Is Islam peaceful?

[Epic Beard Man]

Even if - for the sake of discussion - I granted you those things, that was a thousand years ago. What has Islam done for the world since then?

Islam or the Muslim community? Remember Islam is the ideology, Muslims are the ones that express said ideology. Unfortunately, as Neil Degrass Tyson explains some of the works of Al-Ghazali was taken quite literal coupled with extremism and lack of advancement in education. I wouldn't blame Islam I would blame the socio-political factors that inhibited the progression of Muslim contributions to the world.

 

[Augustus]

Unfortunately, as Neil Degrass Tyson explains some of the works of Al-Ghazali was taken quite literal coupled with extremism and lack of advancement in education.

The history in that series is woeful, wouldn't put too much stock in it.

 

[icehorse]

The decline of the GA was caused by the decline of the things that caused the GA: massive wealth, patronage, stability, paper as a new technology, etc. You don't think Islam caused the GA after all.

After Ghazali there was no decline in philosophy, there was actually an increase, and numerous advances happened after his time.

It's even debatable whether or not there was a decline (was really a slowing of progress over centuries), advancement is relative and the Europeans overtook the Muslim Empires as they fragmented, were conquered and fought. Output dropped significantly in some places but not in others, although being smaller they produced less overall.

Why are you so certain it was an internal issue in Islam?

Well let's recall that - according to Muslims themselves - Islam is a "total life solution". So it's a stretch to say that "Islam has nothing to do with it". As you know from our many discussions, I'm not making the simplistic claim that "it's all because of Islam", my claim is that Islam is a significant factor.

As for your "no decline in philosophy" idea, as I understand it, Ghazali led the charge to a significant shift in the philosophical approach. And his shift was largely AWAY from science and evidence, and towards the idea that things happened because Allah wanted them to.

 

[icehorse]

Islam or the Muslim community? Remember Islam is the ideology, Muslims are the ones that express said ideology. Unfortunately, as Neil Degrass Tyson explains some of the works of Al-Ghazali was taken quite literal coupled with extremism and lack of advancement in education. I wouldn't blame Islam I would blame the socio-political factors that inhibited the progression of Muslim contributions to the world.

Who would you blame?

 

[sayak83]

The last 50 years hindus and buddahists killed more muslims than the west has. What kind of non-sense are you talking about ? Not colonized like indians ? I don't even know....... what ? Not colonized ? hahahaha, lawrence of arabia must be fake, france occupying syria is also fake, the ottomans, the british, the americans, what the hell is this and now israel. Maybe russia is going to occupy next. You don't remember Winston Churchill overthrowing the government of iran because the iranians wanted the control their own oil ?

The native americans died mostly of disease the europeans brought from europe. Most native americans from when the europeans died never ever met a european or a white man, it was rare. Natives who interacted with the european spread disease to other natives who never saw or heard of this whiteman and more of them died that way.

India has a much bigger problem than religion, the problem is trying to breathe clean air, maybe vishnu or rashoo, or radoo, the lord of whatever can manifest himself into a large vacuum cleaner and suck the bad air in india.

Terrorism is less of an issue in india than just breathing and you know this. May the manifestation of whatever god(s) you believe in guide you. Maybe it will be kung fu panda.

Your reply makes my point well. The best way to showcase the regressive nature of current mainstream Islam is to let Muslims speak for themselves. Not everyone, but a lot. And FYI, in the last half a century more Hindus have been killed by Muslims than the other way round. Pakistan had 23% Hindu population when it became independent, now its just 3%. India had 10% Muslims when it became independent, now its 14%. There are problems with minorities in every country, but the stats speak for themselves on how Muslims treat people of other religion when they are a majority. Your reply above shows it too.

 

[MohammadPali]

Turkish delight is the worst dessert in history

"Hmmm, we need a flavour for this pudding. I know let's stick a bar of hand soap into a jelly, that'll be marvellous."



Not in the slightest. 2000 years ago most Middle Easterners weren't Arabs. Palestinians weren't Arabs. Jews weren't Arabs. Levantines weren't Arabs. Persians weren't Arabs. Arabs were the people who lived in Arabia, hence the name.

You obviously never heard of abraham peace be upon him. And im only saying its a arab religion because the whole region is mostly arabs today. I know its founder never met jesus and couldn't even quote a single parable from jesus.


This thread is no longer about if islam is peaceful, its about your religion is better than mine, because you watch fox news or listen to hard line right wing yall'qaeda new sites, breitbart, fox etc etc and you know better than anyone else. When one looney radical muslim does something, you base the entire religion on it. 1.6 billion muslims in this world. Are you that stupid ?

You guys know more about islam than the muslims do apparently. And are all for banning muslims from agrabah, the city from Aladdin, who consequently gave us the movie Aladdin. I won't be surprised if you want to ban flying carpets from arabia. Surprised the movie prince of persia even made it to the movie theaters.

Christianity in america brought the most segregated moments in mankinds history. A white church, and a black church in the 1960''s. A hispanic church, a Lithuanian church. The only church I ever saw that was totally mixed was the jehova witnesses.

In arabic theres no such thing as someone calling someone black, it doesn't even make sense, you can't say that mosque for black people, or that mosque for white people, it doesn't make sense. I can go to any mosque and feel accepted knowing its based off 1 book and not some 17 denominations, different theories, different ideologies, and even different races.

I've prayed with non-arab muslims and theres absolutely never an issue of race ever, I even prayed with shia. Its all the same. The politics is what separates good people.

 

[MohammadPali]

Your reply makes my point well. The best way to showcase the regressive nature of current mainstream Islam is to let Muslims speak for themselves. Not everyone, but a lot. And FYI, in the last half a century more Hindus have been killed by Muslims than the other way round. Pakistan had 23% Hindu population when it became independent, now its just 3%. India had 10% Muslims when it became independent, now its 14%. There are problems with minorities in every country, but the stats speak for themselves on how Muslims treat people of other religion when they are a majority. Your reply above shows it too.

ahahahahahahahaha holy shiva, and vishnu, and lord of the rings, what the hell is this ? lol. Thats complete non-sense. I am not even going to post statistics, ill let the cow dung linger. And just for that, im going to eat a cheeseburger and think of you and laugh.

 

[sayak83]

ahahahahahahahaha holy shiva, and vishnu, and lord of the rings, what the hell is this ? lol. Thats complete non-sense. I am not even going to post statistics, ill let the cow dung linger. And just for that, im going to eat a cheeseburger and think of you and laugh.

Do as you wish. Continue to embarrass yourself by prostration before a false God.

 

[Augustus]

You obviously never heard of abraham peace be upon him. And im only saying its a arab religion because the whole region is mostly arabs today.

So you are being deliberately wrong? Ok, suit yourself.

This thread is no longer about if islam is peaceful, its about your religion is better than mine

Mostly from you apparently

, because you watch fox news or listen to hard line right wing yall'qaeda new sites, breitbart, fox etc etc and you know better than anyone else. When one looney radical muslim does something, you base the entire religion on it. 1.6 billion muslims in this world. Are you that stupid ?

You guys know more about islam than the muslims do apparently. And are all for banning muslims from agrabah, the city from Aladdin, who consequently gave us the movie Aladdin. I won't be surprised if you want to ban flying carpets from arabia. Surprised the movie prince of persia even made it to the movie theaters.

Christianity in america brought the most segregated moments in mankinds history. A white church, and a black church in the 1960''s. A hispanic church, a Lithuanian church. The only church I ever saw that was totally mixed was the jehova witnesses.

In arabic theres no such thing as someone calling someone black, it doesn't even make sense, you can't say that mosque for black people, or that mosque for white people, it doesn't make sense. I can go to any mosque and feel accepted knowing its based off 1 book and not some 17 denominations, different theories, different ideologies, and even different races.

I've prayed with non-arab muslims and theres absolutely never an issue of race ever, I even prayed with shia. Its all the same. The politics is what separates good people.

Cool story bro. Nothing to do with anything I've said, but thanks for sharing.

And if you think there's no racism in Arabia then you are even more deluded than you seem in your funny little cow rants

 

[sayak83]

You obviously never heard of abraham peace be upon him. And im only saying its a arab religion because the whole region is mostly arabs today. I know its founder never met jesus and couldn't even quote a single parable from jesus.


This thread is no longer about if islam is peaceful, its about your religion is better than mine, because you watch fox news or listen to hard line right wing yall'qaeda new sites, breitbart, fox etc etc and you know better than anyone else. When one looney radical muslim does something, you base the entire religion on it. 1.6 billion muslims in this world. Are you that stupid ?

You guys know more about islam than the muslims do apparently. And are all for banning muslims from agrabah, the city from Aladdin, who consequently gave us the movie Aladdin. I won't be surprised if you want to ban flying carpets from arabia. Surprised the movie prince of persia even made it to the movie theaters.

Christianity in america brought the most segregated moments in mankinds history. A white church, and a black church in the 1960''s. A hispanic church, a Lithuanian church. The only church I ever saw that was totally mixed was the jehova witnesses.

In arabic theres no such thing as someone calling someone black, it doesn't even make sense, you can't say that mosque for black people, or that mosque for white people, it doesn't make sense. I can go to any mosque and feel accepted knowing its based off 1 book and not some 17 denominations, different theories, different ideologies, and even different races.

I've prayed with non-arab muslims and theres absolutely never an issue of race ever, I even prayed with shia. Its all the same. The politics is what separates good people.

Ahem
History of slavery in the Muslim world - Wikipedia

Bernard Lewis writes: "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire." He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside.[33] According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.[26]

The 'Arab' slave trade is sometimes called the 'Islamic' slave trade. Bernard Lewis writes that "polytheists and idolaters were seen primarily as sources of slaves, to be imported into the Islamic world and molded in Islamic ways, and, since they possessed no religion of their own worth the mention, as natural recruits for Islam."[34] Patrick Manning states that religion was hardly the point of this slavery.[35] Also, this term suggests comparison between Islamic slave trade and Christian slave trade. Propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.[36]

Arab or Islamic slave trade lasted much longer than Atlantic or European slave trade: "It began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade, we're talking of 14 centuries rather than four." Further, "whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade, it was two females to every male," according to Ronald Segal[37]

You don't know Islamic history, as your bias for Islam makes you blind to much of it.

 

[Augustus]

Well let's recall that - according to Muslims themselves - Islam is a "total life solution". So it's a stretch to say that "Islam has nothing to do with it". As you know from our many discussions, I'm not making the simplistic claim that "it's all because of Islam", my claim is that Islam is a significant factor.

So when you said it was 'it was internal forces within Islam that ended the golden age. It was NOT outside forces.' you actually meant something different?

As for your "no decline in philosophy" idea, as I understand it, Ghazali led the charge to a significant shift in the philosophical approach. And his shift was largely AWAY from science and evidence, and towards the idea that things happened because Allah wanted them to.

It's a nice little narrative that seems to explain things and matches people's ideological expectations, but is very superficial and doesn't seem to match with the actual evidence.

Significant advances in astronomy, medicine, maths, etc. were still being made in the Islamic Empires centuries after Ghazali and up until a long way into the Ottoman period.

Where would you expect scientific development to be most dynamic:

a) large Empire with strong, stable government with solid legitimacy, vast resources and investment, an influx of new knowledge, an amazing new technology (paper) just added to the mix
b) numerous smaller empires, frequent conquests and changes in ruling elite, struggle to establish legitimacy of these, fewer resources due to changing nature of global trade.

The idea that Ghazali's Occasionalism had more influence than significant structural changes to society, especially given the fact that advances were still being made is not very tenable.

It's a pretty much the same as the 'Dark Ages' myth that was the dominant paradigm yet doesn't really stand up to modern scholarship.

 

[icehorse]

So when you said it was 'it was internal forces within Islam that ended the golden age. It was NOT outside forces.' you actually meant something different?

If your'e saying that you'd agree with "Islam was a significant factor" I'm happy to leave it there.

Significant advances in astronomy, medicine, maths, etc. were still being made in the Islamic Empires centuries after Ghazali and up until a long way into the Ottoman period.

Can you cite a few of these way-after-Ghazali advances that were for the sake of science, not for the sake of confirming the Quran?

 

[MohammadPali]

Ahem
History of slavery in the Muslim world - Wikipedia

Bernard Lewis writes: "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire." He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside.[33] According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.[26]

The 'Arab' slave trade is sometimes called the 'Islamic' slave trade. Bernard Lewis writes that "polytheists and idolaters were seen primarily as sources of slaves, to be imported into the Islamic world and molded in Islamic ways, and, since they possessed no religion of their own worth the mention, as natural recruits for Islam."[34] Patrick Manning states that religion was hardly the point of this slavery.[35] Also, this term suggests comparison between Islamic slave trade and Christian slave trade. Propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.[36]

Arab or Islamic slave trade lasted much longer than Atlantic or European slave trade: "It began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade, we're talking of 14 centuries rather than four." Further, "whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade, it was two females to every male," according to Ronald Segal[37]

You don't know Islamic history, as your bias for Islam makes you blind to much of it.

Okay, lets talk about slavery in general, did all muslims practice slavery ? No. But you're talking in a general sense that ALL muslims had slaves, or were involved in slavery of some sort. Not all muslims cared for slavery, and the muslim empire went from spain all the way to parts of mongolia almost. Did everyone really have a slave or practiced slavery, GET REAL.


BUT YOU KNOW WHAT ? Hinduism has been around some 3,500 years, and you know what they have ? A CASTE SYSTEM. So 3,500 years of caste system is pretty damn awful, and id rather live a life as a cow than to be someone from the caste system.

The caste system is just as bad slavery, in some ways it is. I feel bad for these people. If a man dies they would throw their wives in the fire. This has been going on some 3,500 years ?

So deepak chauderwall from hinderbinderbad who suffers from the caste system would rather be some other animal right now because the hinduism is not a fair and loving religion. It deprives man of FREE WILL.

 

[MohammadPali]

So you are being deliberately wrong? Ok, suit yourself.




Mostly from you apparently



Cool story bro. Nothing to do with anything I've said, but thanks for sharing.

And if you think there's no racism in Arabia then you are even more deluded than you seem in your funny little cow rants

There isn't alot of racism in arab countries to be honest. As a matter of fact theres more indians that go to arab countries than vice versa. I don't want to go to india, it sucks.

 

[MohammadPali]

Do as you wish. Continue to embarrass yourself by prostration before a false God.

I dare you to bathe in one of those holy rivers of hindu.

 

[1robin]

Why am I not surprised you backed out.

You made the claim, then ran off with your tail between your legs.

Go ahead, make your case and let's see.

Yes no prob, see you tomorrow.

Well I gave you your chance. You didn't even try to defend Islam, you didn't even hint that anything in my original arguments was incorrect, nor were you willing to go toe to toe comparing which faith was the most violent. Three strikes, your out (of the debate as far as I am concerned).

 

[icehorse]

There isn't alot of racism in arab countries to be honest. As a matter of fact theres more indians that go to arab countries than vice versa. I don't want to go to india, it sucks.

There is a LOT of non-Muslim religious intolerance.

 

[MohammadPali]

There is a LOT of non-Muslim religious intolerance.

No wonder why so many westerners flock to the arab countries, theres alot of non-muslim religious tolerance there. What part of the US are you from ? That should explain your theory.

 

[MohammadPali]

There is a LOT of non-Muslim religious intolerance.

Theres alot of non tolerance here in america too, don't say your **** dont stick either man. I'd like to know what state you from, that will answer all the questions.

 

[icehorse]

No wonder why so many westerners flock to the arab countries, theres alot of non-muslim religious tolerance there. What part of the US are you from ? That should explain your theory.

First off... really? Westerners are flocking to the ME?

Well UN Watch - for one - disagrees with you: