Apparently Lars Vilks founded Ladonia

[Ari Rahikkala]

Lars Vilks being the guy who gets Islamic rage directed at him because, well, he drew this, and from what I hear on reddit, he's just generally big on trolling Muslims. The responses have so far been somewhat impotent - stuff like trying to attack him in a lecture hall when there's apparently a dozen cops right there ready to descend on you or failing to burn down his house even when armed with plentiful gasoline. It would be awfully sad if someone who's actually competent got really mad at him, but I'm not sure at this point if society wouldn't just shrug its shoulders and go "well he brought it upon himself".

So, yeah. That guy? He founded Ladonia. You should be somewhat familiar with the place if you've been following the MNN news feed, the New Herald is where all those pictures of those weird wooden sculpture-things and the election which was won be the President's Shoes are from. If the blog is to be trusted it's still being updated by the artist himself. I guess it's what he does to relax...

[Kaiser Mors VI]

How bizarre.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Anyone who provokes Islamic rage gets my approval almost as a reflex action. Good luck to the chap - even if he did set up Ladonia.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

As much as I feel there needs to be a balance between social commentary through freedom of speech and wilfully insulting people's Prophet for teh lulz, I do find the Muslim reaction amusing.

I mean, why is it not lost on them that reacting to an accusation of being violent and destructive with... well... being violent and destructive, is hilariously hypocritical.

Ah, the world we live in.

[Malliki Tosha]

Generalizations ftw.

The fact that it is a small minority of Muslims that react with being "violent and destructive" was kinda lost on you or what?

[Jacobus Loki]

But the ones who aren't violent and destructive need to reign in the ones that are. If an infidel reigns them in, their just "persecuting Islam".

[Malliki Tosha]

So Jake, what are you doing personally about male violence towards women? Surely, the ones who aren't violent and destructive need to reign in the ones that are.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

The fact that it is a small minority of Muslims that react with being "violent and destructive" was kinda lost on you or what?

Of course I'm aware it was a small minority... I'm still laughing at them, though...

[Jacobus Loki]

So Jake, what are you doing personally about male violence towards women?

I give goods and occasional cash to women's shelters, call 911 (the cops) when I see such crap going on, and occasionally laugh myself stupid at the inadequacy of such stupid mini-pricks attempting to lord over others solely due to their advantage in upper body strength.

I guess the analogy works. Radical Islam = violent stupid pricks.

[Malliki Tosha]

Yep, it does.

Do you also publicly state that you don't support beating up women every time some guy gives it to his wife or girlfriend? Do you also state that you are against rape? It's quite simple. If we as men don't have to feel collective responsibility and guilt for what a few idiots do, neither should Muslims have to.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

Your comparison of a collective responsibility between those of the same gender and those of the same faith strikes me as peculiar, to be honest.

Of course Muslims shouldn't have to suffer a collective responsibility for the violent actions of a few radical members of their religion, but the fact remains that the extremists are more likely to listen to a Muslim argument against their actions rather than a non-Muslim one. There is little non-Muslims can do to discourage Jihadists from their beliefs once they have been indoctrinated, as we are not familiar with the philosophical and theological framework which led them to those extremist conclusions.

Muslims, however, are. And whilst moderate Muslims shouldn't have to feel a collective responsibility for violent Jihadi actions, they ought to feel a responsibility to at least tackle these views within their own communities on their own terms for the reasons I have just described. After all, it is the actions of Jihadists which have led to Islamophobia in the West and consequently it is in everyone's interest- but especiially Muslims who feel the brunt of Islamphobic prejudice by definition- to nip radical Salafi and Wahhabi ideology in the bud before it becomes a danger.
It's not so much of a collective responsibility as a necessary practicality and presumably a moral duty if you're a moderate Muslim who views the actions of Jihadists as un-Islamic, as I believe many do.

[Malliki Tosha]

The comparison is a bit peculiar yes, but nevertheless relevant.

The problem is that this discussion only surfaces when it comes to Muslims and terrorists that label themselves as Muslims. When Christians commit crimes in the name of their faith, it doesn't exactly generate the same response and demands for action by all Christians.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

I think that might be something to do with the fact that there are and have been less large scale terrorist attacks by Christians in comparison to those committed by Muslims.

[Malliki Tosha]

I think you mean "in the name of Christianity" perhaps. If we view Russia, the US, Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Portugal etc. as Christian nations, which they more or less are, I would say that Christians have committed many atrocities throughout history, and continue to do so today.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

There's a big difference there, though.
If a Russian soldier in Chechnya commits an atrocity and he happens to be an Orthodox Christian, that does not mean that the atrocity he committed was necessarily done in the name of his faith. There'd be a difference if the atrocity itself was in his opinion part of his religious duty as an Orthodox Christain.

See, British soldiers in Iraq aren't killing in the name of Christianity; it's not a medieval Crusade. The suicide bombers in Madrid, London, New York, were killing in the name of their religion. Not saying I agree with either, just making that distinction. To attempt to be relativist about the two vastly different psychological motivations and scenarios is simply not truthful. Also I'd debate the extent to which Western European nations are Christian in a meaningful sense anymore, other than it being a cultural and historical element rather than a living faith.

[Malliki Tosha]

But you said terrorist attacks committed by Muslims, not in the name of Islam. I do read what you write, you know.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

Well I evidently didn't get my meaning across in that sentence, for which I apologise.
Essentially the majority of attacks on civilians carried out by people who happen to be Muslim will be due to radical Islamism and Jihadism. The majority of attacks on civilians carried out by people who happen to be Christians are not due to radical Christianity.

Hope that's clearer.

[Malliki Tosha]

I would like to see facts that support those statements, but I know that such figures are hard to come by.

The problem I see is that there are extremists that use Islam as an excuse to kill people. As to whether or not they are Muslims, that is a matter of discussion in my opinion. If a person that claims to adhere to a system of belief and a set of moral guidelines then proceeds to break them in a very obvious manner, can he still be considered to be an adherent of that system of belief? As a political analogy, it would go something like this. If a US Senator claims to be a conservative, but votes as a liberal every time, is he then a conservative or a liberal? When it comes to Islam and terrorism, it would be if a person claims to be a Muslim and then kills people, even though Islam prohibits murder, is he then a Muslim murderer or just a murderer?

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

Well, once again definitions make it difficult, I see where you're coming from.
At the end of the day Islam wouldn't outright reject those suicide bombers as Muslims, simply because they were bought up Muslim and although have denegrated much of what Islam stands for, they still worship Muhammad as the prophet and view the Qu'ran as their revealed text. I myself was told by a Muslim friend that although he doesn't condone in any way what they're doing, he views them as his Muslim brothers and sisters for that reason- that they do fulfil some very, very basic tenents of Islam.

It's also not quite so cut and dry as 'Islam prohibits murder'. How do you define the difference between murder and killing? The original Hebrew of the Ten Commandments aparrently prohibits murder, not killing. But what's the line?
'לא תרצח' (Lo tirtzach, i.e 'no murdering') is remarkably specific as one of the commandments though of course its exact significance is a matter of some theological debate. For example, many, many Muslims in the West Bank, Syria, and Iraq started cheering after 9/11. Does this make them Jihadists? Of course not. But what it does mean is that they had a level of sympathy and empathy for the circumstances which drove those Muslims to become Jihadists.
I think to state that Jihadism can't be Islamic because of what moderate Western Muslims have stated about it is unrealistic- religion is best represented by the attitudes- if not the actions- of its followers, and where there exists a deal of sympathy for Jihadi attacks, if not the ideological motivations behind them, in the Muslim world, then their actions are considered at least to an extent as 'Islamic', if abhorrent, but a number of Muslims.
If you were to state that every Muslim who exhibited some support for these actions was 'unislamic' because Jihadism was 'unislamic', then how many people would by that definition cease to be Muslims? Many Saudis, a large number of Iranians, Pakistanis, and Afghanis and some Palestinians, Iraqis, and Egyptians.

Ultimately it's up to the Muslim world to prove that these actions are un-Islamic by publically denouncing them- the power to make that definition is simply not in the hands of one or two Western Imams who are worried of Islamophobia.
I dare say the majority Muslim position could be that being a Jihadi doesn't make one not Muslim, it just makes one a mass-murdering and dangerously extremist Muslim.

[Malliki Tosha]

Don't equate Jihad with mass murder, that is just factually incorrect.

I base my assertions on what I have read in different sources by learned Muslim scolars. The consensus and mainstream interpretation of the Qur'an seems to be that God prohibits the killing of innocent people, Muslim as well as non-Muslim. The people killed in 9/11 for instance were innocent, and therefore the killing of them were against the teachings of Islam. To learn the teachings of Islam, we surely must go to the source, that is, the Qur'an. The Qur'an prohibits the killing (and murder) of innocent people, hence it is prohibited by Islam.

I also dislike that you drag up things like cheering after 9/11. Yes, I have seen the pictures and videos of people cheering, but you can't tell me they were many considering that there are approximately 1 billion Muslims. How many Americans say 'fuck yeah' every time a Muslim is killed in a bombing in Iraq? I think more than you think.

What drove the people behind the 9/11 attacks to commit that atrocity? Well, I wouldn't say Islam, since the Qur'an specifically prohibits the killing (and murdering) of innocent people. I wouldn't say poverty, since most of them actually lived in the West for a couple of years before the attack. You know what I believe? I believe it was the teachings of a fringe sect that claims to be Muslim but isn't in any way, shape or form that drove them to it.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

Well, ultimately neither you nor I can fully understand the theological and social nuances of this question as we're not Muslims and weren't bought up in Muslim communities. But personally I think it's a subtle mix of social and economic factors (which by their very nature define the creation of political movements such as Islamism), and also of course genuine ideological convictions.
I imagine that the majority of Jihadists are led into it due to difficult social and economic circumstances (it's not a coincidence that a great many British Jihadis come from deprived communities in the North where there is also a distinct divide between them and the non-Muslim community), but the leaders of the Islamist movement probably adhered to it as an ideological conviction, regardless of their material circumstances. This explains how Syed Qutb was relatively well off and not from a deprived background, yet he had the views he did regardless- just as bin Laden came from a wealthy Yemeni family. It is their followers who are the true victims of their ideology, since the majority of them believe it will ultimately benefit them and their families in future. Material circumstances drive all, if not most, ideological convictions.

The Qur'an prohibits the killing (and murder) of innocent people, hence it is prohibited by Islam.

Yes, the Qu'ran does. But that doesn't stop those with money and rhetorical power behind them, and a dubiously self-proclaimed position of Shaykh or Mullah in many cases to make many Muslims believe that those ideas have a sound theological basis. At the end of the day, though, we have to admit that all revealed texts of the Abrahamic religions do contain some grisly commandments which if taken literally can lead to tragic levels of violence and murder. I admit that there are some points of view put across in the Torah which I am not compelled to adhere to but if someone chooses to follow them literally, the fact remains that they are literally following the Torah.

For example, I could find a quote from the Qu'ran which by any reading does justify slaughter of non-Muslims.

8:12- I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them

But I could also find similar ones in the Bible or Torah. Yet the fact remains that those things are written in that revealed text. No matter how much I as a Jew choose to delve into ultimately fruitless 'interpretative' readings of verses like that from the Torah, the fact remains that they are there and I do not believe I should adhere to them.

If a Muslim, Jew, or Christian chooses to adhere to these violent verses in their revealed texts, they are acting in a literalist perspective of their text. They're not acting in the spirit of their faith, but they are acting in adherence to some of the words of their faith.
Look, I'm not saying that Islam as a faith drove the 9/11 bombers to do what they did- I'm saying that one can't rule out totally the influence of a literalist interpretation of the Qu'ran onto a radical Islamist mindset.
The same would be true of any Jew or Christian who claimed to do the same actions in the name of their G-d.

[Malliki Tosha]

And that quote is also probably taken out of context, which is so easy to do with religious texts.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

Well, actually, no it isn't.

But my point isn't exclusive to Islam. Essentially what I'm saying is that we need to understand that there are unpalatable parts of religious texts. We can't just ignore that by saying we're 'taking them out of context' or 'not interpreting them properly'.
Anyone with a literalist interpretation will be, well, literally following those parts of religious texts.

A religious faith which is truly meaningful is to act in the spirit of the revealed text, rather than its word- the crucial difference between a text being insipired by G-d and a text being written by G-d.

[Jacobus Loki]

Not to pick nits, merely random observation-

.......they still worship Muhammad as the prophet.

I believe that a Muslim would see that as blasphemy. Allah only is to be worshiped, or so I have been told. I forget what the term is regarding the Prophet (who was only a man, after all, not g-d.) Honour or respect, or some such, I think is a rough approximation of the term.
*****
Let's put this in Shirithian terms. If Radical Boomists started a campaign of terror in Shireroth because the govt. was not Boomist enough, attacking mass population centers, and if the same variety of Boomists started flying aircraft into large buildings in Antica, and attacking subways in various non-Boomist countries, and started beheading various folks they did not like, wouldn't Shireroth and Boomist Shirithains bear some responsibility in attempting to curtail such?

[Malliki Tosha]

But Boomism doesn't mandate blowing things up.

Oh, wait...



Mohammad has the same status as Jesus in Islam. He was a profet, albeit the foremost.

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

So does that mean that whenever there's a B0O0O/\/\ist service, they have to build a new temple which is then replaced after it gets blown up?

[Malliki Tosha]

Of course it does. The current temple is located at 89 meters below sea level.

[Jacobus Loki]

Offering of smaller explosions used to be more frequent.

[Kaiser Mors VI]

I find this debate interesting. And not just for the B0O0/\/\ism.

Governments kill people constantly for no more reason then they got in the way or the bombs/bullets/missiles. Many innocents, yet we as citizens under those Governments don't stop them. Why? Probably the same reason the non-extremist religious folk don't. Problem is, I'm not 100% on what that reason is. Maybe we don't know how. With a Government we could in theory elect new folk, or over throw the government (if it's not a democracy). With a religion, when you might be some other branch of it, what power do you have? Often your own use of rhetoric isn't sufficient. So do you use the sword to stop them? Or would that make you no better.

(okey, I know.. jumping in at the end of the debate)

Revealed Texts are honestly my biggest issue with organize religions. Once you write something down you set it in stone, you make it immutable. And yet you make it so flawed it MUST be interpreted. Language is inherently flawed. We have no language made for the sole purpose of conveying philosophical and religious ideas. Or languages came about to deal with day to day life, and lack the words and structure needed to deal with complexities of religion. Look at how confused we get with law. We always need to make new words and definitions, and then spend decades in the courts trying to figure out what the law makers meant, and in the end what they said.

(Now I'm on my own tangent)

In programming, there is no universal language for use with all projects. Some languages do some things better. They run faster, more secure, easier to write/read, better at handling strings, graphics, sound, video. When a language isn't made that does what you want... you make a new language. sometimes. So... let's make a new language for religious text... One that isn't so easy to misinterpretation.

Then again, maybe if these books at a single author, or if that single author didn't change their mind half way through.

Mohammad kinda changed his opinion on other people "of the book" several times in his life depending on how he was treated. The Bible has several dozen different authors, more writing 90+ years after the fact. The old Testament was written by yet more hundreds maybe even thousands of years before that. I don't know much about the Torah, just that the old testament was taken from it.

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that these books were all written in times when sex, death and religion were A-Okey. When killing for religion was fine. Now we've got a new set of ideas on what is right and wrong, and we are trying to use the old religions to deal with it. Religions that were not meant to be expanded to the extent they are.
Maybe it's a matter of design. Religions came about as a product of their times, now we have new times, but the old religions. Maybe it's time to make new religions, and new Revealed Texts. Not just new interpretations of the old text, new opinions, but brand new texts. Sure, keep the old gods if you want, but make new revelations. Ones more constructive to the world.

Problem is, the old religions won't let go of their power. The New religions aren't yet in a position to take over, we have no roman empire to decree a new state religion and spread it.
(completely off point now)

[Maksym Hadjimehmetov]

Interesting. But I would argue that in fact early religions in the Levant did great things for breaking social norms for the overall development of a fair society. To my knowledge many of the things Jesus advocated which we now consider to be morally laudable were viewed as wrong by the moral establishment of the time.
Which leads back to the question of whether society determines morality or whether morality determines societal norms. I'd say it's a mix of both, but religion switched from the latter to the former as it lost its dynamism and became complacent in the positions of power it had been enshrined in for so many centuries. What's happening now is that the societal privileges of religion are gradually being stripped- which I genuinely consider to be a good thing. For example maybe in my Synagogue, thirty years ago there'd have been twenty people. Now there are fifteen. But those fifteen have evidently, as is becoming customary, actually looked at why they are there, liked it, and decided to stay.

I'd rather have ten people who view religious practice as an important and meaningful part of their life rather than a hundred who just see it as an excuse for a natter and some nice songs, as the Anglican church has essentially become in the UK. The problem in that specific instance is that the Anglicans refuse to realise that 70% of the population claiming to be a member of their Church is by no means signifying that 70% of Brits actually care about it. It's become a societal norm, which means the Church now feels it has a right to stay in the position in society which it does.

Coming back to your point about text being set in stone, I'd say I agree. The same thing happened in Judaism with the Oral Torah, the set of legal and interpretative frameworks for the written Torah which by tradition were given by G-d to Moses on Mt.Sinai. The Rabbis agreed never to write it down, as it would then in their opinion cease to be viewed critically and analytically. So what did they do later on? Recorded it in the Talmud, of course.
Which ironically means that though the Ultra-Orthodox claim to study the Talmud with such intellectual rigour, they still cannot think of it critically and outside the box for the very reason that it was printed and the very interpretative spirit which the Oral Torah was supposed to foster became stagnated.
Then again I guess if they hadn't written it down it could have been forgotten. Which is probably worse. Dunno.

But that's the power of the written word, not just with religion- books, due to the impersonal and authoritative nature of the very act of recording information, will always be treated with more deference in regards to what they say than a human being will. It's not just exclusive to religion.