Why does Islam produce murderers?

Discussion in 'Questions?' started by PDL, Oct 16, 2021.

  1. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Yesterday, 15th October 2021, a British MP, Sir David Amess (RIP), was murdered whilst doing his job by an Islamic fundamentalist:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58935372
    Before anyone says it, I know such people are not representative of all Islam. Indeed, I've said that myself on this very forum. However, I want to try to comprehend why this religion produces militants that murder in the name of that faith. I'm not aware of Christian or Jewish extremists who murder people in the name of Christianity or Judaism.

    I'm making no attempt to stir-up Islamophobia or to precipitate subjective tirades against Islam. I'd appreciate objective replies that explain in a rational manner what it is about Islam that produces Muslims who believe it is acceptable to go out and randomly kill people in the name of their faith.
     
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  2. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    I do think it is indeed representative of a strand of Islam. Perhaps the answer lies in what variety of Islam is being followed and practiced.
     
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  3. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    Violent Jewish extremism is a growing problem in Israel, and even more so in the Occupied Territories with all the illegal settlements. I would also think that the last 2,000 years provide plenty of examples of Christian extremist violence. On the other hand, violent acts perpetrated by Muslims account for less than one percent of one percent of the world’s Muslims.

    Any religion that is approached in a fundamentalist manner will ultimately result in violence toward “heretics” and “unbelievers”. That’s why it’s so important for Reason to be prioritized. Aside from reinforcing concern with Truth for its own sake, behavior-wise it acts as a moderating influence.
     
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  4. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    you do not need to feel diffident amongst us good sir... your questions are very valid and legitimate...
     
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  5. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    :rolleyes:

    :doh:
     
  6. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    As always, a thoughtful and scholarly response. :no:
     
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  7. Botolph

    Botolph Well-Known Member

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    The course of history is littered with those who have killed in the name of religion, and no doubt feeling justified, and perhaps even a sense of divine approval in so doing. The destruction of Amalekite remembrance certainly comes from a time where violence appears to have divine approval.

    Any tradition which ultimately resolves into a view of 'them' and 'us' has such a capacity to descend into a tribalism that overvalues principles and undervalues the other. The Gospel account of the woman caught in the very act of adultery serves in part to remind us that we should not throw stones.

    And yet we do. The massacre of Muslims in Christchurch NZ a couple of years back should remind us of the danger. The ethnic cleansing that occurred as part of the Bosnian War is another.

    For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life, for Christ came into the world, not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ​

    The real battle is for the hearts and minds, not kingdoms and territories. Christianity fails when Christendom becomes an Empire, just as Islam fails when it is reduced to Caliphate. We all need to embrace the principle of people before principality.

    The death of Sir David Amess (may he rest in peace and rise in glory) is both shocking and sad. If, as it appears, it is the result of Islamic extremism, the result of such actions will actually be counter-productive, as right thinking people will find this unacceptable and further discount the tradition that gives rise to it.
     
  8. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I am aware of this happening. I am also aware of Judaism's concept of a 'tooth for a tooth'. However, I understood their violence to be in response to attacks on themselves or to the forced occupation of land. I am not aware of people being randomly attacked and murdered and then perpetrator claiming it was done in the name of Judaism. I am talking about actions such as the murder yesterday of Sir David, the atrocity at the Manchester Arena, the barbaric attacks in Paris on the night of the Bataclan attack, etc.

    I am not talking about history. I am fully aware of the many atrocities that have been committed in the name of Christianity. Again I am not aware nowadays of atrocities being randomly committed on innocent peoples with a claim it was done in the name of Christianity.

    As I attempted to make clear in my original post I make no claim this kind of behaviour can be attributed to all Muslims. I don't know what percentage of Muslims carry out such atrocities.

    I do not see this in other religions besides Islam. That is why my question still stands and why, thus far, it remains unanswered. What is it about the Islamic Faith that leads to this kind of fundamentalism that leads to such barbaric acts of violence?
     
  9. Botolph

    Botolph Well-Known Member

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    This is perhaps a contemporary observation. I think the point I was trying to make is that we have seen it in many religious and other traditions.

    One of the cornerstones of the Islamic tradition at the moment relates to the approach to the Noble Quran. Islam takes to words as the direct utterance of Allah who spoke in Arabic. As such they words are not open to translation, interpretation, or the scholarship in the style of Biblical Criticism. Whilst at one level this may seem very clear, it also carries to problem that it invokes a clericalism, and invites selective application, which can be absorbed and used to invoke extremism.
     
  10. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    we are not talking about jewish violence, or atheist violence, or progressive violence against Christians... All these have other times and other places

    The good sir @PDL has asked what in the islamic religion permits the sorts of horrors we have seen in our lifetimes, and I believe that is a great question to which I too am seeking answers...
     
  11. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    Well, one example in Israel is Meir Ettinger. There are plenty of examples in the US as well on the Christian side (fundamentalists bombing abortion clinics, the ongoing feud between the Bundy family and the federal government in the Western US). At the same time, it’s just as arguable that at least some of the terrorism in the Islamic world isn’t religiously motivated (in the 1960s and 1970s, when plane hijackings and the massacre at the Munich Olympics happened, which were perpetrated by secularists, this was the rule rather than the exception).

    But by far the biggest factor, is that in the case of Judaism and Christianity, there isn’t a state actor spending vast amounts of money to indoctrinate its youth in the extreme interpretation of their religion as possible, and then exporting them to other countries. The answer to the question of what is wrong in the Islamic world today, in most cases, is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
     
  12. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    There should be something to be said that of all the religions you just mention one was forged and expanded in the main by the sword and conquest.
     
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  13. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    As anyone who has studied medieval Near Eastern history knows, it’s a little more complicated than that. For one thing, Islam initially discouraged conversion. For another, much of the “conquest” - which was political, not religious - was relatively bloodless. The Non-Chalcedonian Christians of Syria and Egypt were more than happy to be rid of their Byzantine overlords who routinely persecuted them.

    It would be great if we could prevent this discussion from becoming characteristically fact-free, as Western discussions of Islam all too often are, due to a combination of ignorance and prejudice.
     
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  14. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    Well as someone who has actually studied I find it really odd that you say relatively bloodless (repeated invasions of Persia, and several battles for the Levant which cultivated in the Battle of Yarmurk. Plus the invasion of Egypt and then the invasion, defeat, and then reinvasion of North Africa. Warefar back then basically focused on armies and not on killing people. As per the time it was about par for the course on bloodiness.) and I am not sure how you can say it was political and not religious. You are correct that they did not at first actively encourage conversion but their policies were bound to lead to conversions.

    I would never want it to become fact free but I don't want to sugar coat it either. Islam was born and spread by the sword initially unlike Christianity. That allows it founding to be glorified and tied in with violence. That has to be a factor in taking into account why some people might be violent. Then you have the Saudi's and their ilk.

    Then you have to look and realize that the people who will be attracted to possibilities of violence are alienated individuals. They have to find something to attach themselves to and often it is a totalizing ideology like some form of radical Islam. When these alienated people look back at the glories of the fake religion of Islam they see a religion that was spread by the sword and that teachings go along with the violent teachings of the Saudi's.

    I would not want this conversation to get bogged down in Western niceties that don't allow us to actually look at and discuss facts. One fact that is also over looked is that Western Civilization has basically been at some form of war with Islam since its founding. The cultures don't seem to mix very well and I am not convinced they ever will. Maybe I am wrong on that but I don't think I am.
     
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  15. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    It seems plain enough that those who murder in the name of Allah, as in the recent instance, are hearing from their religious teachers that the Quran counsels them to do so. Perhaps they use a verse such as Sura 9: "5. When the Sacred Months have passed, kill the polytheists wherever you find them. And capture them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayers, and pay the alms, then let them go their way..." (Christians are viewed as polytheistic because of the Trinity). "14. Fight them. God will punish them at your hands, and humiliate them, and help you against them, and heal the hearts of a believing people." A bit later on: "29. Fight those who do not believe in God, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, nor abide by the religion of truth—from among those who received the Scripture—until they pay the due tax, willingly or unwillingly." And perhaps they read this in Sura 33: "60. If the hypocrites, and those with sickness in their hearts, and the rumormongers in the City, do not desist, We will incite you against them; then they will not be your neighbors there except for a short while. 61. They are cursed; wherever they are found, they should be captured and killed outright. 62. Such has been God’s precedent with those who passed away before. You will find no change in God’s system." These and other such verses, taken together, can be used by Islamic religious leaders to teach their people that Allah is pleased by violence and killing against those of other faiths, those of no faith, and even those who appear weak in the Islamic faith.

    The greatest danger, I think, would be if these extreme Muslims gained the ascendancy in their religion and forced the more moderate, peaceful ones to support and assist them.
     
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  16. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    I’m not sure it’s possible to convincingly sugarcoat any major religion’s history. All I’m saying is that treatments of Islam by Christians should be at least as fair and evenhanded as what Christians demand for our own religion. I also assume that fundamentalism is not the authentic form of any religion, so when a Muslim (or a Christian, or a Jew) commits a heinous act, I do not assume that it was a result of adherence to religious convictions. The Qur’an and Islamic tradition forbid murder and suicide just like religions and societies in general always have. A Muslim who commits murder is by definition a bad Muslim, as no shortage of contemporary Islamic jurists have publicly made clear in recent years. A fair and honest discussion of current events needs to start with that simple acknowledgement.
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2021
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  17. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    was Mohammed a bad muslim by leading armies to invade those around him?
     
  18. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    Are you a pacifist? If not, have you supported our involvement in unprovoked wars (e.g., Iraq 2003)? As a rule, right-wingers in America love war, and violence in general. It’s puzzling to me why the use of defensive force would be seen as a disqualifier for one who claimed to be a Prophet. Unless you’re a pacifist, you recognize the moral distinction between warfare and murder. The Romans had laws against murder, and they conquered the known world at that time.
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2021
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  19. CRfromQld

    CRfromQld Moderator Staff Member

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    AFAIK the Christchurch massacre was not religiously motivated.
     
  20. Botolph

    Botolph Well-Known Member

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    That might be hard to explain to a Muslim.