As a kid coming from a muslim family, but who is not muslin, and has expressed very clearly to his family that he does not value islam, let me see if I can offer any enlightenment on the following;
[quote]pat wrote:
Bad Idea #1 - Depicting or satire regarding the prophet deserves death. Now I don’t have numbers, I will try to do some more research when I have time. But from what I have read and seen, many, many more muslims that the radicals believe this or other forms of severe punishment should be implemented should you draw a picture, make fun of, or offend Mohamed in some way. I have heard percentages up into the 70 percentile range regarding this is a shared belief among muslims, radical or not. Again, looking for help to confirm some of these things.
Point is, this is a bad idea. People shouldn’t be killed or physically brutalized for expressing a picture of words that offend others.
[/quote]
Yes, this is generally true; Drawing pictures of Mohammed is like pissing on a muslim’s mother; The majority of muslims, nonradical ones also, get extremely offended and agree a harsh form of punishment is “justice”
[quote]pat wrote:
Bad Idea #2 - Leaving Islam deserves death or some severe sort of punishment. Again, the numbers of muslims who believe this is way higher than the amount of radicals who believe and carry it out. This is a bad idea. You have a right to not like people leaving the faith, you have the right to be angry about it, you don’t have the right to kill or physically harm somebody for it. Yet this is a widely held belief among muslims from what I have read. Way more widely held than just the radicals.[/quote]
Eh, this is bullshit really; I know a lot of muslims who have left their faith, with the most severe form of punishment simply being disappointment or anger from their family and friends [which is actually pretty severe at the end of the day, but not “death or torture”]
[quote]pat wrote:
Bad Idea #3 - Apostates should be killed. My understanding is that fewer muslims believe this than the previous two ideas, but still way more than just the radicals do believe it. So while it may not be as popular among muslims, many more muslims than just the radicals believe this.[/quote]
Now, with some of these im starting to realize that you may be talking about muslims in 3rd world countries; Since I was born in the states and have, for the most part, only communicated with muslims also either born in the states, or Americanized, I cant speak for what happens in 3rd world countries; Ill take my best shot though;
I speak out quite openly against muslims all the time; This includes foreign exchanged students coming from middle-eastern countries; I have never been threatened physically over it, however, I will say that Apostates in general are looked down upon severely by the majority of muslims, including first world muslims; They do not believe in revision of their religion; Muslims (in my experience) are like blind dogs that hold on to the word of the quran, and reject any argument against it, or suggested revisions;
[quote]pat wrote:
Bad Idea #4 - Treatment of women. This is a big topic, so lets narrow it down to infidelity. Infidelity is a terrible thing for either spouse to do, but in islamic cultures women can get the death penalty. Others belief in harsh physical punishment for the woman who does this, but not the man. Now, this is widely practiced in islamic cultures. Again, I am not saying the “religion” itself condones this, but it’s widely practiced. There are stories almost daily of women being beaten or stoned to death for cheating. Again, a bad idea held by way more than just the radicals in the religion.[/quote]
I wont get into this as I have no experience with it;
All of this being said, I will give my thoughts on Islam; Ill go ahead and state a disclaimer that I am not in favor of religion in general:
Islam is a very “young” religion, in the sense that there have been no muslims that have come about to offer a more logical perspective of the words of quran [such as Thomas Aquinas for the Catholics, newman, etc etc]
The same shit could be argued for Christianity and Catholicism a few centuries ago, but I wont get into that because its not important now.
The problem I believe with Islam, is that it is easy to pervert and create extremism out of by nature; There are a lot of muslims who ive spoken to that make the argument that america’s involvement in the middle east, and its support of israel all while doing so, creates a lot of problems with extremist muslims for the US; I tend to agree with this argument; I think anybody arguing that we are not primarily in the middle-east for oil is being disingenuous, and I can provide my argument for this if need be;
That aside, I still find it baffling that nearly every middle eastern country, save the ones with oil wealth, are shit; I think this has primarily to do with Islam; It is a very strict religion that does not allow, on a large scale, for free thought, imagination, creativity, etc; It seems to me, from what ive observed, that the majority of muslim’s lives do infact revolve around islam, and these are the ones living in the 1st world, so I can only imagine how pervasive it is in the 3rd world societies; This is not true of my christian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc friends;
I think in order for the middle east, and muslims in general, to advance, the religion is going to need a radical transformation, a revolution if you will; it is going to take a group of muslims to convince the rest that
- The quran should not be taken literally
- Revisions can be made
- You can draw the fucking prophet
- You can live in harmony with islam and “reason” for lack of a better word;
All this aside, I find it ironic that a lot of people cry and deplore muslims for islamic extremism, but neglect the fact that US policymakers have
- brought about the rise of the taliban [intentionally to fight the Russians]
- brought about the rise of ISIS [unintentionally to oust Assad]
- radicalized Iran into a shitty muslim state from its previous glory [again, intentionally]
I think if muslims expect anything to change though, they need to realize they have to transform their religion from within, so that it is not so easy to pervert and radicalize people with;
/rant