hinduwoman

All religions breed stupidity, but Islam seems to automatically lead to brainlessness. Well, look at how the Muslims have been behaving:
Why did Laden attack the towers?. It demonstrated his prowess, but what exactly did he expect from it? After all, the destruction of the towers cannot bring down the USA.
Then why did the Talibans protect him? Surely they knew how USA would react? Did they expect Allah to intervene to defeat the evil Satan or something?
And in India, they torched the train. About 2000 people were involved and the attack was pre-planned. Did it not occur to any one of them during all that time, what enraged Hindu mobs would do them personally and to muslim community as a whole? Were they hyped up on glory of Jihad, or expect Pakistan to come marching in? Their insanity was further demonstrated when a group of them tried to prevent firebrigades from reaching the burning train. The anonymity of the mob is one thing; but by this time there was a crowd of other people around with local press and TV falling over themselves to record everything. And they just rushed up with the local municipal councillor at their head to fight with the firemen. That was how some of the leaders were arrested. But what happened to their sense of self-preservation?
The final touch is refusal of many Muslims to believe that Muslims set the train on fire. Instead they say that our people cannot do such things and that the train was actually set on fire by Hindu fundamentalists to make hindus hate muslims. Of course that leaves the question of why so many muslims cooperated with this fiendish plan. (Maybe hindu bodysnatchers took them over, or maybe they had secretly converted to hinduism just before). But if you ask it they just go blank and stubbornly cling on to their theory.
Latest news is muslims in the state of Andhra Pradesh is up in arms against the dastardly plan to deislamize them. The state govt. passed a law asking that a copy of all marriage certificates be deposited with the govt.. So they are protesting. Apparently, since the shariat does not say anything about this, it is unislamic. They are still getting married by their religious laws by a Quazi, but plainly this step according to their spokesman, is the thin end of the wedge to impose Hindu Raj on them. Even worse, a civil institution dares to ask for a copy of a religious ceremony! (frankly I don’t know what they are fussing about; of course it will take the civil servants a month to decide who shall sign what and after a year they will lose the file anyway.)
So, did all these people undergo prefrontal lobotomy as a requirement for being a devout muslim or what?

Samhain

I think jojo-sa should be able to answer this one quite well. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Eudaimonist

Yes, if jojo-sa is any indication, but at least their asses are clean and smelling like a spring breeze.

KeithHarwood

Nope. Just look at Christianity in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. Then after that they had the Inquisition, which nobody expected. Then the Reformation which split Christianity into thousands of warring factions so that Christians could burn each other at the stake instead of non-Christians.

Abacus

Virtually all religions at some point in their history breed supreme stupidity. As Keith pointed out, at one time it was the Christians. At this point in history, Islam ranks near the top. But that could change. Falwell and company are working hard at it.

BibleBelted

RNG posted:

I agree. If it ever reached the point where xians were under the same sorts of pressures that Muslims are under (economic, over-population, etc.) it would be a good bet there would be some Pentecostal terrorists among us, especially if their primary information source was CBN and Liberty Network.
The fact that their problems are largely self-inflicted makes no difference to them, because fundies of any religion are apparently impervious to reason.
Critical thinking is like kryptonite to fundies.

Godless Dave

Also keep in mind that Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. 600 years ago Christians were doing some pretty evil, brainless things.

As to what bin Laden accomplished by blowing up the towers - making himself and his followers feel powerful, for one, and (in his mind) impressing God. Someone on some news show pointed out recently that this new breed of terrorist is especially dangerous because they have no political objectives - they just want to inflict pain on their enemies, not accomplish anything. Islamist groups have been murdering Israeli settlers for years, and Isrealis keep building more settlements. This kind of terrorist isn't rationally thinking "I'll do X to pressure them into doing Y". They are just expressing their anger, and feeding their own egos. Their reward is in the afterlife, not in this world, so they don't really care what long-term effects their violence has.

I really think that the organizers of the attacks get off on a power trip by causing so much death and destruction, and also by manipulating others into suicide attacks. It's not about political or military objectives, it's about unthinking emotion.

What's so sad about the Palestinian situation is that so many Palestinians fall for it, instead of being horrified that these assholes are encouraging their children to commit suicide.

Edited to add: this isn't unique to Islam. The Real IRA is very similar, but without the suicide aspect. They don't have any political leverage, they just want to kill British people.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: Godless Dave ]</p>

repoman

I question whether or not Islam can or will have a reformation and become similar to moderate christianity (i.e. not southern baptist, but the christianity that is kind of like therapy and gentle moral nudging).

Devnet would be a good one to ask about how the plain texts of the New Testament and the Koran limit the possible range of mainstream expression of these two religions.

Now many people do not like Paul's writings in the new testament, however he and Luke were very intellectual and logical about basic ethics at least and were heavily influenced by the cosmopolitan attitudes of Greek and Roman culture.I don't think that the desert nomads had as rich of a culture to draw from as Paul and Luke had.

Not only that, the way Christianity first spread was underground by being passive agressive not at the swordpoint. Later of course it did spread by violence. Islam's intial route of violence might make it more difficult for it to ever be as peaceful a religion as christianity.

Bree

I'm a little confused by the term "peaceful religion" - are we talking about how a particular religion promotes peace? Or are we talking about the wars that have been fought over that particular religion?

I think that Christianity has just as bloody a history as any other religion out there.

repoman

Just on a rough impression of my own, I am saying that if you rate the violent characteristics of a religion just on the texts and the earliest parts of its history I would give Islam an 8 and Christianity a 2. This is not to say Christianity hasn't for periods of time rated higher and Islam lower than this.

However, I think that there is some limit to how peaceful and tolerant Islam can be while still seeming to be Islam to the majority of Muslims. I hope that it can be quite peaceful and openminded , but I have my doubts.

Maybe the better question, is why is is that for Protestant Christianity many sects are actually fairly tolerant and how this can spread to Muslims. Personally, I think it may have to do with people at church being taught the soft sell of Christ and once it reaches a critical point, it just seems psycho to do a hard sell.
For example, I went to UPC (University Presbyterian Church) in Seattle this Sunday and the sermon was very reasoned and directed to the listeners own life. He wasn't screaming at everyone about hell.
He talked about the shepard using the goad (placing a sharp stick behind a kicking sheep so that the sheep would learn not to kick) as a metaphor as sin's (or bad actions) results being so painful that you finally want to stop.

I don't believe in Christ as a god, but it was a helpful sermon to listen to nonetheless. Ironically, the more well rounded the sermon probably the less people will be controlled by the preacher. People need many aspects attended to by a good public spreaker, and if the preacher only talks about your desolation w/o God you might turn into a neurotic church junky.

I haven't been to a Mosque so I don't know what kind of mental boxes Mullahs put their followers into.But if the sermons gives the listener enough daylight, they might think for themselves and finally leave.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: repoman ]</p>