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Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Their should be no problem when everybody converts to Islam. It will also mean the Earth won't be easily knocked over by any potential alien invasion. Ten billion suicide bombers would be one heck of a challenge.
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If your comment was intended as sarcasm, please be more clear about indicating that is the case. If not, your post is a broad, bigoted generalization, and any repetition will be the reason you will be posting elsewhere for awhile.
AnandTech Moderator[/quote]
Dear Anandtech Moderator, I will try to address your concern:
I believe that the fast proportion of humanity is asleep and lives in a dream of unexamined assumptions. I believe that people are not able, in the vast majority of cases, to be reached by argument or logical word at least in areas where they are blind. This fact, I also believe, has been known for centuries by certain types of teachers who use other techniques to transmit knowledge. I have been exposed so some of those techniques in my own little modest way and try to practice them where and when I can. I saw such an opportunity in the following way:
Let us look at some of the OP:
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"muslims believe that god send an angel to earth to dictate the final "word",which is therefore perfect.so any other concept as freedom,unislamic laws and customs take a back seat in muslim`s eyes,in fact they become irrelevant.so why should i,as a muslim, respect the laws of denmark,for example?
after all i respect THE DEFINITIVE WORD OF GOD ON EARTH,fvck everything else.
so,IMO,islam and the west,in fact the rest of the world, are heading for a showdown.
this also happend in europe,in the 30 years war which ended with the westphallian peace,which set the foundation of modernity,that is tolerance. "
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Notice that albatross assumes to define what Islam believes and that this belief negates other laws and customs and that we are headed for a showdown. Now if you don't want to call this a kind of bigotry that's fine by me.
Then we get an intelligent point that all faiths push their belief and a refinement on that by Vic who says that it's fear of other people's beliefs that is the problem.
The the OP boldly declares that Christianity can reform but Islam can't because it's the final word of God. Against this notion is the obvious fact that Christian fundamentalists are absolutley certain that the Bible is the literal word of God. What we know therefore is that the word of God is the word of God but what the word means differs depending on whether you are fundamentalist or reformed and that this will or should be no different for Islam, no? Thus we might assume that the danger of religion is not so much in what it says as what people take it to say and that's what we call interpretation.
But if Islam truly cannot flex and always leads to a single interpretation that leads to violence against others with different beliefs the the poster has a good point. But do we really know the answer to this or is it a matter of bigoted opinion. I would say that we require much more history to say. Where is Islam going in the future.
Then we get some back and forth on how dangerous Islam really is in this regard with a number of people claiming it is; more, in my opinion, bigoted opinion, and some pointing out that Muslims are as varied and indistinguishable as everybody else, a factual view in my opinion based on looking at Muslims.
The discussion turns briefly to the notion that you don't slap people in the face with their sacred beliefs and then this just before my post:
"its true,
its fundamentally flawed as a religion, the literal and perfect word of god and all its horrors cannot be interpreted away. you have no ground to stand on. its not some scribbles by diciples and 2nd hand accounts like that of the bible and such, atleast theres some hope there. [/b]the islamic god is a monster, and to worship a monster is to be a follower of evil[b/]. sure..you can be a good person, by being a bad muslim. people talk about this as if something that must exist, that it somehow deserves some kind of unearned reverence by default. sorry, its not skin color or gender,
something this corrupt should not be protected.
Hehe, no bigotry there, eh?
Now what is the answer to all these assumptions and fear? How do make people really think. Well you can't of course but if there's any chance at all it's not by being direct. In Judo you use an opponents strength against them by directing their energy flow and I like to do that with minds.
With lemons, for example you make lemonade. Let's look on the bright side of our fears. Lets take our worst case fear of Muslims expressed in so many threads and see how that leads to a good place.
The answer to rut assumption thinking and stereotype is never to put such people down, but to humor them out of their rut. Humor and chain logic thinking have the power to cause mental shock and it is only at such times that the mind has a chance to see what is beyond its rut.
Unexamined fear: People fear Islam, fastest growing religion, they kill people not like them--------> shock solution----------> Problem is over when everybody is Muslim. You fell because I let go of the rope.
Unexamined fear: Muslims are dangerous fanatics, maybe even to suicidal extreme as the stereotype goes----------> shock solution---------> When you are one the problem is for others.
Absurd fears have absurd solutions that reflect the absurdity of the fear. It is our absurdity that we protect ourselves from seeing because we put down being absurd. He who laughs at himself and takes himself less seriously takes the first steps to having the strength to look at his or her issues.
By the way, what little talent I have in seeing things from different perspectives was taught to me by Mulla Nasrudin, a teaching exemplar, from a branch of Islamic tradition. May his shadow never grow less.
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