The Other France
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The problem of les banlieues is a social problem for France, but ghetto youth are more interested in girls, drugs, and otherwise acting out than in terrorism.
As Osama Bin Laden and others show, you can be given every opportunity in life and still choose terrorism. You can be well educated (many Daesh members are) and choose terrorism.
The elephant in the room that many refuse to address is that terrorism exists anywhere Islam does, there are insurgencies in nearly every country where Muslims are a sizeable minority.
A little anecdote - my wife comes from a very poor country, from a Muslim region. The poor kids aren't the ones growing up wearing hijabs, aren't the ones committing terrorism. Terrorists have been apprehended from her village trying to get into the west - the one thing they had in common - they went to a local madrassa funded by a Gulf state.
A similar comparison can be made in the US. Ghetto youth don't go around committing mass shootings. They don't join Daesh. It's the middle class, outcast white kids that are doing mass shootings, or newly converted/radicalized middle class youth that join Daesh.
Anyhow, it is a brilliantly written piece, but on this occasion I'm not sure its particularly relevant.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-con...
Having 20% of the populace believe that suicide bombings are justifiable is a real problem.
Muslim Publics Share Concerns about Extremist Groups
Much Diminished Support for Suicide Bombing
20% of Americans believe in a lot of things, from UFOs to a lot of nasty things. I invite you to do a quick search.
The reason for terrorism is extremism in all its forms, not Islam.
How to know if a religion is the source of an action or not? One way is to look at the founder of the religion. Would the founder perform the action? Did the founder use violence and coercion to achieve goals? Did the founder encourage their followers to do such things? If not, then it is likely that the claim is not valid.
If we look at the founder of Christianity, there is no advocacy of using violence to achieve ends. So, the claim of that KKK and other violent groups are Christian doesn't hold much water. This is not to say that an individual who espouses a certain belief will not be violent, just that the religion is not the source of it.
If we look at the founder of Islam, we see something else. We see violence and coercion used and advocated by the founder.
Please explain the harrowing of hell. My local cathedral has stained glass (14th century) of Christ in full armour, with big sword, going to hell to release the righteous (but not the damned), conquering hell in the proces.
http://vidimus.org/issues/issue-04/feature/
(Possibly not quite hell, but the bit before that.)
There is a long tradition of Christians using their bible to justify violence. There's plenty of violence in the bible. But, when pointed out, Christians start saying that those bits don't count, or those bits have been misinterpreted, or that you need to read that other bit as well.
I have you saying that the quran is violent, and I have hundreds of millions of muslims telling me that it's a book of peace.
For Jews that believed in an afterlife, many did not expect something that we would consider to be like Heaven or Hell. Rather, Hades was the destination of all those who died. Hades was, for lack of better words, a place of gloom, essentially a jail of all the dead. For those who lived good lives according to the Law, the best they could hope for was that they would find themselves in "the bosom of Abraham": close to the religious they loved, but certainly not something like Heaven.
St. John the Baptist is also known as the Forerunner, the person who helped prepare the people for Jesus' message. He was the forerunner not only in life but also in death: he preached in Hades of the Messiah who, far from being a worldly conqueror, would truly liberate all humanity: He would liberate them from death and Hades.
To cut a long story short, the Resurrection is the death knell of Hades. The jail which kept the dead prisoner was destroyed in taking upon the Sinless One, God Himself. And those who were liberated were those who received the message of St. John.
It is of course not possible to know what form St. John's message took. It must have been something that even the dead could perform, though. And the dead, lacking life, do not really have anything to give. So I will -- perhaps unwisely -- hazard a guess that it might have taken this form: love and forgive your enemies.
> Christians start saying that those bits don't count, or those bits have been misinterpreted, or that you need to read that other bit as well.
When it comes to the diverse views among Christians, here are two things to consider:
1) St. Paul in the NT says "hold fast to the traditions you have been taught, whether by word or by letter." This indicates, along with historical evidence, that a substantial body of Christian teaching lies _outside_ of the written documents of the New Testament. In as much as some people try to use "the Bible alone," we can see that this results in a tremendous amount of conflicting teachings. It's of note that the New Testament did not even exist in a definitive compiled form until a few hundred years into the history of the Christian Church.
2) Ultimately, for Christians the Word of God is a person, not a book. The God-man Christ did not issue a new set of laws, but took on flesh and taught by example how to live. The Christian is concerned with understanding this Person, and people are much more difficult to describe than laws.
So for the Christian, while the Bible is of course an important guide, it does not represent the totality of Christian teaching. And since this teaching is about a Person, and especially a Person who does not simply say "do X in Y situation," we can come across some conflicting views.
It is the goal of the Church in every generation to help the people of God to know Christ given the unique circumstances of each generation, without veering off into craziness that jeopardizes their love of God and neighbor. Ultimately it is up to the individual priest or bishop to exercise the right balance between akriveia (precision) and economia (house building) in each particular situation. For the priest it is more about the daily lives of parishioners, and for bishops about the actual teaching of the Church.
Anyways, this is starting to turn into an essay, and for that I apologize. But it is necessary to understand the details of the things we are talking about if we are to really talk about them. I do not say this to offend you, but out of recognition that many here are probably unacquainted with or have sadly had bad experiences with religion. To the degree that I can use my background in religious studies and my experience across various religions to help explain things, I am trying to do so.
My comment wasn't meant as criticism; I think we are talking about different issues. You seem to be addressing the acutal theology of this issue; I'm talking about how people can and do interpret the same scripture in many ways.
Based on what I've read, in the case of Islam there has been a huge amount of exegeses and there are complex rules of interpretation that govern the meaning of texts. Trying to CTRL-F a translation of the Koran for "slay" as someone suggested elsewhere is a bizarre way to try to figure out the meaning of a text which has been pored over by great minds for centuries. I think it is a result of the fact that those of us with technical backgrounds tend to be dismissive of the humanities, uncomfortable with ambiguity and prone to literalism.[1]
The interesting thing is that discarding exegesis is exactly the approach taken by the Salafist/Wahabist tradition of the Saudis, and of ISIS and Al-Qaeda. 1400 years of scholarship is replaced with a literal textualist reading of the Koran and Hadiths, and thus justification is found for the most henious of crimes. There is a Latin phrase that describes this approach of discarding precedent entirety in favor of novel readings of a text, but it escapes me for now.
The Koran, or the Bible are not "violent" books not are they "peaceful", they are merely collections of words that need to be interpreted by their readers. It is unfortunate that the intellectually bankrupt literalist interpretation of the Koran is on the ascendant in the Middle East because of Saudi oil money, and that it presently lends itself to the justification of terrorism (even if the Saudi regime itself opposes terrorism).
[1] This could be a reason why terrorist jihadism, buttressed by literalist readings attracts a disproportionate number of engineering types.
The Koran is directly violent and intolerant. It contains direct instructions that are such. The Sunnah describes the violent actions of the violent person claiming to be prophet of the god (which was invented earlier) and his followers. The Old Testament describes the actions of the violent god (an invented being by his believers) and his believers trying to win and control the Canaan territories. The New Testament describes the violent action of authorities who try to keep the order by crucifying the person claiming to be the prophet that brings the end of the world, then contains a lot of briefs of his followers and then one apocalyptic vision.
And not a single one of these texts holds any scientific truth. All are based on myths and superstition.
At the time of the "last revelations" already 800 years passed since Greeks measured the circumference of Earth, the size and distance of Moon and the size and distance of Sun. But the supposed god of the supposed prophet instead spends the energy to leave the message that the uncle of the supposed prophet will burn in hell. He cares about the priorities, you see. In the Old Testament the god actually comes through the house door to his favorite believer and shares a meal with him. Or strolls through the garden. You know, gods have to eat too. Oh, and god also has rest for one day after making the whole world in six.
Read them all and compare.
In the case of Christianity, I think it is telling that at the time the founder was teaching, there was a dictator in Rome who claimed to be god and who was heavily suppressing the ethnic group (Jews) that the founder belonged to.
Did this man advocate any sort of political or violent acts to remedy the situation? No.
I don't think it really matters what the opinion is of a lot of people when we can merely look at recorded history and see what the founder of Islam did.
If Jesus was so peaceful and the founder is so influential, how do you explain all the evil acts of Christians?
The founder of all three religions, Abraham, impressed God by being willing to perform human sacrifice of his own son! I hope I'm not judged by that. Or if you only count Abraham as the founder of Judaism, should all Jews be expected to perform human sacrifice?
My favorite "actual last words" of God from those are where he says (roughly) that the uncle of Mohammad will go to hell and that the wife of the uncle will carry the wood for that fire. (111:1 etc)
Such a natural thing for God to worry to pass to the humanity for ever and ever.
The uncle of Mohammad dared to consider the claims of Mohammad (that he receives the messages of god) as stupidity and dangerous, Sunnah explains.
I'm not making this up.
Why not try reading it and making up your mind for yourself? I happen to share the opinion of the parent poster about the founder of Islam, but at the same time, the Qu'ran is a very interesting and in parts beautiful work of literature. Furthermore, Islam has given rise to some peaceful and open-minded groups, the Sufi tradition comes to mind (although yes, even the Sufis have suffered violent splinter groups over the centuries).
http://quran.com/search?q=slay
"And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers."
Also search "disbelievers."
And on sunnah.com search "stoned."
[2-190]:Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.
[2-191]:And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.
[2-192] And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.
[2-193] Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.
At least when "al-Masjid al-Haram" remains untranslated it can be considered to be only valid around the Great Mosque of Mecca. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masjid_al-Haram But it's just where "do not fight them" is.
If you were disagreeing with me, did you miss the part of my comment where I said I shared the parent's opinion of Muhammed (and yours as well, I presume)?
I simply was encouraging someone wondering about the Quran to read it himself so he could make up his own mind, regardless of our opinions.
Obviously, in the interest of fairness, similar passages about stoning/slaying can be found in the Tanakh/Old Testament. Luckily, few Christians or Jews take those passages literally today.
Sunnah are also searchable online.
Are you addressing this to me, in response to my comment, or to HN in general?
Islamic exegesis, which has led to the day to day fiqh that governs religious life for the vast majority of Moslems is a very complex field that has evolved over more than a 1000 years and takes years of study to master and is not as straightforward as you are portraying it. The "CTRL-F...gotcha!" approach that you seem to be advocating would be regarded as absurd not only by Moslems, but by anyone who has to deal with the interpretation of complex texts.
A layperson with no knowledge of Arabic and lacking the toolkit for understanding is not going to get very far in understanding Islam using Hadiths and the Koran, and you'd be doubly disadvantaged using an English translation.
An analogy would be the average American citizen, unschooled in law, being asked to derive the Miranda Warning from the Bill of Rights, or providing a reasoned opinion about the scope of the Interstate Commerce clause. Sure, it's great from a Civics perspective to read the Constitution, but if interpreting it was straightforward we'd be able to shutter the Supreme Court.
And Saudi Arabia which finances with billions (?) of dollars the religious education of Muslims around the world? Even in the Muslim religious education in the countries which don't use Sharia the first thing the kids learn is to differentiate themselves from unbelievers.
Then even as the layperson you can easily count how many statements there are in the holy book in which the Unbelievers are "liers" and will be "painfully punished" for which is "fire" etc. It's not written in parables or anything it's completely and plainly explicit.
Ditto for the practices of stoning, beheading in Sunnah etc.
The layperson doesn't have to practice Islam, or know their religious discussions to get the rough idea of the content.
In the case of France, as the article points out, Islamically ignorant, disaffected Moslem youths are easy pickings for Salafists.
Edit: as for the rest you are again ignoring the context in which then verses were revealed, and their practical interpretation.
But you don't know. As I speak a few languages, I was able to check the instructions on one local language and I was able to see that among all the content that is supposed to be less fundamentally oriented there is this nice "kids, now we will learn who is unbeliever, think about those who you know who aren't Muslim" etc. Then you can actually check what the religious text tell about the unbelievers.
> ignoring the context in which then verses were revealed, and their practical interpretation
Sunnah is the context and they are even searchable online. So please don't scare people from reading Quran. They will surely understand more than when they don't even attempt to see what's inside. They can also search for the context and interpretations elsewhere, even Wikipedia has some:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Campaigns_led_by_Muha...
Interpretations abound:
http://mercyprophet.org/mul/node/1640
"Those who ridicule Prophet Muhammad and defame his life and message drive people away from virtue and deprive the world from stability and tranquility. These people are condemned and threatened by the Qur’an. Allah says in His Glrious Book, : {The ones who prefer the worldly life over the Hereafter and avert [people] from the way of Allah, seeking to make it (seem) deviant. Those are in extreme error.} [chapter of Abraham, 14:3]"
I actually want to be free to "ridicule" that self-claimed "prophet": I don't believe in him. He was only a mortal, and he was not more connected to God than Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith was a fraud too, even if the guy who believes in him almost became president of US. And gods are just a human invention anyway. Imaginary beings who as the messages stumble to give "Guide us to the straight path The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)" but never even a single scientific hint for anything, like, why wouldn't any "God" leave the message in his holy texts "you don't understand now, but once later you'll see that the light has always the same speed." The humanity discovered it around a century ago. Imagine that this simple words were in some holy text. Wouldn't it simply prove that the imaginary beings called by us gods even exist? The major problem with Islam is that I'd be dead after saying former sentences in front of most of the "submitted" (which is the meaning of the word "Muslim"). It's true that I'd be dead for the same words in Europe of Middle Ages, but that only proves that we know what we know today because we dared to stop being the "believers" or the "submitted."
Most hadiths (I think that's what you are referring to) have weak veracity and weighted accordingly.
As I stated elsewhere your approach shares a great deal with the Salafist/Wahabist doctrine but, sadly, not a great deal with 1400 years of Islamic thought. Once again, to use the analogy of the US Constitution, your approach is akin to finding a copy of the Constitution in 2015 and trying to produce a functioning government from scratch with no prior knowledge. Sure you'd be able to produce something, but th chances that it would remotely resemble the real thing are slim.
And it's actually a good exercise to read both the US constitution and then read Quran and compare the ideas in them.
Let's start with the constitution. I can search through that too.
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt
God is never mentioned, religion is mentioned twice:
"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Al-Sayyid Abdallah Fadaaq
"Differences arising with the current Wahabi regime forced him to leave teaching at the Grand Mosque in Makkah like his ancestors, to teach privately from his home in Jeddah"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/saudi-clerics-f...
And the other letter is bad enough:
"21- Armed insurrection is forbidden in Islam for any reason other than clear disbelief by the ruler and not allowing people to pray."
Imagine that I'm a president of, for example, Turkey, and I just say that I'm an atheist. And that the Muslims should pray in their homes and not in the university (the women weren't actually allowed to cover their head in universities in Turkey since the 1920s, as introduced by Kemal Pasha, I don't know if the current government reverted that recently). From the letter it can be concluded that the Muslims are supposed to organize armed insurrection in Turkey.
"9- It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslim unless he (or she) openly declares disbelief."
So imagine I say I'm an atheist openly. And that god doesn't exist and that Muhammad just invented what he claimed that came from god. What does the letter imply? That then I'm to face the Islamic treatment of unbelievers?
Quran: 5:33 "Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment,"
In reality, Allah really doesn't exist. Otherwise he would leave us a message or two about the speed of light or the atoms. Instead he supposedly said (hey, Muhammad said so it must be true) that Muhammad's uncle will burn in hell. Now that's really important for humanity. No joke. (the sound of some ears closing singing I can't hear you)
I have news for you possible martyrs: if you go around and get killed, you'll just die. No 72 virgins, no heaven. Try to be nice to the people around you instead, this is the only life you and others have. And you believers, that simple fact is the basic source of the existence of morality, not your religion.
Now imagine I've said all this publicly. There's chance I'd end up like Theo van Gogh. That's why a lot of people are scared to say it. But it's so simple and it's true.
I understand that people find their religion part of their identity. We all have to learn how to respect and recognize everybody's identity but to leave the 3000, 2000 and 1300 years old superstitions behind.
This is absurd and ignorant reasoning. I don't think I've ever, in my life, wondered what the 'founder' of my religion would do. I highly doubt most people do, and I'd like to see some evidence - some research - showing that it influences more than a tiny fraction.
Every religious scripture has extreme (by today's standards) violence in it, including the New Testament. And Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have the same founder: Abraham, and the founding act was his extremist obedience to God, when he attempted to perform the human sacrifice of his own son.
I encourage you to read those three scriptures (the Old Testament is long, so at least the first 5 books there, which make up the Torah); it dispells a lot of ignorant rumors that go around.
(Based on what I've read about, and the little I've read of the Quran, the Old and New Testaments are regularly cited, and Moses and Jesus are considered prophets.)
Well, Islam has an entire tradition called the "Sunnah", which can be loosely described as the life and actions of Muhammed. According to any school of Islam with which I am familiar, with the possible exception of certain Sufi sects, all Muslims are categorically instructed to follow the example of Muhammed as the first and foremost example of a "correct" Muslim. In fact, according to Sunnis (one of the two main branches of Islam), the Sunnah are an "official" source of Islam, along with the Qu'ran.
Also, Evangelical Christians have a thing called W.W.J.D., or What Would Jesus Do. If you're in the US, you've undoubtably heard of it. Many Christians wear pendants, bracelets, and put on bumper stickers with these initials.
So in short, order, those are two pieces of evidence I'd put forward of a religion's adherents aspiring to do what their religion's founder would do. You may disagree with the parent's conclusions (I'm not even sure I do, but since it's been flagged I can't re-read it to say), it's decidedly not based in ignorance.
I can't speak to your religion, but I can assure you that among very, very large numbers of Muslims and Christians, the life of their religion's founder has a huge impact on how they go about life. I have to wonder how many religious Muslims or Evangelical Christians you've known that this is even a question in your mind.
Also, I find it odd that you called someone's reasoning "ignorant" who is clearly at least somewhat familiar with Islam and the Qu'ran, when you yourself admit to reading "little" of the Qu'ran.
PS: Since you were looking for good translations of the Qu'ran in your other comment in this thread, I highly recommend Ahmed Ali's, Arberry is fairly painful and hard to read. Also Muhammed Asad's. Although both are accused of being impartial translators, that's mostly by the extremist or at least conservative wing of the religion and I doubt many people here care about that.
Lots of people are categorically instructed to do many things in religion, but very few actually do them. We can't say 'the scripture of X says to do Y, so all (or most) people of that religion do Y'. It's just not realistic or even good reasoning. In this forum of scientific thinkers, where is the empirical data? Why are we suddenly accepting this silly speculation, especially about something so hurtful and dangerous? I stand by my claim that the statement is ignorant.
To add to the discussion of translations for anyone reading (and based on many hours of amateur research - I have more if you are interested):
* Ahmed Ali's: This is leading Shiite translation; note that Sunnis are the vast majority of Islam and the sects have many differences. In my notes: An "Indian scholar of Arabic and Persian" ... "Relies strongly on the commentary of translator's spiritual advisor, Ayatollah Mirza Mahdi Pooya Yazdi, Iranian focused on mysticism" ... "Disparages some Sunni figures". ... "has a rich introduction about the Qur an, its English translations, and the Shia doctrines. It provides useful information about the Shia-Sunni differences"
* Arberry's: You say Arberry is fairly painful and hard to read. You are of course entitled to your opinion. I like it so far and most reviews I read seem to praise it: "The first English translation that attempted to capture the flavor of the Arabic text" ... "widely considered to be the most poetic of all translations" ... etc. Also: "Leading translation for western academics, widely admired" ... "He rendered the Qur'an into understandable English and separated text from tradition. The translation is without prejudice and is probably the best around"
* Muhammed Asad's: Asad is an Austrian journalist, a Jewish convert to Islam. "more popular in the academic circles and among certain groups of people who are looking for a rational and more liberal approach towards the Qur'an" ... "Saudi Arabia banned it" ... "vitiated by deviation from the viewpoint of the Muslim orthodoxy on many counts." ... ""brings a modernist perspective to his translation of the Qur'an," ... "a notable addition to the body of English translations couched in chaste English ... highly readable translation contains useful, though sometimes unreliable background information"
When I was a Buddhist, many of my fellow Buddhists took great pains to emulate the Buddha. It was also important to study the teachings of a particular sect, if one belonged to once, such as Dogen in Soto Zen. In fact, the master-disciple relationship is incredibly important in some forms of Buddhism, with the master ultimately deriving his authority from his lineage, which is rooted in a founder.
I think it would be difficult for Christians, whose name essentially means "Christ-like", to not consider what the founder of their religion would do. Perhaps it's not as big of a movement anymore, but there was a "What Would Jesus Do?" movement in Protestantism that wore bracelets bearing WWJD, to remind themselves to act in a Christ-like manner. As an Orthodox Christian, the goal of theosis is inextricably entwined with behaving like Christ.
I am sorry for downvoting you, but as someone who has seriously practiced multiple religions, and as someone with a degree in religious studies, I think that saying that founders' actions don't influence their followers is quite difficult to swallow (note: I'm making no specific statement about Islam, but rather only trying to clarify this particular point).
And in fairness, "someone who has seriously practiced multiple religions, and ... with a degree in religious studies" is an exceptional case in terms of both experience and expertise, and not representative of others.
You should write a book comparing your experiences. I'd be fascinated.
As you can guess, my point is that this situation occurs in many other areas too, including that of religion. And here I will speak from my experience as an Orthodox Christian: this is an extremely dangerous view. The temptation to label your brother as "not a true Christian," to see yourself as superior because you've read more books, attend more services, pray more often, etc. is very great. I'm not trying to veer into proselytization here, but rather am trying to explain at least the Orthodox response to the general argument of why all Christians aren't obviously great people. :)
When it comes down to it, every person -- Christian or not, Orthodox or not -- is engaged in a very great struggle in their hearts. They have been wounded deeply by this world, even if they live in relative comfort and ease compared to another human in a worse situation. Some have chosen a particular hospital to recover in, but unfortunately struggle greatly with their illness.
I know that my own case, of having experienced multiple religions and chosen an education in religious studies, is rare. But what I am trying to say is that people being sincere about their religion takes many forms, and is more complex than a one-dimensional scale. There are indeed beacons in the Church: the saints, such as Saints Porphryrios and Paisios, who are not far from us but reposed in the 90s. But as Saint Porphyrios said, there are untold numbers of "hidden saints," who lived lives of obscurity and humility and love, not writing tracts of theology, but who lived theology, who lived communion with God.
I think that perhaps we expect a saint to be a certain kind of mythical person and we hold religious people to that kind of standard. I know that it must be disappointing when you meet a Christian and do not encounter faith, hope, and love. But the story of each Christian's life is not over until death -- and even at that point there is mercy.
Read the Quran directly, don't just read "about" it:
9:30 "The Jews say, "Ezra is the son of Allah "; and the Christians say, "The Messiah is the son of Allah ." That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?"
The 9th Surah is considered one of the latest, therefore, by some, the one of precedence over the others (according to the practice of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_%28tafsir%29), do read at least that one.
Cherry picking something bad from the history of Islam as evidence of the whole religion is just an attempt to rationalize hate. It's silly. On that basis, we can condemn everyone and everything.
To people reading this and who haven't read the Quran, I strongly encourage you buy a copy and dispell a lot of ignorant nonsense you hear. If you haven't, be sure to read some other scrpture too (e.g., the Torah, the New Testament) for context - otherwise the brutality of ancient societies can be taken out of context. (Remember we were still executing witches; hanging, drawing and quartering; etc. just a few centuries ago (not to mention things like Abu Ghraib and CIA torture recently.))
EDIT: For those looking for a good translation, I did some research into that and recommend Arthur Arberry's. It's probably the most respected among non-sectarian scholars, and Arberry was the head of the Department of Classics at Cairo University and a professor of Arabic at Cambridge. Many other translations push one sectarian view or another. In the U.S. you might need to order a used copy of Arberry or from Oxford University Press directly, but it's widely available.
Have you actually read the Quran?
"Along with the Quran (the holy book of Islam), the Sunna makes up the two primary sources of Islamic theology and law.[1][3] The Sunna is also defined as "a path, a way, a manner of life"; "all the traditions and practices" of the Islamic prophet that "have become models to be followed" by Muslims."
An example, on sunnahonline.com:
"The Story of the 600-700 Jews Beheaded by the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam at Banu Qurayzah in 5H"
http://sunnahonline.com/library/history-of-islam/287-story-o...
First, it's not significant. Every scripture has brutal violence, including the Old and New Testaments.
Second, assuming all these individuals (or any of them) follow some ancient scripture to the letter is absurd. Do you do that? Do you know anyone who does? Even the most religious pick and choose.
Nobody is fooled by this denial. If you mean nothing at all, then why post at all? To mention random facts? Why post that? How about something from the other hundreds of pages of the Quran? 1001 Arabian Nights? The price of eggs in Cairo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_executions_in_Saudi_Ara...
> If we look at the founder of Islam, we see something else. We see violence and coercion used and advocated by the founder.
Who gives a damn? Most religions are full of contradictions, you pick the bits you like the most. "Non-violent" Christianity was behind major milestones of human progress such as the Crusades, the repression of the Cathars and Albigeois "heresies" (who do you think came up with "let God sort them out"?), the Spanish Inquisition...
I've stated that the historical record of the founder of Christianity does not provide cover for those who seek to commit violence or use coercion. Do you have evidence that it does?
If not, then the cited atrocities are best attributable to other causes.
One could argue that nowadays some religions play similar role, btw.
In many places it still is. As is the Orthodox church.
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
The books after the Gospels have more violence, but I don't think that reflects on Christians. The Old Testament is filled with violence but I don't think that reflects on Jews.
Of course it does, and I say this as a jew. Let's put it like this, being raised on a tradition whose first patriarch was ready to butcher his own son in order to prove his faithfulness to his imaginary friend, kinda paints father-son relations a certain way. Not to mention the whole circumcision thing, which is common to both jews and muslims.
I believe that these words have a deep and nonobvious meaning, provided all the gospels weren't totally made up.
Which of these you think can be easier used to "justify" violence?
What semantics of "inherently violent religion" do you propose such that "our founders told us to kill infidels" still doesn't cut it?
You seem like a Christian (sorry if I'm wrong) so I'll ask: What are you doing to stop the radical extremists of your religion from perpetrating these terrorist actions? What are you doing to stop the extremist elements of your religion from denying women their human rights? What are you doing to stop Christian soldiers using rape as a weapon of war?
Why am I wrong to ask you these questions but it's okay to ask everyday Muslims these questions?
As for the second part, I'm hardly a theist, so what I'm doing is not walking around and telling gullible people that they have been created by some god who now wants them to hunt infidels. Sometimes encouraging others to do the same.
Matthew 16:28: (Jesus speaking:) "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."
At medieval times, people couldn't believe that Jesus could have told something that didn't happen, so they invented the legend that one of those present there still lives.
Now you may of course feel free to disagree with this interpretation. But I think I have presented an understanding amenable to Orthodox Christian theology, which represents not an insignificant amount of people (200-300 million). I'm not trying to appeal to numbers, but rather my point is that when we are seeking to understand religious interpretations, we should be careful to not speak in absolutes such as "it's surely not out of context."
Colonialism and slavery were a violence far worse than the terrorism we experience today, not just in scope and numbers who suffered, but because these were state sanctioned and supported by the public (on the benefiting side, of course).
So while I'm aware that terrorism is not the sole domain of Muslims, the Wahhabi sect in particular has certainly caused a lot of it, and while we can debate no true Scotsman until the end of time, everyone knows there is a problem - and we all know where it comes from.
The reason for cancer is all things that cause abnormal cell growth, not smoking.
Ergo, talking about how we can make smoking safer, or convincing people that smoking isn't so great in the first place - is worthless. Right?
I think there's a significant danger of seeing correlation and assuming causation, groups like FARC, the IRA, or the Tamil Tigers (inventors of the suicide bomber vest) are terrorist groups that existed in places that Islam didn't.
If we take the longer view many (most?) terrorist organizations have been based around nationalism often coupled with anti-colonialism, or on a marginalised group taking up arms against their (perceived) oppressors often coupled with some strain of communist ideology. Its only recently terrorism based on Islam has become a thing.
I agree that its not poverty which leads people to commit terrorism though. At least not just poverty. Its a complicated mixture of feeling marginalised from a society (which can be poverty or can be a bunch of other things), believing they have a grievance against it, plus an ideology that focuses that into violence.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...
> implication that Islam==Violence makes about as much sense as saying christianity==violence because of the crusades 800 years ago
No, it doesn't. Islam is the religion, Muslims are the proponents. The religion is made up of texts and teachings that form its basis. The implementation of the religion is an entirely separate thing. The Crusades came out of what can be argued to be a flawed interpretation of the text in the Bible. The current violence we're seeing cannot be argued to be a flawed interpretation...it's an extremely literal interpretation.
This is not the same thing as arguing that Muslims are inherently violent...that's demonstrably false given how many peaceful Muslims there are. I've traveled extensively through the Middle East and I find the average Muslim to be friendlier and more generous than the Christians I know in the US. But you can't understand the current violence without admitting where it's coming from. And that's the 1400-year-old book that forms the basis for Islam.
I'm sorry to see this on Hacker News.
No, it has nothing to do with the people who practice Islam and everything to do with the texts that they consider holy. We don't claim that the founding fathers of the United States weren't racist just because we've abolished slavery, removed the 3/5 compromise and allowed all races the right to vote. We similarly can't claim that Islam does not advocate violence just because the (vast) majority of the people who practice it are not violent. The text is preserved in it's initial form and there's no denying the violence that it advocates.
I just don't see how people can be so blinded by political correctness to not realize that so much of the violence that we're seeing comes from a strict adherence to those religious texts.
> What would be the 'true nature' of Christianity - I can't even imagine.
It would include things like not eating pork. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of Christians eat pork. But that's what's written in the book that Christians pay blind allegiance to, so it's part of Christianity's true nature.
Good to hear, and I'm sorry if I misunderstood, but please make that clear. There are a lot of people who would smear others based on their religion; it's a serious issue and people will come to harm. Many want to Muslims' rights and even lives taken from them.
> everything to do with the texts that they consider holy
If you aren't talking about Muslims, than why is it relevant what the Islamic scriptures say?
> We don't claim that the founding fathers of the United States weren't racist just because we've abolished slavery, removed the 3/5 compromise and allowed all races the right to vote. We similarly can't claim that Islam does not advocate violence ...
The analogy with the Founding Fathers would be Mohammed. We similarly can't claim that Mohammed does not advocate violence*; it says nothing about a billion Muslims (Though we might: I don't know in non-sectarian historical terms who wrote the Quran. Muslims believe it is the exact words dictated by Allah - it's not Mohammed's words but Allah's. I know nothing about this question myself; I do know that historians believe the Jewish and Christian scriptures were written by many parties and not by the authors the believers claim.)
> blinded by political correctness
Please don't start name-calling or attributing beliefs to people you don't know. It's not productive and raises doubt about the good faith of everything else you say.
> that's what's written in the book that Christians pay blind allegiance to, so it's part of Christianity's true nature.
But Christians, like Muslims and everyone else, do not actually pay blind allegience to their scriptures. Some claim to and I would be surprised if more than a handful actually follows it in practice. Your definition of "true nature" is hard to support - what is "true"? What people do or what a book they mostly ignore says? And there are many, many widely differing interpretations about the truth of even that one book.
Terrorism exists everywhere, in every society, including in the most advanced nations. So if you look for confirmation that Islam causes terrorism, you will find it.
Demonizing entire religions, over a billion people, is very dangerous. It probably should be avoided, but especially if you don't have more to offer than ignorant speculation. Such words have a history of causing great harm.
This quote has stuck with me ever since I first saw it:
"C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui tombe d’un immeuble de cinquante étages. Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer : jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien. Mais l'important n’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage."
Which loosely translates as:
"This is the story of a man falling from a fifty-story building. The guy, during his fall reassures himself by constantly repeating: so far so good, so far so good, so far so good.
But the important thing is not the fall, it's the landing."
What's the context if I have not seen the film?
One of the three suicide bombers at the Stade de France appears to have been of Syrian origin (they found a passport, belonging to someone born in 1990). They have not been able to confirm whether the passport belonged to the person who committed suicide.
One of the three terrorists at the Bataclan is confirmed to be French. They found one of his fingers, and the fingerprint matched someone who was known by the police, but not security services.
Please don't confuse everything.
Just as, if none turn out to have been part of the immigrant wave, it will be conflated with that and the open borders issue.
Politics can be irrational even at the best of times, and this isn't the best of times...
If both answers are "no", you are right about selective blindness. If not, it is you who are ignoring an angle.
The people and institutions pushing these confusions and trying to signal who The Real Enemy is know exactly what they're doing.
From a distance it can look as governments just wanted to park immigration, and that was part of it, but they also believed, if you look at the ads of the 60s, they were opening the gates of heaven. Which was partly and honestly true since at that time many populations lived in ghettos. The idea of having a place to sleep with a modern electric kitchen even (the average family still had countryside way of life), with parks and services under your window ... isn't far from a dream.
Unfortunately nothing went as planned. Failed integration, failed approach to urban planning[1], ... hard to say what was the real problem.
[1] Often blame has been put onto people like LeCorbusier, but his ideas have also been stretched too thin for socio-political purposes.
How many are? Do we have any good information on this? I doubt IS releases the professinal and educational backgrounds of its hires!
Generally, my impression is that historiclly the middle class has provided the idealogues; the theory is thhat if you're living hand-to-mouth you have more immediate worries and less time to study such things, and if you are illiterate you have other obstacles. That's just one possible but commonly repeated hypothosis: I don't know what basis there is for it.
Whenever there is an attack, both the snark about the "religion of peace" as well as the claim that Muslims don't condemn these acts both resurface. The fact is that both terrorism and ISIS have been roundly condemned by large panels of Islamic scholars.
It would not surprise me that, once the religious background of these terrorists is examined, that it is proves to be very flimsy.
The challenge, in my mind, and as a Muslim is that Muslims need to figure out how to prevent the brainwashing of impressionable young people in an era of instant communication.
If the media would act as good as a lens for those instances as they do for the terrorist acts themselves it would be splendid.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-is-...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/saudi-clerics-f...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/24/muslim-scholars-isl...
No matter what Islamic scholars say (and, honestly, what are they supposed to say if they want to be treated seriously?), what they are doing is creating an army of robots who just wait to be programmed - by whomever, for whatever.
If true then this might be the case for most poor suburbs in many countries. People with nothing to loose who want to make a point.
All kinds of people are impoverished but we only see extreme violence from one background. This rules out poor suburbs as prime cause.
One can argue mass shootings of US of A is another example, but it doesn't seem to exist much outside of USA.
We can add right wing to the list.
That is a matter of perception for many. When someone attempts to burn down a Mosque or a Synagogue for some that is 'ethnic tensions' for others those are acts of terrorism. It's not clear-cut at all and the whole freedomfighter/terrorist duality makes it even harder to determine which label to apply and when.
Aurora, Columbine, Newtown, Isla Vista, et al. - none of them had anything to do with poverty.
It's not poverty, it's culture.
If I remember correctly, most Islamic terrorists in Western countries are not born Islamic. They are just people susceptible to any way of making a point, being heard.
Fresh Muslim immigrants are a threat.
Muslim immigrants' descendants are still a threat.
Freshly converted Muslim are also a threat.
A frightening pattern isn't it?
In the end its all about power.
To quote other comment from HN, I don't want to live near islamists and my mother doesn't want to be called a whore in arabic for not wearing hijab - yeah my mum speaks Arabic.
Power is often used as an argument to justify losing decency. This is unfortunate.
This is psuedo-sociological bullshit, pardon my French. Provide some serious basis for it, and your condemnation of over a billion individuals based not on their actions, but on their religion.
People who believe in Islam live in many, many cultures, from Indonesia to India to Iran to Senegal to Morocco to Spain to China to France to many more. You can't even remotely call it one culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-7j4WVTgWc
I watched it in French and I don't speak French. The story is easy to follow.
It pairs well with The Day of the Jackal.
I disagree. (If it's the film I'm thinking of) it shows brutal oppression perpetrated by the French on Algiers. It might inform an understanding of current relationships between France and Islam.
Here, I've pinpointed the precise moment where their troubles began.
10 police fail to sufficiently enforce national law in neighboorhood (either perceived or real, by lack of enforcement or lack of effective legislation)
20 disconnect between local populace and police grows
30 neighborhood starts relying on its own law enforcement
40 distrust between national law enforcement and neighborhood grows
50 local power grows, and local and national laws start drifting apart
60 goto 10
This happens in many locations. In a way, mafia and gangs start out from the same process: there is a local power group that challenges and rivals the national authority. Local county militia carry the same power, but they don't always challenge or interfere with national laws.
Equivalently, "police being unable to enter their neighborhoods shows that they are insufficiently law abiding".
Maybe they only have to take away one in hundred, the bad seed.
Where I grew up the police was free to come and go as they pleased. That did not stop plenty of bullying, lots of crime and a ton of bad influences being readily apparent and I credit my parents (even though they were divorced), the teachers in my school and my interest in technology for not going down some dumb path (most likely not to be a murderer though).
A friend of mine who grew up much the same did in fact end up in a different situation and had none of those advantages that I had, otherwise our situations are mostly interchangeable.
I mean, it is solvable. Firse, you enter the place. Then, you arrest criminals. Then, you rinse and repeat.
There are communities around the world which, while being very poor, only have petty crime. You just avoid nurturing crime tolerance.