Yes. In the same way that a usually-benign bacteria can suddenly flare up and cause flesh-eating diseas, so-called non-militant religions can flare up into bouts of fundamentalism.
..but I've noticed that those who think that Islam is completely evil often know very little about what Muslims actually believe and how they practice their faith.
I am an atheist. This is what Islam says about me. So tell me again... who are the ones promoting hatred and violence?
That defeats your hypothesis that all religion is (equally) a blight on humanity. The Onion image insulted a bunch of religions but there wasn't any violence. It seems that Islam is unique in that criticism of it or satire of it provokes deadly violence.
Besides, if you studied Islam, you would know that it instructs its followers to commit evil acts. Are you saying that just because non-Muslims commit evil acts, it excuses Islam?
But for some reason, nowadays it's Islam that seems to inspire the most heinous acts of religiously-motivated violence and that's why I'm concentrating on Islam. You need to put out the most dangerous fire first before going after the lesser fires.
Are you arguing that what non-Muslims should do is commit genocide against Muslims?
No. But we have a duty to point out how evil Islam is. And we have a duty to use all means in our power to prevent the spread of militant Islam. Ideally, that will be through persuasion and non-violent resistance, but if militant Islamists attack us violently then we have no recourse but to respond violently also.
On the contrary, blaming the religion is exactly the right approach because it is the religion that contains the evil. Most Muslims are quite decent human beings and are deserving of respect. Islam, on the other hand, is a set of ideas and philosophy and we should not hesitate to criticize it.
Isn't a similar statement also true for some of the instructions in the Bible? Wouldn't that make it impossible (by your standards) for someone to be an observant Christian and a good person?
IMO, yes. All religion is bad. That being said, some religions are worse than others and IMO Islam is the worst of the lot.
Second, there is only one country in the world that has, throughout its history, used its military power and political influence consistently to try to export its ideas of morality and law to the world, and it ain't no abode of Muslin desperation, it is the U-S-of-A.
Note: I said the evil flows from Islam. I didn't say that Muslims are evil. The Muslims I know are all decent and humane people. That's because they ignore all the nasty crap in their religion and only pick and choose the benign stuff. But the religion itself is full of nastiness and evil and is a blight on humanity.
My WiFI access point looks unsecured to the casual wardriver. However, the firewall to which it's connected only accepts OpenVPN traffic. So yeah, you can pick up an address with DHCP, but you can't do anything until you establish an OpenVPN session.
I did it this way because I trust SSL/TLS a bit more than WPA and certainly a lot more than WEP.
Infoworld had an article on this in which the reporter wrote: It was unclear whether the optical microscopes needed to read the storage medium will still be available in the year 100002012.
Still, I hear that Hitachi is offering 10x your money back if the data is unreadable 100 million years from now.
Governments aren't supposed keep lists of peoples habits or preferences, and for good reason
I'm not sure that the government kept the list. I think it might have been the Conservative party. Now seeing as they Conservatives have a majority in parliament, this is a very grey area... but still: The government isn't really keeping tabs.
Political parties of all kinds have been targeting specific groups for years. This is nothing new. What is new is that the Canadian Conservative party has a really kick-ass CRM system that lets them do this kind of targeting very efficiently.
... in that it requires ever Muslim on the planet (all 2,500,000,000+ of them) share the exact same dogmatic view...
Muslims are not the problem.
Islam is the problem. The fact that most Muslims are not evil is entirely unrelated to the fact that they profess to follow Islam and completely related to the fact that most people have basic human decency regardless of the twisted belief systems they're force-fed as kids.
It's somewhat premature to predict the dying out of Western civilization. If we project your trends further, the West will have low populations but quite a bit of wealth whereas Muslim countries will be overpopulated and probably barely able to feed their own people. We'll see who ends up surviving...
Your point being... what? Christianity is nasty? Yeah, probably, but so what? Islam is just as nasty and is currently much nastier in practice.
You also conveniently cut the rest of my post:
This is not unique to Islam, of course. Most religions have similar contradictions that allow believers to pick-and-choose according to the situation and the audience.
I went to university with a guy from Iran who literally escaped death by fleeing overland to Afghanistan, thence Pakistan and finally Canada. He had to redo his entire engineering degree because the Iranian officials who wanted him dead would not release proof that he had graduated from university in Iran.
Islamic countries have a long history of keeping several non-Islamic religious groups within its borders, all of them relatively untouched, unharmed, and even with self-governing rights.
Depends. If you are Jewish or Christian, then yeah... you get to live as a subservient member of society. If you're Bahá'í in Persia, the wonderful Islamic republic puts you on a hit list.
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Yes. In the same way that a usually-benign bacteria can suddenly flare up and cause flesh-eating diseas, so-called non-militant religions can flare up into bouts of fundamentalism.
I am an atheist. This is what Islam says about me. So tell me again... who are the ones promoting hatred and violence?
That defeats your hypothesis that all religion is (equally) a blight on humanity. The Onion image insulted a bunch of religions but there wasn't any violence. It seems that Islam is unique in that criticism of it or satire of it provokes deadly violence.
That statement is a well-known logical fallacy.
Besides, if you studied Islam, you would know that it instructs its followers to commit evil acts. Are you saying that just because non-Muslims commit evil acts, it excuses Islam?
OK. Christianity is vile and disgusting too.
But for some reason, nowadays it's Islam that seems to inspire the most heinous acts of religiously-motivated violence and that's why I'm concentrating on Islam. You need to put out the most dangerous fire first before going after the lesser fires.
No. But we have a duty to point out how evil Islam is. And we have a duty to use all means in our power to prevent the spread of militant Islam. Ideally, that will be through persuasion and non-violent resistance, but if militant Islamists attack us violently then we have no recourse but to respond violently also.
Why is that?
On the contrary, blaming the religion is exactly the right approach because it is the religion that contains the evil. Most Muslims are quite decent human beings and are deserving of respect. Islam, on the other hand, is a set of ideas and philosophy and we should not hesitate to criticize it.
IMO, yes. All religion is bad. That being said, some religions are worse than others and IMO Islam is the worst of the lot.
Oh, really? So what was this all about?
Note: I said the evil flows from Islam. I didn't say that Muslims are evil. The Muslims I know are all decent and humane people. That's because they ignore all the nasty crap in their religion and only pick and choose the benign stuff. But the religion itself is full of nastiness and evil and is a blight on humanity.
I am. Islam is a blight on humanity and evil things like those emanating from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan flow directly from Islam.
And if women didn't dress provocatively, they wouldn't be raped.
Yeah, yeah, that's it. Suppress freedom of expression so half-crazed Islamist assholes don't have an excuse to riot. Sounds like a great plan to me.
My WiFI access point looks unsecured to the casual wardriver. However, the firewall to which it's connected only accepts OpenVPN traffic. So yeah, you can pick up an address with DHCP, but you can't do anything until you establish an OpenVPN session.
I did it this way because I trust SSL/TLS a bit more than WPA and certainly a lot more than WEP.
Unfortunately not!
Infoworld had an article on this in which the reporter wrote: It was unclear whether the optical microscopes needed to read the storage medium will still be available in the year 100002012.
Still, I hear that Hitachi is offering 10x your money back if the data is unreadable 100 million years from now.
AEMEN022, you insensitive clod!
I'm not sure that the government kept the list. I think it might have been the Conservative party. Now seeing as they Conservatives have a majority in parliament, this is a very grey area... but still: The government isn't really keeping tabs.
Political parties of all kinds have been targeting specific groups for years. This is nothing new. What is new is that the Canadian Conservative party has a really kick-ass CRM system that lets them do this kind of targeting very efficiently.
Muslims are not the problem.
Islam is the problem. The fact that most Muslims are not evil is entirely unrelated to the fact that they profess to follow Islam and completely related to the fact that most people have basic human decency regardless of the twisted belief systems they're force-fed as kids.
It's somewhat premature to predict the dying out of Western civilization. If we project your trends further, the West will have low populations but quite a bit of wealth whereas Muslim countries will be overpopulated and probably barely able to feed their own people. We'll see who ends up surviving...
Your point being... what? Christianity is nasty? Yeah, probably, but so what? Islam is just as nasty and is currently much nastier in practice.
You also conveniently cut the rest of my post:
So do you. You may recall that I wrote: You'll never get a straight answer. Thanks for illustrating my point for me.
The Qu'ran calls for murder and war. Context be damned; it's hate literature.
Then it's time you learned.
I went to university with a guy from Iran who literally escaped death by fleeing overland to Afghanistan, thence Pakistan and finally Canada. He had to redo his entire engineering degree because the Iranian officials who wanted him dead would not release proof that he had graduated from university in Iran.
Depends. If you are Jewish or Christian, then yeah... you get to live as a subservient member of society. If you're Bahá'í in Persia, the wonderful Islamic republic puts you on a hit list.
I cited the Qu'ran over here.
I posted citations from the Qu'ran itself. No secondary sources needed to show that Islam condones and promotes religiously-motivated violence.