Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Honestly, I think it's the problem that Muslims need to sort out among themselves. I take what people tell me or present to me.
I am a gay, Vietnamese, agnostic theist man. If there is a gay, Vietnamese, agnostic theist criminal who does evil thing and identifies himself with one or all these labels, who am I to say that he is not one?
There are good and bad people in every group. So far I have only encountered decent Muslims who obey the law of the land. I say that they are good Muslims because that is how they present to me. The ones that caused atrocities on 911, the ones that bombed Boston, terrorists in France, Al quaeda, and ISIS are evil Muslims. It is up to Muslims to differentiate true Muslims and untrue Muslims. I am an outsider. I only take information as it is presented.
My parents are practicing Buddhists, and they don't associate themselves with Buddhist monks in Myanmar, who are anti Muslims. They never say those monks are not true Buddhists. In their mind, there are good Buddhists, there are bad Buddhists. There are good monks, and there are bad monks.
I used to be a naive person who believed that being Vietnamese means that people have to be family oriented, monogamous, honor parents, good students, etc. I was wrong. While it is true that Vietnamese culture fosters those values in people, that doesn't mean they are in a moral high ground compared to Caucasians, who are stereotyped to be promiscuous, naughty, lustful, etc. Living in the States, I have met Vietnamese people who cannot speak the language, have multiple partners, are narcissistic, and bad students. Am I going to say that they are not Vietnamese? Certainly not. They are just as much Vietnamese as I am. In fact, they identify themselves as such. They simply choose to follow a different lifestyle.
Similarly, if a Muslim is a terrorist and identifies himself/herself as a Muslim, I will take that information. That is an evil Muslim. If a Muslim is a law abiding citizen and identifies himself/herself as a Muslim, I will take that information. That is a good Muslim. True Muslim or not is totally irrelevant.
I used to be a naive person who believed that being Vietnamese means that people have to be family oriented, monogamous, honor parents, good students, etc. I was wrong.
Oh, the irony! I used to be a naive person who believed that being American meant those same things, and I was equally wrong.
This belief came from fundamentalist Christianity's conflation of godliness with patriotism and good citizenship which in turn came from the notion that when a person becomes a Christian they are transformed for the good -- plus the notion of American exceptionalism and god's special favor for our nation because of some confused notion that it was founded on "Christian principles" when, if anything, it was founded by people who leaned towards Deism.
At least your naive view of Vietnamese identity was probably founded on actual values of the general Vietnamese culture. In America it's easy to be isolated from that because it's a much larger country. You can think that small town midwestern "Bible belt" values are American values because particularly in the 1960s one could grow up and never experience the very different values in, say, Berkeley California, other than as fuzzy images on the televisions of the day, which made it seem far less than real. Heck, I lived maybe 80 miles from the 1968 riots at the Democratic national convention in Chicago and THAT seemed entirely discountable as a few disaffected big-city hooligans who were never going to destroy REAL American values. I never encountered a single person of color in person until I was 18, and that was a Nigerian prince who was here to study MY religion -- hardly typical. So I never identified with the civil rights movement or black culture even a little until MUCH later in life. And I certainly never knowingly met an uncloseted gay person until I was in my late twenties, and that was through work.
Honestly, I think it's the problem that Muslims need to sort out among themselves. I take what people tell me or present to me.
I am a gay, Vietnamese, agnostic theist man. If there is a gay, Vietnamese, agnostic theist criminal who does evil thing and identifies himself with one or all these labels, who am I to say that he is not one?
There are good and bad people in every group. So far I have only encountered decent Muslims who obey the law of the land. I say that they are good Muslims because that is how they present to me. The ones that caused atrocities on 911, the ones that bombed Boston, terrorists in France, Al quaeda, and ISIS are evil Muslims. It is up to Muslims to differentiate true Muslims and untrue Muslims. I am an outsider. I only take information as it is presented.
My parents are practicing Buddhists, and they don't associate themselves with Buddhist monks in Myanmar, who are anti Muslims. They never say those monks are not true Buddhists. In their mind, there are good Buddhists, there are bad Buddhists. There are good monks, and there are bad monks.
I used to be a naive person who believed that being Vietnamese means that people have to be family oriented, monogamous, honor parents, good students, etc. I was wrong. While it is true that Vietnamese culture fosters those values in people, that doesn't mean they are in a moral high ground compared to Caucasians, who are stereotyped to be promiscuous, naughty, lustful, etc. Living in the States, I have met Vietnamese people who cannot speak the language, have multiple partners, are narcissistic, and bad students. Am I going to say that they are not Vietnamese? Certainly not. They are just as much Vietnamese as I am. In fact, they identify themselves as such. They simply choose to follow a different lifestyle.
Similarly, if a Muslim is a terrorist and identifies himself/herself as a Muslim, I will take that information. That is an evil Muslim. If a Muslim is a law abiding citizen and identifies himself/herself as a Muslim, I will take that information. That is a good Muslim. True Muslim or not is totally irrelevant.
The difference is there is no such thing as a Muslim culture that is representative of all Muslims. In areas where there are Muslim communities, the community is usually based upon national origin not religion. A Pakkistanicommunity might or might not be all Muslim or if all Muslim not necessarily the same sect. Even in a Pakistani community that is all Muslim you could have Sunni, Shi'ite,Ahmadiyya, Sufi etc each claiming to be Muslim
Being Muslim is very individual Even a Muslim does not know who is a Muslim we accept every person who claims to be Muslim as being Muslim. There is no such thing as a True Muslim or a false Muslim. A Muslim being simply a person who performs the act of Islam to the best of their ability. But because a person is Muslim does mean everything they do is Islamic.
We are not organized in the same manner other religions are. In non-Islamic nations, such as here in the USA, It is even possible for Muslims to live near each other and not know their neighbor is Muslim. We do not have any identifying features that make us Muslim.
Most Muslim in the USA are not Mideastern, do not speak Arabic and are not recent immigrants and do not live in Muslim communities.
355 Mass shootings in 2015 in America by the time we got to San Bernardino. Apparently the vast majority have become so routine they are hardly even newsworthy. But a terrorist attack by Muslims? Close the borders!
The hysteria about San Bernardino was out of proportion when compared with all the other mass shooting that have happened in America this year. America has major problems to be addressed, that are clearly not restricted to Islamic terrorism.
That being said, there is this issue of martyrdom in Islam, that no longer seems to exist within Christianity, that cannot be ignored.
Most commonly, mass killings seem to be because the attacker has mental health issues (after killing many people, how could it not be related to a mental issue?). However, when the attacker is Muslim, the given reason always seems to be some affiliation with a terrorist group or personal martyrdom based on the persons faith in Islam. Mental health is rarely a given reason.
Perhaps belief in radical Islam IS a mental health issue?
The difference is there is no such thing as a Muslim culture that is representative of all Muslims. In areas where there are Muslim communities, the community is usually based upon national origin not religion. A Pakkistanicommunity might or might not be all Muslim or if all Muslim not necessarily the same sect. Even in a Pakistani community that is all Muslim you could have Sunni, Shi'ite,Ahmadiyya, Sufi etc each claiming to be Muslim
Being Muslim is very individual Even a Muslim does not know who is a Muslim we accept every person who claims to be Muslim as being Muslim. There is no such thing as a True Muslim or a false Muslim. A Muslim being simply a person who performs the act of Islam to the best of their ability. But because a person is Muslim does mean everything they do is Islamic.
We are not organized in the same manner other religions are. In non-Islamic nations, such as here in the USA, It is even possible for Muslims to live near each other and not know their neighbor is Muslim. We do not have any identifying features that make us Muslim.
Most Muslim in the USA are not Mideastern, do not speak Arabic and are not recent immigrants and do not live in Muslim communities.
Again, it is up to Muslims to work out theological issues. The problem I see is that religions based on revelation put the prophets on the pedestal as if whatever they say is completely true.
Even in Buddhism, my family's religion, also has this problem when the Buddha was worshiped as a perfect, flawless, enlightened being. Hence, people who don't follow Buddhist teachings are not considered true Buddhists. I totally disagree with this idea. Gautama Buddhist himself was slightly misogynistic. Even though he taught that all sentient beings are equal, it was much more difficult for women than men to become his disciples. He was also known to say that people who don't follow his teachings will reincarnated as lower beings. I used to be a devoted Buddhist, and I considered everything the Buddha said was true. No question asked.
I hold Muhammad and Jesus the same standard. I don't care if people revere their words as holy sayings from God. People who commit atrocities against humanity sincerely believe that they follow the teaching of the Bible or Quran. Who am I to say that they are true Christians or true Muslims?
I believe that we will never obtain peace when people keep putting every single word in a book on a pedestal. When a holy man and his words are immune to criticism, religious conflicts will never end.
When a holy man and his words are immune to criticism, religious conflicts will never end.
I don't see this so much as religious conflicts. It looks more to me like using religion as a mechanism of control. The fundie Christians or the terrorist Muslims don't do anything to advance the acceptability of the doctrine. Religions can exert a little control over someone or enough to put the person into an insane alternate reality. The people using it just happen to be working in a Muslim environment.
All your graphic shows is that most 'mass killings' are not done by Muslims. We all knew that.
However, Woodrow was asking if we would assume any dastardly deed done by Muslims is automatically linked to Islamic Terrorism. Your graphic does not address his question.
I can think of six mass killings done by Muslims - two at the World Trade Center and one in Boston, Chattanooga, Fort Hood, and San Bernardino. To my understanding, five of those killings were motivated by Islamic ideas.
Therefore, if I hear about a future mass killing done by Muslims, I will estimate there is an 83% chance of it being a case of Islamic Terrorism.
The thing is, many radical Muslims do it in the name of their god. Others do it because they're crazy (and this includes ordinary Muslims too).
For instance, that Egyptian pilot who intentionally brought down the plane in the 90s, nobody called it Islamic terrorism. Because it wasn't. And let's not forget Saddam's regime. He killed so many innocent people. Gassed the Kurds. Islamic? Nope, more racial and political in nature.
So there are a few instances were politics or just a person's insanity plays a role in this, even if they adhere to Islam.
ISIS, Boston bombers, Paris shooters, Sydney cafe siege....Sorry, but these were clearly Islamic. And they say it themselves.
Abortion clinic shooters. KKK. Crusades. Definitely Christian. Tamil Tigers -- Buddhist and Hindu extremists. It's not that we're biased towards Islam. The thing is, Islam radicals are just more prominent nowadays. It's not "racist" to point them out the most.
Again, it is up to Muslims to work out theological issues. The problem I see is that religions based on revelation put the prophets on the pedestal as if whatever they say is completely true.
I hold Muhammad and Jesus the same standard. I don't care if people revere their words as holy sayings from God. People who commit atrocities against humanity sincerely believe that they follow the teaching of the Bible or Quran. Who am I to say that they are true Christians or true Muslims?
I believe that we will never obtain peace when people keep putting every single word in a book on a pedestal. When a holy man and his words are immune to criticism, religious conflicts will never end.
I agree with your last paragraph.
At the ultimately level no human beings can ever judge who are the true Christians or true Muslims. That is for their God to judge in accordance to God's terms and conditions. As such this deliberation is moot from the start.
However on the practical level, we can objectively assess who is a truer Christian or Muslim based on their compliance with the terms and conditions of the covenant [stipulated in the holy text] they made with God or Allah.
For example;
If there are 1,000 obligatory terms a believer must comply, thus one who complied and performed 800 of the terms would be a truer believer than the one who complied with only 300 of the terms of the covenant. QED.
The terms of the covenant of a Christian or Muslims can be extracted from their holy texts, i.e. the Bible [NT] and the Quran respectively.
The fact are;
1. The Quran is both inherently good and evil. More than 55% of the 6,236 verses of the Quran contain evil laden elements of various degrees with a no-holds-barred passport. Thus a high percentage of the obligatory terms of the covenant contain evil laden elements. [can be determined by a detailed analysis]
2. The Bible [NT] has an overriding pacifist Maxim of non-violence, i.e. 'love your enemies' and the likes.
Since the Bible [NT] has an overriding pacifist maxim of non-violence, we cannot blame Christianity itself when Christians commit evil and violence based on the misinterpretation of the verses or are ignorant of the overriding pacifist ethos of the NT.
On the other hand, Islam-in-part [not wholly] is to be blamed when SOME [not all] evil prone Muslims are inspired by the no-holds-barred evil laden verses to commit evils and violence on non-Muslims and even other Muslims.
Buddhism proper also has a specific maxim of pacifism of non-violence as it core principles. This is reinforced by its call for compassion and empathy to all sentient beings. Therefore when Buddhist monks commit violence, we cannot blame Buddhism per se but rather it is the evil nature of those particular monks that prompted them into committing violence.
There are many sects within Buddhism with all sorts of practices that deviate from the central core principles of Buddhism.
For example, many lay Buddhists pray with joss-sticks to various statues of Buddha and other deities. This is not in accordance to the principles of Buddhism proper, but Buddhism and their clergy are flexible to accept such practices to accommodate the emotional needs of lay Buddhists with the hope they will progress from there to Buddhism proper.
Some sects may have rules that are seemingly misogynistic while others do not have such rules.
My point:
We have to understand the central holy texts of a religion to understand its core principles and ethos.
Islam is the only mainstream religion [in part] that has evil laden elements within its holy texts and core principles that inspire SOME [not all] evil prone Muslims to commit terrible evils and violence around the world. The evidence to this is so glaringly that any one can acknowledge with ease.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
