Is Islam a Religion of Peace? - General

When I first saw a debate with Ayaan Hirsi Ali it was in 2011, I was a fan, but when I met her (and many others) at the 2012 Atheist Convention in Melbourne, I was completely swayed. Her words are very deliberate and purposeful which is a somewhat rare trait. This was a fantastic video.

The message isn't completely wrong, but I can really feel that this is a Prager video and it's trying to push this message. Part of it is an attack on "progressives" and "liberals" and then there's the angle that Islam is ruining society. I've seen that argument multiple times and it doesn't seem like something that's said as a hyperbole.

Prager's generally trash pushing an ideology instead of making interesting or informative videos, but I'll throw up some examples as to why Islam isn't really an [i]inherently[/i] violent religion and why the violence currently widespread in the Middle East is more a result of religious fundamentalism than [i]Islam[/i] as a religion itself. There was a pretty major movement around the late 1800s and early 1900s called the Salafist movement, entirely separate from the more modern Salafist movement that is tied to Wahhabism, and it had [i]phenomenally[/i] intelligent academic theologians analyzing and attempting to modernize Islamic beliefs to compete with the expansionism and colonialism of European powers. Just look up someone like [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Abduh"]Muhammad Abduh[/URL] and tell me he's representative of some inherent violence in Islam - he isn't. The dude criticized Hadiths, taught logic and ethics as a professor, and literally called for mandatory scientific education to foster childrens' ability to reason. He was more waaaaay more progressive than the vast majority of Christians in the US today, and this was [i]well over a hundred years ago[/i]. Abduh is one of my absolute favorite figures in the history of Islam. The reason Islamic Modernism failed to really take root in the Middle East is incredibly complicated, tying global politics and the world wars and the fall of the Ottoman Empire and a million other more local variables together. It did take hold in a lot of European countries, probably due to its recognition of the value and importance of certain modern European values around the turn of the century. The fact that violent, extreme fundamentalism has taken root and blossomed in the Middle East in particular is the result of a very complicated blend of extremist academic ideology, like Salafism and Wahhabism, becoming accepted and funded by certain interest groups, plus geopolitics, economics, all sorts of shit. It's not as simple as it's usually made out to be. Literally any major religion has absolute [i]fuckloads[/i] of internal disagreement. Christianity started out as basically Judaism, and then evolved into distinct groups - Greek Christianity, which developed into Roman Christianity and rapidly evolved into the Western European Christianity and the Catholic Church we see today, which then again splintered with the Protestants into the Lutheran Church and literal thousands of other branches, some of which [i]wildly[/i] vary from the major branches (like Unitarians or Mormons). But then there's the Greek Orthodox Church, which evolved largely separately, and then you can go way back and look at Eastern Syriac Christianity, which is [i]fucking ridiculously[/i] different from most other conceptions, you can go look at Manichean Christianity, you can find so many different ideologies and beliefs in Christianity that all result from internal disagreements on interpretation - Islam is [i]no different[/i]. Boiling shit down to Sunni/Shiite is really idiotic, because it's like claiming there's only Protestants and Catholic Christians and ignoring the [i]absolute dickloads[/i] of disagreement even inside of those groups and ignoring minority Christian groups. It's stupidly complicated and the violence present in modern Middle Eastern Islam is [i]not[/i] the norm for the religion if you look back through history (avoiding moral relativism). It's a very unusual and complex phenomenon.

All it takes to know Islam is a religion of violence is to read the Quran. Same goes for every other Abrahamic faith.

this is what happens when you lump everything under a single faith. 'islam' has tons of different sects with different books and different views. its the same with any religion.

[QUOTE=Boaraes;51201764]All it takes to know Islam is a religion of violence is to read the Quran. Same goes for every other Abrahamic faith.[/QUOTE] I'm sure you've read the Quran extensively

[QUOTE=TheBloodyNine;51202717]I'm sure you've read the Quran extensively[/QUOTE] Is my criticism of the Quran and its violent texts somehow an implication that I have not read it? What reason do you have to doubt me?

[QUOTE=Boaraes;51201764]All it takes to know Islam is a religion of violence is to read the Quran. Same goes for every other Abrahamic faith.[/QUOTE] you're not helping

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;51198075]Ayaan Hirsi Ali isnt a Muslim. She is an atheist. She suffered under a misogynistic peasant of a father, now she blames an entire religion for her troubles. I say this hurts her credibility. Christian and Animist Africans arrange marriages, mutilate females and are polygamous as well. And "reform" is a meaningless concept. Christian reformation didnt solve any problems, it was a bloodbath. And Jewish "reformation" was entirely politically driven (liberalism). European Christians and Jews are the way they are since at most 19th century, before that heretics and blasphemers were fleeing to America still, what solved these were development. Socioeconomic and political development. Prosperity. I therefore find this video meaningless and empty, if not wrong. She might have done good by attracting attenton to women's rights in Africa but her views, I cant agree.[/QUOTE] Trebgarta has the best point here. Extremism isn't caused by some specific religion or ideological belief, those are simply reasons given for it, rather, Extremism is rooted in socioeconomic poverty. If you look at history, you can very easily see and recognize this pattern. In Ancient Egypt, Women were treated fairly similarly to men, there was a large chance for social class change where even slaves could become the Pharoh's right hand man/woman, etc. That's because the Egyptian state was rich and prosperous from the Nile and trade with their surrounding civilization. In Rome (at least in the republic), foreign cultures were treated with respect and integrated somewhat, and everyone could eventually become a Roman citizen, women were treated fairly, etc. Hell, we even have an example with Islam, where during the Golden Age of Islam, other religions were treated with respect and fairness, and the followers themselves held fairly humanist beliefs. This is in start contrast to Europe, which was at the time a shithole of religious extremism and war. And all of this is because the Middle East at the time was the final point along the silk road between Europe and Asia. To deny this correlation is literally to deny history itself. If we want religious extremism due to Islam to stop for good, we must do what we can to raise these regions out of poverty.

One of the strongest arguments against the idea of Islam being a religion of peace is found right in it's founding. Essentially every beloved founder of the faith (Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, and Ali) were religious warriors who both expanded the borders of the religious nation through war and tamped down any heretical beliefs with threat of death. In order to follow the lead of Muhammad a Muslim MUST have a desire for Islam to politically dominate society.

[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;51204301]you're not helping[/QUOTE] Actually, realizing that Abrahamic faiths were not created to be timeless and thus have many barbaric and outdated commands is the best way to go. They don't have a place in a society that wants to progress, albeit it must take a large amount of cherrypicking and overall delusion to keep faith in Abrahamic religions if one wishes progression. Fortunately, this process is already taking place; religion is on the decline.

I'd argue based purely on religious texts, the Quran is much more supportive of violence and conquest than either the Old or New Testaments.

lol whenever someone criticizes / closely examines Islam on facepunch they get banned for Islamophobia / Xenophobia / Racism

[QUOTE=Quark:;51205825]lol whenever someone criticizes / closely examines Islam on facepunch they get banned for Islamophobia / Xenophobia / Racism[/QUOTE] no they don't [editline]15th October 2016[/editline] have you not been on this forum for the past 1 or 2 years

[QUOTE=zupadupazupadude;51206370]no they don't [editline]15th October 2016[/editline] have you not been on this forum for the past 1 or 2 years[/QUOTE] have [B]you?[/B] it's mostly a SH issue, but every time there's a thead about ISIS, a muslim person doing something illegal, or something involving islam, and someone posts about problems with violence in islam, a mod bans them for islamaphobia lol, when typically nothing "islamaphobic" was said, there was just a critical analysis of islam usually [URL=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1488241]here's[/url] one from last year where the OP got banned for adding "The religion of piece" sarcastically to the end of his post. i'd dig through google for more and more examples but that's too much work for an internet post and i have shit to do [url=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1429059&p=46162628&viewfull=1#post46162628]this guy's post[/url] asks the right questions tho it's like islam is protected from criticism but for no particular reason other than "Islamophobia"

[QUOTE=Quark:;51207112][url=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1429059&p=46162628&viewfull=1#post46162628]this guy's post[/url] asks the right questions tho[/QUOTE] [quote=Of banned user] 54 Posts I knew Starlight was a Jew and a SJW You can disregard this article, this was just a test. I was testing the people of facepunch. You passed the test, Congratulations! [/quote] HMMMMMMMMMMMM. I wonder if that guy was a bigot and was Islamaphobic and a bigot in general. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Nah, course not!

[QUOTE=Quark:;51207112]have [B]you?[/B] it's mostly a SH issue, but every time there's a thead about ISIS, a muslim person doing something illegal, or something involving islam, and someone posts about problems with violence in islam, a mod bans them for islamaphobia lol, when typically nothing "islamaphobic" was said, there was just a critical analysis of islam usually [URL=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1488241]here's[/url] one from last year where the OP got banned for adding "The religion of piece" sarcastically to the end of his post. i'd dig through google for more and more examples but that's too much work for an internet post and i have shit to do [url=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1429059&p=46162628&viewfull=1#post46162628]this guy's post[/url] asks the right questions tho it's like islam is protected from criticism but for no particular reason other than "Islamophobia"[/QUOTE] So the first one if your run-of-the-mill shitpost, and the second one is a guy asking why a gimmick account was banned? Pftt, the mods around here sure are the gestapo of today. I think there is many things to criticize in Islam (and other religions), and it seems to be that at least in this thread people aren't banned for saying that Islam isn't a religion of peace. Almost like it works out better when you aren't making dumb, snide comments in an OP.

[QUOTE=Boaraes;51205332]Actually, realizing that Abrahamic faiths were not created to be timeless and thus have many barbaric and outdated commands is the best way to go. They don't have a place in a society that wants to progress, albeit it must take a large amount of cherrypicking and overall delusion to keep faith in Abrahamic religions if one wishes progression. Fortunately, this process is already taking place; religion is on the decline.[/QUOTE] Pushy anti-theism isn't going to win the majority of theists over. If anything it is far more likely to make them more entrenched in their beliefs. Condemning a practise within a religion is perfectly healthy and productive thing to do. People can easily reflect upon that. Condemning an entire religion is good for very little but masturbatory self righteousness.