"The issue of Islam" pretty much says it all right there. Reducing 1.6 billion people and 57 countries around the world down to a few youtube clips that agree with your priors is what I'm going to politely describe as "an interesting worldview". Here's your flag.
If you think that a reasoned, nuanced argument is going to bring this guy over to my point of view - that view being that reducing 1.6 billion people spread across 57 countries down to a couple of Sam Harris youtube clips is silly - I'll have to disagree. Also: why on earth would you think that?
I have had a reasoned and nuanced argument with some other guy on the topic of Islam the other day on HN. It's here FYI [1].
Once again, I am not reducing all Muslims to Islamists, so your argument fails. In fact, you are trying to reduce any criticism of Islam (the ideology/religion) as attack on Muslims worldwide. This same scare tactic is used by pseudo-liberals who wish to suppress any criticism of Islam in other public spheres too.
I am opposing the ideology of Islam and I do oppose other religious ideologies too. I am not a Christian. I have left all organized religions back long ago.
Sam Harris also is not reducing all Muslims to some thing.
No. I am pointing out that your "criticisms" are conveniently conflated, totally reductive, and divorced from any objective reality. You're doing all the reducing. Re-read your own words. Or as much as are your own, as you seem to have done some copy-and-pasting.
Or? Let's try this a different way: have you ever even attempted to identify what your "issue with Islam" is? You don't seem to have any single articulable criticism or complaint besides "the others are comin', see this scary video!". Have you even thought farther than that? Did you not feel the need to?
See, here's my take: I think you've invented a neat little alternate reality for yourself where you virtue signal your love for the western liberal tradition by valiantly fighting against the Other - one you imagine and encounter only online and never in real life - and now you're full on radicalized by filter-bubble friendly Youtube clips and rare Reddit pepes, imagining the looming Sharia monsters that are a comin'. I think this because, well, you've said as much, pretty explicitly, in your profile on this board. That's sad, and worrying, and I don't want you to think that it's normal or that you're engaged in some sort of normal debate.
Why do you need an Other? Have you asked yourself that? It's clear that you do - but why?
>>Let's try this a different way: have you ever even attempted to identify what your "issue with Islam" is?
My issue with Islam is its ideology and its doctrine. It's very similar to my issue with Nazism and white supremacist ideology like KKK. Do we think, that when someone criticizes Nazism/KKK are they reducing all German/white people to some bad thing? No.
It's very similar when it comes to Islam too. I criticize Islam. I criticize Islam's pedophile, rapist and thuggish prophet Muhammad. I criticize Islam's treatment of women and kaafirs (disbelievers). I criticize Islam's barbaric misogynist doctrines.
>> You don't seem to have any single articulable criticism or complaint besides "the others are comin', see this scary video!". Have you even thought farther than that? Did you not feel the need to?
I gave links to those videos as a starting point for the western world. But I do not base my criticism on these videos. I do base my criticism of Islam on the very foundational scriptures of Islam called Quran and Hadiths. Very similar how I criticize the Nazi ideology based on Mein Kampf.
You may wish to look into those scriptures to educate yourself about the vicious ideology of Islam.
Spoiler: I'm Muslim. Interacting with you, online, in a civil manner.
>It's very similar when it comes to Islam too. I criticize Islam. I criticize Islam's pedophile, rapist and thuggish prophet Muhammad. I criticize Islam's treatment of women and kaafirs (disbelievers). I criticize Islam's barbaric misogynist doctrines.
Again: zero to do with reality. Again: learn to interact with reality and not google. Very telling that you avoided answering any of my prior direct questions.
I've spent too much of my life listening to hate preachers try to misinterpret various Surah and Hadith to achieve objective (x); x is almost always silly, always nationalistic, and always wrong.
Watching you do the same thing to justify your desperate need for an Other - which you still refuse to acknowledge, and which again, is sad and worrying and a sign that you please, should see a doctor for this anxiety - reminds me very much of the behavior of a typical hate preacher. And that extremists of all types have so much in common with each other - namely, the willingness to ignore facts in the pursuit of satisfying dogma.
For what it's worth: if you want to tell me that there is a Muslim, or a group of Muslims somewhere in the world that mistreat women or 'kaffir' or what have you : that would be true! And conflating that group of people with anything that you can reasonably call Islam - a word used to represent 1.6 billion people, 57 countries, and millenia of history - is psychotic, and not a thing you can really do with any other religion or group of people without being called out directly for it, thankfully. Conflating a massive group of people by a cherry picked example of their worst is the exact definition of prejudice. I know that you won't accept that on the face of it, and your knee-jerk reaction is that you're armed with The Truth here - but take a deep breath. Cognitive dissonance can often be difficult to confront head on. Please try to do so.
Now - I believe this is your cue to explain to me that I really just want to turn you into a dhimmi; offer some whack-ass cherry picked mistranslated hadiths to prove that really, these noble savages just need to be shown the light; or copy paste some nonsense /b/ bullet points about how "Islam does X" in order to help you ignore the real human - this one, right in front of you! - telling you that faulty generalizations in the service of your priors is the telltale mark of a bigot. Go ahead, do what you want to do. And then, for the love of God - go to a doctor.
When you get back: why do you need an Other so badly? Second time I'm asking.
>>Spoiler: I'm Muslim. Interacting with you, online, in a civil manner.
Good and thanks for it. I do have many Muslim friends, some from Kurdish land. They are real good people.
>>copy paste some nonsense /b/ bullet points about how "Islam does X" in order to help you ignore the real human - this one, right in front of you! - telling you that faulty generalizations in the service of your priors is the telltale mark of a bigot. Go ahead, do what you want to do. And then, for the love of God - go to a doctor.
Who is doing a faulty generalization here? You may indeed be a good person despite being a Muslim, I have no problem in accepting that. But that doesn't make the ideology of Islam good.
And why only you? There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are good despite being Muslims. Hundreds of German people living under Nazi regime were good. Does it make Nazism good? No.
>>I've spent too much of my life listening to hate preachers try to misinterpret various Surah and Hadith to achieve objective (x); x is almost always silly, always nationalistic, and always wrong.
Okay, tell me, how, according to you, Islam tells its followers to treat apostates?
Also, tell me, how, according to you, Islam tells its followers to treat homosexuals?
I base my criticism of Islam on such issues.
>>which you still refuse to acknowledge, and which again, is sad and worrying and a sign that you please, should see a doctor for this anxiety - reminds me very much of the behavior of a typical hate preacher.
Thanks for your concern about my health, I am doing fine. Let me assure you, I don't preach hate. I am doing what I can do to help people realize the dangers posed by the ideology of Islam and I am telling them that do not confuse Islam with Muslim people. How is this hate preaching?
What about when Christians do it? Usually results in a viscous slave trade (Africa and the Caribbean) or genocide (colonization of North and Central America).
One side claims there is something fundamentally wrong with the religion of Islam and points to passages in the Quran. That side should, then, also note the fundamental problems with most major religions and point to passages in the Bible (old and new testament), the book of mormon, and other holy texts. But this side does not do that. That indicates to the other side that this is not a logical argument based on genuine fear of a hostile culture, but merely a race/religion war in different clothing (christians fearing muslims).
I wish to make it clear that I am not against Muslim people. But I am against the vicious and barbaric ideology of Islam. Many Muslims (especially Muslim women) are the foremost victims of Islam. So, please do not confuse Islam as an ideology with Muslims as people.
Similar thing applies to Christianity and other religions too. The Western world has been so successful on various fronts (especially on the modern, liberal and progressive cultural front) essentially because they defeated and discarded the barbaric Christianity by what we now call "separation of Church and state".
But Islamists (Muslims who wish/strive to bring Islam as ruler in the world) are trying to bring Sharia in the western world and the liberals here are quite dishonest about it.
> But Islamists (Muslims who wish/strive to bring Islam as ruler in the world) are trying to bring Sharia in the western world a
This is a fantasy that is born out of spending too much time on messageboards and not enough in reality. I get that you think that creeping sharia is on the horizon; go see a doctor about your anxiety issues, is my advice, because that statement is so far from reality that I can't imagine you'd take any other advice I'd give.
>>This is a fantasy that is born out of spending too much time on messageboards and not enough in reality.
Hope this [1] helps you see some reality. It seems UK has already allowed the barbaric and inhumane Sharia to exist there.
So, that's not at all fantasy.
