Is Islam really a violent religion?

[Bahadur]

MeekandMild:

lendringser, Even without Hitler (though Nazism was a secular movement) I think that if you crunch the numbers and count the Red Chinese, Soviet, Khymer Rouge victims they easily exceed all the theistic victims in modern history.

First of all, Nazism was most certainly not "a secular movement." It certainly incorporated many elements that can be described as religous, spiritual or cultish.

Furthermore, let's assume for the moment that "Godless communism" did cause more absolute number of deaths than religious conflicts (which might not be the case). Even if that were the case, you cannot make the statement that the "secular evil" was a greater than the "religious evil." Why? Because much of the religious violence took place in the pre-modern times whereas the secular violence took during the modern times. Meaning, the population bases were very different (MUCH larger in the modern times). So there were "more to kill" in the modern era. Furthermore, the methods of destruction increased tremendously in the modern times. Hitler could kill 6 million deliberately in only a handful of years. It took Jenghiz Khan decades of campaigning to kill an estimated 2 million.

So, sheer numbers of death alone do not demonstrate that one force was "more evil" than the other.

I'm still interested in hearing about your theory that the medieval Christians "relearned genocidal warfar" from medieval Islam -- in other words, that the atrocities committed by Christians were the fault of Islam.

I would like the answer to this too. I consider it to be patently false.

 

[SodaPop]

First of all, Nazism was most certainly not "a secular movement." It certainly incorporated many elements that can be described as religous, spiritual or cultish.

I'm glad to know that someone else out there knows this. I almost fell off my rocker after watching the "The history of the Nazi occult."

Incredible scarey stuff.

When I lived in India, I use to buy bags of rice that had Swastikas on it. My dad later explained that the people that sold it weren't Nazis. "The history of the Nazi occult" got into the twisted occult beliefs taken out of the Middle-east and Asia.

P.S. Can anyone tell me the person that Arafat is related to that was collaborater with the Nazis? I believe it was a grandfather or uncle?

 

[longeyes]

Dang, all hell's broken loose in the faculty lounge! While you guys slash each other to pieces with Occam's Razor some of us are just relying on our sense of smell. Is Islam intrinsically violent or does it just have a funny way of being at the scene of the crime, again and again and again... Let me get back to you on that, okay? You'll pardon me if when I see an eighteen-wheeler bearing down on me I don't ask if it's got two flat tires or Mr. Toad's taken the wheel.

 

[ahenry]

Cuchulainn,

rather I was pointing out to you that you are confusing your reasonable suspicion with likelihood. The birds are 100% correlated, so your suspicion is reasonable. Nonetheless, the likelihood of the birds being the cause remains zero.

First lets understand this inane example of 100% correlation between birds and rain. Its a made up example and anybody can make up anything that appears to support their point. The fact of the matter is you would never have 100% correlation between birds flying under a tree and rain falling because there is no causation there. So by using a faulty example to try and prove your point you do your argument a disservice. Let me go back to my actual example to illustrate what I am trying to say (because I think we are not communicating).

In my example, I went for a good number of years noticing the phenomenon that when I went from inside lighting into outside sunlight, I would sneeze. I have only a small biology background now and even less as a kid, so the concept that sunlight might actually be the cause of my sneezes was pretty ridiculous. An opinion agreed on by most those that saw me. Most tried to tell me that surely it wasn’t the sun, but perhaps the atmosphere, or some other possibility. However, as time went by and I noticed the regularity with which I would sneeze when walking out into bright sunlight, I began to come to the realization that the most reasonable explanation was that sunlight did make me sneeze. It was only years later that I discovered science caught up to my practical understanding of my situation and proved me right. In other words, as the correlation was shown over and over and over again, with consistency and regularity, the likelihood (or probability if you prefer) that the sunlight was the cause increased. Years ago a doctor would have laughed at somebody trying to say sunlight made people sneeze, now we know that it does (in some people). Was I ever able to actually prove causation (prior to seeing doctors studies later in life)? Absolutely not. Was I able to say with greater and greater assurance and accuracy that sunlight was causing the sneezing? Absolutely. Now you can call that whatever you want, me I call it “greater instances of correlation between two issues, indicate greater likelihood of causation between those two issuesâ€.

 

[Boudicca]

Dust-up in the faculty lounge

Longeyes, you've gone to the heart of it. I couldn't agree more.

 

[MeekandMild]

Bahadur, OK, if you won't accept the idea of the great socialists of the 20th century as being secular, would you accept socialism as a non-theistic religion?

On the subject of dark age and medieval christianity, we should divide it into two separate areas, the Holy Roman Empire to the west and the Byzantine Empire to the east. I will leave discussion of the east for another day.

In a nutshell, the west was involved in a series of wars of succession as the ending anarchy of the fall of Rome evolved into the Carolingian society which consolidated the middle ages. It also spent much energy in defence from the Germanic nations and the Scandanavians, with a style of warfare which must be considered primitive and disorganized. These invasions were more like family squabbles than anything else, I suppose where the word 'feudal' came from.

As the Western empire degenerated from a huge Pagan beaurocracy to early Feudalism all that was left of government was a large number of very weak city-states. While Rome was the titular heir to the empire it was in fact one of these weak states. Warfare was more on the level of jockying for position with the bulk of the population pretty much left intact, until invading Islam threatened to overwhelm the west.

I will leave it to you to look up the history of this first invasion, with a good search string being "Charles + Martel +Tours + Saracen". The Battle of Tours was the pivotal point of European history from the fall of Rome to the defeat of the Nazis. This invasion and battle are so important in the total cultural change of the west that one could spend a hundred pages discussing it and never really explore it all.

Once you understand the history of the eighth century then you can understand what I said, otherwise you just don't have the knowledge base and end up howling like the poor dog I mentioned above. The Saracen invasion of the 700's and the Battle of Tours was where Western Christianity and the Roman Church learned genocidal warfare from the Moslems.

A couple of links about early Islam:

From Frank Smitha's comprehensive World History pages, a brief history of early Islam, including its early genocidal actions.

J. J. Saunders. A History of Medieval Islamm, from Chaper IX The Turkish Irruption (Saunder's book is available via amazon.com)

 

[Zander]

***I'll ask you AGAIN, Zander. Please PROVE that it's not true. -- Mike Irwin***

The burden lies on you to prove your contention, Mike.

***You can only SPECULATE that it's not true. So, 100 million killed by tyrants, socialists, etc., in the past 100 years. How many before that? Who knows.***

That's my point. Your contention is based on speculation, not mine. My numbers are quite accurate; what are yours?

***Now, compare and contrast that with what, nearly 6,000 years of recorded human history. In light of that....***

In light of that, what?!?

A little research on population numbers in recorded history gives an answer to those inclined to logic. I'm willing to accept that the world's entire population was approximately 5 million people in 5,000 BC; 200 million in Jesus Christ's lifetime; 300 million by 1,000 AD; 400 million by 1500 AD; 1,500 million by 1900. Straightforward arithmetical progression, given the nature of human behavior.

Please make your case. I don't think you can.

***You don't, actually. -- cuchulainn***

Sorry, this defies the use and logic of the scientific method.

***lendringser, Even without Hitler (though Nazism was a secular movement) I think that if you crunch the numbers and count the Red Chinese, Soviet, Khymer Rouge victims they easily exceed all the theistic victims in modern history. -- MeekandMild***

Seem entirely logical to me.

***Furthermore, let's assume for the moment that "Godless communism" did cause more absolute number of deaths than religious conflicts (which might not be the case). (actually, it is fact) Even if that were the case, you cannot make the statement that the "secular evil" was a greater than the "religious evil." -- bahadur***

Then this is a tacit agreement that the number of human beings murdered by "secular" governments in the last century is accurate.

***So, sheer numbers of death alone do not demonstrate that one force was "more evil" than the other.***

Dissembling at its finest...

***...some of us are just relying on our sense of smell.***

Some of us seem to have retained inherent senses.

***Since history has many incidents of theocracies, Christian or otherwise, which have killed people by the score, your argument against secular regimes loses its point. -- lendringser***

How?

***a.) secular regimes are more prone to genocide than religious ones, ***

Correct.

***b.) only certain religions have violent theocracies in their history, ...***

Without question, some more than others.

***c.) theocratic tendencies for mass murder are a thing of the past, ... ***

Don't recall anyone making that assertion. You can provide some modern-day exceptions, can't you?

***d.) secular governments are worse than theocracies becausse they rack up a higher body count.***

Indisputable.

***What you cannot argue, however, is that theocracies, or declared religiously affiliated governments, have never engaged in mass killings of any kind, whether on their own citizenry or others. ***

Where did I make that assertion?

***George Carlin says that the wrong answer to the God question has been the leading cause of death in history.***

Better to rely on the logic of Thomas Sowell, a brilliant thinker, than the musings of a fried-brain comedian.

*** All religions, Islam included [especially?], have bred violence for the explicit sake of either advancing their own faith or eradicating another.***

Then we should ignore matters of scale?

***That's NOT what the statistics show (what's an "average black" anyway). The stats do not determine the likelihood of a particular individual's actions. -- bahadur***

You deny historical fact. It is without contradiction that blacks commit violent crimes completely out of proportion to their percentage of the population.

That's what the statistics show...and your PC-based rationalizations are, at best, counter-productive. They represent nothing more than enabling such criminal behavior.

***"PC-driven meander" is merely a personal attack, and you know it.***

No; rather it is a factual refutation. I doubt your conclusions, not your integrity. In point of fact, just recently I acknowledged that I learn from your posts. A sincere sentiment, by the way.

***Equivocate all you wish. -- Tamara***

There is no equivocation unless we are forced to accept your convenient melding of religion, "religion", and state-as-religion. Spare me the sophistry.

***lendringser, Even without Hitler (though Nazism was a secular movement) I think that if you crunch the numbers and count the Red Chinese, Soviet, Khymer Rouge victims they easily exceed all the theistic victims in modern history.***

Shock and dismay...fact intrudes upon the discussion! LOL!

 

[Marko Kloos]

Zander, the original premise of this thread was the question whether Islam is inherently violent. We've established that all religions have had mass murder committed in their name, which renders the premise invalid, unless you measure "inherent violence" by the number of deaths caused by followers of a religion.

Now you're implying that Christianity is less violent than either Islam or secularism, and you base it on the relatively lower body count over the centuries. Don't you think that's a weak justification for the superiority of a religious system? "We're better, because less people have burned at the stake in our name?"

I don't care whether I get bombed by Christian, Muslim or secular zealots. A bomb in a clinic, or a plane flown into a building both constitute mass murder, and they both have their contingent of believers trying to justify them via Scripture or warped political philosophy. Any group of people that either justifies or condones the use of violence against innocents to further a theological or political point is neither righteous, nor morally justified...can we agree on that premise at least?

 

[Mike Irwin]

OK, Zander. I will say it outright, as I do believe it. Religion, in one form or another and of all types has been responsible for more mayhem and carnage than any other single reason in history.

Exercise of religion, repression of religion, contrasting and conflicting religions, you name it.

Why do I say this?

Because religion, its exercise or repression, has been at the root of most, but not all, of the most horrific excesses that man can conjure, from the Crusades to the attempts to exterminate the Jews.

Can I lay every single body at your door step to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt?

No more than historians can factually say that 100 million people died in the last 100 years due to non-religious strife. Could be 75 million, could be 130 million. Those numbers are NOT "quite accurate." They're best guesses, Zander. No one can conclusively say that World War II was responsible for 20 million Soviet dead, because the Soviets can't be trusted in their counting.

With the destruction of records inherent in times of drastic upheval, the loss of records, the separation of families, mass migration of people, you can only make best guess estimates. Nothing more.

You want to quibble about which is more horrible? About which constitues the greater loss of life? About how many angels can dance on the head of a pin with corpses for partners?

Quibble away, because the numbers you quote are as open to speculation as my statement.

Ultimately, though, in your incessant desire to quibble a single statement to death, for a purpose I still can't quite comprehend, you still miss the point of the entire conversation. Does it give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside to count history's corpse piles?

I've already stated that I'm not 100% certain that my statement would hold absolute water, but you're not willing to accept that, preferring some dogged pursuit of your own absolute statements.

Quite frankly, unless you're able to count the corpses, you're no more certain of your statement's factual proof than I am of mine, yet you continue to hold and do yourself what you accuse me of? You've no more absolute proof of your numbers than I have, so get off your high horse, Zander.

The population estimates of the world over time are just that, ESTIMATES. They no more prove your case than they do disprove mine.

Why? Because even scientists can't agree on those historic population numbers. Populations don't grow at linear rates. They spike, they stagnate, the flow. The population "absolutes" that you cite are actually variable by as much as 100 to 200 percent, according to some scientists, who claim that the world's population has been a lot larger, and a lot more stagnant pre-1600, than it has been since then.

So whose scientists are more right? Do people procreate and die in linear patterns? Do people kill each other at specified rates based on religious and non-religious criteria?

Beats the hell out of me.

But I still come back to the same statement.

Religion, and its practices, have been at the heart of the worst of man's strife.



Lendsringer...

Yep. A single murder committed in the name of a particular God or religious believe cheapens it just as much as 100,000 murders committed for the same purpose.

I'm starting to think that Churchs should have signs out front, like McDonald's...

Only they shouldn't say "Over XX served..."

They should say "Over umptyteenthoumiland killed in our God's name."

 

[LawDog]

Enough.

Eight pages and nobody's mind has been changed.

Birds and rain.

Condescension, veiled insults, and digital knee-biting.

The horse is well and truly deceased; trust me, it is now time to stop with the flogging.

Lights out.

LawDog