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Muslim Groups Attempt to Censor Wikipedia
Nom du Keyboard writes "The New York Times is reporting that Muslim groups are attempting to censor Wikipedia because of images of Muhammad contained in the article about him. 'A Frequently Asked Questions page explains the site's polite but firm refusal to remove the images: "Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group." The notes left on [online petitions against the page] come from all over the world. "It's totally unacceptable to print the Prophet's picture," Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately."'"
All of that on Wikipedia? How does Jimmy Wales sleep at night?!
Oh, I am so going to end up trapped in my grave being tormented by djinns until the end of time. After that, Shaitan be kickin' me old school. Hope he likes classic rock and indie bands! The notes left on the petition site come from all over the world. "It's totally unacceptable to print the Prophet's picture," Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately." Perhaps you should instead choose simply not to use the site? If you believe that to be true, you should be condemning images of him everywhere at once, not just on Wikipedia. Why aren't you petitioning against all of these sites? Why are you picking on Wikipedia?
My work here is dung.
Good luck with that. People all around the world of all religions and beliefs need to learn that not everyone in the world will bend your views all of the time.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
As an atheist I am offended by this Muslim group deciding what I can an can see baised on a set of beliefs and ideals that are not my own, I demand that they stop bothering wikipedia it shows a total lack of respect and understand to athiests.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
I'm offended by members of your religion blowing themselves up in populated areas as terrorist acts. When you stop doing that, then we can talk.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
that Mohammed's objection to him being pictured is the danger of that image being worshiped. I don't think he would mind if his image is presented in a educational forum, such as Wikipedia, where the forum itself doesn't give any reverance other than historical fact to the picture.
ya know I'm just about sick of trying to give a shit about Muslim feelings. they of all people should realize that the profit's image can only be there if Allah wills it to be so, and if He's fine with it, they might as well shut up too.
You know, I am generally pretty politically correct, and I totally understand the need to let a thousand flowers bloom.
But in this case, it really seems like people are trying pretty hard to be offended. It's fine if your religion prevents YOU from creating pictures of your prophet, or eating meat, or working on Sundays, or using vowels. Best of luck with that. But it's a different thing entirely to tell ME that I am not allowed to either.
"It's totally unacceptable to print the Prophet's picture?"
Oh, really?
Centuries of your own culture's actions suggest otherwise, sweetie. Sorry to have that little inconvenient truth drag you kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Try the veal...
http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/
Honestly, Muslims around the world need to shut the fuck up.
:)
If you complain about something, especially on the internets -- people are going to do it MORE. What happened after the complaints on the drawings of Muhammad? MORE were made by random people all across the internet.
You cannot expect people to respect your religion just "because". Jews, Christians, etc... are all mocked all over the internet on a daily basis. Muslims are no exception to this.
The inherent problem is, that they are quick to complain and rarely change anything in a negative light about themselves. It's why I am non-practicing now, even though I do stick to the tenets of morality (which are largely the same as Christianity or Judiasm -- because they are frankly just stolen and modified) the religion preaches. I cannot get along with people who are so virulent in their attacks of the "West", "blasphemers" (like they think of those editing Wikipedia now), etc.
Besides... as a friend told me -- Wikipedia is a "non prophet organization".
So why are they worried ANYWAY?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Attention Muslims: no one gives shit about the rules your fruity little cult chooses to embrace, so please stop acting as though we ought to.
Attention all other religious folks: likewise.
Maybe when you folks grow up a little and are no longer so arrogant as to believe yourselves to be the sole custodians of the ultimate truths of the universe, we'll have more to talk about. Until then, go screw.
Actually, I think Christianity is every bit as morally bankrupt, worthless and vile as Islam, it's just that most Western societies long ago castrated churches, leaving them largely impotent. On occasion you'll get bands of them a bit more active and politically motivated, but look at how the Republicans are tearing themselves to shreds right now precisely because they sold their souls to a pack of moralizing lunatics to win some elections.
Some day it will happen to Muslims. They'll wake up one morning and realize the mullah they've been listening to is no authority, that his use of political clout is completely improper and counterproductive, and will also realize that he has been in league with politicians to manipulate the populace so as not to have to modernize and liberalize society. On that day, those mullahs better bloody well hope that the revolution is a gradual and peaceful one, and not the violent, bloody kind which they so often preach.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You can't apply the standards of whatever place and time you're living in, to what happened in Arabia 15 centuries ago. What is a pedophile in your opinion? Someone that screws people who aren't 18? 16? 15? 14? 13? Who decides? The age of consent in Germany or Austria is 14; in Spain, it's 13. In other places, it goes down as low as 12 years old. We don't have the same genes or cultures, and different people achieve sexual maturity at different times. There's this girl of 5 years old who gave birth in Peru. And besides sexual maturity, people mature differently in general. That's for the "pedophile" part. The claim that it was "rape" is ludicrous given that the whole marriage was as a favor to Aisha's father (the first male Muslim). If there was indeed rape, she wouldn't have been so lenient on the prophet when recounting her experiences. To quote the Wiki: A rape is a form of assault where one individual forces another to have sexual intercourse against that person's will. Nothing of the sort happened in this case. It was an arranged marriage with the blessing of the whole family, and Aisha didn't object to it. Granted, she was young, but there are plenty of young kids with more judgment, determination and wits than adults. I am not saying she falls in that category, but surely you must be able to realize that your "rape" claim is ridiculous. I should also point out that the prophet married mostly widows, which are often of a certain age. The idea being that it is the best way to fulfill their sexual and economic needs. In fact, at the age of 25, the prophet's first wife was 40 years old. It is not contested that Khadija was the "love of his life". It may also be worth mentioning that the actual age at which the marriage with Aisha was consummated is not exactly a settled issue. The number fluctuates from 9 to as much as 15 years old. Which was it does not really matter in my opinion. Does Georges Washington's marriage to a 12 years old take away any of the man's achievements? You decide. For my part, I am not ready to judge something that happens centuries ago based on some arbitrary figure modern society decided upon.
Let me guess...the only Muslims you know are Ben Laden and his ilk.
Res publica non dominetur
Oh come on now times change, read a history book.
The concept of 18 being the age of maturity is fairly recent.
People used to get married at a young age since the expected life span was much shorter.
Look back at whatever your ancestry is, I bet you'll find alot of marriages at the age of 11/12.
Create a sharia-compliant version of the wikipedia. Along with a kosher version of it. And a Vatican 0, Vatican 1.0, Vatican 2.0 version, a King James version, a baptist version.
The content's licence allows such a thing. After all, Wikipedia is one giant pool of knowledge but has a scientific, secular, americano-centrist bias (only my feeling, it is debatable but it has, to some people, some bias) so it is unavoidable that some other pools spawn from the main one.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You don't see anything wrong with an online petition whose sole goal is to censor an encyclopedia? You don't see anything wrong with a petition which is in fact made by people ignorant of their own artistic heritage?
I've tried to be a moderate atheist these last fifteen years, but I'm really beginning to believe that religion is a vile and repugnant thing, a controlling, manipulating atrocious monster, an ugly form of primitive tribalism that has increasingly less of a place in a modern world.
Maybe if you guys could just keep your goddamned faith in your homes and temples, rather than violating every notion of liberty, justice and reason, it wouldn't be so bad.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1st problem: Once again there are people missinterpreting religious dogma in order to satisfy their desires to express themselves. 2nd problem: religious dogma..... um period. 3rd problem: I'm pretty sure you could find someone offended by some aspect of every single article written in wikipedia to varying levles and with varying density. Solution 1: Think for yourself Solution 2: Think for yourself Solution 3: Grow some balls and re read 1 and 2.
"This message was sent from an Apple
Yeah, and just look how well that worked out.
HAND.
How is a group of Muslims signing an online petition "attempting to censor" Wikipedia? The title makes it sound as if they've engaged in some malicious activity to shutdown Wikipedia.
Unneccessary, since the Wikipedia database contents are already available for download for all interested parties. See this page for details.
That said, I don't think that this is offtopic. This being Islam we're talking about, it propably won't take too long before death threats start flying, and it's always possible some lunatic will decide to carry them out, or take less drastic action, such as a cyber-attack against the Wikipedia servers. Making sure that the database is safe from any such attacks is only common sense; and the easiest way to accomplish that is to back it up and spread the copies to as many places as possible.
Cue a hundred replies claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance; and maybe it is - I wouldn't know, since I haven't read their holy book. All I know is that it certainly seems attract lots of bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm an American Muslim who was born and raised here. While I choose to reserve my opinion over the images of the Prophet I do find a lot of the comments on Slashdot to be disappointing. I've been a part of this community since its very inception and have done my best to contribute my expertise to relevant topics. However, its troubling to see that whenever anything Islam-related is posted, there are endless tirades painting my faith with a broad brush of extremism and ignorance.
As I've seen in the past, this sort of post always garners responses such as: "well if you're so level-headed then why aren't you changing the Muslim world?" Unfortunately, all 1+ billion of us are treated as if we're one big happy family. I have no more power to change the world of Islam than I do my own country's domestic and foreign policy beyond the established routes (i.e. voting, debates, etc). We make small but significant gains in our own ways but none of possess earth shattering abilities to make miracles happen. If we--as westerners--are really bastions of knowledge and free thinking then I'd do far more to educated the masses about my religion instead of having it hijacked by both non-Muslim Islamophobes and international extremists.
I will say that discussions littered with such ignorance and hate don't help people like me when we try to open up dialog with members of our religion. As much as people here may call the anti-portraitists relics of the past its very difficult to defend enlightenment and modernism when its laced with veiled Islamophobia [1]. Its even more difficult when people outside of the religion have the audacity to tell Muslims what is and isn't antiquated or kosher. Defining our religion for us wreaks of orientalism and causes even the most moderate to stop listening. I certainly hope I don't get modded or flamed into oblivion because this discussion needs to start somewhere.
[1]: Lets not beat around the bush and call it what it is when 15 century old stereotypes are thrown back in our collective faces even though they may have been debunked already. It even offends me.
As has Christianity, where fairly wide swaths of believers have embraced those who bombed not only abortion clinic but those who would come to their aide. Web sites naming doctors who perform abortions and encourage their viewers to do "something". All in the name of a man who asked his followers to "Turn the other cheek".
And look at yourself? You've turned an online petition into a reason to rail against an entire religion! I bet you get upset when people use a few bad priests to condemn an entire religion, but you are so eager to condemn Islam based on the actions of a few extremists who are generally agreed to ignoring the basic tenets of their own religion to bring about their own political goals.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Well, technically, Christians aren't allowed to make images of Jesus/God either. The original text of the commandment in Exodus about graven images is:
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Before I get jumped, "idol" means something to be worshiped. This means, in it's strictest sense, no paintings of Jesus/God to worship ANYWHERE. Why anyone would have paintings or sculptures of Jesus/God in a church without intending them to be worshiped is beyond me. And it seems hard to believe that no one has ever prayed in the Sistine Chapel after looking at the ceiling.
This commandment has obviously been rewritten over the years and I'm sure some Christian will reply and make a defense about how I've taken things out of context. I'll never understand some things, such as this commandment can be open to interpretation, while "women should never wear mens clothing" means that it's a sin for women to wear pants to some far out fundamentalists.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
"It's totally unacceptable to crash airplanes into buildings and commit suicide bombings," Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards innocent people and should be openly condemned by all Muslims immediately."'"
Karma be damned. Most people would post this as an AC, but I am totally sick of the bullshit. They've RIOTED AND KILLED PEOPLE over posting images of their Prophet already. I'm tired of seeing people kowtow to this so called 'Religion of Peace' out of fear of 'offending' them. I applaud Wikipedia for their stand on this.
Whoever modded the parent offtopic needs to be metamodded into oblivion. Since when does Slashdot give mod points to people who don't know UNIX?
subject is tongue-in-cheek.
/lnks/ in motherfucking English; fucked up variants exist[1]) is a goddamn Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one da motherfuckin' bomb when it comes to free software and open source development: typically all underlying source code can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by any motherfucker with half a clue.[2]
Perhaps Wikipedia perfectly allows profanity in a subject that deals with, say, Profanity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity ) ?
I quote:
"For example, "fuck", a common (often considered strong) profanity in English, is a verb for the act of sexual intercourse and may be used literally in this sense ("I fucked her all night long.")or ("Fuck you bitch")."
And that is just a tiny quote of that page. I swear I'll have to wash my eyes with soap later!
Perhaps they have a policy on not allowing profanity in subjects that do not call for it; or at least trying to keep it to a minimum.
E.g. what is the added value of the profanity in this:
--
Linux
--
Over the non-profane description that is there already?
However - let's say an article deals with Muhammad, either the very topic or reasonably tangentially - then the added value, certainly in the former, of graphical depictions of the guy is, at least to me, quite clear.
Similarly, however, I wouldn't expect pictures of Muhammad to appear in subjects that have little to nothing to do with him - but not because I feel it would unnecessarily potentially offend islamists visiting that page not having expected to see the picture and seeing it anyway, but because the subject wouldn't call for such the picture in the first place.
That, at least to me, is the difference between your Muhammad vs Profanity and how Wikipedia handles it example.
I can assure you that "Christians" who bomb abortion clinics and picket actors'/soldiers' deaths because of whatever sexual orientation they might be- are hardly Christians at all. While mainstream Christianity disagrees with the issues behind those things, the isolated reactions by a fanatical few are totally uncalled for and vile. Jesus didn't put to death the woman who was caught in adultery- he reviled her accusers (who had committed a greater sin) and told told the woman to go and sin no more. I, however, take great offense at Christianity being likened to Islam.
Associating violence with any one religion, or religion as a whole is just silly. All humans, religious or not, are capable of atrocities, and have been carrying them out for nearly every reason imaginable for millennia. The capacity for hatred really is the one thing all humans have in common.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Except that there isn't anything in the new testament telling Christians to go out and bomb abortion clinics or to do any kind of violence, just isn't in there. Some crazies will read anything and go violent...extremists are rare.
However, there is violence in the Sharia law and the Koran (sp?) that seem to be an integral part of Islam. It seems in Islam, the extremists are almost the majority of the members...they can sure easily fill a street screaming, protesting and dragging bodies through the streets. I dare say you couldn't fill a block with violent Christians and any given time.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Regardless of atrocities committed (and atrocities are committed by humans, not religions), there certainly seems to be a higher atrocity/individual rate in current Islamic culture than any other current faiths.
Retrospectively, I think you'll find it's about equal to Christianity in all regards, with a few rather nasty atheists involved throughout history, their own worst point being one shared with Christians, the holocaust. And mentioning that, I'm pretty sure the Jewish faith has caused more than a few problems, although they generally get as many atrocities committed against them as they actually commit.
All in all, I think pretty much any large, organised group, be their grouping religious or otherwise, are prone to manipulation from nasty buggers who want other groups to cease existing.
Regarding the actual article... Wikipedia's all about verifiable groupthink. It'll be a heavily contested page, just like the one on circumcision or any other 'delicate topic'. All in all, the pictures are pretty much required to illustrate various controversies like the Posten issue, and generally to reflect a worldwide view on the topic. At least they chose the symbolic depiction for the article header and category.
How is this "Score:5, Insightful" ?
The handful of Muslims involved in terrorist activity is both extremely small and non-representative of the religion as a whole. No major Islamic organization is represented by terrorists, and most such organizations officially condemn terrorism as a whole. I doubt you responded to the Oklahoma City Bombing by saying "Dear Christians, I'm offended by members of your religion ..."
I can't interpret your post (and its moderators) as exhibiting anything but discrimination against Islam, including a rather large helping of ignorance.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I can assure you that "Muslims" who bomb people they think are repressing them and picket actors'/soldiers' deaths because of whatever sexual orientation they might be- are hardly Muslims at all. While mainstream Islam disagrees with the issues behind those things, the isolated reactions by a fanatical few are totally uncalled for and vile. Mohammed didn't put to death the woman who was caught in adultery- he reviled her accusers (who had committed a greater sin) and told the woman to go and sin no more. I, however, take great offense at Islam being likened to Christianity.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Sadly, any religion that claims to be a religion of peace is lying through its teeth. When people abandon their faculty of reason and start to believe in the imaginary, they lose their means to negotiate with others. The only remaining alternative is the use of force, either directly (kidnappings, murders, bombings) or indirectly (using coercive power of government to enforce one's "divinely inspired" whims).
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Because if you want to count 'atrocities' the muslim culture is way behind most other cultures. For example, Israel's been averaging 3 dead palestinians for every 1 dead israeli. And of course the US has slaughtered tens of thousands of muslims in iraq and afghanistan.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And look at yourself? You've turned an online petition into a reason to rail against an entire religion! I bet you get upset when people use a few bad priests to condemn an entire religion, but you are so eager to condemn Islam based on the actions of a few extremists who are generally agreed to ignoring the basic tenets of their own religion to bring about their own political goals.
I think you read into what he said. He said he wasn't sure, as he hasn't read their holy book. However, in general it seems to attract more nutjobs than your usual contingent of religious folks.
I mean, Baptists had a person or two blow up abortion clinics is about the closes we have, and usually no one was there except somebody with bad luck, and most good christians were 'meh' but the government those christians elected hunted him down, found him, tried and convicted him. nobody said 'eh, he was doing gods work' and let him go.
Meanwhile, we have a 'folk hero' who took down two buildings killing a few thousand people, and the system of government that is in place from Islam went 'meh' and isn't hunting his ass down to prosecute, and arrest him for murder. You have people celebrating in the streets, you have all sorts of 'support' in general of the activities.
It's hard to be impartial, but to me it seems that while yeah maybe a good chunk of the Islamic followers aren't bloodthirsty monsters, the people they put in front of the cameras for the rest of the world are, and scream prepare to die infidel whenever they get the chance.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
PS, I bet you've never been to a 3rd world catholic country - lots of angry violent mobs in those places too. It has more to do with being a 3rd world country - or living in 3rd world conditions - than it does with being catholic, or muslim. We've got a few million muslims in the US and you don't see them forming up violent mobs - certainly nothing like we get here after some big sporting events...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What authority decides who is a true Muslim and who isn't? Because it is a crime to be gay in most Islamic countries, punishable by torture and/or death, and at some point you have to wonder if maybe your tolerance is the anomaly, not their barbarity.
At what point do we start judging the tree by the fruit that it bears?
Here's a simple question to ask yourself. What religion do most(I dare say close to 99.999%) of the world's suicide bombers subscribe to? Statistically speaking, it doesn't look good for Islam.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
You can't take the sky from me...
And so it begins. "Don't talk about muslims; look at what the christians are doing !"
Yes, look at me rather than your own strawmen. I pointed out that the parent post - which said it might be wise to make a backup of the Wikipedia database just in case - was not offtopic (as it had been moderated at the time), and backed up the neccessity of this operation by pointing out that protests coming from the muslim world have a tendency to become death threats.
As I specifically stated that I don't know Islam well enough to know whether it actually condones such behavior from its followers, your accusation about "slamming an entire religion" is false.
If you are referring to Catholic Church's semi-official policy of protecting practicing pedophiles and ensuring them a steady supply of new victims, you are again incorrect. I find said policy to be a very good argument against such massive religious organizations in general and Catholic Church in particular.
And the only thing I've said about Islam is that it certainly seems to draw a lot of bloodthirsty nutcases nowadays.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad/images#Arguments_for_Removal
Actually reading the talk page, it seems like people are having a lot of fun mocking the religion of Islam and antagonizing anyone who tries to make their feelings be heard. It becomes very obvious that the picture is up there in defiance, and anyone who comes forward with a calm argument simply asking it to be removed is singled out and mocked by what looks to be the elite of the site acting out like 14 year olds.
I'm not religious, but I hate to see blatant discrimination like this. The official stance by the editors is 'we leave the image up, because we can'.
I mean, sure, christianity has its share of nuts, but for the most part those nuts are rather lame. Only occasionally does somebody try to kill an abortion doctor or some such nastiness. And when they're caught at it (and they usually are), then they're arrested and put in a small room and looked at for the rest of their lives.
Whereas the nuts in Islam seem to be the ones in charge. When you have women getting arrested and charged for sitting with another man in a Starbucks, then you have some serious issues that need to be resolved. When you have women being stoned to death for... well, does it really fucking matter what it's for? It's barbaric and ridiculous. Even the nutty suicide bombers seem to have really poor aim, in that they are blowing up random people. At least the anti-abortion-nutjob can aim a rifle at the abortion doctor in specific instead of blowing up cafes in the same town.
Sure, you can claim that these nuts are not "true muslims" or what have you, but that doesn't change the fact that they claim they are and so me, being an outsider, will judge them as such and judge the religion as a whole based on their actions. I'm no christian either, but even I can see that its crazy people are far less crazy (and far less dangerous) than those of the islamic faith(s).
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Not just are you correct, but as it applies to this particular discussion, I'd say that any article that discusses religion in any form, has the (mathematically impossible) 1000% chance of offending people - just as how some religious zealots will see, experience and co-exist with a known (aspect of) reality and dismiss it in favor of religious rhetoric.
I'm impressed that they will not allow such changes though... reality and religious beliefs/desires dont always go hand in hand... no offense to anyone who is religious intended...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Israel targets only militants, but due to them hiding in condensed civilian populace, civilians get killed. Really? Obviously israel knows they will be killing civilians, after all they've been doing it for a long, long time. So clearly they intend that innocent civilians will get killed too. They just don't care. The Palestinians are targeting innocent civilians, even though they could target just the military without getting any civilians killed at all. They could target those whom they can't kill. But that wouldn't have much of an effect would it? If you are going to kill the enemy, one dead is as bad as another - see my first sentence in this post. Perhaps it is the israel military's fault for hiding in fortified bases, while they leave the general population out in the open...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What is the deal with these Muslims, anyway? They're offended; that's fine. But why is it that they think they have the right to dictate to others what to do or not do? Muslims represent roughtly 30% of the world population, that's not a majority; yet they think they can boss everyone else around. 70% of the world is not Muslim, what about their sensitivites or feelings? Immaterial? Seems to me that the Muslims of the world are just a bumch of whiney cry-babies. Why is it only their opinion matters? As one boss I had once put it: everything is a matter of perspective, but your perspective doesn't matter.
You raise some interesting points... unfortunately, they're all simply rhetoric. You imply that someone who has a religious belief automatically abandons their faculty of reason--a ridiculous claim, especially considering the huge range of religions and beliefs; they're don't all say 'we must do what this holy book says without question', nor do they all say that people shouldn't think for themselves and question things. If religious people don't automatically lose reason, I think it's safe to say they don't lose their ability to negotiate, either; but putting that aside for the moment, let's look at your claim that they would need to use force if they can't rely on negotiation (and reason). You're assuming that every single religion in the world has nonnegotiable goals that requires them to kill and coerce when negotiation fails, and that just isn't the case. Some don't even seek new followers.
Now, you may not like religion--and that's fine--but failing to use reason when criticizing people for being unreasonable doesn't seem exactly productive.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
If it's not modded up to a 5, the the moderators are truly on crack!
While it's interesting to see the scriptural basis for the prohibition on depicting living beings (I had no idea it encompassed animals as well). I'm sure you recognize the difficulty of getting an international (but western oriented) community like Wikipedia to observe Sharia law on this subject.
Wouldn't a reasonable compromise be to ask the Wikipedia moderators, that since the images are offensive to Muslims, that they should be moved to a linked page, so that believers would not come across them by mistake?
To demand the rest of the world to agree with one religion on the subject of blasphemy is impossible but not really necessary, when asking for a degree of politeness and sensitivity would suffice.
Most dictators have their own quasi-religious beliefs and practices, such as personality cults (seen in Stalinism and with the fucktard running North Korea), as well as with Hitler and Nazism. It could be said that the more religious a person is, the more mentally unstable they are. Most people who are criminally insane, for example, do not commit murder because they never received a message from god to do so.
Yes Atheists kill, but I would hypothesize that this psychotic tendency comes from that emotional and unpredictable part of the brain that also causes people to see images of the Virgin Mary in inanimate objects like rainbows or cookies.
And why, I ask you, are the christian nuts locked up? Because our countries and laws were set up by secularists, deists, and atheists. Freethinking people who knew that the end result of letting your book o' myths dictate your laws was a sure way to end up with people getting burned, stoned, beheaded, drowned, tortured, generally abused for no good reason. It is ONLY the secular, rational influence of the scientific enlightenment that prevents our society from acting exactly as muslim societies do now.
The real difference is that there aren't as many true believers among christians as there are among muslims (thank goodness). If christians believed as strongly as muslims do, then we would've had a crusade that would've killed hundreds of millions of people by now.
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
Sadly, any religion that claims to be a religion of peace is lying through its teeth. When people abandon their faculty of reason and start to believe in the imaginary, they lose their means to negotiate with others
Sadly, you're assuming that all religion is irrational and imaginary. If you assume that most people are irrational and live in fantasy land, you've lost your means to communicate with others.
DATABASE WOW WOW
>>Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.
.....and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die."
>Neither does the Quran.
I'm no biblical scholar, but a quick Google shows me (which is probably about as deep as many Christians read their Bibles)...
Deuteronomy 13:6-9 "If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying: Let us go and worship other gods (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other, or gods of other religions), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people."
Deuteronomy 17:3-5 "And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens,
2 Chronicles 15:13 "All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman."
And for the "It's only the old Testament" folks:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law (the Old Testament) or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law (the Old Testament) until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)"
Of course it can all be taken out of context, like anything else, and I don't personally care to put the effort in to find the appropriate context, but the Bible, on its face, seems to preach the "death to infidels" thing as well as the Koran, on the face of it.
It is certainly true that Islam is not the only source of terrorism, but some religions are much more likely to lead to terrorism than others. Ever hear of a Quaker terrorist? A Mennonite terrorist? A Buddhist terrorist? A Baha'i terrorist?
They're both monotheistic religions.
They both refer continually to books written a long time ago.
They're both used as an excuse for subjugating, killing or stealing from others.
They're both full of shit.
Even in the subset of things in this world called 'religion', these two are pretty fucking similar.
Don't go pretending Christianity is in any way better than Islam. They're as bad as each other.
If you truly believe that religious belief necessarily implies a willingness or tendency to do violence, then you, sir, are the one who has abandoned your faculty of reason. Not the religious people.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The problem is that religion is inherently *irrational*. There are crazy, stupid, irrational atheists, no one would dispute that.
But if you follow and believe in (almost) any religion, it means you believe things that are by definition unprovable, irrational, and supernatural. A person who is ready to believe such things might be more ready to believe other irrational things than someone who bases his thoughts on rational explanations.
The other problem is that in logic, if you allow a contradiction or paradox, you can prove about anything you want. Positing the existence of an omnipotent, sentient, all-powerful being as an axiom of any system of logic and thought will necessarily result in a system that can be used to prove anything whatsoever. So even though most believers might be considered "moderate", religion can always be used as an excuse for about any crazy thought you have.
Skeptics and atheists, on the other hand, will usually require more rational logic, facts and proof before believing you.
Unless they're lunatics/crazy, in which case your religious beliefs (or absence thereof) will not change the results much.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
The real difference is that there aren't as many true believers among christians as there are among muslims (thank goodness). If christians believed as strongly as muslims do, then we would've had a crusade that would've killed hundreds of millions of people by now.
Yes! This is a key issue that I often overlooked. The warm, enveloping arms of the scientific enlightenment have gradually weened Christians in the West off their religious dogma. The church attendance rate here in the US, this most Christian of countries, is well below fifty percent. Many "Christians" have never read the Bible, in its entirety, because frankly, they don't need to. The "mainstream Christianity" espoused their priests and ministers bears little more resemblance to the religion described in the Bible than it does to the religion described in the Quran. It is, instead, an amalgam of some of the more palatable ideas cherry-picked from the Bible and some traditional American cultural norms. It is, basically, a 2000 year old religion molded and sanitized to fit within the intellectual constraints created by this country's Enlightenment-inspired foundation, along with the further progress afforded by a couple of hundred years of social liberalization.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Easy solution: distribute lynx to all Middle Eastern nations.
Thomas Galvin
Ever heard of the crusades?
This is logically flawed. Just because there are some people who believe it's ok to use force doesn't mean that every pro-liberty individual is guaranteed to lose everything. Liberty-infringing security measures are not the only way to combat such people. And there aren't enough such people willing to take others' things by force to "guarantee" everyone will eventually lose everything.
I myself am often given to hyperbole, but jeez.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
(I'll start. I'm Jewish -even worse- Israeli. Grep my username to see why I've been modded troll in this thread.)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Bah, they were all Catholic :-)
They weren't exactly following the teachings of Christ, either, were they?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Inquisition. Witch Burning. Saint Bartholemy massacre. Many persecution on minority. justification of taking slave by attributing them "no soul". I could probably dig more with a few minutes.
As for the crusade being used as an excuse, that still does not absolve all Christian having participated to them dosn't it ? Or will you use the usual excuse of "those were not true Christian" ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Christianity also has positive things to say about martyrdom - however, it has nothing to do with you killing other people. What it says is that if someone else kills you because of your faith, and you hold true to the end, then you will be greatly blessed in heaven.
Murder, however regrettable, is not the same as terrorism, nor is it necessarily motivated by the religion. One can be reasonably confident that members of all religions (other than perhaps the tiniest ones) have committed murder, but that doesn't tell us much about the religion. Without justifying Nixon's secret bombings, I don't think that they qualify as terrorism - their goal was not terror but to disable enemy forces. There are lots of evils other than terrorism.
"Tons of dhimmi-wannabes running around misquoting and taking quotes out of context. Those are really easy to find in google. Good for you."
wouldn't it be more productive to take the verse quoted and put it INTO context, to teach others and show that your original point remains true?
Name calling and sarcasm would seem opposed to this goal (esp since you should'nt be contentious)?
You can't take the sky from me...
Oddly enough it is my liberties and rights that are being taken by force. Yet I am no more "secure" than I was before they were gone. I was in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11th and I felt far less threat to my freedom on that day than I do since the creation of DHS.
We are all just people.
Whilst religion is not a necessary precursor to crime and atrocity it is significant factor in the committing of the more heinous and repeated crimes. A person who does not receive divine forgiveness is far more likely to turn around and ask "what have I done". Many of the worst criminals (premeditated and serial offenders) in western jails ether had extremely strict religious upbringings (and I mean extreme fundamentalism, this tends to stunt normal life lessons in the teenage years which in turn prevent them from having normal interactions with others) or turn to god as a means to escape the guilt that they feel (Sometimes religious conversion is a means to circumvent the guilt given by the court but I am talking about the type of criminal that we would never let back into society).
* I know not all religions have a divine forgiveness clause, some such as Buddhism promote self evaluation.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
-- Dr. Steven Weinberg
He didn't say you were less intelligent. He said you're more likely to make an irrational choice in the future. I think that might be a bit of an oversimplification as it does not address how accurate a predictor your past behavior will be for your future behavior and he does not address that it requires an irrational decision to act violently against others. Despite this, he does make a valid point to some degree and you have not yet addressed it.
You are saying that the Muslim religion is a murderer? Understand that I'm a Jew living in Israel. Understand that just yesterday a suicide bomber blew up in my country. Understand that every single day between 5 and 25 rockets fall on my country from Gaza. Understand that I spend a month in Lebanon last year. You would think that if anyone would be convinced that Islam is a murderous religion, then I would be convinced, no? I'm not convinced because it's not true. The Muslims who murder are not unlike the Christians, the Jews, and the atheists that murder. They do it because it's what their parents, teachers, politicians, and heros taught them to do. Not because their religion requires it. When the blame gets put where the blame is due, then the problem can begin to be solved. Blaming the religion is merely excusing the real root of the problem.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Here ya go*:
*Please note that the above ASCII art is sanctioned by Islam.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
One thing I learned from this video (and a few similar which are linked): Muslims are still pissed off about stuff that happened hundereds of years ago: the crusades, the expulsion of Muslims from Spain, the Spanish civil war. It is unfortunate that these scholars who keep Muslims so conscious of history do not also inform them of the lessons learned by it.
True, except that few religious believers, especially not those of the Abrahamic religions, hold their beliefs in this way. What you are proposing is apophatic theology, in which you cannot say anything about God--even that God exists in any meaningful sense. The proper response is silence. Virtually all of the faithful adhere to kataphatic theology; they want to talk about God, talk to God, and expect divine intervention on a regular basis. The core of their faith is superstition, a desire for magical control through force of will, and the response you quoted is perfectly suited to this kind of belief. They make objective claims, claims not considered "true for me" but true for everyone. So do you: with that word "miraculous" you give the whole game away. Objective claims have rational and evidentiary consequences, and must answer on those grounds. An intervening God falls within the rightful domain of science, and religion must therefore answer to science when making such claims.
All too often, as it is in your post, the kind of argument you make is accompanied, within a few sentences, by a return to this magical thinking. I call this bait-and-switch deism, where the merest wisp of a deist possibility is taken as carte blanche for the existence of a being intimately involved in the physical world. It's the magical thinking we object to. But without that magical thinking, the entire proposition loses its appeal. If reason and evidence do not apply to such an entity, neither do concepts of personality, good or evil, causation, action, intent, or any other category that is applied to God by any religion. What is left is a meaningless question mark in the dark, something so completely orthogonal to any human hope, expectation, or understanding, so utterly alien, that it is colder than the void of space.
This is not the God that any religion believes in.
Atheist and proud. You can mock it all you'd like -- I'll smile and nod at you.
There's no offense to be had when you have a lack of faith. Its instead your own personal comedy show when you see logical fallacy after logical fallacy, threats, and all other kinds of oddities from those that want to "save" you.
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Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
The all time winners of body count would be secular atheists or agnostics of course. Hitler and Stalin easily surpass any religiously oriented genocidal campaign. Stalin alone is good for 40-50 million deaths through deliberate starvation, gulags, mass executions, etc. Even if the crusades were as brutal, I doubt the Christian forces had the logistics or numbers capable of reaching such a bodycount.
I consider myself a secular atheist, but I call a spade a spade...I think this concept of 'religious wars' is overdone and loses historical, sociological, and ethnic context. The Crusades were religious wars, only insomuch as the dominant government of the day was feudalism which was based on some religious principles (divine right of kings). And there were alot of Muslim armies, but half of the Koran is about various tribes/countries in the middle east fighting with each other.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
The all time winners of body count would be secular atheists or agnostics of course. Hitler and Stalin easily surpass any religiously oriented genocidal campaign.
I'm surprised it took so long to bring up this old myth. Hitler was not an atheist.
His religious views are unclear, but he certainly wasn't an atheist or agnostic.
Stalin was an atheist, but that is beside the point. The point is he didn't murder in the name of atheism. You might as well mark him by the colour of his hair, it's just as relevant as a lack of belief in one particular supernatural entity.
That is utter nonsense. You think the Byzantine Empire rightfully owned those lands before the Muslims seized them? Are you even marginally familiar with the Middle East? It has been under the control of one empire or another until the fall of the Ottomans. The Holy Land was conquered by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Persians again, and then proceeded to oscillate between the late Roman/early Byzantines and the Persians. That is, until the Islamic caliphate conquered a war-exhausted Sassanid empire and then promptly began kicking Byzantine ass.
The world is borne of conflict. The Greeks/Romans never had any claim to the Holy Land--they took it by force, just like everyone else. And its population has been relocated and slaughtered so many times that attempting to claim ancestral ownership is pointless--the Hebrews have lived there for less time than practically ANY other ethnic group native to the area, be it Arab, Iranian, or Turk. The only determining factor in ownership of those lands is the strength to hold it, which is why Israel holds it now, and will continue to hold it until someone gets strong enough to kick them out.
Nice try?