Mandera County, Kenya-Muslim Bus Passengers Save Christians

One wonders what take Dinner has on Anders Breivik. Is it time for America to ban all Norwegian Christians for their savagery?

Misunderstanding Islam

A snippet:

In the long run—apart from their reasonable recommendation to crush the terrorists—the reformers tend to distract us from the intractable nature of Islam and so actually end up making us more susceptible to its depredations. This is the ultimate irony. The reformers deceive not only themselves but those among their Western sympathizers who are led to believe that Islam is essentially benign or sufficiently multifaceted to weaken its core message; that violent jihad is an aberration; that pivotal texts in the canon can be re-interpreted or even bowdlerized; and that extremists are a fringe minority, a school of barbarians or a sect of puritanical zealots who have misunderstood or violated the tenets of their faith—when in fact they are true believers, authentic Muslims, who abide by the manifold scriptures.​

and

We need to remember that Islam may be recessive at times, active at others, but its essence cannot be changed. It is like a volcano that never goes extinct and we are wrong to regard its dormant phases as final. It is always ready to erupt. You cannot reform or re-interpret a volcano, and unless you keep a distance you always risk being buried in the lava of its natal ferocity.​

The reforms push the idea of a neutered version of Islam that would be benign like modern Christianity - but which doesn't exist in the texts or traditions. Basically, they wish Muhammed had been a nice guy who led a nice life like the Buddha or Jesus.

Yes, this is true. Which is exactly why I think that Pope Francis is more dangerous than his two predecessors.

Oh, sorry, you said Islam! I was thinking of Catholicism.

When was the last time we had to clean up after a Catholic suicide attack?

He's a proud national socialist. They're allowed to kill as many people as they want.

He is also a self-avowed Catholic, and has connected his deed to his belief (namely, an extremely complicated endeavour to reunite his country's Protestants with the true Church).

That Anders guy seems to have some good ideas.

Unfortunate for a Catholic.

Well it illustrates how dangerous religious minorities can be, especially when they don't fit in. Think how much problem Norway will have from the far greater number of Muslims.

Weak sauce. There is a difference between an act by someone who is religious but which his religion fundamentally opposes and an act of a religious person which is specifically called for in the religion's holy texts. You are being willfully blind.

This will only get worse and the violent animals need to be rounded up and deported. I noticed they found one of the tiny single digit percentage of the migrants who is educated, maybe that guy could stay and intigrate, but the rest never will. The fact that the animals attack all nonmuslims, even fire trucks and ambulances, shows how the animals will never intigrate, do not want to intigrate, and only want free stuff from the welfare system.

Those facts are obvious to any honest observer.

Bullshit, of course, as has been shown over and over again. Mainstream Islam opposes terrorism just as much, and much more explicitly, than mainstream Catholicism. (And btw, defining a religion through holy texts is an incredibly limited view which breaks down as soon as you get to Catholicism anyway.)

Just out of interest, please explain to me what you mean by "mainstream Islam" or "mainstream Catholicism".

"Defining" or even judging a religion fairly is a hopeless tasks IMO, there are simply no useable criteria. However, I like the "an ihren Früchten sollt ihr erkennen"-approach by Jesus himself! But it will always be gut feeling in the end, a fair or even scientific statement is impossible. Morals, especially based on supernatural insight, are beyond judgement or defining. One can only have a personal opinion.

I agree. The short answer is that for @Dinner's claim to be even meaningful, i.e. possibly false or true, we have to assume that there is some kind of centripetal tendency, at least specific to certain times and cultures, for what a given religion is mostly about. If that is not the case, and that might well be, the whole discussion is moot and his claims are untrue by default.

The long answer, however, would start like this. We live in societies that use mass media to actively construct images of truly centripetal public spheres with collective actors. This does allow the concept of something like "mainstream Christianity" or "mainstream Islam", not deduced from what Christianity or Islam is, but from what our society produces when it produces mainstream images. By comparison, you might consider how we are utterly unable to come up with objective criteria for what is newsworthy, and yet can give a pretty good account of what mainstream news reports are currently covering. That's not because we understand news, but because we can understand mainstream.

Excellent post, but one that I fear will go right over @Dinner's head.

Garbage. His religion doesn't oppose anything. It's not sentient. He interprets religion to his own end and uses it as an excuse to commit violence - just like Islamists do.

It's this basic truth that exposes your bigotry. He is really no different from an Islamic extremist. But you make excuses for him and claim he doesn't represent other Catholic while lumping peaceful Muslims in with Islamists.

You either don't understand what religion is, or perhaps don't grasp what bigotry is. Foolish man.

So Brevik was angry at Lutherans because of something the Pope said?

I agree, even though I had to google "centripetal public squares". Packard explained why he thinks it is ok to use a term like "mainstream islam". However, as a simple minded guy, I still try to understand where this "islamic mainstream" lives and what it is all about. Not as an intellectual construct, but a manifestation in the real world. Let's have a look at catholicism. The catholics have a long history, they are a cetralized organisation with a clear hierarchy, they even have a code of conduct (the catholic catechism), they had very bright, educated minds among them and still have. They have argued for centuries what catholicism is all about, what "mainstream catholicism" really is. Islam is far from being centralised, and while it has a long history, it's still far behind catholicism. Only a small elite among the muslims ask questions when it comes to the history of their belief system or how exactly the Koran was written, while the catholics have been asking these questions for centuries now and have been using other scientific fields like archeology, history, philosophy or psychology. In the islamic world, they still refuse to ask critical questions, it is haram. The Koran is the will of Allah. Islamic theology in a scientific sense is a joke compared to catholic theology. It only exists at western universities, to say it bluntly. Like the idea of "Euroislam".

It is not haram to examine your own belief; in fact, many descriptions of jihad expressly encourage you to do so. Note that your view of Catholicism comes from a minority position: From within an enlightened, well-fed and well-educated Europe. The vast majority of Christians live on other continents and in other circumstances. They are not, as a general rule, as open to critically questioning their faith as you or me. In fact, Catholics are supposed to believe that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he cannot be wrong. I know of no similarly common and absolute rejection of critical thought in Islam.

I have never googled "centripetal public spheres". What did you come up with?

The Muslim animal version of Human Centipede.....

rrrrrrrr .

You interpret Islam despite not being a muslim. This is bold, to say the least! All I do is to look at reality in countries where islam rules, and what I see tells me that that the muslim leaders there strongly agree with your views. Am I allowed to ask in Afghanistan if Mohammed really got his insight from an angel, or was he just an epileptic or even a liar? Do muslim scholars accept the fact that the Koran is a wonderful example of syncretism or even shameless copying? (just like the bible, btw. The Sumerians and the Greek are still angry! )

Of course, only a tiny elite among catholics ask these questions when it comes to their own faith. In every belief system, there is something like "Volksglaube" or folk belief. (Buddhism is the best example, Buddhist scholars drew maps of the human mind 2'500 years ago which still make sense and are the roots of western psychoanalysis, while many "simple" buddhists today are still cought in magical thinking.) But it is not forbidden in catholic countries to ask these questions. In fact, they are part of every catholic theology studies. I am not talking about general religious studies, but about catholics who want to become priests.

Catholicism has found kind of an answer to these questions. "The miracle of faith". It is an important part of their theology. This is why magical thinking is not very important in catholicism anymore. There are exceptions, like exorcism, but without this dark flavour and elements of magical thinking, catholicism would just be as boring as modern European protestantism.

Why?

Because he explains to a believer what his beliefs are really about while not following this belief himself. Just like Obama who told the ISIS freaks that they have no idea about islam, despite their leader being an educated muslim scholar...

Are you claiming to be a Muslim now?

Did you mean 'disagree'?

I don't know. I do know that you are allowed to do so in Turkey.

There is only one country left in which Catholicism rules, and it isn't quite a country nor a rule, really. When that was different, what you're saying wasn't true.

Yeah, I meant 'disagree' of course. No, I am not muslim, and when a self-declared muslim tells me that killing homosexuals is islamic, I take him (her...) by the word. Who I am to judge? I have no weapons against her arguments, because in her eyes, I am an infidel. I don't believe that the Koran has anything to do with a "god". She does. And she has a point. She "knows" more about Islam that I ever could. Or you.

Why do you still defend Islam? No need to defend muslims, most of them have been raised in this cult and don't know better. They are excused. But defending the religious ideology called "islam" and desperatily trying to explain that it is compatible with modern ideas or our way of life and "not that bad" is a waste of time. You know this already, of course.

Are the texts of any religion open to interpretation, whether you believe them or not?

If you take her at a word, then that is a judgement. Other Muslims will tell you otherwise. What else are you to do but judge for yourself?

Incidentally, there is no reason to think that Muslims in general know more about Islam than nun-Muslims. I'm not saying that I know more about Islam than a given Muslim. But do note that most of the Christians on this board know a lot less about the Bible than I do, and I'm no Christian.

I do not defend Islam; Islam is a belief in a God, and that makes it evil in my eyes. I do defend the truth, which is that several of the things ascribed to Islam in this thread do not generally apply to Islam.

Why do you defend Christianity?

Nothing desperate about it. That many millions of Muslims live in modern societies is simply a fact. If one's idea of Islam cannot explain this, one's idea of Islam is false.

Come on, don't play ignorant just for fun. Of course religious texts are open to every interpretation which is possible, but the interpretations of a person who thinks that these texts are truly ispired by supernatural powers have more value than those of a non-believer. Not "value" in a scientific or theoretical sense, but in real life. For the non-believer, it is just an intellectual exercise. Or entertaining philosophy. For the true believer, these letters are the world, nothing less.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I do not defend christianity, it is nonsense in its core. There is no supernatural power who gives a fuck about man and his plight, I am quite sure about that. But compared to islam, modern christianity is more grown-up. Christianity is twelve years old or so, islam is still in its defiant phase and not older than four! While buddhism is already 15, haha.