Why blame Islam?

[Sees]

Well by comparing countries per capita murder rates, we've firmly established that Christianity is a much more violent influence than Islam. So all these anti Muslim arguments fall flat on there face, the SCIENTIFIC facts do not support the premise that Islam is a more violent religion, the fact of the matter is we all have violent tendencies


Why no reply, are the facts too hard for some to swallow??

Where are the - murders related to/influenced by religious ideology - numbers? Or the original accusations that Islam is most violent or murderous? The religious adherence of the people commiting murder? The corresponding links to religious traditions ideological teachings?

 

[Lyndon]

If you are murdered, you're dead, I don't think you will have a chance to ask whether you were killed for religion or not, the premise has been repeated over and over on this forum, "Islam is a violent religion, Muslims are more violent, they need to be feared" And yet when we look at these statistics, you're actually more likely to be murdered in America than in many Muslim countries, if you don't believe Muslims are more violent, Sees, then we have no disagreement, its just that a lot of other people on this forum, even in this thread have made statements to that effect, and the facts just don't back that up.

 

[Zulk-Dharma]

I blame Islam for indoctrinating you in the belief that murder is an acceptable/moral reaction to being offended, and you for mindlessly buying into that.

How's that? Elaborate on this inanity.

 

[Sees]

If you are murdered, I don't think you will have a chance to ask whether you were killed for religion or not, the premise has been repeated over and over on this forum, "Islam is a violent religion, Muslims are more violent, they need to be feared" And yet when we look at these statistics, you're actually more likely to be murdered in America than in many Muslim countries, if you don't believe Muslims are more violent, Sees, then we have no disagreement, its just that a lot of other people on this forum, even in this thread have made statements to that effect, and the facts just don't back that up.

Do you think all religious traditions have equal tendency to promote or inspire fighting, aggression, violence, etc.? I.e. a Buddhist or Jain is as likely to harm or kill other people over, or for, religious reasons/beliefs as Muslims? Do you think religious promotion and inspiration of harming or killing others is nonexistent or insignificant?

There could be an exotic island culture with the religious ritual of sacrificing 5 babies per year, yet they have the lowest murder rates per capita in the entire world. How much of a pass does the religious ideology get?

 

[leibowde84]

yes I did, is it supposed to obviously be a hypothetical?? IF so I will retract my statement when he admits he was testing us with a made up scenario.

I'm pretty sure this was stated as a hypothetical, as there is no such rule in Islam.

 

[Laika]

If someone swears,insult or hurt my mother then my natural human reaction will be to warn that person not to take my mothers name.If he continues then i will give him a final warning that if he does not stop then i will kill him.
Now if this person continues with his insults then i have no option but to kill him.I will be labelled a murderer and the law of the country that i am living in will take its course.
My question is who do you blame for the murder?
Do you blame me or do you blame my religion Islam.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say this might be a reasonable course of action, if extremely dubious on moral grounds and clearly illegal. On a TV Drama, this is an open and shut case of individual guilt because conservative bias and sensationalism makes murder interesting and juries vindictive and thoughtless in enforcing the letter of the law. There are so many totally pointless crime dramas on TV at the moment, it be unusual to get an episode of someone break the law for an actual reason. And not just money.

In Real Life, if someone harasses you to the point that you've made several warnings and it's escalated to a death threat and they still keep going- you're an idiot for doing it, but you're choices become really limited once you made it. Psychological stress and impairment of judgement from sustained harassment will be a factor and will be considered in your defence in a legal proceeding and may reduce your sentence. It could be considered a form of self-defense. But You'll go to prison but there are worse things to go to prison for. Just expect all the prisoners to provoke you with 'yo moma' jokes and being nicknamed 'Norman Bates'. I wouldn't blame you or your religion, but you're an idiot for making a death threat, and they guy insulting your mother is an idiot for carrying on.

The 'issue' with 'Islam' (at least as portrayed in the media) is how insulting or depicting the Prophet can lead to violence- it makes less sense for someone who has been dead for 1383 years (Muhammad died 632 AD), than responding to violence if someone harasses you and you're mother who is alive (or even within living memory). To a western audience, it doesn't make much sense, especially as we can flip over the channel from the News and see a comedian making fun out of Jesus as a sandel wearing hippie and "Anyone who can turn water into wine must be great at parties". etc. It feels like something medieval with people killing each other over which way the priest faces when giving communion: does he face the congregation or god in the stained glass window? The significance of these actions is blown out of proportion by attributing a sacred status- and that why a 'religious belief/believers' could be an issue. I'm on the fence to be honest. (edit: because I'd have a problem with all religions for doing this- not just Islam).

 

[Nietzsche]

So you agree that its my fault and i am lower than dirt.
And you do agree that no blame should be directed to my religion Islam.

Not for the violence that occurs supposedly in its name, no. And honestly, it distracts from the very real problems with Islam by doing so.

 

[YmirGF]

If someone swears,insult or hurt my mother then my natural human reaction will be to warn that person not to take my mothers name.If he continues then i will give him a final warning that if he does not stop then i will kill him.

You would actually kill someone for insulting your mother? Seriously? I'd simply grumble about "Someone here seems to have very serious issues..." and walk away. But... that's just me. You have to understand, my mom is a wonderful lady so if someone was insulting her, I'd know right off the bat that the person had serious problems and couldn't be taken seriously, certainly not enough to get mad at - let alone angry - let alone so frustrated with them that I thought of killing them. That's insane.

Now if this person continues with his insults then i have no option but to kill him.I will be labelled a murderer and the law of the country that i am living in will take its course.

And hopefully they would also provide you with much needed psychiatric counseling for your anger issues.

My question is who do you blame for the murder?
Do you blame me or do you blame my religion Islam.

I blame you, and you alone. I'd have to know far more before I could possibly link Islam in as part of the equation.

 

[Looncall]

So if you were raised a Catholic and you were a member of the mafia, Mexican or Italian, and as part of your culture and position you murdered people, you would blame Catholicism, not the murderer, that's just plain nutso!!!

I would blame Catholicism for not doing a better job of teaching decent behaviour.

The same goes for ravaging muslims, whatever their background.

 

[Deidre]

Well...Pope Francis said recently in a public statement that he'd hit someone who'd insult his mom.

lol

I'm trying to understand this mentality of assaulting someone who would verbally say something against one of my parents. 0_o

 

[YmirGF]

Well...Pope Francis said recently in a public statement that he'd hit someone who'd insult his mom.

lol

I'm trying to understand this mentality of assaulting someone who would verbally say something against one of my parents. 0_o

You and me both, Deidre. I'd be more incline to look at the person with a mixture of shock and pity. But the wise old man in me would understand that they are crying out for recognition and just want someone to talk to. Once you get past the irrelevant venom you might actually begin to drill down into what is REALLY eating at them. Perhaps they feel like a failure or have recently suffered a major setback due to their own lack of planning... who knows.

My guess is that that quote from Franny will haunt him till his last dying breath - and so it should...

 

[Sees]

Well...Pope Francis said recently in a public statement that he'd hit someone who'd insult his mom.

lol

I'm trying to understand this mentality of assaulting someone who would verbally say something against one of my parents. 0_o

Think it goes back to older times with small communities - an insult could result in poor circumstances for the person and their family...honor and saving face was high-ish priority. Today neighbors are more like visible strangers. You could more possibly go many, many years without knowing or speaking with the person living 100ft down the street or their opinions of you having any influence on your life.

 

[Jumi]

Insults? Be strong and don't dishonor yourself by killing someone for them.

 

[Poeticus]

When I read discouraging tales and reports like this ...

The Fall of a Syrian Pagan | The Wild Hunt
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMI_OHCHR_POC_Report_FINAL_6July_10September2014.pdf​

... by all the gods combined, of freakin' course imma lay it down by calling out Islamic rigorism.

 

[Tiapan]

You have immediately limited your choices irrationally, death or nothing is ridiculous choice you are stupidly committed to the worst scenerio. There are a million other optional paths you could have used to defuse the situation.

You would in my opinion be fully guilty of murder irrelevant of the religion or reason for your action. In my country you would spend time in prison in you country you would probably be executed.
If some Religion suggested this is a worthy course of action, I would burn it immediately for suggesting such evil content.

We had a saying at school
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me"
In my opinion people can say and believe what they like, if you don't like what you hear then you are free to express that, otherwise turn the other cheek and walk away. But to resort in response to any form of physical violence is a most primitive and uncivilized way to deal with any situation. I condemn you for even suggesting a few petty words are worthy of the serious sentence of death, that is way way out of line with the rest of humanity.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Well by comparing countries per capita murder rates, we've firmly established that Christianity is a much more violent influence than Islam. So all these anti Muslim arguments fall flat on there face, the SCIENTIFIC facts do not support the premise that Islam is a more violent religion, the fact of the matter is we all have violent tendencies

Far be it from me to defend Catholicism. However, I think relentlessly DEFENDING Islam is every bit as harmful as relentlessly BLAMING Islam.
A couple of quick points;

1) Scientifically, you haven't proven a thing. At best, you've shown correlation of murder rates to religion. At best.
2) You have taken one form of violence, and used that as an index. Consider terrorist activity, overlay that, and see what that 'scientifically proves'. I would again suggest correlation, rather than causation, but your call. Are these sort of stats damning or not? Global Terrorism Index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3) All religions (at least, all Abrahamaic ones) believe they can influence people's behaviour. It is one of their very reasons for existence. Sure, they believe they influence behaviour for the better, and they make people more moral. But are you suggesting religions actually have no impact on people at all??

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

How's that? Elaborate on this inanity.

I already have, re: post #31.

 

[Lyndon]

Far be it from me to defend Catholicism. However, I think relentlessly DEFENDING Islam is every bit as harmful as relentlessly BLAMING Islam.
A couple of quick points;

1) Scientifically, you haven't proven a thing. At best, you've shown correlation of murder rates to religion. At best.
2) You have taken one form of violence, and used that as an index. Consider terrorist activity, overlay that, and see what that 'scientifically proves'. I would again suggest correlation, rather than causation, but your call. Are these sort of stats damning or not? Global Terrorism Index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3) All religions (at least, all Abrahamaic ones) believe they can influence people's behaviour. It is one of their very reasons for existence. Sure, they believe they influence behaviour for the better, and they make people more moral. But are you suggesting religions actually have no impact on people at all??

You make some good points, the weakness of my murder rate study is it doesn't go into how accurate each countries murder rates are, and it doesn't mention whether internal conflicts or war deaths are counted as murders or not. There is a lot of war, civil war and insurgent activity in SOME Muslim countries. Also I see on the link you post of terrorist activity, Norway rates as bad as several Muslim countries, that is presumably because of one horrible attack by Brevik??, in all your chance of being murdered is quite a bit greater than the chance of being killed by a terrorist.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

You make some good points, the weakness of my murder rate study is it doesn't go into how accurate each countries murder rates are, and it doesn't mention whether internal conflicts or war deaths are counted as murders or not. There is a lot of war, civil war and insurgent activity in SOME Muslim countries. Also I see on the link you post of terrorist activity, Norway rates as bad as several Muslim countries, that is presumably because of one horrible attack by Brevik??, in all your chance of being murdered is quite a bit greater than the chance of being killed by a terrorist.

My point more was that showing a correlation between a religion and some negative (or positive) event that occurs more commonly where that religion resides in no way establishes causation. This is neither in support of Islam, nor anti-Islam. It simply is.

 

[Lyndon]

Again what you say is true, my point being if Muslim religion truly made people much more violent, as some people are asserting, we would expect to see the murder rate being quite a bit higher in countries with that ideology, at least on average. It appears from the survey that the murder rate might have more to do with the number of really poor people, the economy and the government, than it has to do so much with the predominant religion.