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Are Muslims being demonised?
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Post by
Pwntiff
Are Muslims being demonised?
Is the sky blue?
No. The sky is clear. The way the oxygen and nitrogen scatter light particles gives the impression of the color blue to our eyes.
The sky is, for all practical purposes, blue. If you're going to split hairs talking about how the atmosphere refracts light, then nothing has color and everything is just absorbing and reflecting various wavelengths of light.
Post by
Liquoid
Are Muslims being demonised?
Is the sky blue?
No. The sky is clear. The way the oxygen and nitrogen scatter light particles gives the impression of the color blue to our eyes.
/melvin'd
Post by
MyTie
Are Muslims being demonised?
Is the sky blue?
No. The sky is clear. The way the oxygen and nitrogen scatter light particles gives the impression of the color blue to our eyes.
The sky is, for all practical purposes, blue. If you're going to split hairs talking about how the atmosphere refracts light, then nothing has color and everything is just absorbing and reflecting various wavelengths of light.Liquoid's original argument "Is the sky blue?" is rhetorical, snyde, and not backed up with logical arguments. It doesn't have a place here in this discussion.
Post by
xaratherus
"Is the sky blue?" is a common literary trope used to indicate that the answer to a question is obvious.
If you dislike it and think that it violates forum rules, then report it, but since you aren't a moderator it's really not up to you to say that it doesn't have a place in the discussion.
Post by
606231
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
Breivik was a horribly atrocious excuse for a human, and he was a right wing nut. He said he was Christian, but he obviously wasn't, due to his actions.
He was; thats like saying my family aren't Muslims, and literally thousands of liberal Muslims in the West.
One cannot be a Christian and not follow the tenants of Christianity.
Post by
Interest
Breivik was a horribly atrocious excuse for a human, and he was a right wing nut. He said he was Christian, but he obviously wasn't, due to his actions.
He was; thats like saying my family aren't Muslims, and literally thousands of liberal Muslims in the West.
One cannot be a Christian and not follow the tenants of Christianity.
Ohhhh....I'd say that depends.*
*
Post by
xaratherus
Breivik was a horribly atrocious excuse for a human, and he was a right wing nut. He said he was Christian, but he obviously wasn't, due to his actions.
He was; thats like saying my family aren't Muslims, and literally thousands of liberal Muslims in the West.
Correct. To say he wasn't a "Christian" is to fall prey to a No True Scotsman fallacy. If you talked with Breivik I'm certain that he could point out to you numerous Biblical passages that could be interpreted to excuse, or even mandate, his actions.
With more than 38,000 denominations of Christianity throughout the globe, trying to distance yourself from some of them because you don't like them by saying, "They aren't really Christian," is false distancing.
Post by
606231
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Pwntiff
One cannot be a Christian and not follow the tenants of Christianity.
Except nobody follows
all
the tenants of Christianity, and the people who claim to dismiss the tenants they don't as no longer being a part of the religion, despite still being in the holy books.
Hell, the Old Testament is part of the Christian holy text, and the New Testament dismisses a number of its tenants.
Post by
MyTie
My opinion on the matter of what makes someone a Christian greatly differs from you all. I admit that the subject, at first glance, appears much more grey than it really is.
Shall we back to the topic at hand?
Post by
Pwntiff
Shall we back to the topic at hand?
I'd say it's hard to get back on the topic at hand unless someone who voted "No" comes forth with a rationale.
Post by
gnomerdon
The old testament and the Quran are about the same level. The Quran didn't branch out into some peaceful crusade like Jesus though. It remained the same.
In the old testament, if your son disowns God, you have the right to stone him to death. Since the Quran acknowledged Jesus and considered him a prophet, wouldn't they try to follow his teachings?
Since Jews are from the Old Testament, I am surprised they are civil enough to not follow through with some of the horrendous stuff I read in the Old Testament.
I think it comes down to nurture. I did read a part in the Quran that if people try to invade your country, kill and behead them all. Maybe that verse has some significance. Allah, the "merciful" says to never go on the offensive and remain on the defensive.
Post by
134377
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
gnomerdon
People's beliefs will determine the outcome of their acts. Sad to say.
I would personally return all of the lands back to the Palestinians, deport all muslim activists back to their God given country, take all the Jews out of Israel. Once this is achieved, we can focus on more important things like space.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
@ Jubilee
The proof that, at least in the eyes of Muslims, their God is the same God that was worshipped by the Christian and the Jews, is in the Quran itself. It says specifically that Christians and Jews are people "of the Book" and identifies their God as the same God as the one true God. What they differ on is whether or not all of the Christian and Jewish interpretations of the teachings of the old prophets, and Jesus, are correct, and also whether the teachings of the prophet Muhammad are the inspiration of God.
It's a similar situation to when Christianity split off from Judaism. There isn't any mention of Christianity in the Old Testament, obviously, because it didn't exist when it was written. All we can do is look at the new testament for their interpretation of their relationship with the teachings of the Torah. It is clearly stated in the new testament that the old prohets and teachings of God were correct, but that Jesus was creating a new agreement (The New Covenant) between God and Man, and the rules of who would be saved or favored, and how, were going to be very different.
If you look at the way God is depicted in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, they seem to be very different entities. In the Old Testament, he is often wrathful, constantly visiting punishment upon the people of the Earth for their sins, his rules are very strict and detailed, etc. The New testament shows a God who is merciful, and forgiving, who makes a sacrifice so that people can be imperfect and flawed, and still have a way to join him him Heaven. the New testament teaches about his love, and that belief is enough to save you- effectively overturning the old rules.
Most people who are of one of these two faiths is fairly familiar with the other one. Everyone agrees that, while they may disagree about when the messages from God stopped coming, or what they have to do to please him, they are disagreeing about the same entity.
The situation with Islam is very similar. You, of course, will not find any information about Islam in the Old or New Testaments, because the religion did not exist when they were written. However, if someone looks at the actual religious text that is the basis of Islam, they would see that they trace back their religion to the same history that Christians and Jews do- they recognize many of the same prophets, and trace their lineage back to Abraham. They believe, just as Christians believe of people who are Jewish, that these other two religions are wrong not because they follow the wrong God, but because they failed to recognize when a new prophet appeared with the new teachings of God.
The image of God presented by Islam is very different than that presented in the New Testament (I would argue that it's more similar to the one presented in the Old Testament, though by no means the same). But not more so that the image of God is very different in the Old and New Testaments. The difference is enough that they are considered different religions. But their religious foundation is based on the idea that it is the same God that was the God that was worshiped by Abraham, and by Jesus. Someone can disagree with whether or not the individual texts are correct, whether or not the teachings of each religion that came to be are truly taking the place of the one that came before. But if each new religion teaches that their God is the same as the previous one, and the only measure of whether or something is "true" in a religion is whether or not it's written in the sacred text, the you have to accept that they are worshiping the same God, even if you don't believe they are doing so correctly, or have the correct information about him.
Most Westerners are not nearly as familiar with Islam as they are with Christianity and Judaism. They usually have a very narrow area of experience with the religion, and it often has come from the media rather than any historical or theological study, or any reading of the religious texts. We often have a general idea of Islam formed by a combination of media sound bites, internet blogs, the teachings of our own religious leaders (many of whom have also never read the Quran) or "the word on the street". I have been lucky enough to have had religious classes in college that went into some detail about all 3 religions, using the actual religious texts. It's better to draw information from the actual texts themselves, than to look up interpretations on the web, IMO.
On Topic: I think that a lot of people do recognize that Islamist Extremism based Terrorism is a real and present danger in the world today, and that steps need to be taken to deal with the threat without sugar-coating what the demographic of the threat really is. However, a much larger group of people either have trouble, or don't even try, to make a distinction between Islam as a religion, and the very specific and smaller Islamic Extremist Terrorist groups that exist. They tend to treat it as one category, and lump all Muslims into a single group. Many also lump anyone with a certain complexion, or with an accent that they identify as coming from "somewhere over there" in the vaguest sense, or who show symbols of other religions that they are completely ignorant about and just assume must be Islam, into this category. Yes, a lot of people- Muslims, Hindus, Bhuddists and Even Christians from South Asia- are being demonized.
I was in college when the towers went down, and my father was one of the people who went in to help clean up the devastation. I'm from New York, and live about an hour outside of the city. It was pretty close to home for me. I also had friends who I went to school with, Hindu friends in this case, who were pulled off a train one night after partying and detained for hours because of the color of their skin. I had a friend whose elderly mother was harassed and threatened in the street, and whose brother was beat up, because they were Bangladeshi. I had a friend who was Jordanian, born in the US, who could speak Arabic and would tell me all of the ways that the subtitles that the media put on video they released from Middle Eastern Countries was inaccurate, and left out words or changed grammatical structures to make it sound more violent or more threatening than it was. I am ashamed, as a New Yorker, that we felt that we had the right to restrict where a Mosque could be built because we thought it was insensitive not to cater to racism.
I think that a lot of people want an easy way to tell who to hate, who to blame for things that go wrong. In northern Ireland, it was a political and economic struggle that ended up being labeled a Catholic- Protestant conflict because it's easier to identify a group that has a different race or religion than you as the "bad". During World War 2, the average American wanted people who looked Japanese to be herded up and locked away during the war, "Just in case", while German and Italian Americans walked free and were sent in droves to fight the war on our side. When the Rodney King riots happened, people targeted white-owned businesses and white people specifically. People do it because it's a face they can associate with the anger they feel, something that they can point to and say "you're different, and I can hate you for something that someone like you did, because you're more like them than like me." It's sad, but it's a very prevalent way of thinking for human beings. And no matter how far we seem to come in overcoming specific prejudices with logic and familiarity, whenever a new one pops up, it seems like people default to the "hate anything different" mentality every time there is a new issue.
TL;DR- Yes, it's the same God. They just worship him differently. And yes they have been demonized.
Post by
MyTie
I would personally return all of the lands back to the Palestinians, deport all muslim activists back to their God given country, take all the Jews out of Israel.
This might sound odd, but Israel originally belonged to the Jews (Israelites). This problem isn't as simple as getting rid of one side completely.
Besides, Israel is a huge balancing factor in the middle east. Getting rid of Israel would be a huge military, economic, and idealist victory for Iran and other countries that want nothing more than to convert and/or nuke the world.
Post by
Morec0
I fully belive Muslims are being Demonized, allow me to point out the Community center they wanted to build in New York.
Too close too soon to the ruins of the Twin Towers? Okay, that's understandable, but the same thing happened in the south-west at the same time! Was that too close too?
It sickens me without doubt that muslims have become the face of terroism, I too cannot picture one without seeing the same generic, hood and mask covered figure over and over because of all of it. Can the acts of a few extremist individuals be forgiven? Probably not? Does that mean and entire way of life should be descriminated against because of it? Definately not!
Columbus and his men kidnapped and enslaved Native Americans, turning girls as young as 9 years old into sex slaves. Does that mean all Catholics are bastards? No.
And if you try to put up an argument "well, that happened so long ago, people thought differently" it dosn't matter. The events of the Bible and all other religions happened even longer ago, does that mean they don't matter? Can those two be compared? Both were done with a God supposidly supporting them, why not?
Post by
606231
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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