Muslims true feelings?

  • Thread starter Thread starter virgo
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
V

virgo

Guest
Like many others out there, I’m just sickened by the recent ISIS headlines. Using children to commit murder, executing children, and taking joy in slaughtering families of other faiths or ethnic groups just boggles my mind. I’ve had Muslim friends over the years that seem like warm, caring people. That said, they were all women and I haven’t worked with or gone to school with any Muslim men. To be honest, not knowing how they really feel about what is going on in places like Iraq worries me. Is this militant, violent focus on the Quran the norm? Do they all secretly wish to kill ‘infidels’?
I’m hoping to hear from other Muslims. I don’t hear any of the U.S. Muslim groups speaking out against the atrocities, and I know that if this were Catholics were making headline news for decapitating children, I’d be up in arms and organizing peace rallies.Instead, the silence is deafening. As an American, it’s hard to know the difference between what I’m seeing on the news and what is really in the hearts of average Muslims.
 
virgo said:
Like many others out there, I’m just sickened by the recent ISIS headlines. Using children to commit murder, executing children, and taking joy in slaughtering families of other faiths or ethnic groups just boggles my mind. I’ve had Muslim friends over the years that seem like warm, caring people. That said, they were all women and I haven’t worked with or gone to school with any Muslim men. To be honest, not knowing how they really feel about what is going on in places like Iraq worries me. Is this militant, violent focus on the Quran the norm? Do they all secretly wish to kill ‘infidels’?
I’m hoping to hear from other Muslims. I don’t hear any of the U.S. Muslim groups speaking out against the atrocities, and I know that if this were Catholics were making headline news for decapitating children, I’d be up in arms and organizing peace rallies.Instead, the silence is deafening. As an American, it’s hard to know the difference between what I’m seeing on the news and what is really in the hearts of average Muslims.
Click to expand...
It all depends on one’s interpretation of Surah 9:29 imo.
 
virgo said:
Like many others out there, I’m just sickened by the recent ISIS headlines. Using children to commit murder, executing children, and taking joy in slaughtering families of other faiths or ethnic groups just boggles my mind. I’ve had Muslim friends over the years that seem like warm, caring people. That said, they were all women and I haven’t worked with or gone to school with any Muslim men. To be honest, not knowing how they really feel about what is going on in places like Iraq worries me. Is this militant, violent focus on the Quran the norm? Do they all secretly wish to kill ‘infidels’?
I’m hoping to hear from other Muslims. I don’t hear any of the U.S. Muslim groups speaking out against the atrocities, and I know that if this were Catholics were making headline news for decapitating children, I’d be up in arms and organizing peace rallies.Instead, the silence is deafening. As an American, it’s hard to know the difference between what I’m seeing on the news and what is really in the hearts of average Muslims.
Click to expand...
The Islamic Society of North America has publicly denounced ISIS. CAIR has remained notoriously silent, as they always do. Not a surprise given their connections to terrorist organizations.
 
Good point, dronald.
The other issue I have is with how women are treated, even within the regular Muslim communities here in the U.S. I’ve had a couple of girlfriends who started dating Muslim men, and I encouraged those girlfriends to break things off before it was too late. Their boyfriends had wives back home, but they were here in the U.S. for work, and in the meantime they were busy sleeping with American women, yet then calling those women sluts and telling them to start covering up and stop drinking alcohol. Yet it was fine for them to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle, and to cheat on their wives back home (I can only imagine what kind of lives their poor wives lead!). All in all, I’m not liking what I’m seeing, and I worry that this kind of mentality is gaining momentum in the West, especially places like the UK, where the Muslim communities are so dense that it’s the norm to see burqas in certain neighborhoods. Scary.
 
virgo said:
Like many others out there, I’m just sickened by the recent ISIS headlines. Using children to commit murder, executing children, and taking joy in slaughtering families of other faiths or ethnic groups just boggles my mind. I’ve had Muslim friends over the years that seem like warm, caring people. That said, they were all women and I haven’t worked with or gone to school with any Muslim men. To be honest, not knowing how they really feel about what is going on in places like Iraq worries me. Is this militant, violent focus on the Quran the norm? Do they all secretly wish to kill ‘infidels’?
I’m hoping to hear from other Muslims. I don’t hear any of the U.S. Muslim groups speaking out against the atrocities, and I know that if this were Catholics were making headline news for decapitating children, I’d be up in arms and organizing peace rallies.Instead, the silence is deafening. As an American, it’s hard to know the difference between what I’m seeing on the news and what is really in the hearts of average Muslims.
Click to expand...
I think it’s valid to expect Muslims to denounce such acts of reprehensible violence. If there were Catholics doing the same thing, I’m sure we could expect to see statements from Pope Francis and the USCCB (among others) denouncing the acts in the strongest possible terms.

However, I do wonder whether it is “silence” or simply a matter of me not knowing who to listen to. What “group” do you turn to for official statements on behalf of a large number of Muslins? I don’t really know. :o I’m not plugged in to the way Muslims typically communicate their message on a mass scale. I don’t frequent Muslin publications. They could be saying a lot and I wouldn’t necessarily hear anything about it.
 
virgo said:
Like many others out there, I’m just sickened by the recent ISIS headlines. Using children to commit murder, executing children, and taking joy in slaughtering families of other faiths or ethnic groups just boggles my mind. I’ve had Muslim friends over the years that seem like warm, caring people. That said, they were all women and I haven’t worked with or gone to school with any Muslim men. To be honest, not knowing how they really feel about what is going on in places like Iraq worries me. Is this militant, violent focus on the Quran the norm? Do they all secretly wish to kill ‘infidels’?
I’m hoping to hear from other Muslims. I don’t hear any of the U.S. Muslim groups speaking out against the atrocities, and I know that if this were Catholics were making headline news for decapitating children, I’d be up in arms and organizing peace rallies.Instead, the silence is deafening. As an American, it’s hard to know the difference between what I’m seeing on the news and what is really in the hearts of average Muslims.
Click to expand...
ISIS does not speak for Muslims as a whole. What would make you even suspect that they do? Do you expect non-Christians to judge you by what a group of violent people on the other side of the world do?

Of course there are elements in Islamic teaching that ISIS is drawing on. But it’s taking even those in some pretty radical ways. For instance, it’s demanding that all Christians pay a tax or leave or be killed. But it appears to have set the tax so high that it’s not a real option, and it appears to be killing Christians on a pretty large scale. Contrary to what you will sometimes hear, traditional Islamic law never called for Christians to be treated this way. Monotheists, such as Jews and Christians, were to be given the chance to pay the tax (and Muslims had their own separate tax, the “zakat,” which non-Muslims did not pay) and were typically given a good deal of self-government. It wasn’t religious tolerance by our standards–non-Muslims were clearly subordinate and were often subject to pressures of various kinds, and Muslims didn’t always live up to their own law. In fact, while Christians and Jews were probably treated a little bit better than Muslims and Jews were treated in Christian Europe, the difference wasn’t as big as some claim. Essentially, both Christians and Muslims followed the same policy, though Muslims did so as a matter of divine law and Christians (at least as represented by Aquinas) regarded the total expulsion of unbelievers from Christian territory as the ideal. Ironically, while the absence of divine law on this point in Christianity made Christians perhaps somewhat more intolerant in the Middle Ages, it has made us much more tolerant in the modern world, while Muslims still have to struggle with elements of their tradition that seem to require the rule of Islam (not forced conversion and not mass slaughter, but the imposition of Islamic law as the norm) over all the world as the final goal of faithful Muslims.

Oh, and one point to bear in mind about ISIS: even al-Qaeda condemns these guys!

Edwin
 
Joe_5859 said:
I think it’s valid to expect Muslims to denounce such acts of reprehensible violence. If there were Catholics doing the same thing, I’m sure we could expect to see statements from Pope Francis and the USCCB (among others) denouncing the acts in the strongest possible terms.

However, I do wonder whether it is “silence” or simply a matter of me not knowing who to listen to. What “group” do you turn to for official statements on behalf of a large number of Muslins? I don’t really know. :o I’m not plugged in to the way Muslims typically communicate their message on a mass scale. I don’t frequent Muslin publications. They could be saying a lot and I wouldn’t necessarily hear anything about it.
Click to expand...
Indeed. If you google “Muslim condemnations of ISIS” you come up with quite a few hits.

One international institution to look to is al-Azhar mosque in Cairo. Admittedly, it is criticized by some Muslims for being too much under the control of the Egyptian government, but historically it’s the premier center of learning for Sunni Islam, and in Sunni Islam scholarship=religious authority (Islamic scholarship, I mean, not Western Ph.D’s of course). Very much like the University of Paris in the Middle Ages (Sunni Muslims don’t have anything like a Pope), and in fact it dates from approximately the same era.

Edwin
 
Just for some context here: your country was invaded and has been occupied for a decade. Hundreds of thousands of people, including many civilians, have died violently during this time. That’s hundreds of thousands. Not, say, 3,000 like 9/11. This all occurred after hundreds of years of exploitation and oppression at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, Hussein, etc.

Ok, now let’s discuss the barbarity these people are involved in and how we would never do anything like that.
 
virgo said:
Like many others out there, I’m just sickened by the recent ISIS headlines. Using children to commit murder, executing children, and taking joy in slaughtering families of other faiths or ethnic groups just boggles my mind. I’ve had Muslim friends over the years that seem like warm, caring people. That said, they were all women and I haven’t worked with or gone to school with any Muslim men. To be honest, not knowing how they really feel about what is going on in places like Iraq worries me. Is this militant, violent focus on the Quran the norm? Do they all secretly wish to kill ‘infidels’?
I’m hoping to hear from other Muslims. I don’t hear any of the U.S. Muslim groups speaking out against the atrocities, and I know that if this were Catholics were making headline news for decapitating children, I’d be up in arms and organizing peace rallies.Instead, the silence is deafening. As an American, it’s hard to know the difference between what I’m seeing on the news and what is really in the hearts of average Muslims.
Click to expand...
While I know a few Muslims and they come across as decent people, I still would not dare show them a caricature of Muhammad.

If you believe your Muslim friends are “warm, caring people”, put it to the test by drawing a Muhammad cartoon. If you survive, tell me how it goes.
 
porthos11 said:
While I know a few Muslims and they come across as decent people, I still would not dare show them a caricature of Muhammad.

If you believe your Muslim friends are “warm, caring people”, put it to the test by drawing a Muhammad cartoon. If you survive, tell me how it goes.
Click to expand...
Why would you want to test “warm, caring people” by mocking what is most sacred to them?

Edwin
 
porthos11 said:
While I know a few Muslims and they come across as decent people, I still would not dare show them a caricature of Muhammad.

If you believe your Muslim friends are “warm, caring people”, put it to the test by drawing a Muhammad cartoon. If you survive, tell me how it goes.
Click to expand...
I wonder how my Catholic friends would react if I snapped a wooden crucifix over my knee.
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
Just for some context here: your country was invaded and has been occupied for a decade. Hundreds of thousands of people, including many civilians, have died violently during this time. That’s hundreds of thousands. Not, say, 3,000 like 9/11. This all occurred after hundreds of years of exploitation and oppression at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, Hussein, etc.

Ok, now let’s discuss the barbarity these people are involved in and how we would never do anything like that.
Click to expand...
As someone said to me at Bible Study. “We’re paying for the Crusades”.
 
In 1995, a Pentecostal pastor smashed an image of the Blessed Virgin on TV:
In the days following Von Helde’s attack, thousands of protesters took to the streets, carrying images of the aggrieved saint. Others surrounded Universal temples, screaming obscenities and throwing rocks, eggs and tomatoes. In Rio de Janeiro, police were called to investigate several bomb threats against Universal temples.
Click to expand...
Now to be fair, the Catholic hierarchy condemned the violent response–JPII called on Catholics not to return evil for evil. But the impulse on the “Catholic street” was rage–and understandably (if lamentably) so.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
Why would you want to test “warm, caring people” by mocking what is most sacred to them?

Edwin
Click to expand...
It’s all about what’s deep in one’s core, and of course I’m speaking hypothetically. I would never advocate that.

But the hypothetical scenario remains. I honest said I wouldn’t dare do so, simply because I fear my for my personal safety. That’s what I really feel about Muslims in general.
 
porthos11 said:
I can assure you we won’t kill you, although we will be deeply offended.

Can we say the same of Muslims?
Click to expand...
I have no idea. If it was a bunch of Muslims in the middle east? Perhaps.

If we’re talking about the Catholics that Contarini posted about, I wonder how long I would survive if I spit a host onto the ground.

No matter how many hateful passages the Qur’an has, I’ll bet you it becomes surprisingly easier to find them on the day your mother/brother/child gets blown up by a roadside bomb.
 
Per_Crucem said:
The Islamic Society of North America has publicly denounced ISIS. CAIR has remained notoriously silent, as they always do. Not a surprise given their connections to terrorist organizations.
Click to expand...
From July:
cair.com/press-center/press-releases/12551-cair-condemns-isis-violence-and-rejects-calls-to-join-extremists-fighting-abroad.html

And yesterday:
theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/cair-reiterates-condemnation-of-isis-violence-religious-extremism/0020263

Took me all of 7 seconds to type “CAIR ISIS” into a search bar to find. I’ll leave you guys to your “Muslims are savages” echo chamber as there’s no point in trying to disabuse any of you of your bigotry, but I won’t let matter-of-fact statements go unchallenged.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top