Incident in Manchester UK

[Mugwump]

^

i worked with a bloke back in the 80's who drank like a fish whenever the opportunity to go to the pub presented and ate anything he could shovel in his mouth. I was gobsmacked when firstly i was told he declined to dress as Santa for a Xmas party as he was Muslim, then showed up to a work function where partners were invited with his wife in a Hijab.

Obviously he only followed the bits that suited him.

I don't have an issue with people who are Muslim. I do believe that the "religion" in how it was conceived and how it's mainly preached is a horrible, repressive, pervasive, controlling thing that has no place in a modern world.

that the majority of people who follow this "faith" do so with good intentions and deliberately pick the good parts to follow from it's teachings doesn't lessen that.

Correct as far as it goes, but I don't think it goes far enough. Let's use an analogy. It's 1933 in Berlin, and a lot of people have a faith called German nationalism - not indefensible in itself, and many of them are nice enough people. Amidst those German nationalists are a small but significant number of outright nazis, and amid those are a number of SS death squads who are causing thousands of deaths each year. Now, how many German nationalists would you want to invite into your country ? Germany just invited a million. Europe, since 2002, has been "inviting" in between 1.6 and 2 million per year, in defiance of the will of a majority of its citizens, even as the murder toll mounts. This is madness.

We must distinguish between the individuals we meet and the consequences of a social policy for the fabric of our society and the continuity of what we value.

[Mugwump]

^ Swoop there have been 12 people killed in anti-abortion violence in the US since the 1980s. It's not even remotely comparable, yet it is wheeled out as some kind of equivalence with blowing apart little girls, or murdering 3000 people at a stroke with aeroplanes. I don't know how many murders there will have been over (say) pets in that time, but I suspect it will be a lot more than 12. This problem is with Islam, not religion.

[swoop42]

^ Swoop there have been 12 people killed in anti-abortion violence in the US since the 1980s. It's not even remotely comparable, yet it is wheeled out as some kind of equivalence with blowing apart little girls, or murdering 3000 people at a stroke with aeroplanes. I don't know how many murders there will have been over (say) pets in that time, but I suspect it will be a lot more than 12. This problem is with Islam, not religion.

Yes but murders in the name of Christ would have been responsible for a lot of deaths over the centuries.

My point is which people seem to missing is unlike Christianity some of the Islamic world appears not enlightened enough to try and be a better more well rounded faith and attempt to learn from the mistakes of the past and move with the times.

Some I'm sure would like us to return to the dark ages.

The Catholic church has had a major problem with pedophile priests in the recent past but is now trying I'm sure to put in place processes to minimise the chances of it happening again.

On the flip side female genital mutilation and arranged marriage of child brides is still condoned and taking place by some within the Islamic faith.

The Catholic church doesn't approve gay marriage but they don't condone lashing people or throwing them from roof tops because of being homosexual.

Christianity was once a cruel religion that burnt people at the stake.

A small amount of Islamic leaders are still cruel and call for barbarity against the infidels and moderate Muslims who oppose them.

[Mugwump]

^ basically agreed, Swoop, but what happened centuries ago doesn't seem to me very relevant.

Have a read of the Christian gospels and the Koran. I think any reasonable person would be struck by the difference in the ethical philosophies expressed.

[stui magpie]

Christianity was created (evolved from an egyptian sun cult) to keep the populace in control with preaching messages of forgiveness and turn the other cheek, none of the new testament was written by Jesus, it's all hand picked second hand accounts.

islam was created by Mohammed firstly as a means to power, then as a means to war and conquest. The positive side effect was it kept the populace under control when they weren't out waging war.

All of the Koran is allegedly direct quotes from Mohammed, arranged in order of shortest to longest to aid retentive memory in the days when almost no one except priests were literate. To read it isn't to understand it, only Islamic scholars can legitimately interpret it as passages contradict each other seriously and the most recent wins, but because it's not written in chronological order, only Islamic Scholars know which is which.

Islam is not a religion, it's an abomination.

[Mugwump]

Oh, yes, Christianity is full of strange fossilized stuff - all that stuff about "take this, all of you, and eat/drink it - this is my body/blood, which will be given up for you". Clearly an after-echo of archaic blood sacrifice myths, you have to metaphorize it to make any sense of it. But ethically, it's a basis for a good society, and (at least in Christ's own formulations) remarkably free of misogyny and hatred.

I find it rather beautiful and profound as a kind of folk tale about the inevitability of suffering in this world, and the need for redemption, given how flawed we all are. No sane person would take much of it literally, however.

[watt price tully]

Oh, yes, Christianity is full of strange fossilized stuff - all that stuff about "take this, all of you, and eat/drink it - this is my body/blood, which will be given up for you". Clearly an after-echo of archaic blood sacrifice myths, you have to metaphorize it to make any sense of it. But ethically, it's a basis for a good society, and (at least in Christ's own formulations) remarkably free of misogyny and hatred.

I find it rather beautiful and profound as a kind of folk tale about the inevitability of suffering in this world, and the need for redemption, given how flawed we all are. No sane person would take much of it literally, however.

You mean the moral majority, southern baptists, the growth churches in Australia the pentecostalists with literalist interpretations of the book of revelations & those who believe in the stuff & who voted for Trump are insane? Shocked, I'm speechless

[watt price tully]

Roses are reddish
Violets are bluish
If it wasn't for Jesus
We'd all be Jewish

[Mugwump]

Oh, yes, Christianity is full of strange fossilized stuff - all that stuff about "take this, all of you, and eat/drink it - this is my body/blood, which will be given up for you". Clearly an after-echo of archaic blood sacrifice myths, you have to metaphorize it to make any sense of it. But ethically, it's a basis for a good society, and (at least in Christ's own formulations) remarkably free of misogyny and hatred.

I find it rather beautiful and profound as a kind of folk tale about the inevitability of suffering in this world, and the need for redemption, given how flawed we all are. No sane person would take much of it literally, however.

You mean the moral majority, southern baptists, the growth churches in Australia the pentecostalists with literalist interpretations of the book of revelations & those who believe in the stuff & who voted for Trump are insane? Shocked, I'm speechless

Perhaps "insane" is a bit strong. But only perhaps.

[David]

Oh, yes, Christianity is full of strange fossilized stuff - all that stuff about "take this, all of you, and eat/drink it - this is my body/blood, which will be given up for you". Clearly an after-echo of archaic blood sacrifice myths, you have to metaphorize it to make any sense of it. But ethically, it's a basis for a good society, and (at least in Christ's own formulations) remarkably free of misogyny and hatred.

I find all this "Christianity is good, Islam is bad" stuff exceedingly tiresome, but even if one is to accept your premise (and Stui's), history adequately demonstrates how little the intent behind a given holy book really matters.

Both Christianity and Islam have a long history of unspeakable atrocities on the one hand and an ability to help maintain a functional society on the other. Whatever the doctrinal differences or Mohammed's role as a warlord versus Jesus' peacekeeper image, Christian and Muslim societies have been basically interchangeable for the bulk of their history. At their best, each have pushed people to act kindly and help the powerless, and to fear divine retribution for unethical dealings; at their worst, well, I think anyone with the ability to read a history book knows what that looks like.

How does your hypothesis square with, say, the nature of the two cultures that clashed during the Crusades, with all the cruelty and indiscriminate violence of the Christian armies and the relative dignity of Saladin's forces? Is this not evidence enough on its own that no amount of decency or cruelty in a founding text is sufficient to shape a society in its own image?

If you want to see the future of Islam, look at Christianity's immediate past. There was nothing inherent in Christianity that brought about the liberalisation of the societies in which it was dominant. Christianity didn't bring us the enlightenment; it lost its battle against it. The same will happen with Islam. Liberalisation is a force that cares little for the nuances of what the Prophet meant when he said X, Y or Z. Cultural change is more powerful than dogma.

[Mugwump]

^ as I said, I think reasonable people reading the words of Christ and those of Mohammed recognise very strong differences in content and tone. Words are words, and they mean what they mean, regardless of what Saladin and Richard I may have done ten centuries ago.

Your assurance that Islam is on a journey to becoming something like the Church of England's liberal wing is as unlikely as it is unprovable. It may - or it may not. It's a speculation, dressed in false certainty. Christianity and Islam have different core texts, historical roots and a different cultural formation. Why would you assume that they will repond to history in the same way ?

In any event, it's a game, this usage of time, backward or forward, to draw false equivalence between two things that are very different in their essence and being today. The problem today is a religion that plainly and flagrantly spawns murder in our society, over and over and over again ; a religion that has flown and rooted here because of the failed liberal experiments of the latter half of the 20th Century. It is surely something worse than complacency to say "all will probably be well in a hundred years", just so that the religion of diversity and multiculturalism may continue heaping its political failure upon the foundations of a civilization that was once one of the finest inventions of mankind.

[stui magpie]

^

Bingo.

The 'reform" of Christianity happened because of the clear separation between the church and the state in western society. Under islam, once it gets a foothold, the church becomes the state, no such separation.

Key difference.

[Pies4shaw]

The question for me is why second-generation British/French/whoever citizens do this. Apart from the obvious anger and aggression (and it's particular cultural manifestation), one can really only wonder how people become so thoroughly alienated from their own society that this strikes them as a tolerable option.

Bloody good question.

Did the parents ever really fit in? We're they raised that way? But still, they are potentially blowing up their neighbours.

I heard or read or both that the parents went to the UK as refugees, but returned home a few years ago.

The alleged suicide bomber stayed in the UK, went to Uni and dropped out, went to a local mosque known to police with a reputation for radicalism, visited the parents in libya ( I think) and underwent some training to be a terrorist while there. This all from mainstream media.

That short synopsis contains a lot of things to consider.

Here's something else to consider:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... pside-down

Some of kinds of terror are more equal than others.

[Culprit]

There is no real defence for Suicide Bombers, just ask Israel. For extremist Muslims, my plan would be to say to potential Suicide Bombers, "If you commit the crime. we will execute the gene pool of your whole family. Then you and all your family members will be wrapped in pig skin so there is no going to Allah. It may be a bit extreme but what the world is doing now isn't working. Fight extremism with extremism.

[HAL]

Are we in the same category?