(September 17, 2013 at 6:06 am)LastPoet Wrote: As with any religion, it leaves enough lack for bad people to feel justified. Moderate religious people may want to do no harm, but they are the fertile soil where the fundies thrive.

Agree with you
Unfortunately the popular religious moderation is still, basically, deduced from scriptures and religious teachings. this makes this moderation unstable and let it have many gates to extremism. This is why, as you say, moderate religiosity is a fertile soil for fundies. Because moderation is, mainly, a fundamentalism with some vague amendments.

To establish a real religious moderation you should put the authority of religion under the authority of human values and human rights. And it needs to put also the authority of religious texts under the authority of reason. This, for theists, does not mean to deny religion or religious texts but to put the in the right place. I have many Muslim friends who are this kind of theists. Lovely and rational really but, unluckily, still minority.

(September 17, 2013 at 5:55 am)Simsim Wrote: Some Muslims, but still minority compared with the rest, believe there is no stoning punishment in Islam. They say it was invented by Muslims. They deny the hadiths (sayings) of Mohammed which state this punishment saying that the only punishment stated in Qur'an for adulterers is just whipping. Sarcastically, those who are more fundamental say that this punishment was already stated in Qur'an but the verse was deleted or cancelled by Allah but, they say, only the text was cancelled but the legislation of the verse is still in effect.

Anyway, Putting stupid restrictions on the relationship between males and females in the Islamic world and considering that the greatest side of virtue is sexual, doing that made Arabs and Muslims live in inhibition and suppression. The Muslim youth want to love and to make love but there is no opportunity for them. This is why some of them resort to jihad and martyrdom.

Well from my years of studying Islam and practicing it, I'm well acquainted with what are known as Quranists (rejecting the Ahadith and living by the Qur'an only as their source for religion)...

I looked into their theories and wanted to believe in what they were saying at the time, because I had many problems with ahadith myself, but the fact remained that Islam and Muhammad and the rest of the historical figures in Islam have absolutely no ground to stand on without the assistance of ahadith.

If you throw all of the hadith out then you're really left with confusion and so much room for interpretation that it feels incomplete.

(September 15, 2013 at 8:50 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: A muslim tried to convince me stoning is actually the act of flicking tiny stones at someone to signify that you disapprove of them.

Presumably, that was a muslim who didn't live in a place where stonings actually occur.

In my YouTube travels, I came across a video of a stoning being carried out. I'd find it and post a link, but I just had lunch, and I'd just as soon keep it down.

In the video, the crowd pelts the woman with many rocks. I don't know if that's what killed her, or if it was the guy who shot her afterwards.

Sickening, barbaric practice.

(September 17, 2013 at 5:12 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(September 15, 2013 at 8:50 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: A muslim tried to convince me stoning is actually the act of flicking tiny stones at someone to signify that you disapprove of them.

Presumably, that was a muslim who didn't live in a place where stonings actually occur.

In my YouTube travels, I came across a video of a stoning being carried out. I'd find it and post a link, but I just had lunch, and I'd just as soon keep it down.

In the video, the crowd pelts the woman with many rocks. I don't know if that's what killed her, or if it was the guy who shot her afterwards.

Sickening, barbaric practice.

Oh yeah Stoning is definitely real.

It was ordered by Muhammad, it was done by Jews, Muslims...

Beheading is real too, hangings, whippings...

Um yea, read the bible too. The only difference between the two is NOT the violence justified, the only difference is that Christianity in the west has had 200 years of secular law preventing the same barbarism.

There are just as many quotes in the OT NT and throughout the bible that give license to get violent in the name of a god.

(September 17, 2013 at 3:26 pm)AtheistCreed Wrote: Well from my years of studying Islam and practicing it, I'm well acquainted with what are known as Quranists (rejecting the Ahadith and living by the Qur'an only as their source for religion)...

I looked into their theories and wanted to believe in what they were saying at the time, because I had many problems with ahadith myself, but the fact remained that Islam and Muhammad and the rest of the historical figures in Islam have absolutely no ground to stand on without the assistance of ahadith.

If you throw all of the hadith out then you're really left with confusion and so much room for interpretation that it feels incomplete.

I know Qur'nists. I have been arguing with them over several issues. But I was not talking about them in my post. I was talking about people who are, officially, Sunni but they have some tendency to Qur'anism.

OK, from even the religious fundamentalism viewpoint hadiths sahih (accurate sayings) are not considered to an absolute certainty to be said by Mohammed but they are, to a large extent, supposed to be said by the him. This is the crucial point from which most moderate cultured Muslims run their inadequate "reformations", that Mohammed's hadiths are not certain to be said by him. This gives them the courage to refuse many religious texts and, subsequently, the religious teachings which are based upon them.

(September 17, 2013 at 5:32 pm)Simsim Wrote: I know Qur'nists. I have been arguing with them over several issues. But I was not talking about them in my post. I was talking about people who are, officially, Sunni but they have some tendency to Qur'anism.

OK, from even the religious fundamentalism viewpoint hadiths sahih (accurate sayings) are not considered to an absolute certainty to be said by Mohammed but they are, to a large extent, supposed to be said by the him. This is the crucial point from which most moderate cultured Muslims run their inadequate "reformations", that Mohammed's hadiths are not certain to be said by him. This gives them the courage to refuse many religious texts and, subsequently, the religious teachings which are based upon them.

I see.

Yes well as far as debates are concerned, the issues in the Qur'an are surmountable enough on their own. But by rejecting hadith they can claim that Aisha wasn't a little girl, adults cannot breastfeed on grown women to become Mahrem, stoning of the adulterer is not a real punishment, you can't marry infants and derive pleasure from them, etc...

So yes by weaseling away from hadith they can hold a slightly higher moral ground than their hadith-accepting counter-parts on some topics.

(September 15, 2013 at 8:58 pm)AtheistCreed Wrote:

(September 15, 2013 at 8:50 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: A muslim tried to convince me stoning is actually the act of flicking tiny stones at someone to signify that you disapprove of them. I don't buy that, but I think it's not too bad if the "progressives" truly believe that than the actual stoning (throwing big stones at people). Of course it'd be much better if they didn't believe any of this at all.

Well I don't have to be an ex-Muslim to tell you that this is not true at all.

In fact, in Iran, there is a legal ruling about the size of stones used:

Article 104 – The size of the stone used in stoning shall not be too large to kill the convict by one or two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone.

And if flicking small stones at someone as a matter of symbolism is true then there wouldn't be any hadith about anyone actually dying from stoning in Muhammad's lifetime. But in fact stoning is intended to be a death penalty.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/...shment.htm

Includes links to the ahadith about stoning ^

Thanks for the verses, I would never have looked them up myself. And yes I know they stone people to death, this muslim was saying that it's a twisted version of Islam, imagine how hard it was for me not to roll my eyes at that.

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(September 17, 2013 at 5:12 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(September 15, 2013 at 8:50 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: A muslim tried to convince me stoning is actually the act of flicking tiny stones at someone to signify that you disapprove of them.

Presumably, that was a muslim who didn't live in a place where stonings actually occur.

In my YouTube travels, I came across a video of a stoning being carried out. I'd find it and post a link, but I just had lunch, and I'd just as soon keep it down.

In the video, the crowd pelts the woman with many rocks. I don't know if that's what killed her, or if it was the guy who shot her afterwards.

Sickening, barbaric practice.

Yes, she's naive about her religion.

Stoning isn't something I know much of, the Shariah court I grew up with only did whippings. Which I think is extremely barbaric, and some people may think it isn't that bad. Trust me it is. They used to do public whipping, I'm not sure if they still do. But stoning seems much worse because so many people are willing to participate in it. It's very creepy when a large group of people engage in murder like it's ok.