Muslims that are terrorists are the real muslims

[jack_hawkins]

This nicely illustrates what I’ve been trying to say about the difference between the way outsiders and insiders perceive a religious tradition. You are horrified when someone looks at Christianity the way you look at Islam.

The Golden Rule applies here just as much as in interpersonal relations. It is our sacred duty as Christians to be just as fair to Muslims as we wish Imagine was to us!

In Christ,

Edwin

I am horrified at people making stupid comparisons based presumably on secular relativism. That’s the sort of statement atheists make for effect. There is no “Christian Taleban” and the poster knows that.
You don’t get the point that we aren’t being unfair to Islam or Muslims. I live in a Mohammedan majority area - do you? Please point out any accuracies in anything I say, but most of it is based on experience of the Islamists in my area.

 

[jack_hawkins]

Yes. Guanophore said it in the OP. Go back and read it.

Edwin

right - one out of many
I haven’t, and most posters here haven’t

 

[Contarini]

right - one out of many
I haven’t, and most posters here haven’t

I was replying to guanophore!

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I am horrified at people making stupid comparisons based presumably on secular relativism. That’s the sort of statement atheists make for effect. There is no “Christian Taleban” and the poster knows that.
You don’t get the point that we aren’t being unfair to Islam or Muslims. I live in a Mohammedan majority area - do you? Please point out any accuracies in anything I say, but most of it is based on experience of the Islamists in my area.

Have I criticized what you have said? I might have, I dunno.

I am making a point about generalization and judgments concerning what is “real” Islam or not. I am not denying that radical Islamist ideology is a real problem, and I’d actually ve very interested in hearing about your experiences with Islamists in Birmingham. My parents and grandparents spent years doing evangelistic work in the cities of northern England and the Midlands (and earlier in Scotland)–back then there were already some Islamic immigrants, but of course nothing like there is now. I was born in Blackburn and lived briefly in Burslem before we moved to a village in northern Staffordshire. We moved to the U.S. when I was six, and I’ve only been back on brief visits.

My only close experience of British Islam is with my dad’s cousin and her husband, who converted to Sufism (while living in East London, though they now live in Stirling). I know of course that they aren’t your average Muslims!

In Christ,

Edwin

 

[Imagine23]

First of all, I’m not trying to give comfort. I’m trying to get to the truth.

Absolutely. Although even al-Qaeda explicitly bases its jihad on alleged Western aggression. Still, given globalization and the high rates of Islamic immigration, there’s abundant reason for concern even apart from the consequences of our interventions in the Middle East. In fact, as I pointed out on another thread, the fact that much Islamic expansion has taken place through peaceful immigration is actually the most worrying thing. We could beat the Islamic world in a knock-down fight (at least if we were willing to damn our own souls in the process). We have a lot more to fear from the process by which Islamic immigrants build their own subculture and then eventually turn this subculture into the dominant culture by imposing shari’a.

I haven’t been to Israel, but I grew up in the South and frequently attended fundamentalist churches. From your stereotyped and generalized description (you don’t appear to make any distinction between Pentecostals and Baptists) I think I know more about this kind of religion than you do.

First of all, you ignored my definition of “literal”: what an outsider to the tradition would decide was the original historical meaning. No, fundamentalists do not interpret the Bible “literally” in this sense. They do not go hat in hand to the nearest university and ask the professor of Ancient Near Eastern studies what the Old Testament means!

The problem is that the word “literal” is ambiguous. Which is why I would indeed defend the proposition that no one interprets the Bible literally. Some people claim to do so, but their “literalism” is rooted in particular theological traditions whether they admit it or not. I suspect I’ve heard a lot more fundamentalist sermons than you have. I know what I am talking about. Many modern fundamentalists, for instance, are dispensationalists–they are committed to what they call “rightly dividing the Word” which involves a highly complex and counterintuitive system of interpretation. Pentecostals, whom you seem to have in mind, routinely allegorize Scripture so as to make it directly relevant to their personal circumstances.

I think that the phrase “those type of people” is extremely vague and even meaningless, especially since you don’t seem to know a lot about Christian fundamentalists. It’s certainly true that Muslims as a whole regard the Qur’an as the literal Word of God in a sense that roughly corresponds to fundamentalist Christianity (indeed, it was a conversation with a Muslim that helped me see the errors of fundamentalism and realize that the Incarnation, not the Bible per se, is the foundation of orthodox Christianity).

Yours truly,

Edwin

Nice post Edwin. It’s refreshing to finally find a theist on this board that can actually express himself in an intelligent, coherent way without even quoting an ancient mythological text! No, I can’t pretend to have even a tenth of the knowledge about the nuances of fundamentalist Christianity as you. But that’s beside the point.

My point was that there are Christians in this country, many of whom wield large degrees of power (like the current president of the U.S.) that make decisions on important issues (e.g. funding of embryonic stem cell research) not based on science but rather “faith.” Religion is used as crutch and worse an excuse for not thinking. One can take seemingly any absurd position and if he points to religion as a justification, he need not argue his point further. That is disturbing.

As an aside, I’ve only been to one fundamentalist (Pentecostal?) service in my life. I was very young and we were visiting relatives. The service seemed like it was about 8 hours long. I remember at one point people started babbling (speaking “in toungues”) I later learned. At 10 years old, the sight of such lunacy scared the [heck] out of me and I feared for humanity. I laughed at first (until my Mom whacked me in the back of the head) because I thought the whole tongue talking thing was a joke. But no, of course these people really believed it.

 

[guanophore]

The Qur'an ...The harshest possible interpretation of Islamic belief on this point is that Muslims should conquer the whole world, wipe out polytheistic rliegions, and force monotheistic non-Muslims into subjugation. There is nothing about killing all non-Muslims.

Well, it sounds pretty lethal to me!

As far as I know even al-Qaeda does not have that goal.

Apparently you have not watched the videos of the adherants speaking.

1. . It is hypocritical to demand that “real” Muslims must do what Jews and Christians certainly do not do–allow outsiders to determine for them what their own Scriptures teach. In fact, when it’s put that way, can’t you see how absurd such a demand is from the start?

The OP is an Iranian who converted to Catholicism. I think he has more authenticity and right to speak about that, having grown up in the culture.

1. Finally, it’s illegitimate in principle for outsiders to any religious tradition to speak of one form of that tradition being more “real” than another. That is a theological judgment that can *only *be made by those who believe in the religion in question in the first place. The simplest way of putting this is that since you and I do not believe Islam is true, it is meaningless for us to talk about “true” Islam. It’s a contradiction in terms.

Why, oh why, can’t you see this?

In Christ,

Edwin

I agree with you that it is difficult to judge from the outside. However, we can know them by their fruits. I don’t see a mass of American Muslims standing up against the terrorists, do you? They can’t because they would be labelled as infidels, and killed too. In fact, according to terrorists, those who are not for them are against them, and deserve to die even if they claim to be Muslim.

 

[Imagine23]

what an utterly ridiculous statement!

Which part? You know the first part is true. Do I need to give you a list of quotes?

 

[Contarini]

Well, it sounds pretty lethal to me!

I don’t care how it “sounds.” You are obligated to speak the truth and not lie, even if the lie “sounds” like the truth.

Subjugating people is not the same thing as killing them.

Apparently you have not watched the videos of the adherants speaking.

I’ve seen bin Laden’s fatwa, which is surely a more authoritative source.

The OP is an Iranian who converted to Catholicism. I think he has more authenticity and right to speak about that, having grown up in the culture.

So ex-Catholics have the right to describe Catholicism and we should all believe them?

I agree with you that it is difficult to judge from the outside. However, we can know them by their fruits. I don’t see a mass of American Muslims standing up against the terrorists, do you?

Yes.

They can’t because they would be labelled as infidels, and killed too. In fact, according to terrorists, those who are not for them are against them, and deserve to die even if they claim to be Muslim.

If they say that, then they are really breaking with Islamic tradition. That sounds like the Khariji movement–one of the first “heretical” groups within Islam, which claimed that people who did what they considered to be evil were not really Muslims. That has generally been rejected by the Sunni tradition.

Radical Islam as we know it today is rooted in the Salafi movement, which rejects Islamic tradition and tries to go back to an idealized early Islam. That’s not to say that traditional Islam couldn’t be violent as well.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Which part? You know the first part is true. Do I need to give you a list of quotes?

I think he’s talking about the “Christian Taliban” comment–and that is a remarkably fatuous phrase, in my opinion.

Admittedly, just as you and I don’t experience radical British Islam every day, so Jack probably doesn’t have much experience with American fundamentalism!

Edwin

 

[Imagine23]

I think he’s talking about the “Christian Taliban” comment–and that is a remarkably fatuous phrase, in my opinion.

Admittedly, just as you and I don’t experience radical British Islam every day, so Jack probably doesn’t have much experience with American fundamentalism!

Edwin

Hardly fatuous my friend, and your closing statement indicates you have some idea of what I’m referring to. As you know, there is a very extreme dedicated right wing group of Christians in the U.S. (whose political power arguably has declining as of late) that are committed to imposing their religiously motivated beliefs on the rest of society, for example, their ideas of what “marriage” should be, their ideas of what a “culture of life” is. They have not been as successful as the Afghan Taliban but their motivation (religiosity) and means (political power) are the same. Thus the reasoning behind the “fatuous” phrase. Did you go to Oxford?

 

[Kadaveri]

Montalban:

Surah Al-Baqarah
Ayah [256]
There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path. Whoever disbelieves in Taghut and believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower.

This was made when Muhammed was just starting the religion and was in a position of weakness. This verse is commonly held to have been abrogated by more bellicose verses.

Actually it wasn’t revealed then, it was revealed either 15 or 18 years into Muhammad’s Prophethood when he was the ruler of Medina (hardly a position of weakness).

 

[Imagine23]

Actually it wasn’t revealed then, it was revealed either 15 or 18 years into Muhammad’s Prophethood when he was the ruler of Medina (hardly a position of weakness).

Was that before or after Muhammed flew to heaven on the winged horse?

 

[LRThunder]

Hardly fatuous my friend, and your closing statement indicates you have some idea of what I’m referring to. As you know, there is a very extreme dedicated right wing group of Christians in the U.S. (whose political power arguably has declining as of late) that are committed to imposing their religiously motivated beliefs on the rest of society, for example, their ideas of what “marriage” should be, their ideas of what a “culture of life” is. They have not been as successful as the Afghan Taliban but their motivation (religiosity) and means (political power) are the same. Thus the reasoning behind the “fatuous” phrase. Did you go to Oxford?

I don’t think anybody should compare any Christians to the Taliban. The Taliban are known abusers of human rights not to mention the Taliban supported, or at least protected Al Queda, which was responsible for 9/11.

What terrorist groups have the so-called “Christian Taliban” have supported?

 

[Imagine23]

I don’t think anybody should compare any Christians to the Taliban. The Taliban are known abusers of human rights not to mention the Taliban supported, or at least protected Al Queda, which was responsible for 9/11.

What terrorist groups have the so-called “Christian Taliban” have supported?

I shall henceforth refer to them as the Christian Fascists.

 

[LRThunder]

I shall henceforth refer to them as the Christian Fascists.

:nope:

Wishing for society to be a better society doesn’t make one fascists or Talibanlike. In any case, the comparison fails because they haven’t acted like fascists or the Taliban. Those groups have imprisoned or murdered the innocent. Even if this “Christian fascist or Christian taliban” did imprison innocent people or kill them, that wouldn’t make them Christian, would it?

 

[Kadaveri]

Was that before or after Muhammed flew to heaven on the winged horse?

After.

 

[jack_hawkins]

Have I criticized what you have said? I might have, I dunno.

I am making a point about generalization and judgments concerning what is “real” Islam or not. I am not denying that radical Islamist ideology is a real problem, and I’d actually ve very interested in hearing about your experiences with Islamists in Birmingham. My parents and grandparents spent years doing evangelistic work in the cities of northern England and the Midlands (and earlier in Scotland)–back then there were already some Islamic immigrants, but of course nothing like there is now. I was born in Blackburn and lived briefly in Burslem before we moved to a village in northern Staffordshire. We moved to the U.S. when I was six, and I’ve only been back on brief visits.

My only close experience of British Islam is with my dad’s cousin and her husband, who converted to Sufism (while living in East London, though they now live in Stirling). I know of course that they aren’t your average Muslims!

In Christ,

Edwin

Yes, Sufi are not considered Muslims by many Muslims, and certainly seem very peaceful - but then they are the mystical arm.
Some of the things going on in East Birmingham/West Midlands-
massive explosion of women wearing the veil
many arrests for terrorism
recent TV programme focussing on a mosque I pass most days (Green Lane)
regular signs of militant Islamists - guys driving around in vans saying “stay Muslim don’t vote”, posters glorifying the “magnificent 19”, al-muhajiroun activity until that group was banned

• the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque denying that was such a thing as Muslim terrorism and al-Qaeda and declaring Britain had become a police state
• sale of videos glorifying 9/11 in carpark of BCM
  that’s just off the top of my head
  The West Midlands seems to be one of the hotbeds, put it this way - after Leeds.

There is no Christian group that suggests doing anything remotely like the Taliban - not even the religious right in the US and I do know a fair bit about them (I met a wacky gentleman on a course in Baltimore [Maryland] so I know the depths to which they plumb). There have been further attempts to set up similar regimes in both Iraq and Somalia.

Yes, there is a spectrum in Islam, but the OP’s point that if you go by internal consistency and the Koran, the real Muslims are those who practise jihad and kill in the name of Allah. We have seen this in Britain with the Muslim Council of Britain - they make announcements about foreign policy after terrorist attacks and accuse the govt of wanting “tame Islam” because the govt wants them to unreservedly condemn terrorism rather than excuse it with “foreign policy”.

 

[Contarini]

Hardly fatuous my friend, and your closing statement indicates you have some idea of what I’m referring to. As you know, there is a very extreme dedicated right wing group of Christians in the U.S. (whose political power arguably has declining as of late) that are committed to imposing their religiously motivated beliefs on the rest of society, for example, their ideas of what “marriage” should be, their ideas of what a “culture of life” is. They have not been as successful as the Afghan Taliban but their motivation (religiosity) and means (political power) are the same. Thus the reasoning behind the “fatuous” phrase. Did you go to Oxford?

No, I didn’t go to Oxford!

Your post reflects the usual confused stereotypes of the secular left. There is indeed a tiny group of “Reconstructionists” who want to transform American society into one based on their interpretation of Biblical law. And I’ll grant that they have had an impact on the much broader conservative Christian movement, just as hardline Stalinists had some impact on a much broader group of leftist sympathizers. But that did not justify Joseph McCarthy in assuming that anyone who had mildly socialistic views was a proponent of the Gulag or an agent of Soviet power. Same here.

There is nothing particularly extremist about defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. That is the way marriage has been defined in our culture until very recently.

I am not sure whom you have in mind when you speak of the “culture of life”–John Paul II used it in one way (which I will defend staunchly) and Bush has used it in what I find to be a cynical and distorted way. Someone like Sam Brownback is closer to defending a true culture of life than Bush, in my opinion.

However, either way to suggest that opposition to same-sex marriage or legalized abortion amounts to imposing Christianity on everyone is indeed fatuous. No one is trying to make people go to church, or to destroy places of worship belonging to other religions, or to restrict the free discussion of religious opinions. Bookstores freely sell the works of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and I am not aware of any movement to make it illegal to publish such books.

If you were really talking about a religiously intolerant regime that was trying to force its beliefs on everyone, you’d be able to point to things like this. But you can’t. So lay off on the extreme rhetoric. Issues such as the definition of marriage and the point at which life begins are going to be influenced by people’s religious beliefs, of course. But that’s par for the course. Was Martin Luther King Jr. imposing his religious beliefs on people when he fought for civil rights? Secular liberals don’t mind mixing religion and politics when it’s for a cause they approve of. The fact is that any honest person’s stance on issues of public importance is going to be influenced by their view of things in general. That is what most of this so-called “imposition of religion” really amounts to.

My problem with conservative Christians–including even the Reconstructionists–isn’t that they are mixing their religion and politics too much, but that they aren’t doing it enough. See this blog post of mine for more.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Yes, Sufi are not considered Muslims by many Muslims, and certainly seem very peaceful - but then they are the mystical arm.

But they are just as much “real Muslims” as anyone else. At one time they were arguably the dominant form of Islam–although admittedly in those days they were by no means uniformly peaceful. In fact, there were militant Sufi orders that fought in Muslim armies (the “whirling dervishes”), and one such group deeply influenced Chechen Islam! I’ve even heard it claimed that the Taliban had some Sufi roots, although generally militant Muslims today are violently anti-Sufi.

The main point I’m trying to make is that Islam takes all sorts of different forms and we have no business labelling one form “real” Islam.

Some of the things going on in East Birmingham/West Midlands-
massive explosion of women wearing the veil

Surely not a bad thing in itself, if they freely choose to do so?

many arrests for terrorism
recent TV programme focussing on a mosque I pass most days (Green Lane)
regular signs of militant Islamists - guys driving around in vans saying “stay Muslim don’t vote”, posters glorifying the “magnificent 19”,

That’s very scary

• sale of videos glorifying 9/11 in carpark of BCM

Wow! Very disturbing. Particularly since I think of the West Midlands in general as my homeland insofar as I have one–at least it’s the place of my earliest memories (though my dad’s folks came from Shetland and my mother’s from the U.S., and I have spent most of my life in America).

Yes, there is a spectrum in Islam, but the OP’s point that if you go by internal consistency and the Koran, the real Muslims are those who practise jihad and kill in the name of Allah.

What makes them “real”? Internal consistency with what? Every religion has to engage in a lot of interpretive work to achieve internal consistency. I wish people would address my arguments instead of denying them. I don’t see how you can coherently claim that we who do not see the Qur’an as the Word of God can tell Muslims what the Qur’an-as-Word-of-God means.

Can you please explain this to me?

Edwin

 

[cmcgrath22]

It is my opinion that Islam is an evil on the face of this world. Islam was founded by a man who gained worldly possesion and power from his teachings. He gained his following by conquering smaller tribes and uniting them under his personal banner. He died of an illness late in his life. A similiar story in history can be found in Genghis Kahn, difference being Genghis didnt need to claim to be a prophet to cement the loyalty of his followers. It is an indication again in my opinion that Islam split into two openly warring factions immediately after the death of Muhammed that the Islamic faith was then and is now nothing more than a social system used by a very clever and evil man to bring others under his control. Upon his death other factions that had been held in sway by him tried to sieze upon this method to wrest control for themselves. Islam at best in my view was an empire then and to a small and twisted extent it still is.