Why do Atheists defend Islam?

[Ben Davis]

Muslims do respond when terror attacks shock the world, but on social horrors which you would probably not wish to see practiced in your own neighborhood, very little is said.

Once again, this is not so true in the UK. There are some very vocal and politically & socially active muslim intersectional support groups (e.g. Muslim Women's Network, Imaan, Safra). It may be that British muslims are more reformed/progressive than those in other countries or maybe they're following the lead of The Church of England, who focus more on how we can all get along rather than any separatist tub-thumping. I'm aware that there's still a good percentage (~25% I think I saw in a recent set of stats) who oppose progressive, liberal or secular values in favour of a more 'traditionalist', repressive society and that's a problem but happily, it's one that British muslims seem more than capable of dealing with of their own accord.

I fear that recent decisions by our political leadership (to bomb Syria) will taint that good progress.

These fundamental problems relate directly to the personality of Mohammad, whose tale was written not by people who were not the product of Greek culture, but of desert raiding, horse-stealing, woman-beating, and slave-marketing machismo. Reform of a religion is much easier when you have a compassionate hippie dude like Jesus as your central figure to look to for behavioral standards, while a dick like Mohammad, remembered as he is, is keeping Muslims forever in the 7th Century.

I don't know about that. There was a time when muslims were a progressive powerhouse; forward looking both socially and technologically. Repression is not automatically an Islamic attribute, it depends on the current 'archetypal' interpretations of the qur'an/hadith.

You cannot criticize what he did without denying him as your holy man, a serious threat to any faith in Islam, and this has the imams threatening with violence anyone who makes such criticism in defense of their job security.

The tales told by muslims/ex-muslims who have worked towards 'reformation' of Islam in recent years would agree with you. But once again, that's not an automatic attribute of Islam or else you would have no progressive muslims at all. Remember that Turkey became a secular nation under the direction of an entirely Islamic ruling council.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

These fundamental problems relate directly to the personality of Mohammad, whose tale was written not by people who were not the product of Greek culture, but of desert raiding, horse-stealing, woman-beating, and slave-marketing machismo. Reform of a religion is much easier when you have a compassionate hippie dude like Jesus as your central figure to look to for behavioral standards, while a dick like Mohammad, remembered as he is, is keeping Muslims forever in the 7th Century.

I don't know about that. There was a time when muslims were a progressive powerhouse; forward looking both socially and technologically. Repression is not automatically an Islamic attribute, it depends on the current 'archetypal' interpretations of the qur'an/hadith.

I'm aware of Middle-Eastern knowledge power, in the wake of the Byzantine Empire - however, I'm not aware of this having anything to do with Islam. It was there, but that itself doesn't make it a contributing factor to M.E. success at the time.

When it became apparent outside of the Xtian sphere that Xtians had serious interest in world domination, this was about the time that the Muslims got serious on their religion, at the expense of their culture. Unfortunately for them, they rejected math and science, along with their infidels, and it was all downhill from there. This is why I really doubt that Islam ever could have done that region any good.

[CapnAwesome]

I don't know how you think it can be mainly political in nature and yet separate from Islam. Islam (Not all of them!) is a political system as well as a religion. There was never meant to be a separation of Church and State in Islam and in the early days there certainly wasn't. You guys always talk about it like Muslims (Not all of them!) just happen to come from these conflict areas and that Islam itself has nothing to do with it. That's just plain wrong. While some Muslim countries have separation of church and state, Islam has influenced the politics and culture of these areas for hundreds of years. It's not like they grew up somehow separate from one another and Islam and Muslims (Not all of them!) are just unforunate to have shitty cultures/economies/etc. Islam is essential to all of that and to act as though it isn't is pretty mind boggling.

There was never meant to be separation of church and state in Christianity, and there wasn't until the Enlightenment. We had to muzzle Christianity like a rabid dog to stop the bloodshed.

And the politics and culture and history of those areas has shaped Islam for hundred of years. None of this shit is happening in an Islamic vacuum. The West deposed the legally elected president of Iran and replaced him with a hated dictator which led to a revolution where he was replaced with a religious fanatic. The USA backed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the eighties and continued to supply their schools with textbooks supporting Islamic extremism into the nineties. We back Saudi Arabia militarily and financially, a regime which compromised with fundamentalist clerics after a terrorist attack and became an active exporter of Wahabbist fundamentalism throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Ayaan Hiirsi Ali is no fan of Islam, but in her autobiography she notes how much more oppressive Islam became in Africa when the Saudi Imam/missionaries started showing up. Saddam Hussein was horrific, but when we deposed him, we thoughtlessly ousted the secular Baathist Party from their military and bureaucratic positions and basically threw them in the street...and many of them wound up in Syria forming the backbone of DAESH.

Our problems in the region don't require more than an understanding of blowback to account for them. Islam is just the flavoring.

Actually really early Christianity definitely wasn't set up as a political system, unlike Islam. Really early Christianity was just a different type of Judaism that focused on withdrawl from society. There is also the old 'give on to Ceasars what is Ceasars and give to God what is Gods" Christianity didn't start acting as the state for hundreds of years. Even with Constantine, Christian laws didn't supersede Roman law. Comparatively Islam set up political rules and religious rulers from the very start. It is designed that way.

That's not to take anything away from blowback theory, which I fully agree with. It's just a complicated situation, not a situation which is cut and dry 'it's one of these two things and only one of them.'

[Mechaghostman2]

I'll just say this: Nobody died over the movie The Life Of Brian by Monty Python. People did however die over a very cheap and poorly acted Innocence Of The Muslims film. As well, nobody has killed anybody over any movie being made against atheists like "God's Not Dead." You make a movie or you draw a cartoon that is satirizing any other religion or non-religion, and nobody is killed. You make a movie or draw a cartoon satirizing Islam, Muhammad, Muslims, etc., and people are killed.

It doesn't matter that the majority of Muslims don't want to kill you, because there are still a great many Muslims that do. The statement "not all Muslims" is fucking irrelevant, because there are enough Muslims who act in such a way to be a problem.

355 mass shootings so far this year. 0.56% of them carried out by Muslims, who are 0.9% of the populations. I think you're engaging in poor risk assessment.

I'd like to see those numbers in Muslim countries.

---

It's hilarious, when one speaks out against Islam and the danger that said ideology has, the first people that tend to rush in to defend them are Atheists. Not all Atheists are like this, many of them aren't, especially the most public ones like Dawkins and Harris, but there's no denying that many Atheists are.

It's kind of troubling for these same Atheists who will sit there and bash on say Christians that don't wanna make a cake or don't like abortion, but at the same time defend a religion that stones women to death for the crime of being raped. They defend that in the name of multi-culturalism and cultural relativism, but don't apply those same standards to the culture of the religious majority in their own country, which is a big double standard.

Either all culture based on religion is bad (which is my position,) or there is no primitive and civilized culture and all cultures must be respected (which is the shittiest position to take.) Anything else is just applying standards to one and not the other.

[Regina]

Multiculturalism and cultural relativism are hideously racist concepts that I wash my hands of entirely. According to this lot, it's great to criticise oppression, injustice and cruelty... as long as the perpetrator is white. As soon as it's brown people involved, "oppression" suddenly becomes "culture", so the human atrocities get a free pass.

Multiculturalism is a human zoo. It's not about "respecting culture", it's about jacking off over "diversity" and insisting that minority groups remain different, so they can be "exotic people" put on display for others to enjoy.

Cultural relativism holds anyone who isn't Western to a lower standard of behaviour and rights. It takes away their accountability for their own actions and basically says "we expect no better from you, so we just shrug and accept it. Oh and, yeah, fuck your rights, those are for us" (white people). It's disgustingly patronising.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

355 mass shootings so far this year. 0.56% of them carried out by Muslims, who are 0.9% of the populations. I think you're engaging in poor risk assessment.

I'd like to see those numbers in Muslim countries.

---

It's hilarious, when one speaks out against Islam and the danger that said ideology has, the first people that tend to rush in to defend them are Atheists. Not all Atheists are like this, many of them aren't, especially the most public ones like Dawkins and Harris, but there's no denying that many Atheists are.

It's kind of troubling for these same Atheists who will sit there and bash on say Christians that don't wanna make a cake or don't like abortion, but at the same time defend a religion that stones women to death for the crime of being raped. They defend that in the name of multi-culturalism and cultural relativism, but don't apply those same standards to the culture of the religious majority in their own country, which is a big double standard.

Either all culture based on religion is bad (which is my position,) or there is no primitive and civilized culture and all cultures must be respected (which is the shittiest position to take.) Anything else is just applying standards to one and not the other.

Then again, not even Dawkins would ever call for rounding them up into concentration camps, as was done with the Japanese in the US. You give off that sort of weird impression.

[Mechaghostman2]

I'd like to see those numbers in Muslim countries.

---

It's hilarious, when one speaks out against Islam and the danger that said ideology has, the first people that tend to rush in to defend them are Atheists. Not all Atheists are like this, many of them aren't, especially the most public ones like Dawkins and Harris, but there's no denying that many Atheists are.

It's kind of troubling for these same Atheists who will sit there and bash on say Christians that don't wanna make a cake or don't like abortion, but at the same time defend a religion that stones women to death for the crime of being raped. They defend that in the name of multi-culturalism and cultural relativism, but don't apply those same standards to the culture of the religious majority in their own country, which is a big double standard.

Either all culture based on religion is bad (which is my position,) or there is no primitive and civilized culture and all cultures must be respected (which is the shittiest position to take.) Anything else is just applying standards to one and not the other.

Then again, not even Dawkins would ever call for rounding them up into concentration camps, as was done with the Japanese in the US. You give off that sort of weird impression.

Ah, the attempted shutting down of a conversation by calling someone a racist or similar. Wow, clap you trained seal, clap!

[God of Mr. Hanky]

=Mechaghostman2
Ah, the attempted shutting down of a conversation by calling someone a racist or similar. Wow, clap you trained seal, clap!

Read my posts, if you think I'm inclined to let anyone do my thinking for me.

For the most part, we've been in agreement on the evil nature of Islam - the problem is that you present as one who doesn't think a lot before he reacts, which is no less dangerous.

[Ben Davis]

I'm aware of Middle-Eastern knowledge power, in the wake of the Byzantine Empire - however, I'm not aware of this having anything to do with Islam. It was there, but that itself doesn't make it a contributing factor to M.E. success at the time.

Well, the Golden Age of Islam was not in any way reduced by Islam therefore it's not necessarily a retardant. Since Islam is so hierarchical, it's arguable that it's the leaders that made the difference, empowered by the structure that the Caliphate provided. In that sense, Islam would be more than mildly contributory.

When it became apparent outside of the Xtian sphere that Xtians had serious interest in world domination, this was about the time that the Muslims got serious on their religion, at the expense of their culture. Unfortunately for them, they rejected math and science, along with their infidels, and it was all downhill from there. This is why I really doubt that Islam ever could have done that region any good.

The Crusades began during the Golden Age so there was a long time where muslims were 'serious about their religion' but not to the expense of their culture, technology or social sophistication. That the post-Abbasid leaders were less capable rulers is more likely to be the cause of the decline than Islam in & of itself and as I said before, Islam's influence seems dependent, in those terms, on the contemporary archetypal interpretations of qur'an/hadith.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Then again, not even Dawkins would ever call for rounding them up into concentration camps, as was done with the Japanese in the US. You give off that sort of weird impression.

Ah, the attempted shutting down of a conversation by calling someone a racist or similar. Wow, clap you trained seal, clap!

I've not really been if you are really an atheist, or if you are trolling us (I've seen some pretty weird trolls who come around with "why do atheists" bait questions, and will insist on ideas such as the planets are gods, or that Cthulu is real), but I for one am not one of those stupid and ideological liberals who will try and whitewash Islam.

I am a bit concerned that my country, to the drumbeat of Donald Trump and other such asshats, could become as radical as the religious if we aren't careful.

It requires an ideology for anyone to believe something which has no sound reasoning behind it, as is the idea that Islam is fundamentally peaceful and egalitarian. Needless to say, ideology and the rational thought of atheist should go together in the same head, but unfortunately there are a lot of people who are selling such irrationality while calling themselves atheists. Amazingly enough,the fact that those who believe they are atheists can think that irrationally means they can react that irrationally in a non-peaceful way as well.

---

I'm aware of Middle-Eastern knowledge power, in the wake of the Byzantine Empire - however, I'm not aware of this having anything to do with Islam. It was there, but that itself doesn't make it a contributing factor to M.E. success at the time.

Well, the Golden Age of Islam was not in any way reduced by Islam therefore it's not necessarily a retardant. Since Islam is so hierarchical, it's arguable that it's the leaders that made the difference, empowered by the structure that the Caliphate provided. In that sense, Islam would be more than mildly contributory.

When it became apparent outside of the Xtian sphere that Xtians had serious interest in world domination, this was about the time that the Muslims got serious on their religion, at the expense of their culture. Unfortunately for them, they rejected math and science, along with their infidels, and it was all downhill from there. This is why I really doubt that Islam ever could have done that region any good.

The Crusades began during the Golden Age so there was a long time where muslims were 'serious about their religion' but not to the expense of their culture, technology or social sophistication. That the post-Abbasid leaders were less capable rulers is more likely to be the cause of the decline than Islam in & of itself and as I said before, Islam's influence seems dependent, in those terms, on the contemporary archetypal interpretations of qur'an/hadith.

Not a retardent? Ok, it galvanized Middle Eastern political power for the first two centuries (also, and this had nothing to do with Islam, the ME benefited from centuries of Byzantine culture). Here's how that worked: Non-Muslims are your enemies, take them all over the world and give them either Islam or the sword if they reject it - that's the Koran for you! Their influence began to expand, they rode into Israel, and the Pope got a bee in his bonnet over that. Then rejection of Western ways, directed by Muslim fundamentalist teachers. Still not a retardent?