(May 25, 2014 at 6:43 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: It's important to remember that Islam is not a monolithic religion. It has a lot of branches and schools of thought. One version could be completely different than others although they use the same source materials. Always remember, all gods are imaginary and people create them in their own images.Sure, but who cares about peaceful interpretations of Islam? It's the violent interpretations that we need to worry about, particular if that's what mainstream/traditional Islam is.
Sam Harris: "One problem is that we have this one word religion which names this truly diverse spectrum of fascinations and ideological commitments. And religion is a nearly useless term. It's a term like sports. Now there are sports like badminton and sports like Thai boxing and they have almost nothing in common apart from breathing. There are sports that are just synonymous with the risk of physical injury or even death ... but if you get injured playing badminton you're just embarrassed...
There is, I'm happy to say, a religion of peace in this world, but it's not Islam. The call Islam is a religion of peace that we hear ceaselessly reiterated is completely delusional. Now Jainism actually is a religion of peace. The core principle of Jainism is non-violence. Gandhi got his non-violence from the Jains. The crazier you get as a Jain, the less we have to worry about you. Jain extremists are paralysed by their pacifism. Jain extremists can't take their eyes off the ground when they walk lest they step on an ant...
So the problem is not religious extremism, because extremism is not a problem if your core beliefs are truly non-violent. The problem isn't fundamentalism ... the only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam ...
Osama bin Laden ... is giving a truly straightforward version of Islam, and you really have to be an acrobat to figure out how he is distorting the faith.
Now if these guys were Jains, or Buddhists, or Amish, or Quakers, it would be patently obvious how they were distorting their religion. In fact their behaviour would be unintelligible, but it is not obvious by the light of Islam, and this is just a fact we have to speak honestly about."
