to the defence of an ideology they've failed to adequately research.

Oh ya poor bloody princess, do you need a lie down?

What I'm opposing is rampant bigotry dressed up as intellectualism. As an atheist, as long as they do no harm, they can believe whatever the hell they want to, it doesn't bother me. You can also believe whatever you want to, but actively promoting the idea of Muslims as one big group who share responsibility for the acts of the minority can do harm. It makes innocents a target for reprisal, and ironically drives moderates towards extremism.

The point at issue isn't 'is islam bad', though obviously it is; but 'is it possible to generalise about large numbers of people who are in the same club and believe the same things' well yes of course it is. As for corroborative evidence, this is not an assertion that requires it. To the extent that it's possible to generalise about anything, it must be possible to generalise about people who have voluntarily signed up to the same ideology.

What's more the actions of individual muslims aren't important. You can't judge any ideology by the actions of its supporters because mostly they will act from, for example, biological imperatives, personal temperament, cultural factors independent of religion and so on, regardless of what they profess to believe. Which is not to say religion isn't influential and dangerous. To assess the merit of an ideology you have to look at what it actually says, what are its core tenets, what are the principles it espouses, and if you do that and ask the question 'does islam promote violence' the answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with promoting violence, but it's not my fault these people can't structure a proposition clearly.

Let's build some consensus. I'm sure everyone here can agree that islam's claims are unfactual, that there is no allah, that mohammed was a liar and that all muslims are idiots. These things are obvious, but given these certain truths wherefore do we defend these delusional maniacs? Certainly none of them is innocent. These are creatures who have signed up to follow the example, the whole point of islam is to follow mohammed's example, of a notorious murderer, slaver and rapist (historical and canonical facts); whose rambling, repetitive book is riddled with threats of eternal torture for unbelievers and exhortations to the faithful to slay those unbelievers, hastening them to that unjust end. Guilty, every one.

If you oppose bigotry, you oppose islam.

Does the Quran condone or command the kind of violence we see from militant Islam? The answer is yes. The argument seems to be that the extremists are following a radical interpretation of the Quran, but the truth is that their interpretation is normative when you take the history of Islam into consideration. Violence and war has been at the roots of Islam since its inception. It is the modern, liberal interpretation of the Quran which is the aberration. So, whether some or most Muslims disregard, ignore or are ignorant of what the Quran tells them to do isn't the real issue; that doesn't tell us about what is at the core of Islam.

Why is what Bill Maher said news?

I also wondered that. I love Bill, but he's a comedian, not a reporter or even pundit. His viewpoint should not be news unless it creates some real 'news'.
I find it odd how often the right wing pundits and representatives want to 'debate' with a comedian and their statements lately instead of arguing with other 'pundits' or reps that aren't joking.

I think it's because comedians are starting to get more attention than the pundits and they don't like anybody horning in on their action. For that matter I sometimes find comedians and what they say to be more truthful and even honest. Comedy isn't always just telling jokes, it can also be a way of broaching subjects that otherwise might be considered too painful or even outright taboo for many people, if you can keep them laughing they are less likely to punch you in the face.

I wish that were the case, but Maher is more full of crap than most. From what I can see he's a sharp but overly emotional guy who gets a hint of the truth and then builds on that with conjecture. On top of that he feels the need to be loyal to a "team" (Democrats via campaign contributions) which in my mind further discredits most of what he says.

Overall though, I agree with your statement, just that Maher doesn't deserve the attention.

Exactly like the bible and torah.

Here's the thing. All religions started out as fire, brimstone and the sword, because that's what the prevailing culture at the time was like. The people who made up each religion were reflecting the cultural values of the time, hence the support for slavery, oppression of women and homosexuals, etc.

As humanity progressed and culture became more progressive, liberal and enlightened, the religions were forced to embrace some of those changes to stay relevant (usually a few decades or even centuries behind the prevailing morality).

Back on topic, it appears that Aslans facts are in dispute.

When a Muslim flies a plane into a building, they are not following a radical interpretation of the Quran, they are following a normative interpretation of the Quran. The Quran commands Muslims to kill Christians and Jews and to wage endless jihad against all unbelievers. The jihadists are the true Muslims whereas the peaceful Muslims are the ones who don't follow the Quran. The difference between violent Christians and Muslims is, violent Christians are going against the teachings of Jesus Christ, whereas violent Muslims are following the teachings of Muhammad.

Nonsense.

If you were a true Christian, you'd follow the laws of the old testament too.
I presume you don't go into town everyday and put people of other religions to the sword?

So you can drop the "no true scotsman" fallacy....

Nonsense.

If you were a true Christian, you'd follow the laws of the old testament too.
I presume you don't go into town everyday and put people of other religions to the sword?

I want to address this scripture quotation first:

Matthew 5:17

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

You have fundamentally misunderstood what Jesus is saying here. What do you think He is talking about? What do you think He means when He said He came to fulfill the law? Please elaborate.. This, however, is what He was talking about:

John 19:28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

He fulfilled what the law and prophets said about Him on the cross.

Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

What did they write concerning Him?

Luke 24:25 And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Luke 24:26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"

You need to understand what was written about Jesus and how He fulfilled it before you can understand what He was talking about.

Your misunderstanding of the gospel and Old Testament law not withstanding, a true Christian is not under the old covenant, they are under the new covenant.

Romans 10:4-10 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

The old covenant is for Israel, the new covenant is for the whole world. Christians are not under law, but grace.

Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

So you can drop the "no true scotsman" fallacy....

It's funny you would invoke this fallacy, yet state earlier "If you were a true Christian.." Yet, according to Jesus, there are true and false Christians:

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

A true Muslim follows Allah, and Allah has instructed his followers to exterminate all of the nonbelievers.

I'm sorry in advance to you who have an srious discussion.
But imo:

Religion is the utter most highly piece of shit bullshit to ever come across this entire universe. It would never exist unless humans did, and people go on doing the most terrible fucking crap ever in it's name.
Any argument that religion makes anything better than without it, is just amazing and a very vile and disgusting view of man-kind. We would do better, be more moral and compassionate beings without it.
*edit* bad grammar and spelling, deal with it