Everything I have read in the Qur’an tells me it is not a religion but a sick twisted ideology. Here are some verses of the Good Book for your own knowledge:
Quran (2:191-193) - “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief] is worse than killing…
but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)”
Quran (2:244) - “Then fight in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah Heareth and knoweth all things.”
Quran (2:216) - “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”
Quran (3:56) - “As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help.”
Quran (3:151) - “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”.
Quran (4:74) - “Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.”
Quran (4:76) - “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah…”
Quran (8:12) - “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them”
Islam usually means sharia law so if you want nothing but sharia on the ballot in terms of domestic and some foreign policy, then Islamic democracy should work out fine for you.
Islam and democracy get along reasonably well in, say, Indonesia (world’s most populous Muslim state).
Islam and democracy get along tolerably well, dominant-party corruption aside (though that’s got little to do with Islam per se) in Malaysia, Iran, and Bangladesh. Even Pakistan would count there.
Islam does not get along with democracy in many other places, but is that the fault of Islam or the fault of the Saud family, etc? It is true that a greater proportion of Islamic states are either dictatorships, "pretend democracies’ like Iraq and Libya were, or feudal/pretend parliamentary monarchies like Brunei, Morocco, etc.
And then we have failed states like Somalia, the vast majority of which are Islamic, or have significant Islamic tensions, like Central African Republic.
But is that the fault of Islam, or poverty, or culture? Which came first: Islam or poverty?
Discuss. 10,000 words, fully referenced, on my desk by the end of the week.
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Probably 80% of the world’s population live under a dysfunctional government or within a dysfunctional culture. Religions, where there are any, are layered onto, intertwined with, and reflect the culture. Countries that are nominally democratic, but in practice are nothing of the sort, have a wide selection of religions. The number of countries that actually implement ‘democracy’ successfully and fairly could probably be counted on your fingers, and those countries are nice places not because of their religion, or because of democracy, but because of favourable cultural memes that have been carefully cultivated and reinforced. Still, there’s no doubt that the explicit purpose of a religion is to preserve certain memes over long time periods, and they can be good ones or bad ones.
Is Christianity compatible with democracy?
Is Judaism compatible with democracy?
Is Shintoism compatible with democracy?
Is Buddhism compatible with democracy?
Is Confucianism compatible with democracy?
Is Juche compatible with democracy?
Is Capitalism compatible with democracy?
There is no easy answer to each of these questions.
About Christianity: at one time it wasn’t, now it is: consider the Scandinavian countries.
You can swap “Qur’an” with “Bible” and come up with similarly bloodthirsty stuff. It doesn’t help to answer the question you asked at the top of this thread.
And if you strategically replace certain words in the article quoted below, you can use it to easily to justify Christian proselytising (the ubiquitous Christian missionaries). islamqa.info/en/128862
When you look at how people live in the countryside in Islamic countries you can get a good idea of how life was in the countryside of most European countries a few hundred years ago - the difference is more one of timing than one of essence or substance.
For example, check the history of various, nominally Christian, countries in Europe and the Americas to see that it’s in many cases barely 100 years ago that women were allowed to attend university and to vote. And large-scale atrocities committed by Christians against non-Christians can be found in recent history, too.
People living in glasshouses need to be careful with stones.
Back to the topic: i am sure that many Muslims will come to terms with democracy and, perhaps more importantly, human rights, especially those who live in countries like Canada, Germany, or Sweden - but this is not an automatic process: it also requires that the non-Muslims living in those countries actively help maintain civil society.
UK is a democratic country and soon Islam will be the dominant religion there. Isn’t Mohamed already the most popular nickname for newborn baby in London?
Anyway, UK has a vibrant democracy and a booming economy. Islam is adapting very well to that environment.
No, it doesn’t. The UK has a large and growing population of yobs, idiots, and ne’er-do-wells. While there are still enough functioning human beings left (Poles, mostly) to keep the place running, the average school-leaver cannot read, write, add up, or sit still, making them fundamentally unemployable. Much of the ‘booming economy’ was down to financial jiggery-pokery in the post-Thatcher era, and for obvious reasons that’s now a shadow of its former self. As for democracy, the place is now run by sociologists and economists implementing outrageously dumb theories unchallenged, with little reference to voters - who are mostly too dopey to know or care what’s going on anyway. The police, who are as thick as the rest of the population, have no power to control crime but a lot of power to make a nuisance of themselves. Islam is the default religion because native British people now worship at the Church of Wetherspoons, where the sacrament is served in pint glasses.
60% of the UK are Christian, 25% have no religion, 4.5% are Muslim, according to the most recent census. It’s going to be a very long time until Islam is dominant, if that ever happens.
60% of the UK are Christian, 25% have no religion, 4.5% are Muslim, according to the most recent census. It’s going to be a very long time until Islam is dominant, if that ever happens.[/quote]
Yes it will take a while but it is going there. I don’t see the trend changing anytime soon.
I’m not sure how I feel about the views expressed by “Father Samuel.” He brings up many points, many of which are in line with what is being discussed here.
Well, his feelings are understandable, considering how his family has been persecuted. But that does not make his opinions facts.
From the (of course, limited) understanding of how Europe works that I gained from living there, I think he is way off with the idea that the political elite in European countries deliberately tries to islamise Europe: people from Islamic countries go to Europe because it is the nearest continent to safely escape to from war and political oppression, and because of the opportunities they see there for living in relatively stable social conditions and for making a living. And I am sure that the Turkish guest workers who were invited to Germany a few decades ago, like the guest workers from Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia, were invited for economic reasons, during an economic bubble, not for religio-social reasons (even though, as a side effect of this, since the invited people were mostly uneducated man from the countryside, it did mean an influx of ultra-conservative, including patriarchal, attitudes and values. But there is no need too suspect conspiracies where cultural naivité or ignorance would suffice as explanation).
That during the 60s and 70s the German police looked the other way regarding the activities of the “Grey Wolves” in Germany would seem to me pretty obvious ( “Grey wolves”: see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Wolves ), considering the patriarchal and anti-“left” character of that part of German society that had the upper hand during those years, but it still makes no sense at all to say that those Germans who are anti-“left” would be pro-Islam.
OTOH, the “Grey Wolves” are just one example of how political and religious extremists (orthodox patriarchals and anti-democrats) can and do piggyback on immigration waves, and modern countries anywhere in the world need to stay alert about the dangers that come with that.
A PS: I think that those who claim there is no such things as moderate Islam silence with that assertion the voices of the millions of Muslims, especially women, who are victimised by Islamic extremists and would like to get out from under the yoke of religious oppression. There is definitely a need for a more nuanced approach.
There is definitely a moderate Islamic faction, but it is not in ascendancy and that is what most people fail to recognize.
Consider Islam like China. There is no doubt Chinese can be liberal and progressive, and the culture is compatible with democracy, but China is not moving in this direction and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
I used to feel much as you do until I moved to a Muslim country. Islamic leadership is sick the world over and it is the Arab countries who set the agenda not the moderates. All the heavily Islamic states in Malaysia for example are trying to make sharia law apply to everyone, and destroy the guarantees of the constitution.
There was an incident last month in which a Muslim group started a “Touch a Dog” campaign to help people overcome cultural fears of dogs. The imans, and the NGOs that act as gangsters do in Taiwan, set on him, declaring that Malaysia’s version of sharia law does not allow for touching dogs and so any activity that promotes this is against the law and Islam. This is serious here as any anti-Islamic activity can be considered sedition.
The poor guy got death threats and had to issue a public apology.
This is Malaysia: probably the most modern Muslim state in the world. And yes, it was all over touching dogs.
So yeah, the moderates are there but they are powerless.
It’s hard for moderates to be in ascendancy when so many who are not moderates makes such a ruckus.
I think we haven’t had enough to do with each other for you to know how i feel. I also have lived in an Islamic country - a rather unsavory one, to boot.
Exactly - that’s why i call for a more nuanced approach, one that ensures one does not silence the voices of the moderates.
Nobody knows how many moderates there really are - if speaking up in favour of moderation puts you in immediate danger of being killed, you can count on it that even if there existed a moderate majority it would be a “very silent majority”.
Yuli: not sure what you’re trying to say. MMs point was that it doesn’t actually matter how many moderates there are if they have no voice. Most of human history has been about very small groups of assholes making trouble for larger groups who just want to get on with cooking the dinner and fixing the roof. Consider 1970s Cambodia, modern N.Korea, or most of Africa.
My limited experience is that many Muslims aren’t really Muslims, in much the same way as 60% of those “Christians” in the UK have barely skimmed a Bible. And that’s probably a good thing; if the OPs quotations are accurate, they’re not as easy to brush under the carpet as (say) the extensive violence in the Old Testament. In the latter case, the prophets involved are simply historical characters as far as modern Christianity is concerned (not so much for Judaism, of course). Dire pronouncements against long-extinct cities or ethnic subgroups are of absolutely no relevance today, and Jesus dismissed the Jewish law (in diplomatic language) on several occasions.
The pronouncements of Mohammed (the Hadith) on the other hand, is as central to Islam as the pronouncements of Christ are to Christians. His words cannot be dismissed with, “oh, but that was a long time ago - we don’t really take that literally anymore”. I suspect a lot of Muslims don’t take it literally - but in that case, they’re not Muslims.
I don’t see why we have to tiptoe around such questions in the name of religious freedom. Anyone may debate the merits (or otherwise) of Buddhism, Jainism, or Christianity. People rarely do because these religions are inherently innocuous (although all of them do carry logical problems and inconsistencies). Personally, I find any religion that dismisses part of God’s creation - say, dogs or pigs - as ‘unclean’ or ‘untouchable’ must be fundamentally flawed, but that’s just me.
Anyway, presumably the OPs unwritten subtext is: if Islam does contain unpleasant ideas within it, what do “we” do about it? Pogroms and Holy Wars haven’t worked. They never do. Dopey articles in the Daily Hate Mail just make things worse. So what does the rest of the world do when faced with a vocal, violent minority who cannot be reasoned with because God Is On Their Side?
