Good things about Islam?

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Mordred

Member
Yeah, the Islamic faith is responsible for war and deaths, whereas Christianity has brought us cute baby Jesus and pretty flowers!
 
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LeanaD

New member
I think the author of this should have asked what good religion has had to offer instead of just Islam. It seems to me religion is used mostly to insite war and racial hatred through out the world regardless of which faith. No I am not an athiest, I do beleive in God, just not in the fear creating fashion of you must believe in our interpretation of God or suffer the consiquences be they in this life or the next.
 
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DarklLord

New member
The problem is that many of the older religious text -- christanity being a bit of an exception if one excludes the old testament -- have a lot of stuff that's hard to take under modern values.

One need only look at all of the slaving laws in the Old Testement for example. Under a strict interpretation, if the US was truely a biblical democracy, we could just make it official and enslave Mexico and Canada based on the laws in Leviticus.

- Matt
 
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Hachi

Member
perhaps whats more important at the moment isn't the ancient past but what they're teaching now, today in american mosques and what they're teaching in iraqi caves.
 
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Arcanine

Member
Yes… I agree. Killing infidels for example can be justified with certain interpretations of the Bible.


Of course.


Yes, but I think the type of worldview of the fundamentalists is more prevalent than people acknowledge. I also think they given the majority of the moderates, their voice should be louder.


I’ve not doubt at all there are some great Muslims. But knowing some good Muslims is not a refutation that the worldview of the extremists can be divinely justified. All it shows is there are Muslims that don’t take God for his word.
 
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BlackSnowHatesYahoo

Member
And this of course clearly demonstrates is that Christians have to steal from secular morality in order to cherry pick the Bible. This in turn denies the belief that the Bible is a source of morals. All the Christian does is select the ‘morals’ that correspond with secular morality, and discards those which do not (such as slavery or killing infidels), showing that the reference for moral values is not the Bible at all. If the Bible was the source of moral values, then all the values we have in society today would correspond neatly with those of the Bible, which they don’t.


Right. This supports by argument above. There are incidentally Christians (known as Christian Reconstructionists) who actually want to return to the worldview of the OT like Leviticus, such the death penalty for homosexuals. They simply bite the bullet and say “well yeah, this is what God wants”.
 
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Rem

Member
That is not the case for the modern terrorist http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/16spec.htm

I do not believe that all Muslims throw their lot in with terrorist ideologies, however there does seem to be a lot of sympathetic ears within even the more mainstream Muslim communities.

I know any book can be bent to reflect your world view, I can find different quotes from the Koran that appears to support, a violent means to an end. I can also find versus in the Bible that can be taken out of context as well (however none that support the whole sale killing of other peoples exist in the New Testament... "Seek out your enemies relentlessly." (Surah 4:103-)".

Unfortunately, I am truly finding it hard to support the notion of Islam as the religion of "peace". What I am seeing is not supporting that philosophy. Whether it is people being misled, by which it would mean that all of the educated ones as well, or there is something in the Koran that feeds this notion as well. I do not even pretend to know the Koran well enough to back this up, but I am trying to understand it better.

Thanks Slib Jab for all of the information.
 
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Amanda22

New member
Such as the 9/11 highjackers who were well educated, had no persecution? Sure, politics doesn’t help and is an influencing factor, but a moderate sane religion person doesn’t fly a plane into a building.
As I’ve said, actions derive from beliefs, and I doubt people would commit such terrorist acts without the utmost confidence in God, and the afterlife/paradise etc, and this of course comes from religion. Additionally, if invading someone’s country is enough to turn otherwise good moderate people to kamikaze death missions then where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers?
 
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dollhouse

Member
so basically it is your position that we should blam every socio-economic factor we can touch, that religion is totally innocent, that perpetuating irrationality, it plays no role in this whatso ever?
 
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yourjustjelous

New member
How about this from Jesus: "But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me." (Luke 19:27)
 
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lulu7x

Member
I’m certainly not saying they were not influenced by their culture and religion, every single person is, but mere influence is not the same as saying the religion was directly responsible for something. Indirectly or associated probably, but not necessarily the direct cause and/or reason.

For instance, I would regard this…

The advent of Islam paved the way for the growth of historiography in Arabia. The abundance of historical data in the Holy Quran provided the followers of Islam with an incentive to study history.

…as something good brought as a direct result of the religion – its key text encouraging people to learn about history. I would not regard the achievements of a person to automatically - by default - be the achievements of his or her chosen religion. That is of course not to say it wasn’t. I just think we have to have more reason than assuming a persons religion was the cause of their achievement(s) simply because it is their religion. We don’t regard Aristotle’s work on logic to be an achievement of Deism do we.

As for Newton… he was a devout Christian. He studied theology more that he studied science, every day. Had he not made the scientific achievements he did it wouldn’t be a stretch to call him a outright theologian.
 
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Netboii

New member
you've got to be freaking kidding me....something as direct as "kill them for me" can only mean one thing. lmao. i suppose love thy neighbor is taken out of context as well? no, of course not, those are the good parts. gimme a break, 90% of the bible is not "out of context" its just really sick.
 
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tenneyemckay

New member
It would be my pleasure to have entertained you; however you might want to go back and read it again since you missed the true author's name in the first 3 lines.
 
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wheezyboy

New member
just in case you missed it upthread.

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yes because as we all know from dc's past posting on this issue he is just asking a question out of the blue and does not agree with the argument put forward in the story at all.

i am going to assume you are being willfully obtuse as opposed to actually being that naive.
 
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barryjackbarry

New member
All excellent points, but I would counter by asking what influence the religion of islam had on the development of the society. An argument can easily be made that Christianity was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire and the ignorance of the dark ages. The European Renaissance and the corresponding cultural and scientific advances in Europe occurred in spite of the dominant religion and often in direct opposition to it.

It can even be said that contact with the Muslim lands was the catalyst that sparked the Renaissance. Muslims preserved the ancient Greek texts. Muslims developed Algebra, Calculus and other higher math. As Slip has pointed out at nauseum, Muslim society was the beacon of light for the world for centuries while Europeans sulked in the mud of serfdom. What I want to know, is if and how these achievements can be linked to the religious beliefs of islam as certain cherished beliefs of the Western world can be linked to Christianity. For example, most western democracies advocate the seperation of church and state, which stems from Jesus' statement to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's. Or the development of Guttenberg's printing press which was invented to make the Bible available to more people. I want to find parallel examples of how islam the religion drove the development of what was indeed the most advanced civilization of its time.
 
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