Slashdot Mirror
Islamists In Bangladesh Demand Murder of More Bloggers
An anonymous reader writes "Days after the killing of leftist blogger Thaba Baba, mosques throughout Bangladesh called for a popular uprising to demand the killing of other bloggers who had held a rally calling for the death of Jama'at-e-Islami leaders convicted of war crimes. This happens in an atmosphere of ongoing tension between Left and Right, with the leftist government threatening to outlaw rightist parties while the right uses violence to quiet selected enemies."
Unfortunately for this "distinction" to have much meaning, you need to have the alleged "average" people and clerics of Islam start denouncing the actions of these "loud attention seekers" more strongly than a token, "it wasn't us."
Do a large number of these "average" people of Islam show up at the places where these "attention seekers" go, to make a shield between them and their targets, like a lot of people (both Christian and non-Christian) do at Westboro "events"?
I fear that it needs more than that. Actually it was Luther who stood first against Pope and dogmas. However, at that time Church was already over it's fever to kill everyone who disagreed. Let's remember, it took centuries for them to get there. They thought that excluding from Church was enough.
When I look to Middle East Islam, I fear they will have huge problems to get over that phase. Everyone who disagrees are sooner or later silenced. Some would say that economical development is only answer, but I fear that it won't be enough.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
And that issue is exactly what makes this so outrageous. If my brother was spouting off, embarrassing the family, I'd punch him in the face and tell him to shut up. Yet, this global "brotherhood" you speak of remains, at best, absolutely silent whenever a small percentage of "their people" launch some rancid extremest call for the murder of innocents. At worst, they join the protests.
As an secular/cultural Muslim, this is one of the biggest points.
This is such an important point.
It is hard to describe to people what Islam is. It is not just belief in God or attending church once in a week.
I grew up overseas, went to Islam school, not an extreme one by any stretch of the imagination, so I do consider myself quite learned.
Islam is composed of the Koran which is relatively vague and you can read it to mean a lot of things and you can apply a lot of context to things.
But the Koran is not the core of Islamic practice. That is the hadith... which basically stems from the belief that Mohamed was a great man... therefore we should do as Mohamed did to have the best Islamic practice.
So I was literally taught to enter the washroom with the left food, to sleep on my right side, not to stand up and pee... That is the level of detail we have in the Hadith on the life of Mohamed and what it is that Muslims are taught to do. This is standard Sunni/Shia Islam.
So you can of course imagine the problems with this... a detailed log of a man who lived 1400 years ago being held up as the final perfections of mankind. The logs orally recorded and then written down over centuries across wars/assassins/politics... You don't need a PHd to figure this out.
And so there are many 'bad' hadiths out there. ...
Stoning single mothers for sex out of wedlock... check.
Going to war, capturing the women and making them sex slaves... check.
Going to war to spead Islam... check.
Killing those who speak against Islam... check.
Yes, most people of all faiths have done similar things in their own religion. The difference in Islam is that this is taken as THE FINAL PERFECT WAY TO LIVE with the hadith to show you how to live.
And this is taken seriously by Muslims. As you say, the old testament has lots of 'bad things', but no one takes it seriously and much of Christian thinking today would suggest that many parts have been superceeded by the new testament... which is relatively good... and the portrayal of Jesus himself as a model is a relatively good one.
Now what most Muslims have resorted to is ignoring the bad parts of Islam and simply saying they are out of context... Sure its an intellectual cop out.
It is the same text (the hadith) that tells you to pray five time a day as the one that tells you to go to war and capture slave women. Yes most modern Muslims will ignore the war and slave part.
But in the end, it is for the good. I can't handle the silliness of it all, so I don't follow the religion. But I'd rather have this kind of peaceful ignorance than 'real Islam'.
Islam is about where Christianity was 500-800 years ago. That is, becoming a major world power and fighting to gain more power, becoming involved in economic and political wars in the name of the religion, and having wars between sects. What if back then the rest of the world had said "we'll never have peace until every last Christian is dead"?
The violent islamists are in the minority of all muslims. Muslims are speaking out against this (despite some people claiming it never happens). If we have modern day atrocities in the last 50-100 years done by Christians against non-Christian minorities, do we blame all Christians for this?