I want the ones reading this and watching this to understand I respect peaceful people and people respecting secularism. This is not hate speech.
On the other hand, I personally checked the quotes and I invite you to check yourselves, don't take my word for it:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1207467783
This has the potential and explains a lot of what we're seeing today.
23 comments:
You could find the same kinds of quotes, for example, in the collected works of Shakespeare.
If you want to "explain" phenomena, consider rigorous application of the scientific method, instead of sensationalist media.
It's not like you coulnd't create a movie like that about any other religion.
But just like you I'd like to add that I don't have any problems with religion and favour peaceful people.
But sure this video do show the tendency of hatred against islam that exist in the Netherlands and elsewhere. It really is sad that people have that much need to find things to hate.
All muslims I've met have been very nice people, though the religious ones have been about as conservative than the Catholic people I know.
You should read the quran, You will quickly see that those quotes are not strange or taken out of context.
You don`t know islam like we in Balcans do. Holland now knows.
This film does nothing else but divide. For equality you should post a film with bible cites and nice pictures of protestants and catholics bombing their way through Dublin... "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" anybody?
People should distinguish between a religion and some minority of fucked up freaks who think their religion is the one and only way and anybody else has to be converted - one hand or the other.
"You could find the same kinds of quotes, for example, in the collected works of Shakespeare."
Yes, but the works of Shakespeare does not pretend to be the word of god and that I should listen to it blindly. The bible and the koran do pretend that.
"If you want to "explain" phenomena, consider rigorous application of the scientific method, instead of sensationalist media."
The problem with any faith is that it requires from the get go to drop any critical thought, and to simply believe what that faith teaches.
You say "rigurous application of the scientific method", OK, let's do that:
1) You have a believer, no matter the religion, which believes whatever is written in a holy book to be the word of god and that the book is the perfect word of god, without alteration or modification of any kind.
2) as a consequence, since, as a believer, you don't question anything, you take as truth anything in that book
3) somebody persuasive enough appears and shows the believer those quotes, taken out of context, or not, it doesn't matter, and demonstrates that is your duty as a believer to be violent
4) since you believe that is the word of a supreme deity, and, as a believer, you are taught to trust scholars/priests/religious authorities, you comply
Please find a flaw in this scenario. The only problem is for the right circumstances to occur: a gullible believer which does believe that is the exact word of god and an extremist leader and you get the new arian movement.
" Floris Bruynooghe said...
It's not like you coulnd't create a movie like that about any other religion."
Yes, indeed, this fundamental problem is present in all religions. The root cause is that being religious mandates the person in question to drop any reasoning and questions when talking about his/her faith.
Is just a matter of time until a nut appears and interprets in an extremist way the holy word.
"People should distinguish between a religion and some minority of fucked up freaks who think their religion is the one and only way and anybody else has to be converted"
I agree, that's why I said from the begining what I said.
It was the same with any extremist religious movement.
The key problem with religion is that is requires abandoning reason and logical thinking.
"This film does nothing else but divide. For equality you should post a film with bible cites and nice pictures of protestants and catholics bombing their way through Dublin"
I never said one should hate any religion, but that in order for a old religion to match current values it should reform itself to respect the rights of others. The Roman Catholic church had that problem and fixed it, although is unfortunate people had to suffer for that to happen.
Some of the individual rights are: freedom of life, freedom of choice.
Any modern religion must understand and endorse that by modifying their dogma if it wants to uphold modern values. Otherwise it will be seen as extremist. And this is not an ultimatum since any sane person would tell you that would prefer to live free than a slave (in any shape or form).
This video is not interesting. It's made by a far-right racist. It shows a whole bunch of lunatics as representing a major religion.
If 5% of muslims worldwide held such hatred in their hearts, we'd all be headless by now.
Don't let two little planes make a foolish paranoid out of you.
Also notice how partial your outrage is, since a *somehow* secular mass murder of nearly a milion iraqi civilians doesn't make the hair on your back raise in the same fashion.
All major organised religions have a history of doing bad things that continues to this day. For example the idea that the Catholic Church has become all nice can be easily refuted by a search of news archives for references to child sex offences (and the organised church cover-up) or the history of Opus Dei.
There are a lot of really good people who are Catholics, but the Catholic Church still does some bad things.
The problem with decentralised religions such as Islam (which generally seems to have no hierarchy apart from the mixture of religion and government in Iran) is in random people appointing themselves as spiritual leaders. Osama bin Laden doesn't lead many people, but it only takes a few to hijack a plane.
A large part of the so-called religious violence is really based on nationalism or banditry. Osama bin Laden wants the US forces out of Saudi Arabia. The IRA want political power and have a sideline in banditry. The Taliban want political power and to control the drug trade.
"in order for a old religion to match current values it should reform itself to respect the rights of others. The Roman Catholic church had that problem and fixed it."
nope, they never did. freedom of choice is not a fundamental human right in the vatican rhetoric: you are not free if you choose wrong. the roman catholic church can't (and won't) reform its dogmas, and the pope explicitly rejects modern values in all his speeches and writings.
@anonymous
"If 5% of muslims worldwide held such hatred in their hearts, we'd all be headless by now."
unfortunately out of 1 billion muslims in the world today much more than 5 millions take the fundamentalist view: large chunks of the population of somalia, sudan, nigeria, egypt, afghanistan, iran, pakistan, indonesia, iraq, saudi arabia and many more are undeniably dangerous fundamentalists. some time ago a simple cartoon put them on fire, and several riots and deaths occurred. we really do have a problem.
"People should distinguish between a religion and some minority of fucked up freaks who think their religion is the one and only way"
is there a major religion that was not founded and is not controlled by a minority of fucked up freaks?
"Don't let two little planes make a foolish paranoid out of you."
I am not fooled at all, but it takes just one persuasive nut to make a holocaust - see Hitler.
"Also notice how partial your outrage is, since a *somehow* secular mass murder of nearly a milion iraqi civilians doesn't make the hair on your back raise in the same fashion."
Don't put words in my mouth.
OTOH, that mass of secular iraqis don't follow a book blindly, without questioning it. More than that, I don't see the connection, so don't deflect.
Not questioning is the main problem with any extremist view on any matter.
EddyP
nope, they never did. freedom of choice is not a fundamental human right in the vatican rhetoric: you are not free if you choose wrong.
Even apologising for the inquisition is a sign of reform.
OTOH, you can choose to go out of that religion and nobody will do anything to you.
And you can choose wrong, although the church disapproves.
EddyP
"secular mass murder of nearly a milion iraqi civilians"
How exactly is a mass murder of moderate muslim iraqi civilians by militant extreme muslim fighters a "secular mass murder" ?
But the real tragedy here is the apparent complete lack of moderate/secular muslims vocally rejecting the violent parts of quran.
Majority of members of all other religions accept that their holy scriptures are not to be taken literally. And while taking them as spiritual guidance, accepting the fact they have to be read in the context of the time they were written.
But finding moderate muslims who come out and tell that they are muslims but don't believe that quran is literally the truth is very hard... At least _I_ haven't met anyone. If someone reading this is one such, please beat the drum - the world needs you!
It takes a lot more than one persuasive nut. Hitler didn't work alone. People like Fritz Thyssen paid a lot of money to support him. Many of the propaganda ideas used by Hitler originated in Tzarist Russia.
None of it would have happened if WW1 had ended differently. The economic and political failure in Germany after WW1 was the major cause of the population wanting something (anything) different.
As for what the bad 5% of Muslims might do, that will probably be restricted to beating their wives unless someone invades their country and makes them want to strike back. The vast majority of violence is always local.
The fact that religion requires abandoning reason is a major part of the problem. But you can get this without a religion too, take for example the "town hall protesters" in the US and their insane objections to medical reform. A large part of what is called "conservative" politics in the US is based on a total avoidance of reason - often without a religious connection. The "war on drugs", "abstinence only" sex education, and almost everything related to the US military are completely unsupported by reason.
As for the million dead Iraqi civilians since the US occupation (half of whom were women and children), that is largely due to the US invading without any plan. Everyone who considered the issue knew before the invasion that the Kurds would want independence, but that Kurdish independence would threaten the stability of Turkey (the best US ally in the region) and that the Shia Muslims would probably be inclined to ally with Iran if given a choice. Now as the Kurds, Shia, and Sunni all have a long history of hating each other it obviously wasn't going to go well if someone just removed Saddam and tried to keep them all together. So once again it's people dying wholesale because of a lack of reason, but no direct religious involvement.
It takes a lot more than one persuasive nut. Hitler didn't work alone.
Well, in Islam now we have extremist scholars and some rich idiots funding them, so I guess, you need a bunch of nuts to get together. That doesn't deny the fact the risk is there.
As is well put before, we need moderate muslims to come forward and say they do not consider the quran to be taken literally and to do that in front of other muslims.
After all, we need people to reason before acting based on any belief.
The "war on drugs", "abstinence only" sex education, and almost everything related to the US military are completely unsupported by reason.
Indeed, what we need is more people, and especially people considered "inside" people, to be vocal about being reasonable.
In particular about religions, those "inside" people must acknowledge publicly that *no* single book can be the exact word of God, or even if it is, it must not be taken literally.
In any holy book one can find conflicting ideas which, in turn, can *only* be explained by *not* taking the words literally.
EddyP
You should read the quran, You will quickly see that those quotes are not strange or taken out of context.
I don't know to whom was that addressed to, but indeed, the quran says those things.
And the key problem is the lack of vocal/authoritative reasonable muslims talking sense into all other muslims.
These moderate leaders should make the others understand that they must accept other opinions, not as a temporary truce, but as a permanent and final condition of the modern world we all live in (after all is tolerance we're talking here about).
Also, these leaders must clearly state the fact that the quran and any other holy book can't be 100% correct and accurate since those books themselves, in their current form, contradict internally, which is a clear sign of human alteration or even, worse case for them, origin.
@eddyp:
"And you can choose wrong, although the church disapproves."
i know they don't kill heretics anymore but i could fill pages with examples on how the catholic church doesn't merely disapprove and actually forces its moral code on unwilling people; i'll quote just this one: a few month ago the vatican opposed an onu call to decriminalize homosexuality, because (i'm not joking) that call would discriminate against the countries currently discriminating, jailing (and killing) homosexuals.
as far as i know the current pope was even against the much louded but little influential "apologies to god for past errors of bad churchmen", the church never really "fixed" itself, is on one of its "revival of tradition" phases, and seeks an alliance with the not-suicidal-bombing-but-still-radical muslims to "fight the european secularization and the modern values" (their words)
@russel:
"None of it would have happened if WW1 had ended differently."
maybe, but we can't be totally sure: italy was on the "winning side" of ww1 and yet we invented fascism twelve years before hitler gained power.
1. Even the Old Testament contains hatred. I don't remember where because I read it now 10 years, but there is a passage where it is written about happily dancing on your enemie's grave...
2. Haven't you heard about the conspiration version? Slowing down the movie you can see that the buildings didn't (and couldn't) crash because of the airplanes.
Stop fooling around!
1. Even the Old Testament contains hatred. I don't remember where because I read it now 10 years, but there is a passage where it is written about happily dancing on your enemie's grave...
And that makes Islam's position good or correct? wtf?
I am against all kinds of dogma, including christian, islam, communism etc, just to put things into perspective.
2. Haven't you heard about the conspiration version? Slowing down the movie you can see that the buildings didn't (and couldn't) crash because of the airplanes.
Stop fooling around!
So you are denying that there are extremists out there calling "behead those who insult islam"?
I have heard the 9/11 conspiracy theory and there are some things there that don't make sense, but that does not deny the fact that there are muslims who promote terrorism, hatred, extremism, killing of apostates, destroying western civilisations, and so on.
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