Valkie wrote on Apr 20
th, 2017 at 7:20pm:
Islam is not a race...........it is a political CULT
I stand by this statement.
I dont care what colour, race or where you are from, it matters not.
Perhaps my rant being big enough to necessitate 2 posts scared you away from reading it.
The racism that I was referring to was straight up racism. Nothing to do with religion or Islam. That's a type of bigotry all of it's own. You seem to be the only one arguing this and you're arguing with yourself.
The Muslim faith is a tricky subject. It's complicated at best. I personally have a problem with all religion and especially those who indoctrinate the weak with it, and those who take it a step further and use it to control others, radicalise the brainwashed and commit atrocities in it's name.
For centuries throughout our history this was done by all religions, including Christianity. They had somewhat of a re-branding with the New Testament, but there are still plenty of Old Testament people who use that to justify ridiculous claims such as a Husband cannot rape his wife because in the eyes of the lord, in marriage she does not have the right to refuse her body to her husband or the justification of slavery, even some of the horrible things we see in the Christian African nations when it comes to homosexuals.
Some say Islam is no worse than other religions, but I can't agree with that either. If people took a literal interpretation of the Christian books and it was enforced as the law of the land, such as Sharia Law, and there were no secular balance things would be horrible, but a different kind of horrible.
Thankfully like Christianity, the majority of educated practicing Muslims pick and choose what parts of their texts they adhere to and in the western world, they reject those that would put them in jail if they didn't.
But it took Christianity/Catholicism centuries to get where they are now from their "dark ages" and they're still full of kiddie fiddlers and men trying to hole power over women. An enlightened society comes from education and understanding. Taking an uninformed stance against Islam or any religion is, on a philosophical level, no better than those extremists who commit horrific acts in the name of an extreme interpretation of any given faith.
(Obviously in the real world, the two cannot be compared)
I've read both Testaments and an english translation of the Quran and while I feel "more informed", I still only have part of the story, part of the picture. It's what people who abuse their interpretations of it that cause the most damage that I have the greatest knowledge gaps.
You could cherry pick and take all the good for the Quran, live you life by those rules and you would be one of the better people in the world.
But when you have people calling for the death of those who draw their prophet, or stone women accused of being adulterous, the key is what those in a position of "religious power" abuse their texts and push their ideas of control of others and this only highlights the complexity of the issues.
I wouldn't go as far as calling Islam a cult no more than I would call any other religion a cult, BUT, the extremists who try to justify their actions with religion, they and their followers/indoctrinated are acting whether willingly or unknowingly as a political cult much like how you've described it.
But those who practice their faith and are good people far outweigh the extremists. We should be empowering them, especially the women, to speak out against the extremists, not bundling them all together in such an ignorant fashion. That will only make things worse.
Quote:I will get a short post from Bwyannnn calling me a islamaphobe and telling people to move along.
This is simply because he cannot dispute the truth, so its fingers in the ears and na na na na na na
I won't call you an islamaphobe and I honestly believe your position comes from a genuine concern, but you could certainly benefit from informing yourself better on the subject and not take such a primitive stance on such a complex issue.
Again however, that is not the topic of this thread.
Unfortunately, on topic, if this thread was a honeypot to prove or disprove the original question, that being do these forums, their mods and their owners encourage racism, given some of the outright hate and vitriol posted and let remain in this thread alone, I'm worried for what the answer may be.