In many countries of the world, well in most countries apparently, there is a substantial penalty for renouncing your faith if you’re a Muslim. The death threats are certainly not an incentive to renounce Islam as your religion.
Fascinating that there are probably millions of Muslims walking around as Muslims only because to declare otherwise would actually be dangerous. Whereas there are millions of Christians out there, mostly in places like China, Sudan and some Islamic countries, where being a Christian is dangerous. And yet they still convert.
Kinda says something about the two religions. Figure it out.
Yes, there are many people who consider themselves Christians who are not practicing. Especially in the United States. But where in the world would a Christian be harassed and threatened with death if they renounced the faith. It’s mostly cultural (and hedging your bets about the afterlife) that people hang on to the Christian label.
Interesting discussion over at Winds. Armed Liberal seems to disagree with the premise that liberal Hollywood (and all that represents, i.e. the export of social liberalism) are partly or wholly responsible for the Islamic hatred toward America and the west. By disagree he thinks that the idea should be shunned from the vat of admiral discussion points, but I disagree, and the comments the post has been getting seem to indicate that it may or may not be true (at least in the sense of the underlying cause of Al-Qaeda or that it’s the main cause of Islamic hatred) it’s a good point of origin for discussion on where the militant Islamic movement comes from and where it gets its fuel.
But our involvement with the Middle East and terrorism goes back a bit longer than most people realize, and the causes of Islamic Extremism are far reaching, beyond their deranged attitude toward the west. Interesting interview with Michael Oren, author of a book detailing our founding fathers grappling with Islamic terrorists. Yes, it’s been that long.
Also, this conundrum: if we support Democracy, what do we do when democracies vote in parties that support Islamism and generally hate us?
In a nutshell, if we believe that freedom and some form of a democratic / representative government are the keys to dismantling the more violent and hard-to-live-alongside versions of Islamism - how do we deal with the problem that in free elections in much of the Muslim world today, the Islamists - the hard-to-live-alongside ones - would be likely to win?
If we believe we can avoid conflict by doing the right thing, and doing the right thing means handing power to people who are determined to have a conflict with us...there's a good chance we've got issues with the way we're formulating the problem.
It’s another good starting point for a discussion anyway. I disagree with the quote he brings up to illustrate this. We’ve been hard on Hamas even though they were elected in Palestine. However, Hamas is, at its core, a terrorist organization. We have every right to insist that countries be run as Democracies, but then every right to deal with the party in power as we see fit to ensure our own safety and the safety of our allies.
I do agree that we can’t turn a blind eye to countries like Egypt suppressing a party like the Muslim Brotherhood just because we’re afraid of them winning a general election there.
4 comments:
thats the biggest load of rubbish ever (people are Muslims out of fear??!!!). Muslims are muslims by choice and even Westerners are accepting Islam in large numbers - surely that is not out of fear? Stop fooling yourself, Islam is the number one religion in the world, just accept it.
Just accept it? You sound like quite the cheerleader. "We're number one. We're number one."
Listen, if I have not been clear in my postings about this sort of thing, let me clarify this right now. I don't believe that all Muslims are evil-out-to-get-us-nasty. There are many devout but moderate Muslims living in the world today. Many of them right here in the United States. One of the things that makes the United States great is that you CAN choose to become Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever, and no one will come knocking down your door to chop off your head.
But it is a fact (a point you don't dispute) that in many countries converting from Islam to anything else (even nothing) is asking for a least harassment, and at worst death. Don't tell me there aren't hoards of people claiming to be Muslim just because to do otherwise would endanger their lives and the lives of their families. One of the prime motivations for conversion to Islam during the Islamic Empire around the turn of the last millennium was that non-Muslims were taxed at a much higher rate that Muslims. Tens of thousands converted just to avoid the taxes. It happens.
But the same thing could be said of other religions at various points in time. I didn't exactly pay to convert from Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition (and nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition).
So please don't imply that I claimed that ALL Muslims become so primarily out of fear. That's not what I said. I'm just wondering if Islam would be "number one" if the same standards we have here in the USA applied everywhere.
Oh and by the way, whenever someone bad mouths their religion, calling it say a religion of violence, Muslims don't exactly thank that person for being honest. Take for instance that sect leader in Manila who called Islam a religion of killers. Certainly not a very nice thing to say, but when the response from the Muslim community is to demand his head be cut off, well that just supports his statement rather than refutes it.
If the world Muslim community wishes to get respect, it must work hard to achieve a standard of tolerance and ability to discourse without inserting chants of "death to America."
hi
depends how you view a THEORY about a relgion-- more highly educated people turn to islam then any other religion. What does that say about islam, WHAT FORCES EDUCATED PEOPLE FROM THE WEST TO BECOME MUSLIMS, LOWER TAXES?.
PEACE TO ALL REGARDLESS OF RELIGION AND RACE!.
islam never forces people to become muslims --defeats the object of worship.
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