Obama: No Religion is Responsible for Terrorism

That was an appetizer and an intro to the nature of oppression of the ‘other’ within and without in Islam. It is not significant to the point and note it is only a one liner with a link. The significant point is the one that follows in the earlier post.

Your points “the treatment of non-Muslims varies by country” and ‘a difference of treatment between accepted religions’ acknowledge there are negative treatments in essence but they vary in degrees.
The government and various conditions are factors in the variation of oppression but what is critical is the fact there is an essence within the religion that non-believers should be made to feel subdued, oppressed, and subjugated.

Here is one of the significant verses signifying oppression and subjugation;
“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).

This is a command by God [Allah] to Muslims to feel superior over non-Muslims [this should remind one of Hitler] and this is prevalent in many other verses in the Quran. The principle is believers has to feel their religion is the most superior [and the only way] over others because the existence of other religions raise doubts on the credibility of their religion in promising them a passage to heaven and eternal life.

The other point which is well known is there is a correlation between the severity in the negative treatment of non-Muslim with the percentage of the population within an area. Long ago the Muslim were very quiet in Europe and note what is happening now as the Muslim % increase, apparently it is 10% in France.
When the Muslim population % increase in the US in time, there will be more terrible evils for non-Muslims. This impending evil [of varying degree] is inevitable and natural.

Those historical points are not about treatment of non-Muslim but rather they are about how Muhammad was personally treated by the Jews and Christian before he got his religion going and how he became a killing machine with vengeance later. Thus they are VERY significant to understand the motivation of why and how the Quran evil verses were conveyed by Muhammad.

Muhammad had respect for the prophets of the Jews and the Christians but his final and overall treatment of Jews and Christians is one of contempt, condemnation and evil. His only consolation that he did not wipe them off from Earth was because he needed to tax/rob them to survive. see (Qur’an 9:29) above.

Here are verses condemning the Jews;
In three instances (Suras 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166), the Quran tells of Allah turning Jews into apes and/or pigs.
Sura 2:65 “And you had already known about those who transgressed among you concerning the sabbath, and We said to them, ‘Be apes, despised.’”
Sura 7:166 “So when they were insolent about that which they had been forbidden, We said to them, ‘Be apes, despised.’"
Sura 5:60 “Say, ‘Shall I inform you of [what is] worse than that as penalty from Allah? [It is that of] those (i.e., the Jews) whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs and slaves of Taghut. Those are worse in position and further astray from the sound way.’"
Verses not to befriend Christians and Jews;
Qur’an (5:51) - “O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.”
For other similar verses see;
thereligionofpeace.com/Quran … s-jews.htm

I’m still not sure about the relevance of Scriptures to the reality of this. Muslim countries oppress women, and Muslim extremists want to destroy western civilization. This is known. If their holy texts explicitly endorse these positions, or if they don’t, what is at stake there? We know full well that religions can do evil things even if their scriptures don’t advocate them, and we know religions can do great things even if their scriptures advocate some evil. So what difference does it make? I’m sure the moderate Muslims have their reasons for interpreting their texts the way they do, and their hardcore guys have their reasons for what they interpret- and I’m not being a relativist about it, make no mistake. I’m sure one of them is basically right and the other basically wrong. But I dont know which one it is and frankly I don’t care or see what difference it makes. The Muslims who are our enemies have to go, and there are hundreds of millions of them. It’s not a few whackjobs, but it’s not every Muslim everywhere, either.

The relevance of Scriptures on the topic of violence is just the same as our concern for exposure of violence in the various media that can influence the public especially vulnerable children [thus the need of PG ratings and other warnings].

For the religious [especially the Abrahamic] they are terrified [consciously and subconsciously] of eternal death and hellfire.
So if they want to avoid hell and go to heaven for eternal life, they have to literally obey whatever this written in the Scriptures [infallible God’s words].
Thus when one enters into a covenant with God with a promise of eternal life in heaven and for some with virgins [72?] one has to obey God literally. Whatever are the words of God must be followed and God knows best [even in the non-believers views these are irrational and evil].
Note Abraham went to the extent of obeying God to kill his only son.

The Quran contains hundreds of evil laden verses.
For SOME [20% = 300 million!] Muslims they will insist on following the scriptures of the Quran otherwise they do not feel secure they will go the heaven and they think they could be burnt in hell.
So SOME [20% = 300 million!] will naturally carry out the commands of the evil laden verses in the Quran merely to ensure they go to heaven. In addition, the martyrs will be given an express-lane over the others.

If the scriptures do not advocate and believers went on to commit evil and violence, the logic is very obvious that it has nothing to do with the religion per se. We cannot blame the religion itself.
What is wrong is due to the inherent nature of the believers and not because of the religion.
This is the case I have been arguing for the Buddhists, Jains, Amish, Quakers, and other inherently pacifist religions. If a Jainist happened to be a serial killer, it is not because of his religion [Jainism] but it is because of his own inherent evil nature in his brain.

The moderates has a lesser impulse of anxiety and angst of the threat of hell fire. Many moderates are not too engaged with the ethos and the scriptures. In addition most moderates, even they may have a high degree of the threat of hell, they do not have evil tendencies. As such, their focus are not on the evil and violent verses in their scripture.
If one is a psychopath [and evil prone] and a Muslim, the Quran, Hadiths and Sira are really a God sent feast for them.

The Muslims are not our enemies, they are just like any other people. What we need to understand is the malignant potential of Islam, the ideology that conditioned the religion. We need to understand this root cause and deal with it effectively. The question is how?

I’ve said on these board many times that the Muslin concept of shirk is about the best moral code there is. I say “about” because I don’t believe in God. But we have a lot to learn from Islam.

Shirk is not a moral code.

Perhaps you were referring to ‘Sharia’ rather than ‘shirk’.

IMO, Islamic ethics may be relatively ‘good’ and effective in some circumstances but overall it is net-evil.

Well, I suppose the difference is that with ratings and so on we’re trying to protect our children. I don’t want to protect extremist Muslims, I want them to die or at least cease to be a political force on the world stage.

   A couple problems with that.  First, I still don't see why I should care.  They want to blow me up, so we end their existence post haste.  Does knowing the particular interaction between their deeds and their interpretation of Scripture assist in that?  If not, it doesn't matter.  Second, none of that stuff is true. Plenty of religious people (most) aren't concerned with hellfire, for you to put it off onto their subconscious is for you to pretend to be a wizard claiming things you know nothing about.  You're assuming infallibility of Scriptures in Abrahamic texts, when most denominations at least in Christianity and Judaism don't believe that.  Your example of Abraham is apt- he was going to obey God and kill his son, [i]but not believe it was written down in a Scripture somewhere,[/i] but because he believed God was speaking to him directly.   You use Abraham as an example of somebody prepared to do evil in the name of their faith? Well, it's an example of a person's faith bringing about such evil without a Scripture to justify it.  So you undermine your key principle here.  Abraham is an example of a religious person (some would say THE MOST RELIGIOUS PERSON EVER) doing what many would consider evil, because of his faith, irrespective of a holy text. 
  So what's written down in the text isn't as important as what living leaders encourage their flock to do, or what private individuals come to conclude when they meditate on the precepts of their faith. 

Your example of Abraham of course refutes this, unless you want to say Abraham's actions had nothing to do with the Abrahamic faith. :slight_smile: 

And again, it doesn't matter- you're working to cross purposes. This idea that religions are only culpable for what's written down in their scriptures works very well for your OTHER agenda of excusing anything done in the name of religions and philosophies that you like. But with the crisis of Islam it simply doesn't matter. If those hundreds of millions of people want to destroy Western civililzation because their Scriptures tell them too, or because some Mullah has mis-interpreted those scriptures, or for reasons completely outside their Scriptures, it makes no difference.  If 300 million people say "I am doing this in the name of Islam", then that's a problem with Islam. If it was 6 people then yeah, maybe it would be necessary to see just how islamic they really are. But there's a certain critical mass where if enough people are doing evil in the name of the faith, then the faith is the problem irrespective of what is written down. 

Those aren't two different things.  It is a peculiarly Protestant, American notion that a religion is nothing more than a series of premises that you can list on a piece of paper.  Just about everybody else believes that their religion is the Scriptures, the history of their interpretation, the culture that has sprung up around them, numerous events, legends, lessons and teachings that don't make it into the Scriptures, and the living rituals and actions of the body of believers.  For example, nowhere in the Bible does it say what order the Scriptures should be read in church throughout the year.  Do you seriously want to claim, then, that the Orthodox Liturgy is not a part of the religion?  What about all their saints and martyrs and feast days and commentators and the history of interaction with Constantiople and Rome that has shaped so much of what is practiced and how and where? These things are OBVIOUSLY a part of the religion, and if some of these things encouraged or entailed violence, that violence would obviously be a function of the religion. I imagine there are many Orthodox people who would kill to keep a unique holy icon or site from being destroyed. Would such actions have nothing to do with the religion per se merely because the Bible doesn't advocate this course of action? 

In other words, your interpretation assumes a role for Scripture that it seems like you learned from some evangelical Baptist 20th century American Church, and you're just kind of assuming that every religion everywhere plays by those rules. 

 If that's true, it's because we've looked at the history of the Jain faith and the behaviors of the masses of it's current practicioners, NOT just what is written down in their holy books.  So for example, if *every* Jain was a serial killer, and they all claimed to be doing it in the name of Jainism, then it wouldn't matter what it says or doesn't say in their Scriptures, Jainism would have become a religion of murder. 

Those two statements are not mutually exclusive. They are just like any other people; they love, they hate, they fear, they laugh, they pet their dogs. And a lot of them need to be wiped off the face of the Earth to protect western civilization. That’s brutal, that’s reality. The ideas that ‘if they are like us they must not be enemies’ or ‘if they are our enemies they must be evil to the core’ is, sadly, storybook stuff.

My point was, the scriptures are an important contributing factor and a catalyst in why SOME believers turned terrorists. For this reason we need to scrutinize the related scriptures and note how SOME evil laden verses had inspired SOME believers to become violent.
If we get rid or defanged the evil laden verses or get rid of the religion, there will be no basis and no religion for any believers to use religion as an excuse to commit evil. As such, the problem is not the Muslims but rather the religion and its ideology.
For example, we got rid of Nazism, there is no room for any Nazi sympathizer and Germans to use Nazism for extensive violence. No doubt there will still be Germans who are inherently violent and commit evils but they will be dealt as normal criminals and not as a Nazi follower.

If we know the Scriptures has a direct correlation to the evil of believers, then when we get rid of that root cause, we will be able to get rid of that religious-based evil.
For example, if the Islamic world take the concerted effort to edit out all the evil-laden verses and from there on do not recognize any other as the official Quran, then we will not have any more Islamic-based terrorist. Any intended terrorist will not be able to get the majority support from the other Muslims, e.g. Muslims from all over the world are joining ISIS because of a common Quran that is filled with evil laden verses.
The problem is the Quran is supposedly considered as immutable, thus cannot be edited. In this case, we should take effort to wean off Islam and therefrom there will be no Muslims. Prior Muslims could be convert to other religions, etc.

All serious religionist are concerned primary [subconsciously and consciously] with the soteriological [salvation] elements, i.e. eternal life in heaven and many with hellfire. Such points are very clear in the Bible and the Quran. It is probably those who are religious by birth who are not too concern about salvation and hellfire, but if they become ‘born again,’ most will be very alert to the need for eternal life and the fear [at least subsconciously] of hellfire.

My example of Abraham was not about evil-laden verses in the scriptures. I did not portray it as a story example that motivated terrorists to act. It is an epistemological and philosophical example.
The example of Abraham was introduced to exemplify the terrible subconscious impulse of insecurity and anxiety that is oozing and pulsating within the psyche of all theists.
When this terrible impulse is fed with evil laden verses from the holy texts [especially Quran] what we have is God ‘sanctioned’ [in the eyes of the evil-proned believers] evils.
The example of Abraham was apt for my purpose, but without it, evil-prone believers as driven by the inherent insecure impulse will still feed on the evil-laden verses in the holy texts.
If there are no evil-laden verses in the holy texts there is nothing for them to feed on and whatever evil they commit is due to their own inherent evil nature.

The intended action has nothing to do with the Abrahamic faith but it is merely an expression [symbolic] of a fundamental psychological impulse of Abrahamic believers. Btw, I have not heard of any Abrahamic sacrificing a son for God by beheading.

If 300 million people want to destroy Western Civilization, we should find the root causes of their motivation and remove it.
In this case, I have already identify the main problem is Islam [partly] not Muslims as people.
The solution is to get rid of the evil-laden verses in Islam or wean off Islam.

Whenever there is a problem we should deal with it analytically and rationally.
It is then necessary to identify the roots causes and the relations to;

1. The core of the religion - the holy texts that is supposed from God
2. The exegetical fringe ideas that are interpreted by the clergy and others.
   In this case we should give them due weights and deal with them accordingly.

Jainism is represented by some core texts inherited from thousands of years.
If every ‘Jain’ become a serial and claimed to do it in the name of Jainism; logically, rationally and analytically it has nothing to do with Jainism per-se which can be easily contrasted to the holy texts.

The only possible scenario that Jainism has a responsibility is when the Jain community abandon the current holy texts and compile a new one with evil-verses that condone violence and evils.
In this case we will have

1. Old Janism -abandoned in practice but historical known
2. Neo-Jainism - now accepted as the main practice.

If we can edit out the evil-laden verses, there will be no opportunities for any Muslims to commit evil in the name of the religion. Better still when we wean off Islam, there are will no Muslims around to commit evil acts. The 300 million ex-Muslims who are just like any other people will still be around believing in other religions or become non-theists or non-religious.
Your ideas of ‘brutal reality’ seem to be evil itself.

Shirk is considered sin, it’s acting in front of God as if God weren’t real or omniscient.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirk_(Islam

As an atheist I use this concept to guide myself morally.

They won’t let me cut and paste the last parenthesis… so it’s a dead link, just google it.

Arminius

Let us say that all religions are interpretative, at least that we are subjective beings and cannot know things in the exact same way as other. that said…

The very idea of a single god is enough to create an ideological singularity, even where there are many variations of that in expression. This is why ALL religions have been given strict ‘guidelines’ for practice e.g. dharma in Hinduism, Buddhism and Janism, and sharia law in Islam. christianity done the same thing via preaching and largely achieved it until various movements and industrial transformation changed our society.

The only difference is that Islam went in the opposite direction, starting out with grand philosophies, maths and cultural changes, but then becoming strict. The industrial revolution didn’t happen in the middle-east, so their societies have been changed from western influences ~ and that is the real difference.

Without Faustians there would never have been any industrial “revolution” (the better word is “explication”). The Faustian people as its originators brought it to all Non-Faustians.

The whole culture of the islamic people is a religious culture - that means that their lives are domonated by religion / exercise systems (see above).

In almost all cases cultures have many forms, thus not only religious forms. Religious forms can influence the culture, of course, but the religion of the Faustian culture has never been as powerful as the Islamic religion. The “Abrahamic” myth is not important for that, and Christianity, which was and is the official but not the real religion of the Faustians, is not as monotheistic or henotheistic as Islam and Jewry are (but that does also not as much matter as each whole culture matters). It makes not very much sense to isolate religions from their cultures and their landscapes they belong to. Christianity is not an original religion of the Occident but of the Orient, especially of the Oriental desert (also Jewry and Islam); but the mix of this Oriental desert religion on the one side and the landscape and climate of the Occident (boreal, nordic, rainy, just mild: not too warm and not too cold) and its original culture on the other side is a successful one. One of many examples is that in the Occident religion and state (secaular politics) are seperated from each other.

Do you know any Moslem?

Arminius

Arabs were somewhat nomadic as we all were originally, the culture of religion is mostly a continuation of the ‘order’ demanded by civilisation. A few centuries ago most everyone in the west were of a religious extremity. I don’t see any difference between the barbaric acts of isis and that of the christians back in the day ~ except they are not as barbaric [e.g. burning and lowering women into the flames so that the smoke doesn’t make them unconscious prior to the flame].

Surely you can see that without religion having power you get rid of all that, and that people need extreme views to do extreme things.

my daughter used to have a muslim boyfriend, and we got on fine [I am 1/4 jewish].

Amorphos, excuse me, but if you can’t see the differences, then you are either nearly blind or just “political correct”, and “political correctness” has merely to do with lies and hypocrises, thus nothing with reality / historical facts.

Humans lived and live in different (A) cliamte zones and in different (B) cultural zones.

(A) Climate zones:

(B) Cultural zones:

Cultural zones mean cultures that are influenced by the climate zones (see above) and other circumstances. It is no accident that nearly all monotheistic / henotheistic religions arised in deserts, and when they were brought to people in cultural zones without deserts, then the religions changed more or less (depending on where, how much different these zones were). I will not go into details because of the derailing danger.

Yes, and I'm asking why.  The only thing YOU seem to be doing with that information is making declarative statements about which religions are worth keeping and which aren't.  That doesn't interest me so much. If you thought there were secrets in the Koran that we could use to manipulate the minds of Islamic terrorists so that they die faster, that might be worth hearing. 

Yes, and in order to do that all we need to do is win World War III and brainwash a billion people, which is never going to happen, so who cares?  You have to understand that this idea of "Well, if those verses are causing trouble we simply won't print them in the next edition of the Koran" might make sense to somebody who doesn't give a fuck about religion except as a means to an end, but to the actual human beings who will be your allies and enemies, it's not teneble. 

Yes, we got rid of Nazism, who was made up by some asshole less than 2 generations before it caused a World War. It was localized to one nation, had no claim to spiritual enlightenment that anybody took seriously, and etc. It’s not the same.

See above. In order for you to think that’s a thing that could happen, you have to be either vastly deluded about what a religion is and why it’s important, or you’re an aspiring member of IngSoc, or both. If you asked these people, most of them would HAPPILY tell you they’d rather you just kill them outright than bastardize Islam into a neutered thing of your own creation where an atheist outsider like you gets to decide what goes into the Scriptures and what doesn’t.

The Eastern Orthodox Church isn’t. You are seriously taking out your ass here.

I don’t care how you intended it. You brought it up and it serves my purposes. Abraham was not acting according to any Scripture.

Oh. So you’re just a bigot pretending to do philosophy then. My bad. Discussion over; you aren’t capable of understanding or discussing the actual root causes or players involved, everything you do is just to shore up confusions like the above. No philosophy to be had here.

Yeah… right. And the crusades that pillaged and killed in Ancient Roman times had nothing to do with Christianity at all.

If they weren’t interested they would have done something about their radicals a long time ago instead of sitting there like idiots letting them make fools out of them and letting other countries deal with their problems.

I don’t need to believe I exist either. I just do. I don’t even need to think about it.

facebook.com/video.php?v=10153152337774602

That is also not true. Islam started with violnce, violence, and … violence-. During a few decades it has become a huge empire. What you call “philosophie, maths” started after the four brutal violence centuries (7th, 8th, 9th, 10th), after they had attacked and conquerd so many countries and people that a bit wealthy and thus also a bit “philosophies, maths” (from the Indians!) could appear.

Look into the history books.

The “holy scriptures” of Jewry (torah) and Islam (koran) are ful of violence, and it is not allowed to change only one single word or even only one single letter of that “holy scriptures”.

It does not look justified to say that Islam started with violence.
Rather, it should be said that Islam was born in violence.

with love,
sanjay

At that time - in the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th century - it was not possible to become such a huge empire without violence. And by the way: a huge empire has always been the result of violence.

Islamic expansion from 622-750 - with nowadays borders overlaid.

And the following map shows the largest islamic expansion:

Current borders are overlaid.