Prove Them Wrong! With Guns!

Some Muslims, perhaps.

There are mostly Muslim countries in the world where that sort of thing would never happen. In some Muslim countries, people storm stores for selling Valentine's Day cards. In others, they're more secularized.

It wasn't the Muslims in Denmark, for example, that stormed the EU office.

That's true it was Muslims in the gaza strip. However, Muslim countries seem to have a poor track record with human rights. I added a table of muslim countries ranked by percentage of population that is muslim and looked them up in the Observer Human Rights Index. They didn't fare so well as a few of the countries that aren't listed there aren't listed because they're not really countries anymore or their standard of living is so terribly low they fell off the chart. Afghanistan, for instance is the 12th worst place for offenses but because the standard of living is so low, they don't rank in the top half of worst offenders when adjusted.

100 worst human rights offenders table

When there are only a 160 countries in the world, and some of them aren't in these rankings, being in the "100 worst" is not necessarily a bad thing!

Weird, the full list had 193 "countries" on it. I wonder where the extras came from. Plus the full list didn't seem to have Somalia.

I think there's a definite chicken and egg question buried in this table. Are the places unjust because of Islam? Or does Islam thrive in places that are unjust?

It's more likely that my "160 counties" number is a relic of taking most of my geography classes before the fall of the Soviet Union.

Somalia does not exist as a de jure or de facto nation in any real sense. There's no central authority. So, it's not always on the nation lists. There are also about a half-dozen de facto countries with no international recognition, even though they have armies and passports!

Are the places unjust because of Islam? Or does Islam thrive in places that are unjust?

Fundamentalist Islam is unjust, IMHO, but only from the modern perspective Western justice. Fundamentalist anything is unjust, to modern Western eyes.

To us, it looks like the Islamic nations are reacting to increasing secularism. To people there, the west keeps poking their nose in and making their lives suck. I think they're both right!

To us, it looks like the Islamic nations are reacting to increasing secularism. To people there, the west keeps poking their nose in and making their lives suck. I think they're both right!

This is probably true, though, I think my belief that the greater Islamic community eventually intends to conquer the world is pretty accurate. Any basic information on Islam seems to have the same patterns repeated over and over again, especially about Jihad.

Under Islam, land once possessed by Islam, if subsequently lost to an invader, remains land that is holy to Islam. It is especially imperative that such lost lands be restored to the rightful rule of Islam. Historically, of course, such lost lands now lost to Islam include not only Israel but large portions of Southern Europe, Spain and North Africa. Since Allah's will is for the entire world to come under subjection to the rule of Islam, Muslims are known for their zeal in spreading their religion, whether by peaceful means or by the sword.

And here's another interesting quote:

The objective of jihad is not the conversion of individuals to Islam, but rather gaining of political control over the collective affairs of societies to run them in accordance with the principles of Islam. Individual conversion occurs as a by-product of the power structure of the community passing to the hands of the Muslim community.

Remember, you're only paranoid if everyone isn't out to get you...

Apparently not so much

You know Islam is a deeply disturbing religion.

In classical Islamic law, Shari'ah, offenses against the person, from homicide to assault, are punishable by retaliation---the offended being subject to precisely the same treatment as the victim. For six specific crimes the punishment is fixed (hadd): death for apostasy (renunciation of religious faith) and for highway robbery; amputation of the hand for theft; death by stoning for extramarital sexual relations where the offender is a married person and 100 lashes for unmarried offenders; 80 lashes for an unproven accusation of unchastity/adultery, or for consumption of any alcoholic beverage.

So, um, yeah. Death for leaving the faith appears to have real roots in the religion. It's also interesting to note that historically the religion was divided into 4 segments:
The Qur'an (holy writings), the Sunnah (traditions), the ijma (codified laws), and ijtihad (personal contemplation). However, in the 9th century the Sunnah and ijma were prefected and thus there is no more need for ijtihad. I'm not kidding about that last part.

Re: Apparently not so much

Yeah, that's Shari'ah. The Old Testament Judaic law is similarly dire. Remember, there are secular Muslim states that don't even come close to acknowledging this stuff.

Re: Apparently not so much

I'm curious about this, the best I could find on secular muslim nations was Turkey, Syria and Pakistan. I don't think any of these nations are particularly secure in their secular role.

Am I missing some obvious, or less than obvious, alternatives?

Re: Apparently not so much

Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, and much of Africa. Portions of Eastern Europe are also predominantly Muslim. Egypt and Iran and Iraq were all VERY secular and yet also very Muslim states (Iraq especially) until fairly recently in history.

The whole problem with the current war on terror is that it has polarized the Islamic world. All these creepy fundamentalists are gaining power with every airstrike. The funadmentalists in Egypt recently increased their representation in government five-fold...

Re: Apparently not so much

Yes, I agree. Though, I don't think the "War on Terror" is the root cause of the growth in fundamentalist power, I think it's only a catalyst. The root cause is I think simply poverty.

I think the middle east wants what the developed countries have, essentially a prosperous and safe society. I would hazard that it's a common belief that the west owes much to the middle east and that the prosperity of the west is based on the importation of middle eastern oil. I suspect that many are angry that they have not enjoyed the same prosperity.

I suspect that it is inevitable under these conditions that governments will shift towards confrontation and eventually war.

After doing a little investigation, it looks like Malaysia is the most prosperous of all the Muslim majority countries. Is it coincidence that it also has the lowest precentage of Muslims? It could be.

In looking at Islam, I wonder if the rejection of many of the "decadent" features of western life might not be have a negative effect on the economy of a nation. No interest paid on loans means there is little incentive to risk money on other peoples ventures. A prohibition on realist art can easily be extented to inclue a ban on television and movies. Technologies whose commercial and banal embrace by the western world have led to many improvements in electronics.

I'm not sure if there is a flip side, if there are any economic advantages that could be derived from the religion.

You think Islam has a monopoly on radical extremists hell-bent on having their ideology become law? Have you looked at the US lately?

Also, your comments about the nature of Islamic belief stem more from FUD than actual research. The Koran forbids the depiction of any living thing in artistic form, not just Mohammed - that's why Islamic art is primarily mathematical and geometric in nature.

When you speak out of ignorance, you sound no different than any other hate-monger who wants the Muslims killed.

No, I think extremists of all stripes are dangerous, though, I happen to believe religious extremists are more dangerous than most others. The religious aspect includes a fundamental indoctrination and the ultimate appeal to authority to justify it's actions. Something is right because God has commanded it, how can argue with that without turning the entire pyramid over.

My opinions about Islam peacefully coexisting are based on what I know about Muslims. I make no claims to perfect knowledge, however, I do know that there are Islamic leaders who have explicitly said that Islam can not tolerate the existence of other religions because they are false. I believe this is a fundamentally true statement. I don't think it's any less true of fundamentalist Christians. Any Monotheistic religion that embraces envangelism will eventually reach a point where it becomes more practical to use force or threat of force to convert people, for their own good, of course.

There is a huge protest going on in the Muslim world because a non-Islamic paper has broken an Islamic rule. This is a rather forceful attempt to push Islamic values on those who do not practice Islam. It is also an opportunity to fan the flames of hatred, and grab a little attention and power. However, I think this is a long term trend that is only going to get worse.

As for the Koran forbidding the depiction of any living thing in artisitic form, no I didn't know that. My disgust with religion in general and Islam in specific has reached new heights.

Religious extremists are dangerous. Nobody with an ounce of sense is going to dispute that idea, for all of the reasons you have mentioned. You seem as if you are trying to get at this point, but you get lost in the Muslim-bashing.

The nations of the world would like to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran because their government has been a theocratic nightmare being lead by incerasingly unstable religious nutjobs who use the profits from selling oil to finance their extremist visions of power and domination of the world. Islam has little to do with Iran's plans; if Iran was still predominantly Zoroastrian, the speeches would sound different, but the actions would be the same.

The Koran preaches a remarkably peaceful religion that asked for greater spiritual discipline than Christianity. That some Muslims have perverted the original teachings of Mohammed for their own personal gain should not be surprising - every religion on earth has done that. That some people have sought to re-shape Islam to be more compatible with the brutal life in a feudal tribe-based society is also not surprising - Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and even Buddhism have all done the same.

Why you have decided to single out Islam as the most dangerous religion wouldn't bother me so much if far stupider people than you didn't make the same arguments to me. In the second paragraph of your original post, your tone moves from idle speculation to overly prejudiced stupidity. You take the actions of a few extremist Muslims and act as if they speak for Islam when, if you had taken any appreciable time at all to investigate Islam for yourself, you would see that they do not. In general, your smug sense of intellectual superiority over the idiotic unwashed masses of theists is incredibly distasteful, even to a former theist.

Indeed, I know reltively little about Islam. What I do know doesn't paint a great picture. Perhaps the religion has been co-opted, or perhaps the peacefulness is not really there. It seems to me that Islam, in particular, has had a consistently violent history, which does make me question the "it's really a peaceful religion" assertion. The Koran may not encourage violence, but the other attached traditions, particularly the Shariah, do. Most of the countries that are predominantly Muslim are either a dictatorship, involved in a civil war, or experiencing a guerrilla insurgency. Sure this could be coincidence, but at some point coincidence starts being a trend.

The statement that it is just a few extremists would be more convincing if that Danish dairy company wasn't experiencing a boycott of over 90% of their sales. That doesn't seem like a few extremists. That certainly seems like a majority. The fact that a few extremists can mobilize that majority against a company that has nothing to do with the papers in question, and can do so over something as fundamentally innocuous as a series of political carttons is dangerous. Really, I don't think Christianity is capable of that degree of mobilization anymore.

And just to be clear, I really don't care what you think of my "smug sense of intellectual superiority". Really, I don't think theists are stupid, I just find most religions to be distateful systems for implanting obedience into the "unwashed masses". They have been corrupted by organization from revolutions in moral thinking into systems for the accumulation and direction of political influence. The heart of the religion is too often lost to blind obedience to the traditions that surround it. The "greater spiritual discipline" that you speak of for Islam to me seems to be part of the problem. The "spiritual" part has been left by the wayside, and all that seem to remain is the "greater discipline" or more accurately "greater obedience".