Never confuse terrorism with religion
Published:
January 9, 2015 at 10:37am
This is on the front page of Times of Malta’s print edition. Malta’s Imam Mohammed Elsadi said yesterday that reverence to Mohammad was not expressed through violence and bloodshed but by showing the true values of respect for the sanctity of human life.
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The problem is not Islam itself, but rather the fact that there are a great many Iman’s and Islamic preachers who brainwash their followers into believing that they must spill blood of the non-believers if they are to go to heaven.
I agree that Islam and the majority of Muslims are not the problem but unfortunately they are getting a bad name because there is a large percentage of Muslims willing to cause such atrocities which they claim they are doing in the name of their religion.
The Imams are not fabricating these beliefs. The Quran is full of versus inciting violence against non believers.(specifically Christians and Jews). Let’s not pretend that the Quran is a book promoting peace and love.
[Daphne – It’s interesting to see that you’ve taken the time and trouble to read the Koran, and that you are fluent in Classical Arabic. Quite an achievement.]
Like the Christian New Testament Bible, the Holy Kuran also is available in authorised translations.
The Kuran definitely supports extreme murderous violence against against unbelievers.
If I remember rightly (and I do!) you retorted by saying that her good Muslim friends “ignore” the violent Sura quoted textually by me – therefore it exists. Any “good” Muslims who ignore what they do not like in the Koran do it openly from the the relative safety of Catholic Malta. They would have to be indeed very reckless and brave to do it openly in Islamic States.
[Daphne – Only a relatively small percentage of Muslims live in Islamic states, and there is no indication that they are happy with the situation, but rather the opposite. Roman Catholicism is a repressive religion too, which is so many Roman Catholics ignore several of its rules and instructions completely and call themselves Roman Catholics all the same.]
For anybody wanting to confuse religion with fanaticism and terrorism perhaps a salubrious reminder of this incident in Norway in 2011 in which a man describing himself as a Christian soldier defending Europe from an Islamic tide killed 77 people. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks
Agreed. And on a similar note.. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/charlie-hebdo-how-exactly-would-we-like-muslims-to-condemn-these-attacks-9966176.html
He visited Malta. He has a network of supporters here including that elusive Richard the Lionheart fellow who is a fugitive from the law in the UK. This is what we should be worried about. Not some refugee.
I’m not sure if it’s just me, but there is one positive development I’ve seen through this – not that I’m looking for a silver lining here.
The typical criticism whenever there has been a terrorist attack is that the criticism from within the Muslim community has been nonexistent.
I strongly believe this to be untrue and rather think it’s a case of the Muslim community getting very little air-time, while in this case the media seems to have provided a proper platform for both average Muslims off the street, as well as Muslim leaders, especially in Europe, which has shown that the vast majority of them have shown complete condemnation of these attacks.
100% correct. Following the murder of Lee Rigby, nearly all mosques in the UK got together and issued a press release condemning the killing without any reservation.
Extremist Anyem Chodary of course disagreed and praised the murderers. Yet, it was the silly face of Choudary always popping up on the media not that of practically all the other imams in the UK.
Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist, said:
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you’d have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion”
The Nazis and the Stanford prison experiment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment ) have shown us that it is really the impressionability and obedience of people who are given a legitimizing ideology backed by social and institutional support that makes good people turn bad.
While Weinberg is not correct as to religion being the only cause for this phenomenon, it certainly has historically been and continues to be one of the main ones.
[Daphne – I can’t stand those sorts of arguments about religion because they are entirely pointless. There is always going to be religion because people want it. The only way you can have no religion is by banning it with fearsome punishments for practising it, and that is in itself only possible through a major evil called totalitarianism, which has been responsible for more death and misery than anything done in the name of religion. Weinberg may as well say the same about political ideology.]
Daphne, I don’t agree with you that the only way you can have no religion is by banning it. It would be horrible if it were so.
Lack of religious belief correlates closely by country with higher standards of education and more economic prosperity. When people understand how science explains many things that we had no explanation for before (e.g. evolution supplanting creation as an explanation for the diversity and adaptation of species to their habitats) they can then start to see how science might one day explain the things we still don’t understand, and the need for religion fades away except as a means to delude ourselves into thinking we are immortal.
Even morality does not come from religion, contrary to popular belief. People and churches (except for fundamentalists) pick and choose which parts of their holy books they follow and which parts they ignore according to the times.
This is so true that, for example, Roman Catholicism today is closer to other modern Christian denominations as regards morality than it is to medieval Roman Catholicism, where you would be killed for something as trivial as blasphemy. It would be most interesting indeed to watch a modern pope debate a medieval one on moral issues.
[Daphne – That argument is false. Plenty of people with a very high standard of education are religious, and plenty of people with no education and very little intelligence are completely irreligious. And even if that were not the case, genetics are what they are. There will always be a significant part of the population too stupid even for a low standard of education, let alone a high one.]
You can’t dismiss an argument based on statistical analysis by simply pointing out the exceptions at the fringes. Here’s an article about a comprehensive macro study of why some countries are less religious that goes into some detail:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2012/12/is-education-main-reason-why-some.html
I agree that there will always be people who are too stupid to figure out things for themselves. With some luck, they will tag along with the majority and with the way they were brought up, as they already do once belief/unbelief reaches a tipping point.
It is not false.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/religious-people-are-less-intelligent-than-atheists-according-to-analysis-of-scores-of-scientific-studies-stretching-back-over-decades-8758046.html
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21623712-how-education-makes-people-less-religiousand-less-superstitious-too-falling-away
Islam is this, Islam is that.. I’d like those talking about Islam here to come up with a definition of what Islam really is because even Muslims themselves cannot agree, hence the sectarian violence.
The version the likes of ISIS espouse isn’t that far removed from what some very influential figures preach.
It just happens to be more simplistic and bloody.
The likes of ISIS don’t see the need to implement their totalitarian vision through the ballot box as the Muslim Brotherhood seek to do but otherwise both are fruit of the same tree.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2015/01/un-muslims-ethnically-cleansed-car-2015196546788288.html
The issue is not one of confusing terrorism with religion. Individuals or groups of individuals, small or big, who embark on a mission, peaceful or violent, are inspired by a vision, a belief, in something that motivates them into action.
Religious belief, and indeed a rejection of a religious belief, has been one of the main motivating factors for human activity. To ignore this is to ignore history. This does not exclude the fact that the true religious message may become distorted, or adulterated by other motives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry3NzkAOo3s
Call me a sceptic, but it seems the infallibility of Islam must be emphasized after every massacre.
What the Imam is reported saying here is completely the opposite to what he said on Bondi Plus some years back when he declared that the state should cut the hand of people caught stealing, leaving Lou Bondi speechless – and that is some achievement.
Someone recently told me that if a Muslim is to be true to their faith, then anyone who is not Muslim is by default disposable.
What do you guys think? Do you agree with this view or not?
I admit to not being that knowledgeable in the matter personally and am interested in reading about the views of others on the matter. Thanks.
Concisely (perhaps an over-simplification) Islam (the Holy Kuran) differentiates non-Muslims into personae non gratae “infidels” (e.g. Hindus) and “people of the book” (Jews and Christians).
It is the duty of every healthy adult male to wage holy war (jihad) and kill infidels as happens regularly in the Far East. People of the book are treated differently. As long as they pay a special tax and as long as they do not interfere with the laws of the Islamic state they are tolerated.
To add to this, Mohammed wrote an open letter to Christians that declared their right to self-governance, protection for churches and monasteries, and freedom to practice their religion openly in Muslim controlled areas. Muslims are commanded to follow this until the end of time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achtiname_of_Muhammad
Were it not a fact that the vast majority of the 1.6 billion-strong Muslim community does not follow the Qu’ran literally, there wouldn’t be a safe corner on planet earth for any non-Muslim to stay in.
Just a thought.
But even Saudi Arabia condemned the attack, while preparing to dish out a thousand lashes to a ‘blasphemous’ blogger.
And the Imam went on record supporting Sharia, amputations and all.
Do any of your readers understand the meaning of taqiyya? The revered figurehead of Islam was a political and military leader who spread his cult through sixty-five military campaigns. If the majority of Muslims are not terrorists, it is in spite of, not because of, his legacy.
Daphne is putting a lot of effort into trying to persuade her readership that all this has nothing to do with Mohammed’s ideology. She is doing this because she is desperate to find an excuse for not posting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons on Mohammed, despite devoting acres of space to the issue of free speech. A homophobic, anti-Semitic halal chicken called Daphne!
PS: And no, I am not a “taghna lkoller” trying to have you bumped off.
It is strange that this comes at a time when relations between the Vatican and Islam are at their best. Many are trying to connect it to France’s acceptance of the Palestinian cause. There is no direct relationship but much doubt is being instilled.
Which Islamic authority, Wilson? Islam is not one thing.
The version espoused by the Sunni Ulema of Saudi Arabia and that practiced by the Akhonds of Qom is as different as night and day.
People like the terrorists and the propagators of their ideology in the Arab world are always going to be angry at anyone who is different from them.
*erratum are as different
I would like to point something out.
The policeman killed outside the magazine’s offices was a Muslim. So here we had a Muslim protecting the entity that was satirizing and ‘attacking’ his religion and culture.
My question is this. How many of our islamophobes would be capable of doing that?
Who is the real barbarian?
Isn’t that an insult to the dead man? He was a police officer. Fullstop.
Dismissing criticism of a set of ideas as a pathology, how very progressive and Stalinist of you, Buckle.
The man was doing the job he signed up for, same goes for the men who sign up to join the army and get blown up while on patrol in Afghanistan.
There is nothing heroic about it; it is merely one of the risks.
Wars and minor conflicts are most often due to ancient ethnic or political differences whose boundaries may, or may not coincide with religious demarcations. It would be an incorrect oversimplification to blame resulting conflicts exclusively or mainly on fortuitous religous differences. The warring parties may, or may not, even belong to different religions.
The recent bloody confrontations in Libya, the former Yugoslavia and the USSR are obvious examples. The bloodshed was/is more directly related to traditional, ancient ethnic rivalries among societies that were welded together artificially by strong dictators. They broke apart when the unifying dictatorships passed away. They were not wars of religion.
If Muslim communities are really outraged at the Paris barbarous murders and to be believed that they are not shedding crocodile tears they should do what they did when a book was burnt or a cartoon of the Prophet published and take to the streets in their thousands all over the world and protest against these savage murderers.
[Daphne – You’re confusing matters. The people who protested when a Mohammed cartoon was published (I assume you mean the ones in Denmark some years ago) would be the last to protest against these murders.]
Until they do this I will not believe their statements of condemnation. Words come cheap. Unfortunately the West is in denial. So many imams, so many mosques and madrassas, most of them in our own Western cities – all they do is brainwash children, young men and old people with their hatred for Western civilization.
Islam is by definition irreconcilable with Western values – Muslims themselves have stated this in the past, they tolerate democracy until it serves its purpose – and wants to supplant such values with its own which are still rooted in medieval times.
[Daphne – Muslims this, Muslims that. Thank heavens we are not defined as Roman Catholics. “Quick, quick, mummy look! There are some Roman Catholics coming into the cafe! Watch out.”]
Terrorism and Religion do not remain distinct when one reads the Quran. Please indulge:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm
[Daphne – Do all Roman Catholics use the rhythm method for contraception and stay virgins until and if they are married (to a person of the other gender)?]
In answer to your question, Christians do not pretend to be quoting the New Testament bible regarding methods of contraception, staying virgins until marriage, homosexuality, IVF etc.
Most emphatically Muslims do quote relevant passages in their Holy Koran to support their Sharia Law, the duty to kill infidels etc.