Cenk Uyguy gets it

[GrandizerII]

This video is from two years ago, but still relevant today.






Cenk Uygur (Young Turks) said it best: this is a cultural problem, not a strictly religious one. This is why even Christians in the same regions commit some of the extreme stuff that some Muslim factions commit. I know a lot of you are big fans of Sam Harris, and some may not be fond of Ben Affleck, but Sam Harris is just misguided on this topic. Listen to the video and see what Cenk has to say: he pretty much says what I've always wanted to point out to some members here.

[mralstoner]

BS. Read the biographies of Jesus, Mohammed and the Buddha to a 5-year-old, and even they can see that one of these religious archetypes is far more likely to inspire violence than the others. Hint: that would be the guy who spent half his prophet tenure engaged in war, terrorism, torture, political assassinations, sex slavery, chopping heads, killing apostates, marrying children, etc.

Anyone who denies this OBVIOUS fact is either ignorant or politically motivated to protect peaceful Muslims from being collateral damage in a crackdown against Islam.

Cenk is POLITICALLY motivated. Like Obama, he will stand with the Muslims, should the wind shift in a ugly direction. Cenk and Obama and Tariq Ramadan and Waleed Aly and even Majid Na-whatshisname, .... all these guys are politcally motivated to protect Muslims from a conflict-of-civilisations because they know, deep down, that Islam is not a peaceful religion and is inherently a threat to the Western world. So these guys do everything to avoid pointing the finger at Islamic ideology, the prophet Mohammed, and Islam itself. They obfuscate, distract, and blame the West. It's all a distraction for political motivations.

[GrandizerII]

BS. Read the biographies of Jesus, Mohammed and the Buddha to a 5-year-old, and even they can see that one of these religious archetypes is far more likely to inspire violence than the others. Hint: that would be the guy who spent half his prophet tenure engaged in war, terrorism, torture, political assassinations, sex slavery, chopping heads, killing apostates, marrying children, etc.

Anyone who denies this OBVIOUS fact is either ignorant or politically motivated to protect peaceful Muslims from being collateral damage in a crackdown against Islam.

Cenk is POLITICALLY motivated. Like Obama, he will stand with the Muslims, should the wind shift in a ugly direction. Cenk and Obama and Tariq Ramadan and Waleed Aly and even Majid Na-whatshisname, .... all these guys are politcally motivated to protect Muslims from a conflict-of-civilisations because they know, deep down, that Islam is not a peaceful religion and is inherently a threat to the Western world. So these guys do everything to avoid pointing the finger at Islamic ideology, the prophet Mohammed, and Islam itself. They obfuscate, distract, and blame the West. It's all a distraction for political motivations.

Yeah, your side's not politically motivated at all.

Bet you listened to the whole thing, and are willing to provide a good critique of what he had to say, right?

[CapnAwesome]

The problem with 'it's a cultural thing' is that you see similar problems across the Muslim world, which extends to many different cultures. All of them have problems with the oppression of women, all of them have problems with the repression of free speech, all of them have theocratic elements. To try to seperate culture from religion is to ignore that Islam have a profound and deep effect on the culture itself and that in the middle east especially, the culture stems from Islam as much as Islam stems from the culture.

I'll never understand left wing people like Cenk defending an extreme right wing ideology like Islam.

[GrandizerII]

The problem with 'it's a cultural thing' is that you see similar problems across the Muslim world, which extends to many different cultures. All of them have problems with the oppression of women, all of them have problems with the repression of free speech, all of them have theocratic elements. To try to seperate culture from religion is to ignore that Islam have a profound and deep effect on the culture itself and that in the middle east especially, the culture stems from Islam as much as Islam stems from the culture.

I'll never understand left wing people like Cenk defending an extreme right wing ideology like Islam.

Well, I'm not too keen with your usage of the word "all" because that's not exactly true. Would you like to be a little less misleading?

Furthermore, many cultural practices such as FGM preceded the advent of Islam, and in fact some Christian and Jewish groups also perform these barbaric rituals. It is not just Muslims who do it, and not all Muslims do so anyway.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...0413000258

I will agree with you that religion can have an impact on the culture itself, but it's not an absolute rule and it's not something you can determine confidently with just speculations and selective observations. Relationships between variables can go both ways, and don't have to be in one direction only. And it's more nuanced than that anyway. Relationships don't tend to be so simple.

[CapnAwesome]

The problem with 'it's a cultural thing' is that you see similar problems across the Muslim world, which extends to many different cultures. All of them have problems with the oppression of women, all of them have problems with the repression of free speech, all of them have theocratic elements. To try to seperate culture from religion is to ignore that Islam have a profound and deep effect on the culture itself and that in the middle east especially, the culture stems from Islam as much as Islam stems from the culture.

I'll never understand left wing people like Cenk defending an extreme right wing ideology like Islam.

Well, I'm not too keen with your usage of the word "all" because that's not exactly true. Would you like to be a little less misleading?

Furthermore, many cultural practices such as FGM preceded the advent of Islam, and in fact some Christian and Jewish groups also perform these barbaric rituals. It is not just Muslims who do it, and not all Muslims do so anyway.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...0413000258

I will agree with you that religion can have an impact on the culture itself, but it's not an absolute rule and it's not something you can determine confidently with just speculations and selective observations. Relationships between variables can go both ways, and don't have to be in one direction only. And it's more nuanced than that anyway. Relationships don't tend to be so simple.

Which Muslim dominated country doesn't have a problem with the treatment of women? There are some that are better then others, but yeah, they all have sexism problems. Don't know what that has to do with FGM, nor did I bring it up. I think the argument that 'Christians and Jews are bad too' doesn't have much bearing on Islam. So what? It's like someone saying that Jeffery Dahlmer was a bad person and someone else saying 'Ted Bundy was a bad person too' So what? Islam blows.

I'm not saying that Islam has an influence on the culture out of speculation. I'm pretty familiar with the early history of Islam and how it influenced the culture. Pretty familiar with the spread of Islam to southeast Asia and the cultural changes that took place there. Pretty familiar with the spread of Islam to west Africa and India. You don't have to speculate, you can read about it. You can also ask Muslims, most of whom will say their religion is the number one identifying factor about themselves, not their culture. Who will tell you that Islam is a cross cultural religion. So you don't have to speculate.

[GrandizerII]

Well, I'm not too keen with your usage of the word "all" because that's not exactly true. Would you like to be a little less misleading?

Furthermore, many cultural practices such as FGM preceded the advent of Islam, and in fact some Christian and Jewish groups also perform these barbaric rituals. It is not just Muslims who do it, and not all Muslims do so anyway.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...0413000258

I will agree with you that religion can have an impact on the culture itself, but it's not an absolute rule and it's not something you can determine confidently with just speculations and selective observations. Relationships between variables can go both ways, and don't have to be in one direction only. And it's more nuanced than that anyway. Relationships don't tend to be so simple.

Which Muslim dominated country doesn't have a problem with the treatment of women? There are some that are better then others, but yeah, they all have sexism problems. Don't know what that has to do with FGM, nor did I bring it up. I think the argument that 'Christians and Jews are bad too' doesn't have much bearing on Islam. So what? It's like someone saying that Jeffery Dahlmer was a bad person and someone else saying 'Ted Bundy was a bad person too' So what? Islam blows.

I'm not saying that Islam has an influence on the culture out of speculation. I'm pretty familiar with the early history of Islam and how it influenced the culture. Pretty familiar with the spread of Islam to southeast Asia and the cultural changes that took place there. Pretty familiar with the spread of Islam to west Africa and India. You don't have to speculate, you can read about it. You can also ask Muslims, most of whom will say their religion is the number one identifying factor about themselves, not their culture. Who will tell you that Islam is a cross cultural religion. So you don't have to speculate.

What you overlooked is that it goes the other way around as well. Such a relationship is not unidirectional. It is not that religion is strictly the reason for these cultural practices. It is more religion and culture mutually influencing each other so that it's hard to just blame it all on religion. I gave you the example of FGM to illustrate the point. But you can relate this to oppression of women as well. Religion, or rather how one interprets or employs religion, may enable the oppression of women but it doesn't necessarily cause the oppression, nor is it implausible that religion may just be a correlate of some other causal factor rooted within culture itself.

Yeah, ok, you're pretty familiar with the early history of Islam and how it spread. That's all good, but it doesn't necessarily mean you know as a result what is going on "behind the scenes". Perhaps you're looking at what you have from a wrong angle, and perhaps you're being overly selective in that you're focusing on Islam as the root cause of certain negative practices but you're not seriously considering other factors as well. You're forgetting, for example, that heaps of Muslims don't oppress women. I would say Muslim Kurds are a good example. But anecdotally, I also intimately know Muslims and have some relatives who happen to be Muslim. The ones I know don't oppress women, and where I'm from (around 50-60% Muslim population, such oppression (ala Saudi-style) is rare and any slight form of oppression that occurs equally occurs in both Muslim and Christian populations over there).

So my point overall? It's not simply religion. And it's simply unfair to end up condemning a whole population of people for the crimes of a few in the group.

[Minimalist]

I have no use for any dumb motherfucker who thinks that his invisible friend says it is okay to kill people.

Fuck all theists.

[GrandizerII]

I have no use for any dumb motherfucker who thinks that his invisible friend says it is okay to kill people.

Fuck all theists.

And now the discussion will start to degenerate from here.

[Minimalist]

Don't fucking care.  "God" is a piss poor excuse for killing people.