On the Charlie Hebdo Attack and Current State/Effect of Religion.

Started by: Salt | Replies: 8 | Views: 1,714

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Jan 9, 2015 6:25 PM #1292898

There's this story about a man who broke into the prophet's house in an attempt to kill him. The man was caught by the prophet's friends, who wanted him killed for his attempt. The prophet said no. He asked the man to sit down, fed him, gave him water, and let the man go. There's a lesson to be learned here about tolerance.

Religion has been deformed and mangled over the past 1400 hundred years in an unimaginable way. This isn't surprising, since statistically speaking by the time a piece of information or story has reached the seventh person, most of the original data is lost or changed. This simply proves that what we are now calling Islam is largely the opinions and thoughts of people from ages past who had infinitely less knowledge than us and no enlightment as the prophet did. Most of what remains unchanged now is the very essence and basics of Islam.

There is no such thing as blind faith, one must think and use their head. Islam urges us to learn, therefore it must also urge us to learn and think about Islam in itself. If you are simply a blind follower with no good reason for what you believe then you are an idiot who can be fooled into committing the worst atrocities imaginable for false promises and illusions. You can have your life controlled and constrained in whatever way your so called more knowing religious leaders want to. Whoever someone is or claims to be you do not follow without proof, reason, and humanity. I choose to be Muslim because I am convinced that I have a soul that will go somewhere at some point after death. I find a lot of the teachings of Islam to be for the good of others and I find prayer to be comforting to my soul. Yet I do not believe in or follow in what other people view as correct Islam because it is simply not right and hurts others.

Think for yourself people, Muslim or not. Do whatever you want as long as you're nice to everyone and you don't hurt others, and you'll probably be ok after you die, whatever your beliefs. At least that's what I'm convinced of.

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Jan 9, 2015 8:46 PM #1292928

Here's a good comment I found on reddit that's relevant to this.

"I am a liberal, and Islamophobia in the US and Europe have long bothered me. Intolerance is never the answer, and the very real grievances of many in the Middle East with US foreign policy should not be dismissed as religious rambling.

All that said, Kristof has offered the usual stable of platitudes meant to distract us from looking clear-eyed at these events when they happen. Of course 1.6 billion people are not terrorists. Of course most Muslims are peaceful and abhor activities like these. And of course it is possible to scour the globe and find Christian extremists and Hindu extremists and extremists of every stripe and creed.

But these facts should not cause us to deny the obvious truth that these events are disproportionately carried out in the name of an intolerant strain of Islam and that the views of a great many people - not all of whom approve of violence, mind you - are incompatible with vigorous free expression, political plurality, and equality of the sexes. The United States and Europe must stand for those values, no compromise. In my view, tomorrow every major news outlet should be printing a Muhammed cartoon, not because they agree with it or because those cartoon are not offensive, but because media everywhere should stand together and affirm that terrorism does not work and free expression is not up for debate. Neither is the equality of women or the idea that religion does not rule public life. The vast majority of Muslims believe these things too and so should be welcome in western society. But those who do not, are not.

As Kristof notes, few Muslims are cheering these shootings, and that should not be forgotten in the coming days and months as the temptation to "religiously profile" will be strong. But neither should we forget that too few in the Muslim world stand vigorously against the ideas that lead to this kind of extremism. It is easy to point out, as countless liberal pundits have or will, that extremism of all sorts is an enemy. That should not blind people, including those who believe in the importance of tolerance, to the fact that extremism does not come equally from all quarters."

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Jan 10, 2015 1:33 AM #1293077

Quote from Exilement
carried out in the name of an intolerant strain of Islam

I wonder if the topic would become, or at least appear, less racially charged if we talked specifically about Wahhabism rather than Islam.

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Jan 10, 2015 10:59 AM #1293322

Quote from Exilement

But these facts should not cause us to deny the obvious truth that these events are disproportionately carried out in the name of an intolerant strain of Islam and that the views of a great many people - not all of whom approve of violence, mind you - are incompatible with vigorous free expression, political plurality, and equality of the sexes.The United States and Europe must stand for those values, no compromise.

"Religion has been deformed and mangled over the past 1400 hundred years in an unimaginable way. This isn't surprising, since statistically speaking by the time a piece of information or story has reached the seventh person, most of the original data is lost or changed. This simply proves that what we are now calling Islam is largely the opinions and thoughts of people from ages past who had infinitely less knowledge than us and no enlightment as the prophet did. Most of what remains unchanged now is the very essence and basics of Islam."

I definitely agree with you. Terrorist acts happen to be more attributable to have been done in the name of Islam more than any other belief. I think this is due to the fact that like all beliefs it is going through a "phase", just like Christianity during the dark ages. Islam appeared later than Christianity therefore this "phase" is appearing also at a later time. And as I previously said like all religions a lot of it has certainly been mangled and changed through out the ages. And that's why in the end I ask people to think for themselves and not blindly follow those leaders views; that would result in people realising how backwards and hurtful these views and either choose not to follow them.

Quote from Zed
I wonder if the topic would become, or at least appear, less racially charged if we talked specifically about Wahhabism rather than Islam.

The differences between the different "sects" of sunni Islam are considerable in size, but not fundamentally different. These "sects" were meant to interpret certain vague parts of Islam as per highly educated religious leaders. The problem is these leaders were from centuries ago. What most people now consider true Islam is flawed either way in my opinion.

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Jan 10, 2015 12:05 PM #1293346

Quote from Exilement
"I am a liberal, and Islamophobia in the US and Europe have long bothered me. Intolerance is never the answer, and the very real grievances of many in the Middle East with US foreign policy should not be dismissed as religious rambling."

I never liked this word or how this word is used. It always seemed to me it would be used by someone using it to shut down any criticism of Islam by other religions or atheists.
I have never heard anyone say "oh look at that Christophobic comment" or "Gee, stop having Athiestophobic discussions on this forum."

Why should Islam be magically free of all criticism or ridicule when Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Atheism and even Buddhism are criticized and made fun of? That and people seem to lump Islamophobia with the word "racism" as if insulting Islam or Muslims is on par with insulting Arabians, despite not all Muslims are Arabian and not all Arabians are Muslim. The word is clearly a new word invented by Muslim apologists as a ad hominem when people attempt to criticize Islam or it's followers since it doesn't appear in any legit Dictionary.

Finally the word it's self is really misleading since it implies a "irrational fear of the religion Islam" when people could simply not like or even hate it since it's a religion and can't back up most of it's claims with science like most religions.

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Jan 10, 2015 12:22 PM #1293354

Quote from Salt
The differences between the different "sects" of sunni Islam are considerable in size, but not fundamentally different.

You could say the same about Christianity, but if the complaint was "Christianity leads to people refusing blood transfusions" (Jehovah's Witnesses) or "Christians are immoral because they practice polygamy" (Mormon fundamentalism) we would reject the claim as false. If the behaviour under scrutiny is only practised by a particular subset of a group then it's misleading to talk about the group rather than the subset. Unless I'm mistaken and actually there are loads of jihadists around the world from sects other than Wahhabism.

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Jan 10, 2015 1:27 PM #1293369

Quote from Zed
You could say the same about Christianity, but if the complaint was "Christianity leads to people refusing blood transfusions" (Jehovah's Witnesses) or "Christians are immoral because they practice polygamy" (Mormon fundamentalism) we would reject the claim as false. If the behaviour under scrutiny is only practised by a particular subset of a group then it's misleading to talk about the group rather than the subset. Unless I'm mistaken and actually there are loads of jihadists around the world from sects other than Wahhabism.

It's not just the violence, it's the ideologies that involve this violence and other flaws like sexism for example which are present in most sects.And yes Wahhabism isn't the only thing.

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Jan 12, 2015 3:28 PM #1294372

Quote from xDonnyx
I never liked this word or how this word is used. It always seemed to me it would be used by someone using it to shut down any criticism of Islam by other religions or atheists.
I have never heard anyone say "oh look at that Christophobic comment" or "Gee, stop having Athiestophobic discussions on this forum."

Why should Islam be magically free of all criticism or ridicule when Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Atheism and even Buddhism are criticized and made fun of? That and people seem to lump Islamophobia with the word "racism" as if insulting Islam or Muslims is on par with insulting Arabians, despite not all Muslims are Arabian and not all Arabians are Muslim. The word is clearly a new word invented by Muslim apologists as a ad hominem when people attempt to criticize Islam or it's followers since it doesn't appear in any legit Dictionary.

Finally the word it's self is really misleading since it implies a "irrational fear of the religion Islam" when people could simply not like or even hate it since it's a religion and can't back up most of it's claims with science like most religions.

it doesn't imply an irrational fear of islam, that's the literal definition of the word and it's not misleading in any way. the existence of the word doesn't mean islam is 'magically free of all criticism', what the fuck are you even talking about? rational criticism of islam is not islamophobia by the definition of the word. this isn't difficult.

people do have an irrational fear and/or hatred of Islam and that's the only thing the word refers to. literally everything else you said is completely irrelevant.

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Jan 12, 2015 5:01 PM #1294396

I understand this topic is mostly concerning Islamophobia but I also see it as a place to weigh in your thoughts on the Charlie Hedbo attack as a whole. So I just figured I'd drop in to share a thought:

This response to the attacks in Paris, the unities of different citizens from around the world under the tag of #JeSuisCharlie, goes to show how exactly the world and its societies are evolving. Any sort of terrorist organization out there has one purpose, to rule and control others through the means of fear and intimidation. Whenever there may have been a time where this was successfully a means of becoming powerful and dominant, doesn't seem to be dawned upon us now. Because while terrorist acts of violence have the intention of making us run in fear, instead they cause things like this to happen:

I understand that ISIS is a thing, but the response has been just as much of a thing as well. We're living in a world where a rally-around-the-flag effect (the unpolitical version) is much more likely to occur. What this means is that while two or more forces may be in conflict with each other and attempting to dispatch the conflict by any means, if a larger force is to come in and become a threat to all forces, then they will unite to eliminate the threat. France and America have severely weak social ties, but this is something we all are coming together for. We do not tolerate intolerance. And we're living in a world that's more accepting to freedom and individual right than any time ever before.