Islam - the religion of peace

[broncofan]

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world...ogue-1.2112780

For every Muslim extremist there are thousands of decent Muslims. It's only fair that I include this for some perspective. It actually makes the problem more complicated when you realize how marginal the violent extremists are and that in percentage terms they don't have much support.

I will point out though, that extreme beliefs exist on a sliding scale, so that there may be many Muslims who think the violence against cartoonists is unacceptable but who think homosexuality is or should be a capital offense. Or that it is permissible to punish apostasy by death, even if they would not carry out the punishment themselves. I am curious about how prevalent those particular views are and whether we think they are just internal issues to be worked out in certain Middle Eastern countries.

For instance, if a gay American traveled to Iran and was charged with engaging in prohibited sex, is it our position that he should have followed the rules of the country he's in and that a pending execution is an acceptable punishment for not understanding the mores of that society?

I realize the answer to this rhetorical question may seem like an emphatic yes to many people. While I agree that one should be aware of the laws in any foreign country they travel to and comport with them, I think it's problematic when something that is seen as neither legally nor morally wrong is a capital crime in a different jurisdiction. Discrimination against gay men and women is not a cultural value but a human rights violation. Enshrining that discrimination in law is abhorrent and I think it's worthy of condemnation whether it's an Iranian or an American being executed for having consensual relations with members of the same sex.

[broncofan]

But is this a problem inherent in religion, or is it 'merely' politics?

The two only diverge where secular politics is not so anathema to fundamentalists that it cannot be tolerated regardless of the composition of the citizenry. If members of a faith are not content to live in a society based on at least some secular principles and instead mandate that citizens of non-state religions submit to a religious imperative or are subject to criminal penalties for blasphemy, the root of the problem is religion.

[Stavros]

The two only diverge where secular politics is not so anathema to fundamentalists that it cannot be tolerated regardless of the composition of the citizenry. If members of a faith are not content to live in a society based on at least some secular principles and instead mandate that citizens of non-state religions submit to a religious imperative or are subject to criminal penalties for blasphemy, the root of the problem is religion.

I read that several times, and I am not sure. Although I agree that many members of religious faiths accept that they must respect the laws and customs of the state where they live, even if it is secular or of a different faith, the source of divergence lies in the holistic nature of most major religious systems which, by incorporating politics into their belief makes it difficult, if not impossible to separate religion from politics. It is part of the controversy in the UK, for example, over the ordination of women priests and bishops in the Church of England, gay marriage, and abortion, issues on which many Christians take a religious view, complaining that the moral life of the country is being undermined by secular changes which are now infiltrating religious life-not forgetting that the UK is, officially a Christian state, whose head of state is head of the Church.

It is precisely because there are Muslims who call for the imposition of 'Shari'a law' and Muslims who do not, that you can see how the radical groups are in fact using their holistic view of Islam to both shame their fellow Muslims (if that works) while appearing to threaten the existing Christian and secular powers that be. It begs the question however -what exactly is Shari'a law? Is there no flexibility in its application? Who makes legal decisions? I suggest when you pursue these questions, you end up with a political weapon in your hand, looking exactly like the Kalashnikov's beloved of bin Laden and the IS militants, rather than that absent book the Quran.

The same obsession with the monotheist faith rooted in a text that cannot be changed can be observed in the consequences of (mostly American) Christian evangelism in East Africa and Russia, where the attempt, successful or otherwise to criminalise homosexual behaviour raises the same question about religion and the state. My view is that they ought to be separated, because in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-reigious society that is the only way to balance out belief and practice in as harmonious a manner, and that is also how I think most people like it. It does not downgrade a religion, but does raise questions about how people of different faiths co-exist, as they have done all over the world for millenia. I don't see why the actions of a fringe minority should threaten that, but we can't at the same time isolate such people and tell them to sort it out as if we had no role to play. Not slaughtering their fellow believers in other lands might be a good place to start.

[youngfit93]

I think people need to look deeper.

Just remember the US has killed far more Muslims then Muslims killed US in fact in 2013 3% of terrorists attacks where made by "muslims"

[broncofan]

I in fact in 2013 3% of terrorists attacks where made by "muslims"

I was wondering if you could post the site that reported this statistic. I would be surprised if this is the case. About 20% of the world's population is Muslim. If Muslims carried out 3% of the terrorist attacks worldwide, that would make them under-represented by a factor of nearly seven. I am just curious what definitions are being used (this is especially an issue since you put scare quotes around the word Muslims).

[Stavros]

I was wondering if you could post the site that reported this statistic. I would be surprised if this is the case. About 20% of the world's population is Muslim. If Muslims carried out 3% of the terrorist attacks worldwide, that would make them under-represented by a factor of nearly seven. I am just curious what definitions are being used (this is especially an issue since you put scare quotes around the word Muslims).

The Global Terrorist Index Report from last year may be the most up to date survey, based on the definition of terrorism as "the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation". It is a 94 page report but worth reading. The link is here:
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/site...t%202014_0.pdf

The summary has these points to make:
Key trends
In 2013 more than 80 per cent of the lives lost to
terrorism occurred in only five countries; Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

The largest year-on-year increase in deaths from
terrorism was recorded between 2012 and 2013
increasing from 11,133 to 17,958.

102 of 162 countries covered in this study
experienced no deaths from terrorism in 2013,
while 60 countries recorded one or more deaths
from terrorism.

87 countries experienced a terrorist incident in
2013, slightly up from 81 in 2012.

The number of countries experiencing over 50
deaths in one year hit an all-time high in 2013 at
24, five greater than the previous high of 19
countries in 2008.

Putting terrorism in context
Around five per cent of all the 107,000 terrorist
fatalities since 2000 have occurred in OECD
countries.

Homicide claims 40 times more people globally
than terrorism with 437,000 lives lost due to
homicide in 2012, compared to 11,000 terrorist
deaths in 2012.

Approximately 50 per cent of terrorist attacks
claim no lives.

The long term indirect costs of terrorism can be 10
to 20 times larger than the direct costs.

[Odelay]

Man, the US administration policy on training Syrian rebels is looking more and more like a clusterfuck.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/...pecial-forces/

The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible. Before this project proceeds, Obama owes U.S. citizens answers and some evidence that phase two has been studied and makes sense.

The entire piece is worth a read.

[broncofan]

Thanks Stavros..I'm looking at your link right now.

[Stavros]

Man, the US administration policy on training Syrian rebels is looking more and more like a clusterfuck.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/...pecial-forces/

The entire piece is worth a read.

Thanks for the link. This morning I read Patrick Cockburn's The Rise of Islamic State. ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Verso 2015) in which he repeatedly points to the role played by Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the funding of the Syrian opposition -but primarily the Salafi groups including the al-Nusra Front and al-Qaeda before it became IS even if SA now regrets doing it. But here is the nub of the problem, from p58
"The 'War on Terror' has failed because it did not target the Jihadi movement as a whole, and above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries who fostered jihadism as a creed and as a movement. The US did not do so because these countries were important American allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated, and on occasion purchased, influential members of the American establishment."

-And it goes without saying that a lot of the arms sold to Saudi Arabia end up in the armouries of IS just as they have got their hands on the American weaponry that was sold to the Iraqi military and abandoned by the soldiers in the last year or so when they ran away from IS in Iraq. Clusterfuck seems too mild a word for it!

[yosi]

Islam Is ‘Not A Religion Of Peace’

Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/pro...religion-peace