Considering you're putting down TStael's response because you seem to think s/he doesn't know as much as you, perhaps you'd permit me to respond? I'm sorry, but I don't believe (in what it seems you believe) that a good muslim is a bad person, and a good person is a bad muslim. Do you consider me beneath you because I (try to) "grab my rug five times a day and pray"? If I'm not going to be a atheist, I suppose you'd prefer that I be a christian or something?

You say you are some expert on the Islamic belief system, and you paste a list of verses from the Quran as proof. I really don't want this to turn into a religious debate thread, but did you read any of the Surahs you pasted verses from, or is that a list culled from somewhere off the internet? The first one, for example, starts off telling muslims to fight those who fight them, but not to be the aggressors, and ends with instructions to stop if the enemy stops fighting. I admit, this isn't as lofty an instruction as that given to Christians, but you say you are not a Christian. Do you consider something immoral in fighting those who fight you? Much of that section of Surah 2 dealt with events before a battle, so it has instructions relating to that.

You may not be a muslim, and fine, whatever, you say you are an atheist. But you see it does seem odd when you discuss it using racially charged language, and present it as something uniquely violent and evil, even when compared to all other religions? I obviously don't want to start a Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism/Whateverism vs Islam discussion, but they can be interpreted as having just as many, if not more "direct orders for violent acts" as Islam. Any scriptures/text/religion/belief system can (or has) been twisted to suit nefarious ends.

And seeing as there are almost 1.5 billion(?) muslims, or to put it specifically, a reasonable fraction of those considering themselves to be devout muslims, the vast majority of who live their lives peacefully and have the same desires and wants as anyone else (because, of course, they're humans JUST LIKE you and me), I'm sure you understand that they might find it a bit presumptuous of you to say "I have studied Islam and the Quran, and it is evil like no other evil"?

No.

No.

And I understand why you don't want to mention all the other quotes I listed.

Where?

No. Show me comparable violent stuff in scriptures of buddhism and daoism please, not to mention humanism, which can be seen as a religion too by now since it's becoming of age and "religere" doesn't mean what most people think today.

So sheer number is a sign of being right? Always worked well in human history as we all know.

I say humans should abolish every belief system that encourages
violence / oppression / disrespect
towards nonbelievers / believers of something else / females / animals in the slightest bit and so should you.
The fact, that you ignore important parts of what you officially deem "holy" does only make you inconsistent (which is a blessing) and so are most monotheists. Sadly this ignorance makes it a lot easier for people like those terrorists to be able to exist and act.

Apologies. You said you were forced to attend Christian school, but left all that now, and that you are not "part of any deluded human group". I guess I just assumed. Which human group are you a part of, then?

I don't want to mention all the quotes listed, because I get the sense you don't really care about the actual content of the quotes, you just listed them to have a "wall" to block yourself off with. If I posted a discussion of each and every quote you listed there, it'd be a wall of text the length of a forum page, most people who'd be reading this thread would have their eyes glaze over, and you'd just ignore it, and I've had wasted an hour or two on something that ultimately doesn't matter to anyone here. Do you think you are the first non-muslim I have discussed religion with? Do you think you're the first person to come up (or copy) such a list? Do you think I'm the first person to respond to such a list? I'd suggest you read through them yourself, perhaps including some of the surrounding context, and google the verses for muslim explanations. If you really care, you can PM me and I'd be happy to respond.

I don't know these religions in great detail, perhaps you could ask someone who does? I know that Buddhism considers women a step below men, and the numerous examples of Buddhists using their Buddhism (as a religion and as an identity) as an excuse for violence against other groups (individually, in mobs, and at a country-wide level in places like Bhutan, Burma, Japan and Sri Lanka). And I don't think Humanism has a scripture, besides, not sure how much of a religion it can be considered, seeing as there are/were humanists of many religions.

No, sheer number is a sign for it not being wronger than anything else. Sheer numbers is a sign that considering their behaviour and what you claim they are, I'd defer to them as to what their religion is, rather than you.
Muslims have had a 1400+ year history across the globe, and while I certainly don't claim that every muslim was the greatest guy ever, even in places where muslims ruled and were in majority, there still exists (and in some cases thrives, and has exceeded) hinduism, local branches of judaism and christianity, zoroastrianis). Do you think in the hundreds of years these groups were in contact with Muslims, if Muslims were as vile as you say, they'd still exist?
For a comparison, today we have absolutely no remnants of the original adherents of the original European religions- Vikings, Druids, Wiccan, etc. All that remain are writings by Christians on them.

Every single ideology or grouping of people exists in opposition and contrast to the "not-existing" of it, so every single grouping will consider themselves correct, and the opposite wrong, otherwise they wouldn't exist at all.
Unfortunately, it is not a long step (justified or formalised or not) from that to disrespect and then oppression and then violence. This isn't something unique to Islam specifically, or even religions in general, and we all need to guard against it.

This question shows, that you clearly cannot imagine someone being spiritually (or otherwise) independend.
I am part of no group at all, there isn't a single one I aggree with wholeheartedly and even if there would seem to be one, I wouldn't join anything because it leads to giving up your own judgement in favour of common beliefs.

I only hear about those people from followers of other religions to discredit those, but there surely are such people. Those are not living their religion in my eyes and are only pseudos, because I've read their scriptures (I recommend "Dhammapada" for Buddhism, "Dao-De-Ging" for Daoism, and some stuff to explain "Wu-Wei", would really help you thinking outside the box you were born in and the same goes for all the christians and jews here - and especcially for those silly Europeans calling themselves "buddhists" while living the opposite).
All I know of buddhists in Japan is, that there are as good as none. Most priests/monks there drive around in expensive cars and want to see a lot of money for rituals which completely goes against what Siddharta said, but they have a patchwork religion mixed from shintoism, buddhism, christianity and capitalism anyway.

What you wrote here about those pseudos has no ground in their scriptures whatsoever and that's where the big difference to Islam can be found. If you'd read the quran without your heritage marking it as "the good ones", you'd see, that it's really not so different from "Mein Kampf" and if you knew way more ancient religious scriptures outside of your own personal context, you'd see things more clear.

You can say what you want about the current terrorists, at least they are consistent.

Inform yourself about what happened to the former religion and the statues that were way older than the whole Islam (1400years are nothing compared to religions there) in the area now called "Pakistan". This is no exception.

PS: How can you say, you are a true believer of one religion without knowing much of the others?
It's the best way to show oneself, that your own religion is nothing more than tradition and has nothing to do with enlightenment and the personal search for it.
People who think they've found their enlightenment without even searching are just lazy and not really interested at all and it's sad, that still most people didn't even get to the point to searching it in themselves.

I'm sorry, you don't believe in any religion, but you don't consider yourself an atheist either? The question was more of a jokey thing, since you said originally that you're not a part of any "deluded human group", so I just phrased it to ask which group you ARE a part of. I'm sorry if it messes up the terminologies, but these labels are descriptors as well as a sense of identity/grouping. You're one or the other, or SOMETHING.

Its all very well to say "Those guys aren't the REAL religion X, they're fakers!", every religion and group under the sun who has been found out about something has probably used that excuse.

Inform yourself about the difference between the country "Pakistan" and the country "Afghanistan". They both might end in -istan, but they're not the same. Near where I lived was on of the oldest universities in the world, Buddhist in nature, where the muslim guide proudly explained all the reliefs and engravings talking about Buddha shooting the furthest arrow, or the elephant piercing his mother's tusk, etc.
I'm certainly not claiming that Pakistan is anywhere near a model of religious tolerance, but it is less than 70 years old, and certainly not "Islam". You're switching again between "countries" and "religion". Pick one or the other. If you're telling me that Pakistan is in bad shape, and has some problematic policies and issues, I wouldn't be able to disagree with you. If you tell me that muslims in the world today are in bad shape, I wouldn't be able to disagree with you. If you're going to say that Islam as a whole is categorically evil and needs to be removed, you're going to get the majority of 1.5 billion complaints, along with most of 1400 years of history disagreeing with you.

The statues in Afghanistan existed for thousands of years, including the time under muslim rule, until 2001, when, the Taliban destroyed them (after promising to preserve them), likely as a result of offers from other governments to fund repairs or transportation away while Afghanistan was under rigorous economic sanctions for everything else.

PS: I never really considered Taoism to be a religion at all, more an anarchist way of thinking, combined with some "alternative" medicine stuff to spice things up.

There is way more than monotheism, polytheism and atheism in this world, my friend.
Check out pantheism and especcially panentheism, not to mention agnosticism.

I don't think there is an ancient booklet describing how a real scotsman has to be, so this comparison is moot.

Pakistan was supposed to be a role model of an islamic state and one of the first things they did was destroying the old buddhist statues, so yeah, pretty much a model indeed.

Your loss, it's actually pretty interesting stuff, but there are only a few monasteries far removed in the hills left actually living and believing the way an in the scriptures.

PS: For understanding the concept of not only religious independence but in general the indenpendence of the mind, I recommend stuff from Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Edit:
Well, some works from Immanuel Kant are commonly considered as the basic scriptures of this philosophy and religere is nothing more than a relation to old philosophy, it doesn't even have to be theistic, although it usually is because in former times many people believed in some deities to explain stuff that blew their mind and many still do.

So when I (mistakenly) said you were atheist and you disagreed, and I asked what you were and you dismissively claimed that I had a wrong way of thinking, you could've simply said "I am panentheist"? Or is that just another digression.
Either way, sufi strands of islam touch on panentheism.

The fallacy is called "No True Scotsman". That is the name. It isn't only restricted to being applied to scotsmen.

Again, I think you missed the point where I said that Pakistan is not Afghanistan. What are you talking about? Which old buddhist statues did Pakistan destroy?
Either way, if I labelled myself a taoist, and then went about randomly kicking or not kicking dogs, would Taoism be suddenly accused of apathy towards animal cruelty? Your reasoning is equally invalid.

It doesn't matter what I am, it's not influencing this discussion in any way because I don't mean anything personal and I don't even know if there is a word for my spirituality, trying to find one would be limiting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for reforming Islam and some strands are slowly catching up, I'd just think it better to abolish all of it, just like the christians should have done, but I know that I have to accept, that human culture evolves very slowly.

Will try to look up again when I've got the time, I know that it was way worse in Afghanistan though, there you're right.

Only if the daoistic scriptures would support such behaviour, which they don't.

Harassment is not unique to misogynists and terrorism is not unique to religions.

I probably should have expected Islamic terrorism would pop up in a discussion of radicalism, yet here I stand partially surprised.

Much as I would like to actually see a discussion of the Quran, which I've been curious about for some time, I don't think this is the best place for it. Also the moderate Muslim interpretations are precisely being challenged by self styled orthodox fundamentalists, and there is the added factor of taquiya or however you spell it. When and if I care enough about it ill see about learning Arabic and have a go at it myself.

Put simply, language that conflates, say Gamergate with harassment, is equally wrong as language conflating Islam with terrorism. One should try to use qualifiers and avoid generalizations. That said, whereas I haven't found many self identified Gamergate misogynist harassers, there sure seem to be quite a number of self identified Islamic religious terrorists. As far I'm concerned in terms of religious inspired violence in today's world, sure there's still some Buddhist and Hinduist episodes, but Islam is in a league of its own. Anyone pretending otherwise is probably impersonating one of those three monkeys: 'see no evil', 'hear no evil' or 'speak no evil'.

Of course not, you're just here to defend Islam. But wait... in the next part of your sentence you do in fact make a comparison so it appears you are doing the *insert religion" vs Islam discussion thing after all.
Typical apologist rhetoric. While it is true that you can twist everything into anything in order to find orders for violence, it's a lot harder to do this with e.g. the Bible than than with the Quran because in case you hadn't noticed, the peaceful New Testament takes precedence over the brutal Old Testament, at least for Christians. I know this because I had to attend bible class and wasn't always successful enough with trolling (=being an agnostic) to get kicked out of class so I did learn a few things even if it didn't interest me. I grew up in a Catholic village and not one person interpreted the Old Testament as an instructional book to be followed in the least bit, not even the monks at the local monastery.
I must admit though that I can't comment on the contents of the Quran in exacting detail as I haven't read the whole thing and don't intend to, in part because I keep hearing that unless I read the original version in Arabic, it's not the real Quran and the translations are all wrong etc. Really too unfortunate if the contents of a book aren't strong enough to survive translation in one piece. But if the translated quotes I've seen so far are even halfway accurately translated, then one can definitely see that it's not hard to interpret the Quran as an instructional manual on how to handle things, sometimes more and sometimes less detailed, and it doesn't take much twisting to interpret some of the more unsavory parts as instructions for violence.
In the end, I don't think blaming a book makes much sense though, I mean if you gave me a 7th century book that tells me to do bad things then I wouldn't do them so obviously it depends on each person and how gullible / able to put into context they are. There seems to be no consensus anyway considering all the different branches of Islam, there's no unity within the religion aside from the feeling offended at any kind of criticism part and duty to defend the religion part.
In fact, have you noticed that when you look up the Bible on Wikipedia, there is a section for Criticism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible#Criticism

But when you look up the on Wikipedia, there is no section for criticism on that page. There is a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Quran]separate page but it's not linked from the main Wiki article about the Quran. Where are the screams from the politically correct folks about such unfairness, however subtle? And how am I supposed to take anything seriously that is so fragile it can't allow for criticism? I don't have a current need for invisible friends in the sky but If I had to choose between Christianism and Islam I'd choose Christianism any time of the day, as that's a club you can leave anytime without getting death threats from the hardliners. So in the end, all religions are not equal. Some are worse for your health than others. During my travels to 6 Muslim countries I've met many super nice people and found appreciation for cultural aspects like the superior hospitality - an ancient tradition which predates Islam in those regions by centuries - but when they try to invite me to become a Muslim (and this happens often), I always decline the kind offer. Even if there is delicious tea and cake involved.

I don't even know where to start, this has got to be one of the more absurd things I've read on this forum and I look at all the weird threads. This kind of logic is almost comical in a very darkly funny way.
I'm not even going to go into the far reaches of history as you'll bring up the old "but Christians did equally bad stuff and worse". (As if that was an excuse anyway)
Even if you look at just the last 100 years, it should be painfully obvious that religious minorities more often than not didn't survive or "thrive" under Islam because of Islam but despite it and in some cases just barely survived.

A little story from real life:
When I was in Cairo back in 2010 (before the whole uprising), I saw a really cool old building and decided I wanted to paint it. It was a Jewish synagogue and I thought, well I had been painting mosques etc all week and I've never painted a synagogue so let's do that. I had barely stood there looking at the building for 5 seconds - no exaggeration - when a plainsclothes officer came running and said I'm terribly sorry but this is a security problem area. I did notice the army soldiers with machine guns and heavy body armor plus bullet proof shields in front of the synagogue but I hadn't noticed all the plainclothes agents sitting in cars nearby, in total I saw about 8 or more armed guards. Even after I showed my passport, they wouldn't let me paint the synagogue, apologizing to me and saying i would need a special permit from the Egyptian embassy in my country because they had such serious security problems there. So yes, a religious minority can survive in a Muslim country but often only under high security. What does that say?

And I don't think I have to go into all the severe religious discrimination going on in Muslim countries nowadays, it would be an immensely long post. And definitely including Pakistan, a country which was born under painful circumstances with lots of mass genocide going on between the religious groups.
Surely you must know about how mass genocide was taking place in the Punjab region in 1946/47, on one hand hand from Muslims against Hindus and on the other hand from Hindus against Muslims. Pointing that out before you say "both sides did bad things, shit happens" or "but Nehru didn't want to give in to our demands". It's a most tragic chapter in human history and because of religion, millions of people were displaced. Including my dad's family who didn't even belong to any of the main factions. My dad doesn't follow any religion but his family belongs to Jainism. A peaceful minority - so peaceful that they don't even eat animals or even potatoes because they don't want to harm insects on the plant's roots. When was the last time you heard about a terrorist from Jainism? ...exactly.
They lived in the part near Lahore that now belongs to Pakistan so they had to flee. Fortunately they made it out in one piece and settled in parts of India, my dad later emigrated to North America (Canada & USA) where he met my mom who is Swiss. But others weren't so lucky to just be displaced. My father never talked about it, what he saw must have traumatized him too deeply. I remember asking my mom if she knew anything because he didn't talk about it and she told me some stuff that is way too brutal and graphic to be posted here, seriously messed up stuff. But even to my mom he didn't tell too much about the atrocities he saw, and even after many decades he still doesn't talk about that in detail. You could say, well but the non-Muslim religious minorities survived under Islam in Pakistan and the Muslim minority survived under Hinduism in India. But at what loss? Look at the low percentages that remained. All this displacement and death because of religion. Survived? Yes, a few. Thrived? Hell no.

I made sure not to mention any specifics with regards to scripture at all, not even which religion's scripture, so I'm not sure what you speak of. Again, as I said, I don't feel this would be the most appropriate place to begin a debate on scripture vs scripture.

I didn't bring up the Bible, you did. And interesting how you have to "explain away" all the bad verses. Sound familiar? There are more than enough Christian groups who don't feel the same compunction to explain them away, and their arguments are just as strong, and that's not even mentioning how none of that applies to the jews, or the violence mentioned in the New Testament.

What are you talking about? The link for "Criticism of the Quran is right there, in the "See Also" section. I checked the edit history as well, and there have been no recent changes removing or adding it, so you must've missed it. You should be wary when you start seeing conspiracies every direction you look.

Klumpen was attempting to provide a case for the argument that Islam is uniquely violent. That is all I was trying to disprove. I wasn't using it as an excuse for anything.

An interesting point about all your stories. Everything you're mentioning is about NOW. So are you suggesting that Islam was all peaceful before, and then suddenly it became violent? How would that make sense unless it is unrelated to religion? Because if it was always just as violent, or it was super violent and became less violent now don't you think that almost 1400 years of absolute rule in those areas would've wiped out any non-muslims (as happened in Europe with the folk religions)?

Oh dear, I'm sorry for your dad. In vegan circles sometimes although seldom you meet some jainist and although they are weird even by my standards, I can't imagine how anyone could want to hurt them, doing this needs some true bastards.
It's like kicking little rabbits to death only that I can imagine the people doing this have found more "creative" ways...

The history of Pakistan was violent and horrible even before the start, yes.
I can imagine that propaganda there is trying to masque it at every occassion.
That said, I'm not a fan of hinduism either, but the whole existence of Pakistan is wrong and typical for the eagerness of the monotheistic religions to have their own states with their own laws, especcially Islam in some countries with this horrible Scharia bullshit that should have no place in the modern world and absurdly enough even many average moslems agree in this point.

You wrote in this post: " I obviously don't want to start a Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism/Whateverism vs Islam discussion, but they can be interpreted as having just as many, if not more "direct orders for violent acts" as Islam. Any scriptures/text/religion/belief system can (or has) been twisted to suit nefarious ends."

You didn't directly mention any specifics in regards to scripture but you made a broad comparison that automatically includes any specifics because if you included Christianity (and you did), then you automatically compared the Bible with the Quran in your sentence. So I say you did compare scripture vs scripture, even though you said you didn't want to.
Sometimes, we do things we don't want to :)

See above...

You mean all the 40 members of the Westboro Baptist Church vs ... the entire country of Saudi Arabia? Ok, you win :D

Though to be fair, the Westboro Baptist folks are just incredibly annoying, they may have "God Hates Fags" signs (that's their favorite one) and whatnot but unlike Saudi Arabia they don't actually kill anyone for that particular "offense".
And I bet you couldn't find as many Christian groups that call for the death penalty for gays Leviticus style as I can find fundamentalist Islamic countries that have the capital punishment in place for male-to-male sodomy.

Criticism of the Bible directly listed under point 10 of the Wikipedia entry, summary text on the same page with a link to the full article.

vs

Criticism of the Quran listed under "see also" on the Wikipedia entry , no summary but only link to full article on a separate page.

Ok, only subtle difference. But the fact that I missed the link kinda backs my point. Because maybe other users are just like me and miss out on seeing it, as well. Sure, doesn't have to be a great conspiracy and all, maybe it's just coincidence. I guess we can't prove either way. If there is no edit history suggesting that this was any different at any time, it could either have been a conspiracy from the get-go, or never. Let's say we don't know :)

I only mentioned things from 1946 - now. If you want me to start history lessons and cover everything pre 1946, you'll have to pay me many moneys. It will be a lot of work, seriously.

No, didn't suggest or say that anywhere. See answer above :)

Jainism is really very chillax, bit crazy yes but no one get hurt. Even Richard Dawkins, the über-atheist, can't find much to hate about this religion and even uses it as an example that some religions can be less violent than others and therefor not all religions are equal.
But nowadays where every kid in kindergarten is told that they're all equal, such "horriblly cruel" opinions that not everything is as good or bad as everything else may be an unpopular opinion with some.

I'll let babark answer this as he's the one living there right now and I'm not up-to-date about the details of the legal system in Pakistan, from what I understand it's far more liberal than many other Islamic countries nowadays. Which doesn't mean everything is super great now, currently Pakistan is ranked 147th on the international human rights rank indicator

EDIT: mixed up quotations: replies were supposed to be to post 131 instead of 130, fixed

And if I hadn't included Christianity (being the largest religion, population-wise), I'd be saying something too, that included specifics, wouldn't it? I can be made to say anything at all, by someone who wants to interpret it that way.

I wasn't particularly thinking of the WBC, no. They're relatively benign as far as that goes. Since you automatically jumped to the US (an odd comparison that), how about the virulent strands of dominionism present in the US government? Or other Christian groups that also believe in a great return of Jesus Christ, and therefore do their darndest to bring about the apocalypse so that they can hurry it along? Or those that support (vocally, monetarily, militarily and even physically) the Israeli government because of religious reasons, thus supporting continued aggression against the Palestinians (I'm not ignoring the violence on the Palestinian side, of course, but the situation would probably have been solved a lot quicker if the US was more balanced in its approach). But like I said, why focus on the US? There are many places is Africa and Asia with similar backwardness, including death penalty for sodomy (which you mentioned as an example) that are Christian (and other religions).

And if I go pre-1946, I could list loads of atrocities as well, likely much more than you can for muslims, even accounting for their relative lateness to the world stage. That's my point. If you're talking about religions in their entirety, why focus on the last 50 years? The religions in question lasted longer than that. And if you DO focus on the last 50 years for being unusually (comparatively) violent, then doesn't that say something interesting about it not being about the religion in question?


No propaganda tries to mask any situation. Both countries know the great sacrifices that were made at the inception, and while some groups use this as evidence for the idea that the whole inception was wrong, most take it as "lets make their sacrifices worth something". Not that this particular diversion into religion is exactly relating to the topic at hand, but the politics of the creation of Pakistan and India are probably even less so. Suffice it to say, it was never about "we need a country where we can practice our own laws", and more about "we don't want our right to be represented in the governance of our nation to be completely overshadowed by hinduism. And while India does make claims to be secular (and is likely somewhat more so than Pakistan, which currently claims no such thing), there definitely IS the undeniable shadow of one religious group over everything (as evidenced by the problems/protests/issues Sikh "minorities", Christian minorities, even the hindu nationalists and yes, even, though not just, the muslim minorities).

Please, Klumpen, I really hope you don't take this the wrong way, I don't mean it at all in any negative sense, I understand that the histories and issues of the indian subcontinent have very little to relate with for someone from Germany, but if you are wanting to discuss them (which again, I totally get if you don't, it isn't really relevant to anything at all here), read up on them a bit, as you don't seem all that knowledgeable on the topic (I think you confused Pakistan with Afghanistan in a previous post).

Nope I didn't although I can understand why you want to believe that, you don't seem to believe what happened to the jainists in Pakistan either.
I looked it up again and one of the destroyed statues was 40m high and in the northwest of Swat. They did this in 2007 in the light of day and without any resistance by the Pakistani officials.
There was stuff like this way before, but for some reason it's hard to find information about it, I did find more some time ago.