Friday, October 8, 2010

Moderate vs. Extremist Islam


Full Episode - Should Americans Fear Islam?
October 3, 2010 on ABC's 'This Week' with Christiane Amanpour
(via RichardDawkins.net)

15 comments:

  1. However abject what Islam and certainly mr. Chaudri stands for, I think he actually has a good point about 'interpreting the Quran, or for that matter any holy book.
    Ofcourse it is possible to interpret to a certain extend (although I highly doubt if that is what 'god' would want us to do with his holy word(s), but I think the Quran is very clear about some of the rules, for example alcohol, sex before marriage, gambling, praying five times a day, spreading it around the world etc. If you believe in and respect your god, you simply cannot ignore those rules and say 'oh well, this is my interpretation'. It's nothing more than leaving the uncomfortable bits aside, because they don't fit in with your modern way of living. I guess hypocrite is the word I'm looking for. 
    That's why I think his analogy with a vegetarian eating meat is pretty accurate. 

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  2. This video needs the tag "humour". Dark, caustic humour..

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  3. Edit my first post: apparently his name is Choudary, not Chaudri.

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  4. Idiots debating lunacy.

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  5. Pains me to say that Mr. Choudary is the one making sense in this video. Arguing for a moderate Christianity is pretty hard but for a moderate Islam it is damn near impossible, simply because the Qu'ran is a much more concise totality than the Bible. In the latter you can always find loopholes and ethical contradictions which allow - or even require you - to choose the interpretation you prefer, but the Qu'ran is much more straight forward and clear. Of course people can put the emphasis on different aspects of it, but virtually any truly liberal reading of it will be a deviation from it. At least that's the way I feel when I read the Qu'ran.

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  6. I used to find if I brought this kind of argument to my "Catholic" friends who: hadnt been inside a church in years, have pre-marital sex, use condoms, etc.  that by these reasons were not really Catholic at all, I'd have them wanting to fight me outside.  How do we get them to see that the Pope and Imams are right on this and it would be better for these self described, albeit moderates to finally shed themselves the weight and burden of literal belief in these various religous claims of truth. 

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  7. It appears to me that there are two mainstream schools of thought about people like Choudary. The conventional view of the left is that he is a troll and he gives the media what it wants - controversy and lots of it. Ignore him and he'll go away is the general message; expressed by commentators such as Charlie Brooker and the like. While people on the right usually reflexively react with hysterical, thermonuclear apoplexy at the mere idea that such a person who could be so audacious as to openly express the view that their own non-christian religion should be dominant, would actually exist at all. And therefore they think he should be deported and his organization "made illegal" by the state.

    I can't agree with either of these positions. I think the left expresses a sort of simpering and laughable naivete when it seriously suggests that if we ignore these cretinous ghouls they'll go away (an opinion invariably delivered with the admonishment to remember that "all religions have their extremists you know!"). While the right goes overboard and rushes to toss freedom out the window for the cynical and expedient sake of shutting up one of their supernaturalist competitors.

    I think that right now, Choudary and his ilk can be dismissed as the mediawhoring trolls they are, but if you think for one second that he wouldn't morph overnight into the next Ahmadinehad or Bin Laden if given the opportunity to acquire the power requisite to do so, you're a fool.

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  8. Seems to me that the hardliner muslim is not different than the Christian Identity people in the States. Is what he is claiming really different in any significant way from what Pat Robertson and Randall Terry say? No.

    Just goes to show how much the Christianists and the Islamists have in common. Lucky for us that they hate each other so much, because if not we'd be in deep doo-doo...

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  9. @<span><span>Michael S. Krokben</span> : The apparent unity you see in the Qur'an is as much of a myth as that of the Bible. Almost every single Christian believed in the absolute coherence and unity of the Bible as little as two centuries ago. Most Chrisitians in the US still do to this day. They see no contradictions, even though anyone who reads the text with an open mind cannot fail to see a large number of them.</span>

    The Qur'an is no different; it was written, just like the Bible, by multiple authors, in different styles and with different points of view, very often contrary (there's quite a lack of doctrinal unity regarding the treatment of non-muslims, for example).  But unfortunately, the scholarship in Critical Analysis of the Qur'an is still in its infancy, due in no small part to the threat of death hanging upon any who would publish their findings by the hardliners. Once again, this is no different than what happened in the history of Christianity, if only delayed by two centuries.

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  10. Of course there are many problems and conflicts of interrest in the Qu'ran. It's hard to reconcile different texts even of a single author - like Plato or Nietzsche. But personally I find the Bible more problematic than the Qu'ran in this respect (based strictly on my own lay-man reading of the books).

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  11. Isn't there at least an attempt in the Qu'ran to create a single interpretation by designating later editions as more authoritative than earlier ones?

    The New Testament is problematic because although it lays down new laws, it also explicitly says to keep the old ones (Matthew 5:17).

    Isn't it fair to say that the Qu'ran at least fixes such blatant problems?  That would certainly give it more unity than the Bible, if not complete unity.

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  12. 1:52 for the win... That guy's reaction was PRICELESS.

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  13. This is possibly one of the worst discussions I've ever seen in my life.

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  14. @ Denis

     "Once again, this is no different than what happened in the history of Christianity, if only delayed by two centuries."yes, but this is one of the main problems we see here in Europe - a religion which hasn't said its mea culpa and hasn't been through an enlightenment is not able to fit into our society, much less adhere to our values.  Time will tell.  We may see more human bombs before that.....

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  15. The day of judgement will not come until a group of the Ummah conquer the white house.

    It's the intellectual level of a twelve year old who has discovered Nostrodamus.

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