Posted on 06/23/2011 4:45:05 PM PDT by majormaturity
Fellow Freepers: I had a thought. Is the solution to the war on terror the birth of a new Islamic sect? We have Sunni, Shia, and a number of minor sects. But perhaps Islam needs a new sect: one based upon shunning jihadist terror as a component of religious life and rejecting violence. In other words, maybe the world needs a truly moderate Islam. We've paid lip service to it through many presidencies, so where is it? And not simply an independent state's civil constitutional rights that aren't enforced (Lebanon, anyone?); but rather, where is the truly tolerant Islam? Why hasn't it emerged across the national boundaries of Islam as a cultural reaction to militant Islam? In the evolution of Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto, Hindu, Christian, and many other belief systems in the world, there were people who gave rise in their own times and own ways to the definition of religion as tolerance, excluding from the main stream those who advocated violence and lying and pedophilia. In essence, isolating them to irrelevance. Why hasn't Islam? Is it because any attempt to moderate is met ultimately with death by the jihadists? If so, then Islam must either capitulate to violence and war between its sects, or between it and the rest of the world.
Yeah. Good luck with that. The things you want to elimnate are in the Koran. It would be like Christianity without either the Bible or Jesus Christ.
I've dealt with muslims from mideastern countries and, while I like many of them and find many of them to be personable and friendly, at the heart of their religion is the violence toward infidels (us - the non-believers) and the desire to make Islam the world's religion.
While we may not understand the different muslim sects and why they can't get along, they do and it is ingrained in them. Our only choice is to either defeat them or be subjugated by them. And, for Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, etc., that's not much of a choice.
I was just talking to my pet tapeworm--Obiwan--about this and I agree with what he said. KILL THEM ALL!
Islam will either adapt and modernize or, over time, fall hopelessly behind and die on the vine.
My guess is Muslims continue fighting it out mostly amongst themselves while the world moves on. The fundamentalists and their supporters will continue lashing out at competing religions where they come in contact with them. In time the modernist may finally succeed, updated versions of sharia law will come into effect and/or new texts from Muhammed will suddenly be “discovered”. If this happens it will be a long process over hundreds of years - none of us will be around to see it all play out.
From Jihadwatch.org (islam 101 link)
http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam-101.html
As should be plain to anyone who has examined the Islamic sources, to take the violence out of Islam would require it to jettison two things: the Quran as the word of Allah and Muhammad as Allah’s prophet.
In other words, to pacify Islam would require its transformation into something that it is not.
The Western Christian Reformation, that is often used as an example, was an attempt (successful or not) to recover the essence of Christianity, namely, the example and teachings of Christ and the Apostles.
Trying to get back to the example of Muhammad would have very different consequences. Indeed, one may say that Islam is today going through its “Reformation” with the increasing jihadist activity around the globe.
Today, Muslims of the Salafi (”early generations”) school are doing exactly that in focusing on the life of Muhammad and his early successors. These reformers are known to their detractors by the derogative term Wahhabi. Drawing their inspiration from Muhammad and the Quran, they are invariably disposed to violence.
The unhappy fact is that Islam today is what it has been fourteen centuries: violent, intolerant, and expansionary. It is folly to think that we, in the course of a few years or decades, are going to be able to change the basic world outlook of a foreign civilization.
Islam’s violent nature must be accepted as given; only then will we be able to come up with appropriate policy responses that can improve our chances of survival.
YOU brought it up. why can’t we talk to you?
If you know anything at all about islam, you already know this is beyond ridiculous...like the article earlier today about having the Holy Bible rewritten by an atheist.
If you have been here long, you know my satire...
I've had similar experiences in Asia. I worked with many Muslim professionals who in reality were only nominally Muslim or nearly entirely irreligious. Still, the ones that are devout do believe we are all infidels, and when pressed they will almost always support the fundamentalists.
I lived in Thailand for some time and the Islamic violence in the south is beyond brutal. These Muslim nuts regularly behead Buddhist monks, school teachers, etc. Islam does not play nice with any religion that comes in contact with it.
Islam will either modernize or die. Considering how many of them there are, my guess is at some point it will go through some sort of enlightenment. We basically need to keep Islam in its box where it will rot and simmer in an endless low grade civil war between the fundamentalists (who actually do represent what the Qur'an and Hadith actually say) and modernists who see the world passing them by. Who knows, they may one day have a mormon moment and suddenly a new book will appear helping them bridge the gap between the old inflexible ways and modernity.
Which is what prompted my response. No offense.
No religious movement can exceed the moral and ethical bar its founder sets with his actions.
Here is the problem with Islam as it stands:
1) Polygamy
2) Inbreeding
Polygamy means that there are many young, horny males who know that they have no chance of procreating and who thus don’t mind going out and raping and pillaging the “other” (which would be us) to satisfy that desire.
Inbreeding means that after thousands of years, they are as dumb as rocks. British Pakistani Muslims have one of the highest rates of first cousin marriage in the world and, despite being only 5% of the UK population, have over 30% of Britain’s developmentally disabled children.
Islamic men are mentally stunted and horny with no chance of satisfying that horniness within moral or ethical boundaries.
So in short, no. There can’t be a global, moderate Islam.
My second post on this thread.
I wonder if you have read this quote from Ayatollah Khomeni, former top religious leader/scholar of the Shiite Muslims:
“Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.
But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world ... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless.
Islam says: kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]?
Islam say: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us?
Islam says: kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender to the enemy?
Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors!
There are hundreds of other ayat [Qur’anic verses] and ahadith urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.
Source: Qom 1986. (Originally published in Qom in 1942 and reprinted in Teheran in 1980 and 1983). Translated here by an Iranian journalist and Khomeini critic Amir Taheri, from: Holy Terror, London 1987, p.226-7.]
http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_works.html
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