Is the ''Only a minority of Muslims are radical'' true?

[Minimalist]

America is seen by many people as being a little bit meddlesome when it comes to foreign affairs,

You have a talent for understatement! 


That's a bit like saying that ants in your jockstrap are a "bit annoying."

[Minimalist]

Ripped from today's headlines.


http://apnews.excite.com/article/2015061...a7cb6.html

LUXOR, Egypt (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up Wednesday close to the ancient pharaonic temple of Karnak in southern Egypt, a site visited by millions every year, the government said. No tourists were hurt and the Nile-side monument was not damaged.

[CapnAwesome]

I just can't listen to The Young Turks guy. Very few people make me want to punch them in their ignorant faces quite like that guy.

[ReptilianPeon]

Are only a minority of Muslims are radical? I would say yes because peaceful people are the radical ones. There's nothing radical about using a religious book to justify violence because it's common behaviour.

[Mister Agenda]

Your study is from 2009, Mess.

This, 2013 Pew Study,

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com...g-picture/

Pew report on Muslim world paints a distressing picture

backs you up with more current data.

There is a link to the full study in the summary.

And if you read the full study, one of the first things you learn is that most of the people who want sharia to be the 'law of the land' want it only enforced on Muslims, and favor religious freedom for non-Muslims. They also don't all mean the same thing when they say they want sharia, most favor it in family law and property disputes; fewer support severe punishments.

Are we to think that non-Muslims in the same regions are more accepting of evolution and homosexuality?

The USA has a lower acceptance of evolution than the Muslim population of 14 of the countries surveyed.

As I've observed before, the barbarity of a region is linked far more closely to its history than its religion. And none of my comments should be interpreted to indicate that I think the Muslims who are radical extremists are a tiny enough minority.

It was narrated that Abu Al-Aliyah said:
"Ibn Abbas said: "...the Messenger of Allah said to me: "And beware of going to extremes in religious matters, for those who came before you were destroyed because of going to extremes in religious matters." (Sahih)

Source: Sunan An Nasai Book 24 Hadith 3070          

[Mister Agenda]

Either way, I think you are missing the point I was making --- we are constantly smacked with ''A fringe minority of Muslims are radical'' yet what appears to be the case is that entire Muslim majorities in Muslim countries all hold extremely radical beliefs.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria, the list goes on.

But how FAR does it go on? No one is disputing that radical beliefs are not a fringe position among Egyptian, Saudi, or Pakistani Muslims. I'm not even sure that radical beliefs are fringe positions in non-Muslims in those countries.

And btw, I think that suicide bombings can sometimes be justified. Someone really ought to be asking these same questions of non-Muslims.

[Minimalist]

Seems that stoning is quite popular in some of these countries, and death for apostasy...damn

Rocks they have in abundance.

[Mister Agenda]

America is seen by many people as being a little bit meddlesome when it comes to foreign affairs, this happens mainly in areas of the world that find themselves over resources the US find useful such as the middle east. The middle east is mainly muslim and so the problem is down to geography and politics which then becomes mingled with religion rather than religion on its own.

It's true that if we're talking about terrorism you can't pin the blame on religion, or at least not entirely, but if we're talking about oppressive religious laws (imprisonment or death for gays, apostates, blasphemers) there is no other explanation. Almost every Muslim majority country does at least one of those three things, some even go as far as executing people for all three (Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and Afghanistan)

Let's see: the Saudis are our best buddies, whom we prop up with our military, and our State Department was supportive of them exporting Wahabbism, which they've done with a vengeance. The idea was that the Saudis would control the religion and we would control the Saudis. Afghanistan was modernizing when the USA threw in with the Mujahadeen, who became the Taliban. The Brits and Soviets got rid of Iran's duly elected reformer president who wanted his country's resources in the hands of its people and replaced him with a hated dictator. More recently, we overthrew the secular leadership of Iraq. It's kind of hard to imagine what more we could have done to get the current situation that we have. But if only Islam hadn't been invented, we wouldn't be having the problems we're having now; because Orthodox Christians with the same tribal heritage would be completely civilized and modern by now with the same treatment from the West and Northern Asia.

[Saxmoof]

There are plenty of extremely poor, extremely religious countries in the world that don't execute gay people, blasphemers or apostates, and some of them are Muslim. I don't believe that poverty and religion automatically and inevitably lead to religious extremism. Your points about Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq are completely valid but there are more than three Muslim countries in the world, if people in those countries want to take revenge on the west or support those that do i'm sympathetic towards that - this doesn't explain all the other Muslim countries that execute gays, apostates and blasphemers, unless they're just doing it to piss us off

[abaris]

I just can't listen to The Young Turks guy. Very few people make me want to punch them in their ignorant faces quite like that guy.

And I get the same emotions when listening to Sam Harris.