Europe submits voluntarily

[whichphilosophy]

It seems to me that for some it is far easier to blame everything on the West for the abominations of islamic extremism than look closer to home for its real origins, which is plain and simply, islam.

The abominations are there alright but the dictators were able to contain them until we removed them. Now the genies are out of the bottles.

 

[Bomb#20]

Your claim was that the existence or absence of Sharia courts is a triviality, which is <expletive deleted>, for the very obvious reason that one scenario grants legal authority, and the other does not. You can have people illegally victimizing others and citing Islam as their justification, but the mere suggestion that this is somehow equivalent to a court imposing Sharia on non-Muslims, and having legal apparatuses to force people to comply with it, is <expletive deleted> ridiculous.

But that's not the suggestion I made. That's you inventing a suggestion by reading carelessly and/or making groundless assumptions about what came before you started reading, and then imputing your suggestion to me. It looks like the reason you did that is because you think I'm pond scum, and you think whether you tell the truth about pond scum isn't important enough for you to have any obligation to do two minutes of fact-checking before you put words in pond scum's mouth. You really ought to butt out of other people's discussions if you can't be bothered to come up to speed.

The latter is never going to happen in Europe, which is what Zoidberg accurately pointed out to you.

Maybe it's going to and maybe it isn't; but (a) that's not the point in dispute, and (b) even if that had been the point in dispute, your opinion that it's never going to happen isn't worth two cents. Nobody has any obligation to take your word for it, and nobody's failure to believe you when you make your ex cathedra rulings about what the future will bring means he's irrational.

Do you have a reason to think such zones don't exist? Or are you taking it for granted that anything one of your political opponent says is automatically false if you sneer at it enough? Supposing, hypothetically, that there were such areas, how do you think we would know? Would a country containing them perhaps publish a public caution on its government website with all the known no-go areas marked on a map?

By all means, tell us what if anything you would regard as evidence for the existence of a no-go area. Conversely, if no observation would persuade you, that means you are a faith-based initiative.

Oh, give me a <expletive deleted> break. I guess I'm taking it on faith that the U.S. government didn't destroy the World Trade Center and isn't building FEMA camps, right? Because it's my job to go disproving every <expletive deleted> crazy claim tossed out by wingnuts.

Is English perhaps not your first language, Warpoet? Are you unfamiliar with the word "if"? I didn't claim you were taking it on faith; I simply pointed out, correctly, that IF no observation would persuade you THEN you are taking it on faith. I asked you a question. Here it is again:

Supposing, hypothetically, that there were such areas, how do you think we would know?​

Did you not understand the question or are you refusing to answer it?

That I have to explain the difference between "refusing to believe something in spite of evidence" and "not accepting outlandish claims until presented with evidence," on an atheist forum of all places, is pretty sad.

You did not have to explain that. You did not have any reason to believe you needed to explain it. You are simply reading my posts carelessly and deciding they mean things you have no reason to think they mean.

He who makes assertions, backs them up, using credible sources. If you think that Muslims in Europe have been allowed to establish their own autonomous enclaves and that the police are too scared to assert themselves there, there ought to be plenty of credible sources you can cite to support your claim.

My claim? What claim? Did you see me claim that Muslims in Europe have been allowed to establish their own autonomous enclaves and that the police are too scared to assert themselves there? If you saw me say that, quote me.

Incidentally, Mr. "He who makes assertions, backs them up, using credible sources.", you asserted that "The latter is never going to happen in Europe". Unlike the make-believe claims you keep putting in my mouth, that one's a real, grade-A, USDA-certified assertion. You haven't backed that up using credible sources. Are you going to?

If you can't find any, or can only find gross misrepresentations of evidence and right-wing nuttery,

That tells us exactly nothing about what you think would qualify as evidence. "If you can't find any" "credible sources", you say. What's your criterion for "credible"? I've read a lot of your posts over the years, and as far as I can tell you judge sources' credibility based on whether you agree with them. So if a source says something you disagree with I expect that will cause you to label it a misrepresentation and right-wing nuttery. If you think I'm wrong about that, put up or shut up. Give us your objective criterion for determining whether a source is credible.

that should tell you that your claim is garbage.

What are you claiming I claimed?

So your theory is what? That criminals keep trying to extort people even though it never works? That everybody who gets threatened if he doesn't pay and warned not to tell the police tells the police? That today's identity-group-based crime gangs are progressive and enlightened, so they follow a strict code of nondiscrimination and would never concentrate on non-members of their identity group?

Are you really this daft? Do you possess any understanding of the concept of burden of proof?

Perfectly. But it's not clear that you do. In the first place, you keep trying to reverse burden of proof -- that after all is the whole point of your persistent challenges to me to prove claims you didn't see me make. And in the second place, DZ and I weren't arguing about whether there would be a court with legal apparatuses to force non-Muslims to comply with Sharia; we were arguing about DZ's claim that a person being afraid of Sharia rules getting imposed on people in Europe implies that that person is a racist. DZ very much has burden of proof on that claim. It's an extraordinary claim and any logical person would think it requires extraordinary evidence.

You told us that "Christians have been forced to pay" for being Christians - how in the hell did you arrive at the conclusion that this bears out that claim? For one, the fact that it's in English is a pretty massive red flag about its authenticity,

Oh for the love of god! You do know, don't you, that in the migration source countries in Asia and Africa, people who've learned English are a dime a dozen and people who've learned Swedish are few and far between? And that in Sweden, people who've learned English are also a dime a dozen? The fact that it's in English is a pretty massive red flag that the crook who wrote it didn't speak Swedish and didn't let that trouble him because he knew perfectly well he could count on every recipient either to know English or to know somebody who does.

and two, I can't find any English language sources even commenting on this except <expletive deleted> crazy right-wing blogs. Wonder why?

Possibly because nobody outside Copenhagen cares about it except people who are concerned about the effects on Europe of too much immigration with not enough assimilation, and you define being concerned about that as proof that someone is a crazy right-winger. You've built yourself an unfalsifiability bubble for your opinions to stay safe inside.

Do you have any evidence suggesting that anything actually came of this?

So your theory is what, that when extortionists threaten to hurt people if they won't pay up or if they tell the police, the victims who are intimidated enough to pay up aren't also too intimidated to tell the police? The threats you hear about are necessarily going to be the ones that failed to be sufficiently intimidating. When you assume your failure to hear about a threat that succeeded is reason to believe none of them succeeded, that's your unfalsifiability bubble doing its job for you.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer already. For pete's sake, I don't even see any mention of jizya or even Islam anywhere in the whole thing.

What's with your odd focus on trivialities?

No rational person will look at this and see it as evidence of a modern jizya in effect.

Seriously - if this is the best you can come up with, you should just stop now.

You saw the other case I posted, right? The thugs explicitly told the guy he was targeted for being Christian; and he was so scared he was prepared to become homeless in order to get away from them. We most likely never would have heard about that case if the idiots hadn't demanded more than the guy could pay. I take it since he ran instead of paying them, you'll chalk this one up as another in the "nothing actually came of this" category?

It's not my <expletive deleted> job to disprove your silly claims, it's yours to back them up using credible evidence. This is a pretty basic concept of discourse that shouldn't need to be explained.

Well then, tell us what sort of evidence you'd regard as credible.

 

[Jokodo]

Could you provide a credible source for that claim? I can't seem to find a single source. Even among well-known islamophobic fear-mongering sites, the closest I closest I can find to this proposition is folks calling welfare claims by Muslims in Western countries "a modern form of jizya".

In 2009, Jyllands-Posten (the same newspaper that ran the original Muhammad cartoons that caused such a fuss) reported that several people in Gentofte (a Copenhagen suburb) had received the following letter, curiously in English:

Seriously?

This is evidence of someone trying to scam money out of people's fears. Nothing more, nothing less. Even if he occasionally succeeded, it's not evidence that those fears are rational, which you were supposed to provide. Otherwise, you've just proven that black helicopters coming for you are a thing, evidences by the sales of survival kits marketed along those lines.

 

[Warpoet]

But that's not the suggestion I made.

Yeah it was. You responded to Zoidberg's correct assertion that fear of Sharia courts is irrational with an outlandish hypothetical scenario in which thugs are freely enforcing Sharia law anyway, ending with the revelation that " The court is an irrelevance; the enforcement is what matters."

And of course, that's bullshit, since the scale and nature of the enforcement is so vastly different in each scenario as to render any comparison between them null and void. So no, I didn't misread at all. You're just following your usual MO of misdirecting with long-winded bullshit that dodges the fucking point.

Also, the fact that you have the balls to chastise someone else for butting into discussions is pretty damned hysterical.

Is English perhaps not your first language, Warpoet? Are you unfamiliar with the word "if"? I didn't claim you were taking it on faith; I simply pointed out, correctly, that IF no observation would persuade you THEN you are taking it on faith. I asked you a question. Here it is again:

Supposing, hypothetically, that there were such areas, how do you think we would know?​

Did you not understand the question or are you refusing to answer it?

Why should I answer the question? It's fucking dumb, the answer is obvious to any honest reader, and you clearly posed it as an attempt to divert discussion away from the fact that you don't possess any real evidence of no-go zones, just like you don't possess any evidence of Sharia being enforced on non-Muslims, or jizya being levied.

Incidentally, Mr. "He who makes assertions, backs them up, using credible sources.", you asserted that "The latter is never going to happen in Europe". Unlike the make-believe claims you keep putting in my mouth, that one's a real, grade-A, USDA-certified assertion. You haven't backed that up using credible sources. Are you going to?

Yeah, right after I get done assembling some sources to prove to you that the Earth indeed revolves around the sun, and that the laws of gravity will continue to stay in effect indefinitely.

Nothing can be predicted with 100% certainty, but that observation is practically meaningless. It's theoretically possible that a group of scimitar-wielding Moslems will break into my apartment and behead me as I type this, but there's no reason to think that will happen, nor has anyone presented any sound logic to support the notion. Ditto Sharia and jizya.

That tells us exactly nothing about what you think would qualify as evidence. "If you can't find any" "credible sources", you say. What's your criterion for "credible"? I've read a lot of your posts over the years, and as far as I can tell you judge sources' credibility based on whether you agree with them. So if a source says something you disagree with I expect that will cause you to label it a misrepresentation and right-wing nuttery. If you think I'm wrong about that, put up or shut up. Give us your objective criterion for determining whether a source is credible.

I don't need to explain to you what does or does not qualify as a credible source and I'm not going to. If you don't know already, then what the fuck are you doing here in the first place?

If you actually had any credible sources to present, you'd have done so. And if it were true that I invariably attack sources I don't agree with even when they are credible (it isn't), you'd have no trouble defending said sources.

But, we both know that these credible sources don't exist, for any of your claims, and that that's why you keep trying to redirect and weasel your way out of coughing them up.

And in the second place, DZ and I weren't arguing about whether there would be a court with legal apparatuses to force non-Muslims to comply with Sharia; we were arguing about DZ's claim that a person being afraid of Sharia rules getting imposed on people in Europe implies that that person is a racist. DZ very much has burden of proof on that claim. It's an extraordinary claim and any logical person would think it requires extraordinary evidence.

Except that's not what he said.

I can't follow you. If somebody says they're against Muslim immigration because they're worried we'll get Sharia courts in Europe then it's an irrational fear. We can analyse how likely that is to happen. Which is zero percent likelihood. At least without being invaded by Azerbaijan or Indonesia. Then we can put it in the box labelled "xenophobia". And go through all objections in that manner one by one. If all objections are in the xenophobia box then it can be dismissed as an irrational fear of the different, ie racism/Islamophobia.

He didn't say anyone who is afraid of Sharia is a racist. He said it's an irrational and xenophobic fear, and that when irrational and xenophobic fears comprise the entirety of a person's objections to Muslim immigration, it's racist. Not the same thing. Maybe you ought to do a better job of reading your own discussion before busting someone else's balls about chiming in, eh?

Oh for the love of god! You do know, don't you, that in the migration source countries in Asia and Africa, people who've learned English are a dime a dozen and people who've learned Swedish are few and far between? And that in Sweden, people who've learned English are also a dime a dozen? The fact that it's in English is a pretty massive red flag that the crook who wrote it didn't speak Swedish and didn't let that trouble him because he knew perfectly well he could count on every recipient either to know English or to know somebody who does.

No shit most Danes and Swedes can speak English. It was probably one of them who wrote this, trying to scam people, as Jokodo just suggested. The whole thing reeks of bullshit, your only source is a right-wing Danish newspaper, you didn't provide a link for the reportage, and it doesn't even support your claim in the first place. So again: are you kidding or what?

Possibly because nobody outside Copenhagen cares about it except people who are concerned about the effects on Europe of too much immigration with not enough assimilation, and you define being concerned about that as proof that someone is a crazy right-winger. You've built yourself an unfalsifiability bubble for your opinions to stay safe inside.

If by "unfalsifiability bubble" you mean "basic standards of evidence that Bomb#20 cannot reach because he's talking out of his ass," then yes, I have. Just like I have "unfalsifiability bubbles" about 9/11 conspiracy theories and FEMA camps, etc. Every batshit crazy nutjob has an explanation as to why they're the only ones willing to speak the truth, and why they can't find any credible sources to corroborate it. The sources I spoke of are not people merely "concerned" about immigration and assimilation. They're axe-grinding fuckwads who dislike or even hate Muslims and don't try very hard to conceal it, if at all. As I said, when that is the caliber of sources you have to call upon, it should be pretty clear that you've backed yourself into a corner and ought to just give it up.

So your theory is what,

My theory? I don't need a fucking theory. This is what you posted:

People in European ghettos have already been forced to pay for being Christian.

You claimed Muslims have imposed jizya on Christians, you were asked for evidence, and you came up with a poorly sourced, highly sketchy word document. You have no information about where it came from, and nothing to indicate that it ever amounted to anything at all, far less the successful extortion you plainly asserted has already happened. It's sad to watch.

It's not my job to prove to you beyond any shadow of a doubt that these threats never occur and don't ever amount to anything, because you're the one who made the claim in the first place.

Now either get off your ass and back it up with something substantial, or admit that you can't and quit wasting my time.

You saw the other case I posted, right?

Yeah, I saw your similarly poorly sourced, anecdotal example. I found nothing from that newspaper substantiating your claim, just blogs filled with right-wing nuttery. You didn't even provide a link to where you found it. Wonder why?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Your claim was that the existence or absence of Sharia courts is a triviality, which is horseshit, for the very obvious reason that one scenario grants legal authority, and the other does not. You can have people illegally victimizing others and citing Islam as their justification, but the mere suggestion that this is somehow equivalent to a court imposing Sharia on non-Muslims, and having legal apparatuses to force people to comply with it, is fucking ridiculous. The latter is never going to happen in Europe, which is what Zoidberg accurately pointed out to you. Pointing at the behavior of street thugs, even if you can properly source your claims (you haven't), doesn't make a dent in his observation, nor does appealing to the emotions of the victims.

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs. First off, the community enforcing norms through threats and violence is common in working class neighbourhoods. This is pretty universal around the globe. Most of the time things are fine, because everybody is in line, but now and again this erupts into crazy shit that tabloids write about. The reason for this is that in "rough neighbourhoods" things are normally rough, so the cops stop giving a shit. It's left to the community to do the job of the police. In middle-class neighbourhoods people just call the cops and it's all sorted in no time.

In the lower class neighbourhoods of predominantly Muslim tenants you can bet that somebody will mention the Sharia or some Islamic thing whenever the neighbourhood gets together to educate some misbehaving member of the community. When the tabloids write about it it's all an Islamic gang enforcing the Sharia suddenly.

In non-Islamic working class neighbourhoods when shit hits the fan people shout other stuff that the media don't react to. So we don't hear about it.

This is the same phenomena as with psycho killers on the lose. If it's a Muslim who grabs a gun and starts attacking people, or knife's somebody. The media/everybody starts discussing the problems of Islam. But if the guy is a non-muslim, (or even better, white) then people instead discuss his mental state and how somebody so otherwise normal and well behaved could do something so insane.

It's simply us being super sensitive to anybody talking Islam, that it skews the entire debate. It makes us blind to non-Muslims doing the exact same crazy shit as Muslims. All it means is that we can't just blindly read articles or blog posts. We always need to do a little digging and ask why. Usually the real reason is something boring and mundane, like a family of drug addicts having moved into a community and are scaring the children. Or something similar.

 

[TSwizzle]

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs.

Every news outlet in the world covered the very public beheading of Lee Rigby, the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the 129 dead in Paris just recently. It's far more serious than just the high jinks of a few muslim "street thugs". It's all related.

 

[Jokodo]

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs.

Every news outlet in the world covered the very public beheading of Lee Rigby, the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the 129 dead in Paris just recently. It's far more serious than just the high jinks of a few muslim "street thugs". It's all related.

Related in the sense that my traffic violations are related with my grandfathers Nazi party membership, i.e. not really at all.

 

[TSwizzle]

Every news outlet in the world covered the very public beheading of Lee Rigby, the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the 129 dead in Paris just recently. It's far more serious than just the high jinks of a few muslim "street thugs". It's all related.

Related in the sense that my traffic violations are related with my grandfathers Nazi party membership, i.e. not really at all.

In the grand scheme of things, it's all related. Keep ducking and diving.

 

[KeepTalking]

Related in the sense that my traffic violations are related with my grandfathers Nazi party membership, i.e. not really at all.

In the grand scheme of things, it's all related. Keep ducking and diving.

Yeah, you just have to play six steps to terrorism (kind of like six steps to Kevin Bacon, only with less bacon) to connect the dots.

 

[TSwizzle]

In the grand scheme of things, it's all related. Keep ducking and diving.

Yeah, you just have to play six steps to terrorism (kind of like six steps to Kevin Bacon, only with less bacon) to connect the dots.

I can't remember if it's six steps or seven steps so you are in the ball park.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs. First off, the community enforcing norms through threats and violence is common in working class neighbourhoods. This is pretty universal around the globe. Most of the time things are fine, because everybody is in line, but now and again this erupts into crazy shit that tabloids write about. The reason for this is that in "rough neighbourhoods" things are normally rough, so the cops stop giving a shit. It's left to the community to do the job of the police. In middle-class neighbourhoods people just call the cops and it's all sorted in no time.

In the lower class neighbourhoods of predominantly Muslim tenants you can bet that somebody will mention the Sharia or some Islamic thing whenever the neighbourhood gets together to educate some misbehaving member of the community. When the tabloids write about it it's all an Islamic gang enforcing the Sharia suddenly.

You realize you're basically admitting it's real--there are Sharia zones.

 

[Bomb#20]

First off, the community enforcing norms through threats and violence is common in working class neighbourhoods. ... It's left to the community to do the job of the police.

You realize you're basically admitting it's real--there are Sharia zones.

"When you meet a contradiction, make a distinction." -- St. Thomas Aquinas

 

[angelo]

Much of the discussion about this has focused humanitarian and not on economic impacts, such as pressures on already fragile social-welfare systems. These are obviously important, but the big issue is the longer term cultural impact of a a large influx of immigrants from the islamic world.
In 2004, a certain Mr Bernard Lewis [I know he''l be labelled a racist, but he was far from it] He was a distinguished historian of islam and the Middle East, ruffled many pc European feathers when he predicted Europe would be majority islamic by the turn of the century, " at the very least." Since then other authors have taken up the same theme, the most coherant being Christopher Caldwelll and Bruce Bawer. [I know, more racists right?]
They base their arguments on on the birthrates of muslims as compared to EU birthrates which are in most cases in decline.
A muslim majority in EU is only a matter of time. And these distinguished authors wrote before the latest influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants pouring through the very pourers borders.
There has been sighted in muslim neighbourhoods of EU of some youths wearing T-shirts with the slogan " 2030-the year we take over. This view, often referred to as the " Eurabia thesis" , has been attacked as simplistic, since it relies on the linear projection of existing population growth rates. The pc brigades point to evidence that growth rates tend to decline once immigrants communities become settled. Taking that into consideration, the Pew Research Centre has forcast a gradual, rather than dramatic increase in Eu's muslim proportion.
But these gradual change are rendered irrelevant by the dramatic events of the last few months, especially Merkal's extraordinary foolish invite to accommodate mass uncontrolled entry of people into Europe.
Unless this policy is changed, and quickly, it WILL transform the continent over the coming decades into a Eurabia! The Middle East isn't going to get better anytime soon. Then there are other regions besides the Middle East, like Africa and that are continuing trouble spots.
What Europe needs is debate on the subject, and damn the pc brigades. A docile response will surely spell the end of Europe as it is today!
A Swedish minister for integration Jens Orback, talked about about accommodating muslims now so that in the event they became a majority " We go a little bit safer." This kind of fatalism has spread right across, especially left socialist governments like a plague.
Meanwhile, anti-immigration parties are making big inroads in elections right across the continent. If the politicians wont's do anything, perhaps the ordinary people in the street will.

 

[thebeave]

I'm doubtful there's much you could do at this point. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs.

Every news outlet in the world covered the very public beheading of Lee Rigby, the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the 129 dead in Paris just recently. It's far more serious than just the high jinks of a few muslim "street thugs". It's all related.

The beheading of Lee Rigby had nothing at all to do with the Sharia. I'd argue, not Islam either. It was just Islamic nationalism, ie Islam as a an team to defend, rather than a system of teachings. Charlie Hebdo is similar.

In the Bible the punishment for blasphemy is death. Also in the Quran. If Christians can manage not to kill people who blaspheme (which we in the West have a long history of doing) I'm sure Muslims can manage to quit doing it as well.

That's the problem with tracing violence in the name of Islam to the Quran. If the Bible encourages the exact same violence, yet Christians don't act on it, then you need to come up with an alternative model with which to explain it. If you don't, it's special pleading.

- - - Updated - - -

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs. First off, the community enforcing norms through threats and violence is common in working class neighbourhoods. This is pretty universal around the globe. Most of the time things are fine, because everybody is in line, but now and again this erupts into crazy shit that tabloids write about. The reason for this is that in "rough neighbourhoods" things are normally rough, so the cops stop giving a shit. It's left to the community to do the job of the police. In middle-class neighbourhoods people just call the cops and it's all sorted in no time.

In the lower class neighbourhoods of predominantly Muslim tenants you can bet that somebody will mention the Sharia or some Islamic thing whenever the neighbourhood gets together to educate some misbehaving member of the community. When the tabloids write about it it's all an Islamic gang enforcing the Sharia suddenly.

You realize you're basically admitting it's real--there are Sharia zones.

Please show me where in the text I admit it? Because I can't see it. Angry neighbours in a fight throwing pseudo-religious curses at each other does not a Sharia court make.

 

[Turambar]

In the Bible the punishment for blasphemy is death. Also in the Quran. If Christians can manage not to kill people who blaspheme (which we in the West have a long history of doing) I'm sure Muslims can manage to quit doing it as well.

That's the problem with tracing violence in the name of Islam to the Quran. If the Bible encourages the exact same violence, yet Christians don't act on it, then you need to come up with an alternative model with which to explain it. If you don't, it's special pleading.

I think the comparison is fairer between Islam and Judaism. Both the Q'ran and the Torah advocate for shitloads of violent stuff, yet most modern Jews have adopted moderate values.

Christianity also did some pretty violent shit in the past, but most of the violence committed back in the dark ages was actually in conflict with the teachings contained in the New Testament. Luckily for middle age Christians, the "Old" testament came in helpful in order to justify and even advocate for some of the violence committed against actual non-believers and those that were merely accused of being so.

We could argue forever whether Jesus Christ was a real character or an amalgam of numerous self proclaimed "messiahs" that came out during the Roman occupation of Judea, but one thing is for certain: The teachings preserved in the New Testament are mostly in total juxtaposition to those contained in the Torah or "Old" Testament. I mean, they were some revolutionary shit for the ancient world: Love, tolerance, compassion.... All in an age when watching an accused thief being thorn apart by wild beasts was considered completely acceptable.

The closest thing that Islam had to a messianic Jesus figure was a guy named Bahá'u'llah who lived in Persia during the 19th century. He was trying to introduce a modern, more compassionate twist to Islam but he was persecuted and imprisoned. His followers eventually found a new religion called the Bahá'í Faith. They were ruthlessly persecuted throughout the middle east but eventually found refuge in Israel, which is pretty ironic when you think about it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

In the Bible the punishment for blasphemy is death. Also in the Quran. If Christians can manage not to kill people who blaspheme (which we in the West have a long history of doing) I'm sure Muslims can manage to quit doing it as well.

That's the problem with tracing violence in the name of Islam to the Quran. If the Bible encourages the exact same violence, yet Christians don't act on it, then you need to come up with an alternative model with which to explain it. If you don't, it's special pleading.

I think the comparison is fairer between Islam and Judaism. Both the Q'ran and the Torah advocate for shitloads of violent stuff, yet most modern Jews have adopted moderate values.

Christianity also did some pretty violent shit in the past, but most of the violence committed back in the dark ages was actually in conflict with the teachings contained in the New Testament. Luckily for middle age Christians, the "Old" testament came in helpful in order to justify and even advocate for some of the violence committed against actual non-believers and those that were merely accused of being so.

We could argue forever whether Jesus Christ was a real character or an amalgam of numerous self proclaimed "messiahs" that came out during the Roman occupation of Judea, but one thing is for certain: The teachings preserved in the New Testament are mostly in total juxtaposition to those contained in the Torah or "Old" Testament. I mean, they were some revolutionary shit for the ancient world: Love, tolerance, compassion.... All in an age when watching an accused thief being thorn apart by wild beasts was considered completely acceptable.

The most central tenet in Judaism, Islam and Christianity is that humans shouldn't pass judgement. It's for God and God alone. If any of them took their holy book seriously none of them would stone anybody for anything.

The closest thing that Islam had to a messianic Jesus figure was a guy named Bahá'u'llah who lived in Persia during the 19th century. He was trying to introduce a modern, more compassionate twist to Islam but he was persecuted and imprisoned. His followers eventually found a new religion called the Bahá'í Faith. They were ruthlessly persecuted throughout the middle east but eventually found refuge in Israel, which is pretty ironic when you think about it.

Mohammed?

 

[whichphilosophy]

I think this idea of Islamic street thugs enforcing Sharia law is much the product of the tabloids and racist/nationalist blogs. First off, the community enforcing norms through threats and violence is common in working class neighbourhoods. This is pretty universal around the globe. Most of the time things are fine, because everybody is in line, but now and again this erupts into crazy shit that tabloids write about. The reason for this is that in "rough neighbourhoods" things are normally rough, so the cops stop giving a shit. It's left to the community to do the job of the police. In middle-class neighbourhoods people just call the cops and it's all sorted in no time.

In the lower class neighbourhoods of predominantly Muslim tenants you can bet that somebody will mention the Sharia or some Islamic thing whenever the neighbourhood gets together to educate some misbehaving member of the community. When the tabloids write about it it's all an Islamic gang enforcing the Sharia suddenly.

You realize you're basically admitting it's real--there are Sharia zones.

In the UK Sharia Courts are legal providing they follow the 1996 Arbitration Act. (Im sure there are some who do not)

 

[DrZoidberg]

You realize you're basically admitting it's real--there are Sharia zones.

In the UK Sharia Courts are legal providing they follow the 1996 Arbitration Act. (Im sure there are some who do not)

Ie volontary. Both sides in the conflict have to first volontarily agree to the arbitration. And may, if the arbitration wasn't to their liking, simply ignore the ruling. They have no power to enforce anything.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

In the UK Sharia Courts are legal providing they follow the 1996 Arbitration Act. (Im sure there are some who do not)

Ie volontary. Both sides in the conflict have to first volontarily agree to the arbitration. And may, if the arbitration wasn't to their liking, simply ignore the ruling. They have no power to enforce anything.

Don't they? I was under the impression that if you agree to an arbitration procedure, the outcome is legally binding unless they did something to break the law. For instance, if a ruling gives a parents' estate 2/3rds to the son and 1/3 to the daughter because Baby Mohammed cries if a man doesn't get twice as much as a woman then that violates gender discrimination laws and isn't valid. If, however, it gives him 2/3rds because he took care of them in his house for ten years while they were invalids and she only visited twice during that period, then she's stuck with the lesser amount because that's within the arbitrator's judgement call.