23 replies to this topic

[Imagine]

http://www.washingto...-or-we-will-ki/

Being a practicing muslim for all my life it still saddens me each and everyday to see people who "share" the same religion as me pull nonsense like this. The problem is that it makes the whole population of the religion look bad, the few ruin it for the majority.

To be fair the majority of Muslims in the west at least in England are nice people, who mix into the society, let the people have their beliefs, contribute to the government and their local areas, not just taking and taking then complaining when there is nothing left.

Funny thing is I had an argument with a wannabe "extremist", he was making points about how the western way of life is "haram" that we should be forcing shariah upon them. My response was "Go and read Surah-Al-Kafiruun, which clearly states, 'For you is your religion and for me is my religion' which clearly states that there is no reason to punish someone of another religion, a persons beliefs is theirs and only theirs. If you cannot accept the way of life of a foreign nation. My friend you may as well leave".

Just my two cents.

[some_weirdGuy]

Some of the Islamics are going through what Christianity did in the middle ages.

I heard it was about 2000 years since first being founded that the christian crusades and whatnot happened, and apparently now is about 2000 years since the Islamic faith come into being.

Not sure if its true, (i can't be bothered researching to check), but if it is it may help explain why its now happening. I wonder if we'll have to deal with this stuff in 2000 years when scientology's turn comes along >.<

[Elvenlord]

Sorry, really need to say something here. Do you even what our calender is based on? You know, the birth of Christ? So even if Christianity was founded on the day of his birth Christianity would just be 2000 years old now. First Crusade was slightly before 1100. Islam was founded in the 600's. So 1100 years versus 1400.

[duke_Qa]

It's a culture conflict with moderates vs extremists. They are desperate to avoid getting trapped in the amber of the past and thus has to be loudmouthed to recruit. Nothing more nothing less. Hopefully we will bring down the law on them soon enough... They should be sentenced on the same footing as organized crime.

It would have been much better if most Muslims had this kind of style to their religion(starts at 40 secs)

Spoiler

Edited by duke_Qa, 13 May 2011 - 09:22 AM.

[Vortigern]

Small point: Britain was not founded on Christian beliefs. That's just plain wrong. For one thing, the first king of England Alfred the Great has never been confirmed as a practising member of any religion, although he was confirmed by the Pope during his youth. Then, in the more traditional view of the Norman invasion beginning England proper, William the Conqueror was also not a particularly religious man. Later, as we all know, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and quit the Catholic church. Then when the Puritans came along we kicked them out so they could go practice their weird absolutist bullshit on a different continent.

Basically, Britain doesn't have a history of being super-religious, and we especially don't care now.

Imagine: you seem like a decent guy. Sorry if the few xenophobes we have kickin' around have made you uncomfortable, but everywhere has 'em. Best just to ignore them and carry on regardless. There's a very good reason why neither the BNP nor UKIP have ever won a seat in Parliament.

[Puppeteer]

Britain was founded on Christian beliefs, so if any beliefs at all should take cultural precedence it's those.

Both of those clauses are wrong. Nice logic.

You end up with a totalitarian newspeak state

Haha, do you even know what you're saying any more?

Edited by Puppeteer, 05 May 2011 - 03:16 PM.

[Hostile]

Very disturbing article Imagine...

[Madin]

An atrociously written article.

Yet another example of how the 'war-on-terror' rhetoric is being used to cloud core issues.
In this case the astonishing way in which many societies treat women and the fact that they feels it's their right and duty to continue such actions in other countries.

The number of women killed on these shores under so called 'honour killings' is shocking. The fact that there is nothing such has a male honour killing tells you all you need to know.

The use in the article of the word 'talibanesque' is shocking, way to bury the real issue in the typically banal rhetoric of the 'war-on-terror'.

[Námo]

Some say why don’t you love your neighbours, Go ahead, turn the other cheek
But there’s nobody on this planet that can ever be so meek
And I can’t bleed for you, You have to do it your own way
And there’s no religion, no religion, no religion here today


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlNK5ZJMP3U

Van Morrison: NO RELIGION

[Van the Man once lived in my neighbourhood in Copenhagen, he even did make some songs about it ... wonderful lyrics]

[Ash]

Small point: Britain was not founded on Christian beliefs. That's just plain wrong. For one thing, the first king of England Alfred the Great has never been confirmed as a practising member of any religion, although he was confirmed by the Pope during his youth. Then, in the more traditional view of the Norman invasion beginning England proper, William the Conqueror was also not a particularly religious man. Later, as we all know, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and quit the Catholic church. Then when the Puritans came along we kicked them out so they could go practice their weird absolutist bullshit on a different continent.

Basically, Britain doesn't have a history of being super-religious, and we especially don't care now.

I suppose it's a matter of just how far back you go. After paganism Christianity did kind of entrench itself pretty firmly. You can't argue how deep religion went in a country which rather enthusiastically took part in crusades, had shitloads of churches etc, and has a calendar which is quite clearly festooned with what have been subsumed to be Christian holidays (I'm sure we could all pick the bones of them being nicked from the pagans, etc, sure they were - but they're still used by Christianity, in the same way the majority of Roman gods are just Greek gods renamed...festival plagiarism is OlderThanYouThink ), and has a set of church denominations all its own. Henry VIII might have quit the Catholic church but that didn't stop him establishing one of his own. You might have heard of it: The Church of England. If he had not done this he'd have been accused of being a heathen by his own population who'd have risen up against him. Probably wouldn't have been a bad thing, considering he was the Tudor's answer to the current elected governments - Oyster card which only covers the gravy train, morally bankrupt and lavishly wasteful and corrupt beyond measure.

I don't see any evidence of the British Isles, or their constituent nations past and present, being very secular, except to talking to the modern man- or woman-on-the-street. Nor do you see much evidence of that in British culture, even today. Probably as a result of our brief reign of terror under Puritanical rule, as you state. Throughout history your average Joe/Jo did practice their faith. Whether they were more than merely dutifully religious is a matter of pure and unprovable speculation but you can't argue that there isn't a very strong Christian heritage in the country. I am not saying Christianity or any religion should be protected because of its impact on culture - you of all people should know that, Vort - what I will say is that I don't think it's right that the culture should be eroded. I suppose the term 'tradition' might be better to say, given that even religious holidays (such as Christmas) have been co-opted by a more secular society.

And basically I think that the traditions Britain has should be preserved and take precedence within Britain, whatever religious underpinnings they might have had. That was the point I was trying to make.

You end up with a totalitarian newspeak state

Haha, do you even know what you're saying any more?

Are you unfamiliar with the term 'political correctness'? I'm not advocating the right to go down the street shouting racial slurs at everyone you meet (although that might get my arrest figures up quite handily), but it really does seem sometimes like there is a verbal hygiene campaign going on.

[Hostile]

Seems there is going to be a long process of making people of one common sense change their mind to the "other" common sense. Some people are intolerent of tolerence, while others are tolerent of intolerence.

I believe this is the foundation for a potential clash of civilizations WWIII scenerio. I hope wiser, more tolerent minds prevail.

[some_weirdGuy]

Sorry, really need to say something here. Do you even what our calender is based on? You know, the birth of Christ? So even if Christianity was founded on the day of his birth Christianity would just be 2000 years old now. First Crusade was slightly before 1100. Islam was founded in the 600's. So 1100 years versus 1400.

uh, Elvenlord, perhaps you are unfamiliar with the bible but there is a whole first half based around everything which happened BEFORE Jesus. Christianity may have split of on its own some time after Jesus by accepting him as the messiah, but it is still strongly based off Judaism which is estimated to be more than 3000 years old(if i remember correctly).

But as for the rest; as I said, I couldn't be bothered to check stuff like when the crusades first occurred or when the Islamic faith was founded, its just something I heard in passing and so brought up here to make conversation.

[Elvenlord]

Yes. Judaism is that old. Not Christianity. If we do it your way Islam is the same age as well.

[Vortigern]

SWG: Christianity was founded in about 30 A.D., although it wasn't called that back then on account of how people hadn't accepted Jesus as their official lord and saviour yet, and it only became a state religion in 325 A.D. when Constantine the Great introduced the Nicaean Creed. The first Crusade began in 1096 and ran through to 1099, while the third Crusade was less than a hundred years later, running from 1189-92. That gives us a period of approximately eight or nine hundred years between the religion really taking off and its followers deciding to begin a holy war.

Islam only really gained major belief and respectability with the prophet Muhammad who was born somewhere around 570 A.D. and died in 632 A.D. It then only took about five hundred years for Muslim kingdoms to start enforcing their religion on new lands, such as previously Christian Turkey and southern Spain. Then the Crusades happened and Islam got knocked back a bit by the establishment of all the Crusader kingdoms in the holy land, and it's only recently that they've become militant again.

So, the two histories aren't really that comparable. Also, bear in mind that this is a very simplistic overview because I'm not really qualified to go into massive detail on either.

A small side note: Judaism does claim to be around 3'000 years old, which is reasonable and more or less provable, but if you count back the lifetimes in the geneaologies in the Bible, it should really be closer to 15'000 years old, I believe. Though that, of course, requires some willing suspension of disbelief inasmuch as apparently Methuselah lived some 900-odd years, and wasn't alone in having a ridiculously implausible lifespan.

[Námo]

Islam only really gained major belief and respectability with the prophet Muhammad who was born somewhere around 570 A.D. and died in 632 A.D. It then only took about five hundred years for Muslim kingdoms to start enforcing their religion on new lands, such as previously Christian Turkey and southern Spain. Then the Crusades happened and Islam got knocked back a bit by the establishment of all the Crusader kingdoms in the holy land, and it's only recently that they've become militant again.

This is not correct, please get your facts right.

First major wave of jihad was the Arab conquests from 622 AD to 750 AD, and the second major wave of jihad was the conguests of the Ottoman Impire (the Turks) from 1071 AD to 1683 AD. The Crusades were just a response to these waves of jihad, not the cause of them, cf.:

The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD

Near the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's expansion to stop with Arabia. [...] Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.

Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia.

This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.

The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD

Some twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades [...], but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.

excerpt from JihadWatch: Islam 101, part d.

The Third Major Wave of Jihad is what we are experiencing today.

[Vortigern]

Okay, I was unaware of the first wave of Jihad, but apart from that I was more or less right. And you'll note I did say that I'm no expert, which was sort of an invitation for people who knew more to add the details. It's pretty impressive that the Muslims got as far as Paris, though. I did not know that. Who'd have thought the French would actually be able to halt an invasion?

[Phil]

That's because they were still Germanic back then

[duke_Qa]

Yeah, the crusades are somewhat understandable when compared to all the lands that the Muslims had conquered before that time. Action and reaction.

But I dunno if the Muslim conquests saw as much bloodletting as the crusades did, as it seems that the Persian and Byzantine Roman empires fell easily to them. Primarily because they've fought each-other and lost a lot there, and they had annoyed religious groups more connected to the Abrahamic religions in their lands.

[Námo]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/apr/18/report-london-taliban-wear-headscarf-or-we-will-ki/

Being a practicing muslim for all my life it still saddens me each and everyday to see people who "share" the same religion as me pull nonsense like this. The problem is that it makes the whole population of the religion look bad, the few ruin it for the majority.

The real problem is, that those fundamentalists (Wahabi, Salafi, Ikhwan, etc. etc.) in fact constitute mainstream Islam, and that what they preach are rooted deeply in all the Islamic holy scriptures.

The problem with Islamic fundamentalism is the fundamentals of Islam

A similar example from Norway:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4ZllIoagsQ

BEHEADING FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT OBSERVE RAMADAN OR PRAY

A report aired on Norwegian State TV, NRK, about an Imam and private school founder in Oslo, Syed Farasat Ali Bukhari, who is firm on his opinion about how to treat those who don’t pay full attention to Islam in their daily life. He demands decapitation for those who will not follow Ramadan.

Human Rights representative, Hege Storhaug, explains to the journalist that this is nothing new to her. This is the mainstream Islam being preached in the mosques everywhere, she states. Based on her in depth knowledge about Islam, she is often being attacked verbally as being "racist". Some time back, Storhaug found herself in a pool of blood after an attack in her own home. Prior to this incident she could see "no racists in our neighborhood"-style messages written over posters with her photo on lampposts, in her neighborhood.

It should be noted, that such schools are heavily subsidized by the state.