Can you name something "Good" about Islam?

The only thing good about islam is that it is straight forward and philosophically simplistic. It's authoritarian at it's root and as dubious as every other religion ever invented. The Qur'an is far more prescriptive and practical than the Bible. Perhaps if it had been hit with the hammer of Enlightenment philosophy then we may be crediting it today instead with all of our great advancements in capitalism and liberty.

 

From Mohammed Last Sermon:

An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab; white has no superiority over black, nor does a black have any superiority over white; [none have superiority over another] except by piety and good action. .

Taking that in historical context is a major event

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with any religion but instead it is the use of religious teaching to rationalize the violations of the Inalienable Rights of the Person where a problem exists and this has existed for all religions.

If we look at the teachings of Jihad of the Islamic religion the first Jihad addresses the problems of the person and it is internal in nature. It's about improving one's self as a person. The Second, or Little, Jihad is about addressing the injustices of society. The problem is with what actions are being rationalized related to the Second Jihad. For example "Al Qaeda" was a movement originally organized to fight against the tyranny of the Royal Family of Saud in Saudi Arabia. We would applaud the opposition to tyranny but the problem was from the tactics of terrorism that Osama bin Ladin rationalized based upon the Second Jihad that the teachings of Islam really don't support. Acts of tyranny committed by government cannot be addressed with acts tyranny by individuals because tyranny, regardless of source, is still tyranny.

There have always been those that use religious teaching to commit acts of tyranny and this relates to all religions and not just to the teachings of Islam. Always remember that there are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world that are very peaceful people. Only a very small minority are violent terrorists.

Of course any nation founded upon criteria such as religion, race, ethnic heritage, social class or other invidious criteria is inherently a tyrannical nation. It always establishes an "us" and "them" criteria which is discriminatory and subjugates the "Them" group to the tyranny of the "Us" group in power. That's why the founders of America rejected religion as a foundation for government in the United States and the worst thing we could do as a nation is to self-identify as a Christian nation even though the majority of Americans at least profess to be Christians. .

 

All religions are authoritarian in nature. The religion dictates the actions of the person and that is authoritarian.

 

Can I say something good about Islam? Nope.

 

Actually……there are only a few things we can know for sure, or assure as we can what Buddha actually said…
Buddha asked everyone to question authority.
He also said and this is for sure"Do not look towards any god or demon or even me to help you. for no one can you help you except yourself."

i pointed this out in various buddhist groups where the majority of members were looking towards the priest or guru or teacher for help, and defiantly doing"things looking for help and "benefit"..lol..
never really got much more than a look from the person "In charge"..it's why i left Buddhism, too many things that seem not to be of buddha's intention..

that being said i would tell anyone and everyone to try their hand at the religion for you will gain more than you hoped for….
Buddha really only pointed to enlightenment, and really wanted everyone to find everything within themselves.

once authoritarian anything creeps into the philosophical practices or religion….run...

 

Islam is obviously something that was reworked with Jewish and Christian thoughts as it's base..
It took from the Jews and Christianity and added a sense of fellowship which really created an us vs them religion.
in the koran it is admitted jews have fallen from the real thing and so do christians except the christians are not as fallen away as the jews…

it then goes on and gives a plethora of rules and regulation that make it into a religion and then the whole Muhammad was illiterate and God wrote this so it's got to be 100% real..

Unless you really believe it to be written by god, one gets a sense of generals creating a religion to rally the Bedouin nomads into one force.
i had an Afghan gentlemen tell me this at the same time saying he could never voice this to his family or friends at the cost of being killed or at the very least shunned..
he seemed happy to have someone he could explain this to.

 

Objectively that may be a positive attribute. But in a culture where far too many Muslims are sworn to violence in advancing a totalitarian Islamic agenda, "not snitching" is another way of saying collusion is always a probable factor in Muslim violence. That no Muslim can be trusted to act to prevent violence or harm to non-muslims.

Not a good thing at all if you are not a Muslim.

 

Why does the Koran or the Prophet or Allah require Muslims to perform Jihad?

Toward what purpose?

Certainly there is an ultimate reason for it.

For example, we all believe exercise is good for the mind and body and recommend it to everyone.

But why?

Because it helps us to think, move feel and function better and promotes longevity and extends our healthy disease free and injury free existence.

So, what is the ultimate objective of Jihad?

I already know the answer.

Do you?

 

Christians also have a "no-snitch" rule but it's weaken by idea that believers should confess their "sins" in public. Once that's done then it becomes impossible not to judge the person who confesses even though the listeners might have done similar things. That has the effect of creating disharmony in the group.

The muslim practice is much better, with everyone keeping their lips zipped. After all, loose lips sink ships.

It's becoming unbearable seeing every Jack and Jill blabbing about the most inconsequential aspect of their miserable lives. The net result is that it's easy to grow to hate them because they destroy the illusion of peace and harmony. That's one area that the Islamic philosophy is better than the other religions.

 

You're making several errors in your comments. Exercise in and of itself does nothing to promote longevity. Look at the population of old people. The vast majority of them are sick and infirm from a variety of ailments, but they are still living whereas the more active people you would expect to be alive in that age group have died off.

So the point is that when people make false assumptions about something so basic and observable as that they are also more likely to reach false conclusions about complex social issues. It's hard to think for yourself when you have been brainwashed with certain beliefs all of your life. But it's possible.

 

Sure. If you value appearances over substance.

 

Speak for yourself.

I'm asking a question.

 

As noted there are really two different Jihads. One is the inwardly aimed Jihad and the outward aimed Jihad. One is performed on a personal level while the other is performed on a group or societal level.

The first and primary jihad is the introspective inspection in order to improve oneself and bring one closer to their religion and deity is something basic to all religions. The inner struggle for inner peace and betterment most often will improve the individual and allow them a better path in life and in dealings with others. Inner Jihad is a laudatory pursuit that is probably honored and accepted throughout much of our societies in the world.

The second jihad is the addressing of social injustices along with the spreading of the religion (identical to Christianity that also directed Christians to spread the religion) and is a pursuit of the Muslim religion as a whole. It is this second jihad where problems arise because there are conflicting passages in the Quran from what I understand. It all depends upon how one rationalizes whether acts of violence are based upon self-defense or are acts of aggression acceptable. Of course pulling out of context can rationalize many atrocities.

Not being a Muslim my opinion, and the opinion of the vast majority of Muslims, is that violence can only be used in self-defense because it would volate the "jihad" of the person to commit an act of aggression against another person.

 

And for we 'infidels' who don't submit, we get oppression and death. As the modern-day Islamic scholar, Ibrahim Sulaiman, puts it, "Jihad is not inhumane, despite its necessary violence and bloodshed, its ultimate desire is peace which is protected and enhanced by the rule of law."

When other beliefs involve the wholesale oppression of women (Sharia Law is gender apartheid), gays, non-Muslims, etc., that is evil, and evil is to be resisted, not 'understood' or co-existed with.

Right, and Hitler was a victim too, according to him. Islamic aggression has been going on since 611 AD. Islam can't tolerate non-Muslims in their lands.

And to answer the OP, no I can't think of anything good about Islam. Like all false religions it is works-based. Muslims can't even tell you for sure if the 'prophet' went to heaven.

 

Not even close to being the same, Christian missionary activity is based on voluntary conversion, even today many are faced with a choice of converting to Islam or death.

I'm not aware of any use of 'jihad' in the Koran that is peaceful. From another site:

"In Arabic, "jihad" means struggle. In Islam, it means holy war.

The Quran specifically exempts the disabled and elderly from Jihad (4:95), which would make no sense if the word is being used merely within the context of spiritual struggle. It is also unclear why Muhammad and his Quran would use graphic language, such as smiting fingers and heads from the hands and necks of unbelievers if he were speaking merely of character development.

With this in mind, Muslim apologists generally admit that there are two meanings to the word, but insist that “inner struggle” is the “greater Jihad,” whereas “holy war” is the “lesser.” In fact, this misconception is based only on an a single hadith that Islamic scholars generally agreed was fabricated.

By contrast, the most reliable of all Hadith collections is that of Bukhari. Jihad is mentioned over 200 times in reference to the words of Muhammad and each one carries a clear connotation to holy war, with only a handful of possible exceptions (dealing with a woman's supporting role during a time of holy war)."

 

Not really, Gal. 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Islam treats 'infidels' as second-class citizens, as we've seen in Egypt: http://www.copticsolidarity.org/med...-by-muslim-brotherhood-regime-says-researcher

I know of no Muslim-majority nation with freedom of religion as we know it in the West.

 

Try explaining the Spanish inquisition where those that refused to convert to Christianity were executed.

Once agian citing out of context is often used to rationalize atrocities and that has been done related to virtually every religion historically. As noted because there are two different Jihads any adocacy of violence, except in self defense, related to the "social" jihad would violate the inner jihad and is inherently self-contradictory based upon the teachings of Islam. The vast majority of Muslim agree with this which is why they are overwhelmingly a peaceful people.

Citing the acts of even a million Muslims when there are over 1.5 billion Muslims is really just reflecting the fact that an extremely small percentage of any religious group will rationalize atrocities which is exactly what I've stated. It would be like condemning Christians for the acts of religious fanatics like Jim Jones.

 

They went against Jesus' words and deeds, you don't judge a philosophy by its misuse. Jesus harmed nobody, and only sadly walked away when someone refused His message. In the parable of the wheat and tares he said not to try and separate the two, because we don't know who is who. The Jihadists, on the other hand, do nothing that the 'prophet' didn't do, except for using superior Western technology for their crimes.

Right, is that why there are an average of five Muslim terror attacks throughout the world every day? Such a peaceful religion, try telling that to an Egyptian Christian. As a wise Muslim once said, not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslim.

Jones was one of you:

"While Jones always spoke of the social gospel's virtues, before the late 1960s Jones chose to conceal that his gospel was actually communism.[16] By the late 1960s, Jones began at least partially openly revealing the details of his "Apostolic Socialism" concept in Temple sermons.[16] Jones also taught that, "those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment — socialism."[39] Jones often mixed these ideas, such as preaching that, "If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin."[40]
By the early 1970s, Jones began deriding traditional Christianity as "fly away religion," rejecting the Bible as being a tool to oppress women and non-whites, and denouncing a "Sky God" who was no God at all.[16] Jones authored a booklet titled "The Letter Killeth," criticizing the King James Bible.[41] Jones also began preaching that he was the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi (murdered in 194 and Father Divine (died in 1965), as well as Jesus of Nazareth, Gotama Buddha and Vladimir Lenin. Former Temple member Hue Fortson, Jr. quoted Jones as saying, "What you need to believe in is what you can see ... If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father ... If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God."[11]
In a 1976 phone conversation with John Maher, Jones alternately stated that he was an agnostic and an atheist.[2] Despite the Temple's fear that the IRS was investigating its religious tax exemption, Marceline Jones admitted in a 1977 New York Times interview that Jones was trying to promote Marxism in the United States by mobilizing people through religion, citing Mao Zedong as his inspiration.[38] She stated that, "Jim used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion," and had slammed the Bible on the table yelling "I've got to destroy this paper idol!"[38] In one sermon, Jones said that, "You're gonna help yourself, or you'll get no help! There's only one hope of glory; that's within you! Nobody's gonna come out of the sky! There's no heaven up there! We'll have to make heaven down here!"[11]

Wikipedia

 

Even if muslims are intolerant religious bigots they are not racist like the ones in Judaism and Christianity. That's a major difference worth noting.

 

That is the point I've tried to make.

Remember that I'm an athiest ahd I see the abuses in the name of all religions from the fundamentalist Christian killing an abortion doctor to the Muslim suicide bomber the the Israeli killing of Muslim Arabs. I see it all and all of these atrocities have common denominator in that those responsble are using "religion" to rationalize the atrocity. Even Shiite and Sunnis use their religions beliefs to rationalize atrocities against each other just like Protestant Christians did against the Mormon Christians in the 19th Century here in the US.

When we address domestic terrorism in the United States we find that Muslims are responsible for virtually none of it. As I recall from an old statistic I read a few years ago Muslims were only responsible for about 6% of domestic terrorism in the US while Christians were responsible for about 80%. This didn't relate to the "religion" being cited as the cause but instead only related to the demographics of the terrorist committing the act.

As an American I'm predominately concerned with the United States and there is one undeniable fact related to that. It's not the Muslims that represent a threat to America but instead it's the Christian fundamentalists that represent a threat to us. They seek to destroy the United States from within has they believe the Bible is the Supreme Law of the Land and not the US Constitution.

 

Nonsense, show me a Christian list of 22,000 terror attacks since 9/11 like this: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/TheList.htm

In self defense, not because they are of a different religion, as Muslims do.

OK, and the Communists killed 100,000,000 with no religious justification.

And the Protestants who did those things did so inspite of Christ's teachings, the Jihadists act because of the 'prophet's' words and deeds. There's a reason he made the cover of Military History Quarterly.

Which makes your analogy fail, get one that tells how many of each faith did crimes such as 9/11 BECAUSE OF their faith, shouting 'allah akbar' while killing is a good tip. Someone who robs a bank who is not a practicing Christian and is not motivated by anything but self interest isn't the same thing.

Nonsense, I don't know any Christians who think that, that scenario exists only in your head. On the contrary, the Bible tells us to obey those in authority over us.

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What Jew or Christian is racist, I don't know of any. Where does Christ teach such a thing?

 

Rarely do you see a Muslim slagging off the Christian or Jewish religion. The same cannot be said about many "pretend" Christians or Jews on this forum.

 

you probably cherry pick people to listen to.
I like the response just above your response from Shiva. I couldn't say it better.

That is because they are still OT based in faith.
And christians don't have a lot of ground to stand on when it comes to gays. Improving yes, but they have been just as oppresive towards gays or others christians don't like.

Then stay the fruck out.

All religions have bad apples. And in reality, the world would be better off without any of the 3 abrahamic religions.

 

You mean that unsupported bigoted rant? You're right, you couldn't say it better.

Where does the OT say to kill people just because they didn't believe in the God of Israel?

I bet you think believing homosexual activity to be immoral and contrary to God's will is 'oppressive', right?

I was talking about their own citizens who choose to follow a different religion, or none at all. I'd love to see you spout off like you do here in say, Saudi Arabia. Most atheists would be too cowardly to do that, they prefer abusing people who don't fight back.

Its just that ONE religion seems to have the majority of the bad apples, not surprising considering the word and deed of the 'prophet'. Or are you afraid of your local Methodists?

Your bigotry is noted, can I say the world would be better off without atheists?

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Huh? Tell it to an Egyptian Coptic Christian.