This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.

Are Muslims being demonised?

Post by rageahol

That's wonderful. I feel, as a Muslim, that yes, Muslims are being demonized by the media, but not to great extent, at least here in Ireland. There's the odd terrorist joke, but it's in good humor, and no-one actually believes that you are actually a terrorist or such.

Now, about the different-religion-same-God-thing: Let's say I'm a warrior and you're a DK. We both duel the same frost mage. you win, I lose. I think he has great mobility and freezes, you think he has great mitigation (or whatever, I'm no expert on DKs or mages). Just because you and I saw different things in the same mage does not mean they're different mages. (bad analogy, but I'm not good at this)

My point is, Jubilee, your arguments kinda rely on God being a fictional being who only exists in the minds of followers on whatever religion, making him unique to them. People can see different things in God, some can be misinformed or form different opinions, and over thousands of years, things will change.

Finally, Infidels =/= People of the Book.
Infidels are people who do not worship God.
People of the Book are Christians and Jews, and any other follower of an Abrahamic religion.

Post by Jubilee

My point is, Jubilee, your arguments kinda rely on God being a fictional being who only exists in the minds of followers on whatever religion, making him unique to them. People can see different things in God, some can be misinformed or form different opinions, and over thousands of years, things will change.
It's the other way around. Your arguments rely on God actually existing and doing all these various things, and because of this they are matter of faith. My arguments merely allow the possibility that he not exist or exist in any possible way, and do not deal with belief but with logical consistency.

Post by rageahol

The logic...IT BURNS!

I forgot your original argument.

But I believe I worship the same God Christians and Jews do, they're just worshipping him the wrong way. :P

Do YOU worship the same God? The one that tells you that if you do what he says he'll get you into heaven, and if you don't he'll throw you into hell? The one who created humans?

I don't have nothing against you if you don't.

Here's a better analogy (maybe, I didn't get any better these past few minutes): I play an active bass with my fingers. If another bassist plays a passive bass with a pick, doesn't mean he plays a different instrument, all it means is he has a different view towards the instrument.

Post by ElhonnaDS

No- belief is a personal matter. Regardless of whether someone is right or wrong, has strong reasons or none at all to believe something, whether someone is smart or a moron- what they believe is dictated by no more than the workings of their own mind. If someone believes something is true, then you cannot argue that they don't believe. You have no ability to know that, and no standing to tell someone else what they do or do not believe. You can tell them what you believe, what you think they SHOULD believe, but not what they do or do not, at the moment, actually believe to be true.

To argue that someone is worshiping a different God than the one they believe they do is actually dependent on them being mistaken about which God they talk to, which means that there must actually be a God. If there is no God, then all that matters when they pray is who they believe they pray to, because no one is listening anyway. If you are arguing that someone may believe that they serve one entity, but actually serve another, then at least the second entity must exist for them to be wrong about who they worship. If you are arguing that you don't believe in God, then their entire religion must then, by definition, be in their own mind, and therefore what they believe is the truth of it for them.

I am not going to pursue this any further. I often feel like I have trouble debating points with you, Jubilee, because your mind does not work in a way that I am used to. I'm not making it an insult, or anything- you just seem to have a different opinion on things like definitions of words and terms, whether things that seem to me and most people I know to be a given in reality are actually factual, etc. and I don't know how to debate with someone who cannot agree on certain things being given in a static reality, a common language, etc. I will argue whether a cup is larger or smaller than the cup next to it, but when the discussion becomes "How do you know that it's actually a cup? Who decided that's what a cup was? Why should I accept that it's a cup, just because everyone else does." I feel like it's gone to a place where I no longer have the energy to go.

@Rage- I've already tried analogies. It's not going to work- lol

Post by 557473

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by rageahol

Wonderful. As long as you're doing what you believe in, it's all good.*

*As long as that doesn't include preventing other people from doing what they believe in.

Back to WoW General for me!

Post by 324987

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by fenomas

...This entire thing started when I responded to the statement "hey don't know that Muslims worship the same god as Christians do ". That was a statement of fact, which I believe has no real basis.

I tried to explain this already, but you're conflating a religious tenet with the eternal truth that may or may not underlie the tenet.

If someone says "Christians worship the Jesus who turned water into wine at Cana, not some other Jesus", that would be an accurate description. It's beside the point for someone to say "No that's not true, because I personally don't believe that a miracle occurred at Cana". That's the sort of objection you're making here.

Obviously it's fine if you don't personally believe that Allah and Yahweh are the same thing. I personally don't believe a miracle occurred at Cana, for what it's worth, and generally speaking I think we can assume that most people don't believe religious tenets of religions other than their own. None of this affects the accuracy of the statement you're disputing.

Post by fenomas

From the outside there seem to be insurmountable paradoxes in the descriptions provided of the Abrahamic god by the three primary Abrahamic faiths. To use your analogy, they all say it's a duck, but one describes a duck that sounds like a mallard, one describes a duck that sounds like an eider, and one describes a duck that sounds like a teal. They just can't all be right; they can believe it's the same duck all they want, but that doesn't make it the same duck.

Hehe. So in other words, "these three religions contradict each other, they can't all be right"? I don't mean to sound flippant, but that's not exactly news. ;D

Post by MyTie

If someone says "Christians worship the Jesus who turned water into wine at Cana, not some other Jesus", that would be an accurate description. It's beside the point for someone to say "No that's not true, because I personally don't believe that a miracle occurred at Cana". That's the sort of objection you're making here.

That's a pretty big distinction. Let's assume your name is Gary. If a police officer were to go up to you and say:

"Hey, are you Gary, the guy who murdered 700 school children."

and you were to say:

"My name is Gary, but I never murdered any school children."

then the police officer were to say:

"That doesn't matter. Just answer yes or no."

What would you say?

Post by rageahol

So all we have concluded from this thread is that people who are firmly rooted in their beliefs (no matter what they are) will not be swayed from said belief by other people's arguments in the lifetime of your average forum thread.

That and that Muslims have been demonized to some extent in Western media/culture, etc., but not completely (see poll results).

Post by fenomas

What would you say?

I have no idea what you're trying to argue here. I would answer "no", and I would be unequivocally correct. You seem to be trying to make this into a complex question fallacy, such as if the police asked someone "Is your name Gary and did you murder some children?" But neither your example nor anything I've said qualifies as such a fallacy.

Post by MyTie

Post by fenomas

I'll rephrase. In a nutshell all I'm pointing out is that whether two religions worship the same god or not is a doctrinal question, so it doesn't make sense to talk as if it was an empirical one.

Consider for comparison: we can accurately say that Christians worship Jesus as the son of god, and we can also say that Muslims revere Jesus as a mortal prophet. The two beliefs are contradictory, but we can nonetheless describe each without contradiction, and without getting into whether Jesus was actually literally the son of god or not. That's the kind of statement we make when we say that Muslims worship the god of Abraham. It's doctrinally correct per Islam, and it may or may not be doctrinally correct per Christianity (I have no idea). But whether it's "true" is neither here nor there, unless we intend to start professing our faiths. (Let's not!)

Post by ElhonnaDS

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-woman-stripsearched-after-frontier-flight-from-denver-landed-20110914,0,596152.story?hpt=ju_bn6

I thought this story relates very well to this question. This woman was on an airplane, and she was taken into custody for four hours and strip searched because the two other men in her row, who she wasn't traveling with and didn't know, went to the bathroom. She was half arab, and the other two men were described as also being darker skinned.

Post by gnomerdon

Although I do believe that muslims have been demonized, ....... here's a clip that greatly disturbs me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2pnlNgj-GI&feature=related

I want that religion to rot until their extinct. In fact, I want all religions to go extinct.

Post by Pwntiff

I want that religion to rot until their extinct. In fact, I want all religions to go extinct.

Unfortunately that's the kind of closed-minded ideology that extremists use, and the same kind that gives extremists justification from their own perspective.

Post by Onimushua

Post by ElhonnaDS

Ok. Here's a page full of videos about the bombings in Northern Ireland, related to the political/religious conflict up there.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=northern+ireland+bombings&aq=f

Here's some footage of the genocide in Rwanda, which is part of the conflict between two different ethnic groups:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=genocide+in+rwanda+footage&aq=1&oq=genocide+in+rwan

I could link more, but the point I'm making is that there's no one religion, or society, or ethnicity that in and of itself is the cause of things like this. Hate, intolerance and fear cause these things. People group them selves under a banner of religious fanaticism, national pride or ethnic superiority not because it's what brings them together, but because it's what lets them separate themselves from thei "enemies". Hate is the root of terrorism, and genocide.

And Facesmasher, the way you have repeatedly posted venomous comments about wanting to get rid of people of other religions and ethnicities shows that you think and feel more like a terrorist than any of the millions on non-violent practicing Muslims in the world. You may not be willing to resort to violence to get what you want, but your sentiments and wishes are pretty similar.

Are Muslims being demonised?

Post Reply