ISIL, Taliban = True Islam??

[TagliatelliMonster]

No. A religion is defined by what it teaches. Individuals who call themselves adherents are judged by how closely they follow said teachings.

And those doing the "judging" are themselves adherents with their own interpretation. This is essentially the "no true scottsman" fallacy.

That's a fundamental difference that you have backwards.

No. Actually, it supports what he said.

 

[Azrael Antilla]

Sorry, I don't mean the right to wear the Islamic dress code. I mean that it should be implemented as in society should be taught to wear that dress code and the law enforces it if and only if majority perceive the wisdom of it.

I'm arguing this is true regardless if Quran and Islam is true or not.

Id rather be burned alive at the stake than live in a nation in which islamic dress is compulsory. Naturally. As I despise the Islamic faith and all it stands for. I hate Islam with a passion. So no. I wouldn't agree with your sentiments. Not in a trillion years.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

There is no point in me, a believer, arguing with you, a disbeliever.

You got that right.
There is no point to that, because you as a believer have already decided what the truth is and adhere to it in dogmatic ways.

Discussion about anything that is dogmatically accepted as Truth, capital 'T', is an exercise in futility.

I judge by what G-d reveals to mankind, and you have an agenda of showing how G-d is wrong and foolish.

I do not have to answer for God, the Most High.
He is the Most Wise .. Aware.
You have your deeds, and I have mine.

Yep. Just blind dogmatic belief and nothing will sway you from it.
Likely you don't understand how that puts you in an intellectually dishonest position, which is the reason why any discussion or argument is an exercise in futility.

 

[Link]

He did. How else would you describe a girl "too young to have started menstruation"?

You can mention youngness and say too young for....

 

[Link]

Id rather be burned alive at the stake than live in a nation in which islamic dress is compulsory. Naturally. As I despise the Islamic faith and all it stands for. I hate Islam with a passion. So no. I wouldn't agree with your sentiments. Not in a trillion years.

I understand. Can you defend your stance though? As I said it's irrelevant if Islam is true or not. If you are up to the one on one debate let me know.

 

[Azrael Antilla]

I understand. Can you defend your stance though? As I said it's irrelevant if Islam is true or not. If you are up to the one on one debate let me know.

Sure bro. I can defend secular liberalism anytime.

 

[Azrael Antilla]

You got that right.
There is no point to that, because you as a believer have already decided what the truth is and adhere to it in dogmatic ways.

Discussion about anything that is dogmatically accepted as Truth, capital 'T', is an exercise in futility.



Yep. Just blind dogmatic belief and nothing will sway you from it.
Likely you don't understand how that puts you in an intellectually dishonest position, which is the reason why any discussion or argument is an exercise in futility.

We think it's futile. But one day. Your words will echo. In the minds of those who read them. You're doing sterling work for rationalism. Kudos.

 

[KWED]

I have not employed ad hominem. So you're dishonest and libellous too eh?

Brother Firedragon doesn't understand what an ad hom argument is.

 

[KWED]

Quran contains an explanation of all things in terms of guidance for humanity.

How many times a day does the Quran tell you to pray?

 

[stevecanuck]

???
Khalifa
As for the women who have reached menopause, if you have any doubts, their interim shall be three months. As for those who do not menstruate, and discover that they are pregnant, their interim ends upon giving birth. Anyone who reverences GOD, He makes everything easy for him.
Yusuf Ali
Such of your women as have passed the age of monthly courses, for them the prescribed period, if ye have any doubts, is three months, and for those who have no courses (it is the same): for those who carry (life within their wombs), their period is until they deliver their burdens: and for those who fear God, He will make their path easy.
Pickthal
And for such of your women as despair of menstruation, if ye doubt, their period (of waiting) shall be three months, along with those who have it not. And for those with child, their period shall be till they bring forth their burden. And whosoever keepeth his duty to Allah, He maketh his course easy for him.
Shakir
And (as for) those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, if you have a doubt, their prescribed time shall be three months, and of those too who have not had their courses; and (as for) the pregnant women, their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair.
Sher Ali
And if you are in doubt as to the prescribed period for such of your women as have despaired of monthly courses, then know that the prescribed period for them is three months, and also for such as do not have their monthly courses yet. And as for those who are with child, their period shall be until they are delivered of their burden. And whoso fears Allah, HE will provide facilities for him in his affair.
"Progressive Muslims"
As for the women who have reached menopause, if you have any doubts, their interim shall be three months. As for those who do not menstruate, and discover that they are pregnant, their interim ends upon giving birth. Anyone who reverences God, He makes everything easy for him.

Was that a question for me or a statement?

 

[KWED]

The dress code of Islam is a human right that should be implemented by all governments whether Islam is true or not. I can have one on one debate about this if you wish.

What is "the dress code of Islam", and why should non-Muslims have to abide by it?

 

[KWED]

The only way to make Islam sound compatible with the modern world is to lie about what it teaches.

It certainly seems like that is the approach taken by some.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I can indeed argue that they are wrong. You can cherry-pick your scholars. I agree with you that the "scholars" you pick are well known, but that doesn't mean you are right, about it being about immature girls.

You haven't argued that they are wrong. You have just claimed it. The words speak for themselves. He provided four examples explaining that the reference is to prepubertal girls. They specifically referred to girls too young to have menstruated yet. Rather than explaining why those words don't mean what they plainly mean, you wave them away by using the phrase "cherry picking." That phrase, like "you took it out of context," implies that there is other text that shows that those words don't have their apparent meaning. If that's not what you mean, the objection is empty, and if it is what you mean, it is incumbent on you if you want to be believed to provide the missing textual evidence that demonstrates that you are correct. You didn't do that. You just have an unsupported claim. You know how those are treated by skeptics.

There is no point in me, a believer, arguing with you, a disbeliever.

There would be if you had a convincing case you could present. You're posting to a skeptical audience that is open to you making a compelling case and teaching them something new. Of course, to do that, you have to play on their field and by their rules, since they are the ones who decide if you have made your case according to the standards of critical analysis. Look at how the Muslims on this thread are posting. You're hoping to be believed by assertion. Another is giving us his theology, which is also not an argument. And a third is busy trying to disqualify opinions he doesn't like with claims that others don't know enough Arabic to have an opinion. None of you are making arguments at all, much less fallacy-free chains of reasoning leading to sound conclusions. You all just give your opinions about what Islam is and then repeat them when they are countered with conflicting evidence. Nothing less has persuasive power on the skeptics' field.

There are two atheists who claim they can make exegesis of the Qur'an with out even a Childs knowledge in the arabic language. Im sorry to say but that is not exegesis, but learning off some website.

Not your call. You don't define what writing is valid. I find @KWED 's arguments compelling, and you haven't done a thing to refute them.

Just look at these so called atheists who are citing arabic words as if they are experts and making exegesis with absolutely no knowledge. Its truly pathetic.

It must frustrate you that you cannot stop it.

What might frustrate you even more is recognizing that what you have actually accomplished with this thread is the opposite of your apparent intent - to make Islam look better in the eyes of non-Muslims. The reason for that is that you don't understand your target audience. You don't know what their standards for processing information and deciding what is true are, so you bring what apparently works for you in other settings, perhaps when interacting with other faith-based believers also unskilled in the critical analysis of arguments, people who also make empty claims (unsupported) claims and fallacious arguments that they expect will be believed. You're on an even footing there.

The problem for you there is that you actually have the opposite effect of that which you intended when you make the same comments to critical thinkers. What do you think you have actually accomplished? Do you think that others see Islam and Muslims more favorably, less so, or the same because of this thread?

As I've told you before (and you've misunderstood), much of my understanding of these things comes directly from Muslims like you in venues like this. You claim that all we know about Islam is what lying, Islamophobic media indoctrinate us to believe. Wrong. There are many sources of information about Islam.

One such source is the people who disagree with you, and who post compelling evidence and arguments about Islam and its writings, evidence that contradicts you that no Muslim on this thread has successfully rebutted. I value the input of well-informed outsiders much more than that of the faithful trying to sanitize their religion. Their agenda is to get to the truth that reason applied properly to relevant evidence produces.

Yours is to counter that and perpetuate an illusion - a sanitized Islam - and you do that with techniques that are unpersuasive to your audience. So, your meta-message (ethos) is much different than your intended message (logos), and it is the latter which penetrates. Unfortunately, your meta-message is that you have no case and are willing to use the kind of tactics you do to promote your faith and disqualify any dissent with fiats of irrelevance or the lack of qualification to comment.

Once again, are you completely unaware of the message you actually send doing that? Maybe. I've been coming more and more to the conclusion that there simply are no people who both know what critical thought is and don't use it themselves. It seems that one can safely conclude that when he sees all of this other kind of thing - reaching for every tool in the persuasion box except a sound, evidenced argument - it's because he is unaware that such things exist, that there are others who respect the power of fallacy-free thought and have learned to think that way, and reject all other approaches. Why else would they keep bringing that stuff to these discussions? Why else would you think this could be effective rather than counterproductive except that you just aren't aware of this other way of deciding what is true about the world?

Anyway, as long as you misjudge your audience, your posting will continue to reinforce in them that their way of thinking is preferable to the alternative, and that the output of their way of thinking is more reliable than that of one who can't make or recognize a sound argument not merely because they aren't quite proficient enough yet in argumentation, but because they don't know that such a thing exists, much less how powerful the method is.

A little bit of humility would do. But when underlying intentions of spreading hatred take over, none of this matter.

You've got it wrong. There is no intention of spreading hatred coming from those disagreeing with you. And how quickly you resort to that kind of demeaning of those who disagree with you. They can't just be dissenters in search of truth using standards you cannot meet. These people don't frame you in analogous terms. When you misrepresented my words earlier, I asked you if you had a reading comprehension issue or were lying, a question you refused to consider or answer, hand-waving it away with a declaration of "ad hominem."

Incidentally, when you choose to not have any input into a question such as the one I asked you, you help with the non-answer. I have to ask myself is it more likely that you really didn't know that you had misrepresented my words, or that you did know that, i.e., that you were lying. What does it mean that you didn't show any interest in correcting an error if you had made one, or apologizing for so doing. I'm pretty sure that if I had accidentally misrepresented you, and you pointed it out to me, I would go back to the text in question, reexamine it, and either show you why I disagreed with you or apologize for my error (dialectic).

I would be anxious to let you know that I was not knowingly misrepresenting you, because that's a behavior I object to in others, and a reputation that I don't want to have. You don't seem to have that same concern about how you are perceived, nor any desire to make things right if you are wrong. Why? Probably because we are very different kinds of people with different values, different methods, and a different agenda. Yours seems to be the same as the Christian apologists.

This, too, is how we can learn about Islam. This is the lab part, the practical education.

And you can learn about secular humanism from reading what humanists write rather than from people with an agenda to discredit them. That's the lab for you, if you are a student. Or, just go on projecting hatred and Islamophobia onto such people as you have likely been taught through indoctrination, a belief clearly contradicted by the gentle, even manner, reasonableness, and eminent fairness of those people.

It's actually you who is spreading the hatred, as when you call others haters for disagreeing with you..

Come on, you need to do better than this.

Nice work. Thanks for the education.

 

[KWED]

I can indeed argue that they are wrong.

But you will need to present a cogent argument.

You can cherry-pick your scholars.

Quoting four major scholars is hardly "cherry-picking". You advent even cited a single scholar.

I agree with you that the "scholars" you pick are well known, but that doesn't mean you are right, about it being about immature girls.

So we are back to the "all those Classical Arabic speaking, authoritative scholars are wrong, and a random bloke on the internet is right" argument.
Not very convincing.

It doesn't make sense. What father would want their daughters to be sexually active before puberty? It's ludicrous.

Argument from personal incredulity fallacy. Are you saying that you only accept god's word if it makes sense to you? What happened to "Allak knows best"?

Women often miss periods, for various reasons.

The passage does is not referring to them. It talks about those who have not started menstruation.

I have 6 daughters.

Good for you. Would you be happy for them to get married and have sex aged 9 or 10?

 

[Augustus]

Depends what the context is.

This one of course

Empathy, altruism, cooperation are far more important than violence against out-groups.
Maybe you're just hanging with the wrong crowd?

No idea what point you think you are replying to but it's got nothing to do with anything I said

My point was that empathy, a "good" characteristic can drive harmful behaviour.

There is scientific evidence to support this, an overview:

Empathy seems like a good quality in human beings. Pure and simple.

It allows us to consider the perspective of others — to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine their experiences. From that empathetic vantage point, only good things can come, right?

Not necessarily, according to author Fritz Breithaupt. "Sometimes we commit atrocities not out of a failure of empathy but rather as a direct consequence of successful, even overly successful, empathy,"

Does Empathy Have A Dark Side?

WADR, trying to justify unnecessary violence as "just a part of nature" is pretty strange. As a society we have long moved beyond using violence as the default means of settling issues.
Maybe you're just hanging with the wrong crowd?

There is no such thing as a "default" means of settling issues. One measure of settling issues that is still common throughout the world is violence though and that violence is often justified as being 'noble' and humanistic such as the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars.

The concept of belli justi is obviously subjective, but it is possible to wage one without "doing evil".

If you are willing to excuse the waging of aggressive wars based on lies that had no chance of achieving their objectives and resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths as being acceptable then you probably shouldn't be criticising the ethics of other people imo...

What does "killed in the name of progress" mean? Can you Gove some examples? Surely spreading religion and wiping out godlessness is considered "progress" by those doing it.

From the post-French Revolutionary violence, to colonialism, to communism to the Iraq War, Libyan regime change etc.

All those things were more ideological than scientific.

It amazes me how many 'rationalists' uncritically repeat such an obvious fallacy that they could fact check themselves in 5 mins.

They were considered perfectly scientific at the time by people from right across the political spectrum.

Unless we use hindsight to rewrite the past, which is certainly not rational, eugenics etc were supported by the equivalent of scientific rationalists.

An example of the latter would be this 'Eugenics Manifesto' published in the prestigious journal Nature (one notable signature: founding President of the British Humanist Society, Julian Huxley).

Obviously the issue is far more complicated than saying "eugenics = evil" given things like birth control fell under the umbrella of eugenics, but the idea it wasn't viewed as scientific, including the more controversial forms of eugenics is pure fantasy.

??

Malthus was a major influence on people such as Charles Darwin etc. and also a major influence on the colonial administrators in India as a Professor of Political Economy who taught East India Company officials.

His view lead to the idea that subsidising the poor was harmful, and thus the rational, utilitarian view of things was to 'let nature take its course'.

This directly impacted famine policies, for example:

In the first two decades after Britain assumed direct responsibility for the administration of India, parts of the country were subject to devastating famine, particularly in Orissa in 1866 and Bengal in 1874. Ambirajan found that during these critical years many in the administration were con- verted to a Malthusian view of the situation. Lord Edward Lytton, Gover- nor-General during 1876-80, was convinced that famine should be solved by the market, telling the Legislative Council in 1877 that the Indian popu- lation "has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil" ... An 1881 report concluded that 80 percent of famine victims were drawn from the poorest 20 percent
of the population, and if such deaths were prevented this stratum of the population would still be unable to adopt prudential restraint. Thus, if the government spent more of its revenue on famine relief, an even larger proportion of the population would become penurious. Ambirajan (1976: 7-1 1) concluded that, although the administration was divided about the value of famine relief, these Malthusian views undoubtedly affected its volume and timing.

Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India - John C. Caldwell

Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India on JSTOR

Your claims that science gets good people to do evil is obviously nonsense, although ideologies sometimes misrepresent science for their own ends.

My claim was that people of good faith acting in the spirit of scientific rationalism can get good people to do evil things, and this is pretty much an established historical fact whether you choose to remain ignorant of it or not. Can lead a horse to water and all that.

It's perfectly obvious that a combination of utilitarianism and a certain kind of "scientific" belief could easily lead people to support or at least be indifferent to eugenics, Malthusian approaches to famine, the replacement of "inferior" races, etc.

Look at the views of Darwin himself:

In the Origin of Species Darwin had avoided a direct discussion of the significance of the theory of natural selection for human history. But in his letters he was more candid.

He wrote to Alfred Wallace in 1864: "Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese or Negro) than the middle classes, from [having the] pick of the women; but oh, what a shame is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection!"37 In his Descent of Man (1871), Darwin came directly to the point: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."38 Darwin added, however, that even if men could restrain their sympathy for the less fortunate members of society, it would only be by a deterioration of the most noble part of their nature.

But Darwin did not expect all men to act in such a noble manner. This and the increase in human population meant that men would never escape the evils arising from the struggle for existence. But this was not a bad thing, Darwin assured his readers: if men had not been subject to natural selection in former times, they would not have attained their present eminence in the world.39 Darwin's strong belief in the importance of natural selection for the development of human society by eliminating the "unfit" continued to the end of his life.

A year before his death, he complained to W. Graham that natural selection did more for the progress of civilization than Graham wanted to admit: "Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so- called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an end- less number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."

Rogers, JA, Darwinism and Social Darwinism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(2)

Although certainly a product of his time, Darwin himself was a fairly moral and liberal fellow who wasn't maliciously bigoted, but it is pretty obvious that the views he held could easily be used to justify all kinds of terrible behaviour and fed directly into the common 'Social Darwinistic' views of the day championed by the likes of Herbert Spencer (although even thinking that people back then neatly differentiated Darwinian evolution from Social Dawinism could be seen as misleading).

Without the benefit of hindsight, for the adherents in the late 19th early 20th C this was not the 'misuse' of scientific ideas, but a good faith, rational application of them towards the social issues of the day with a goal of contributing to the greater good.

That much of the science turned out to be wrong and that our moral sensibilities have thankfully changed doesn't alter the clear fact that scientific rationalists acting in good faith supported policies we would today deem evil.

 

[KWED]

No, I don't. I judge by what G-d has revealed.
What people do is none of my business.
I would advise them, but if they are not breaking the law..

You seem confused.
Either women should be allowed to wear what they want, or they should have to wear what they are told.
Which is it?

 

[KWED]

Mohammad (s) and his family (a) are the cure to dark magic, they are the light and place of refuge.

But Muhammad confirms interpretations that you claim are only caused by dark magic.

 

[sun rise]

Was that a question for me or a statement?

It was a statement that the verse was about older women who are in menopause.

 

[KWED]

So saying "Free the slave" is not good enough for you in a world where slavery was the accepted norm. I suppose you are equally vehement about attacking other religions for the same reason and attacking the founders for institutionalizing slavery in the Constitution over 1000 years later.

It doesn't say "free all slaves", it says that freeing a slave is a good deed that can assuage sin or gain entry points for paradise.

You need to bear in mind the context where in the early days of his preaching, many of the early followers were slaves. They were bought and freed if they converted to Islam. However, Muhammad and his companions still kept and traded their own slaves.

 

[KWED]

It means to you what you think it means.
There is no point in me, a believer, arguing with you, a disbeliever.

Ok. What about a genuine Islamic scholar?
"When the question is asked: why does Islam permit slavery? We reply emphatically and without shame that slavery is permitted in Islam" - Shaykh Muhammad al Munajjid

I judge by what G-d reveals to mankind,

But you don't. God reveals stuff in the Quran. Muhammad confirms it in ahadith. You disagree with it.

and you have an agenda of showing how G-d is wrong and foolish.

When it comes to things like slavery, god is cruel and unjust rater than mere wrong and foolish.