I just finished watching a video that tackled the question, "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?"

I know that there are probably quite a few fans of Mr. Christopher Hitchens, so...

And for those of you that would rather watch paint dry than listen to two long videos....

So Escapists, what do you think, is Islam a religion of peace?

Personally I feel very conflicted on answering yes or no because I have seen people cite exerts from the Koran which seem to incite violence, but I have also seen people cite exerts that promote tolerance. One thing I always liked about Islam is the part that said that
"people of the book"(see:Christians and Jews) should be respected and treated with tolerance. But what about you? What do you think about Islam? Is it inherently violent, and if so, do you think it promotes violence more than Christianity or Judaism does?

Hazy992:
Oh dear this won't end well...

OT: Other religious books have violent excerpts in them so I think it's unfair to single out the Koran.

Well I tried not to be like other past threads and I tried to provide a fair counter to the claim. If you look at the first two videos, they both contain competent people who refute the claim. I'd recommend you watch them if you have the time.

No religion on Earth has a perfect record. Either in terms of keeping the peace, or adhering to their own religious tenets. Singling out Islam as if one expected it to be an exception is not particularly fair to its followers.

On the other hand, from my perspective, what a holy book does or does not say matters very little when judging a religion. What matters are the actions and viewpoints of the current followers of the religion, in the name of that religion. On that basis, among the primary religions of the world, Islam is currently on the whole by several orders of magnitude more violent and sociopathic than the others, even if you were to discount the actions of splinter terrorist groups.

If the followers of Islam agree that such is not the path Mohammad preached about, that's great, now they need to go and DO something about it, because their brethren and their nations are collectively dragging their name through the muck. I've often criticized Christianity for its past actions, as has some of the Islamic leadership. The difference is, Christianity, barring a few holdouts, has for the most part grown up and moved past its barbaric past, Islam, while somewhat better than it has been, is still badly dragging its heels and has much further to go.

Hazy992:

Volf:

Hazy992:
Oh dear this won't end well...

OT: Other religious books have violent excerpts in them so I think it's unfair to single out the Koran.

Well I tried not to be like other past threads and I tried to provide a fair counter to the claim. If you look at the first two videos, they both contain competent people who refute the claim. I'd recommend you watch them if you have the time.

Do you know approximately when they mention that specific point cause I don't really have time to watch the videos, I'm afraid (it's nearly 2:45 AM here :3)

Perhaps this might help you a little...

Hazy992:

Volf:

Hazy992:
Do you know approximately when they mention that specific point cause I don't really have time to watch the videos, I'm afraid (it's nearly 2:45 AM here :3)

Perhaps this might help you a little...

Here is the opening of the discussion where both sides state their claims. The pro-Islam side has an American Muslim women speak about the good aspect of Islam she was raised by, while the anti-Islam side has an famous African Muslim(ayaan hirsi ali) speak about the negative aspect of Islam and the Koran. It doesn't feature the Muslim man or the atheist man though.PHA+PGRpdiBzdHlsZT0idGV4dC1hbGlnbjogY2VudGVyOyI+PG9iamVjdCB3aWR0aD0iNDMyIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjI2OCI+PHBhcmFtIG5hbWU9Im1vdmllIiB2YWx1ZT0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy55b3V0dWJlLmNvbS92L0VldGw1akJrTnJzJmFwPSUyNTI2Zm10JTNEMTgiPjwvcGFyYW0+PHBhcmFtIG5hbWU9Indtb2RlIiB2YWx1ZT0ib3BhcXVlIj48L3BhcmFtPjxlbWJlZCBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20vdi9FZXRsNWpCa05ycyZhcD0lMjUyNmZtdCUzRDE4IiB0eXBlPSJhcHBsaWNhdGlvbi94LXNob2Nrd2F2ZS1mbGFzaCIgd21vZGU9Im9wYXF1ZSIgd2lkdGg9IjQzMiIgaGVpZ2h0PSIyNjgiPjwvZW1iZWQ+PC9vYmplY3Q+PC9kaXY+PC9wPg==

OK thanks :) oh and I wasn't saying your post was biased or anything it's just that people feel strongly on both sides of this debate on this forum and I thought it might get ugly.

Oh ok, good. I was hoping that the first two videos would give both sides a fair chance to demonstrate their points. Good to know I didn't immediately come off as biased. :)

No more so or less so than any other Abrahamic religion. They all have passages promoting tolerance and passages demanding you exterminate everyone who is not like you. It is up to individual interpretation. However, despite growing up around Muslims who were from the Middle East, I have never seen a Muslim act as abhorrently as I have personally seen Christians act. Which is not to say that there aren't Muslims who do, and it is also not to say that there are not Christians who behave better, but my experience has been that the Muslims in my life have been more tolerant than the Christians.

Islam is neither a warlike religion nor a peaceful one, it's simply a religion. The problem is that the heart of Islamic culture is in a region that can't bring itself to move into the modern era.

No religion is monolithic. I'm more familiar with the Bible than I am the Koran, and I know that book is full of contradictions. It includes both "turn the other cheek" and "stone to death disobedient children." It's not all one work by one author; it's a compilation of books by many different people with wildly differing opinions. I'm sure the Koran is no different. Calling Islam a "religion of peace" is stupid, because calling any religion a "religion of X" is stupid. There's no central authority on what being part of a religion entails.

Katatori-kun:
Religion is nothing without interpretation, and all interpretation takes place in the head of the individual. Therefore all religions exist as variant interpreted forms in the heads of myriad believers.

Thus to suggest that a religion can be uniformly peaceful or uniformly violent is 100% hogwash.

It all comes down to the individual believer.

Did you see any of the first two videos?

Well, how often do people complain that Indonesia, Pakistan, or India is particularly violent?*

In another way of putting it, it is pretty damn hard to blame religion alone for much of anything. There's always many things all going on at once, and what defines a religion in a discussion can be rather arbitrary (like geography). So no, in other words.

*The point is not to say they aren't, but that these three countries' Muslim populations are not usually associated with the term Islam or Muslim. One could make the same point about Muslims living in Canada or the US.

Islam it self isn't violent. It is a set of beliefs and rules that it's people follow. What they do with those beliefs, that is the real question.

The problem is that many (not nearly all of them though, the United States actually has the largest Islamic population of any nation if my memory serves) lives in the Middle East, which is possibly the most war torn place on the planet. It has very few places where food can be reliably grown, used to be the nexus of all trade routes between Europe, Asia, and Africa, then it was the birth place of MANY religions (each thinking it belongs to them by word of god), has a lot of oil, etc.

It is just the media's constant focusing on that region and that religion that give the perception that islam is EVIL!

Is Islam more violent? In principle, no. Pretty much as violent or non-violent as Christianity, that is to say: It depends on the cultural surroundings and the way the religion is used and promoted.
It's just that currently there are a number of places where Islam is used for violence (largely violence against other Muslims, by the way, which is very underreported in our media; most terrorism victims of violent Muslim fundamentalists are other Muslims).

I can't call Islam a religion of peace with a straight face while it can be compared to something like Jainism. THAT is a religion of peace, as the practises which surround it are all literally done with the intention of limiting any harm done to anything.

If the thread asked if there is at least one religion of peace, I'd say yes. But it is not Islam.

To elaborate, it (Islam) is not a religion 'of peace' because it concerns itself with things that aren't peace. Peace isn't its central goal; and the interpretations which call muslims to violence don't take a lot of creativity. They're fairly straight forward, it takes much more work to paint Islam as a peaceful religion than as one that is 'open to' violence.

Now to try and twist Jainism into something violent? That would take a very impressive amount of stretching.

Every Person is an individual.
Believe it or not, they choose how to follow the creeds of their religion. The religion changes based on the perception of the person and the ways he was exposed to it. There are many different sects of a religion. A person may choose to follow certain acts decreed in a religion. A person may have no faith but continue out of respect for his traditions.
This discussion is a joke. Herd mentality occurs in many situations. Violent Rioting can be made by catholic Christians, Anglicans and Lutherans and so can Evangelicals. Muslims may riot violently whether they be Sunni or Shiite or Ibadi, and so can Jews riot violently.
People are violent because they are violent. Factors for the violence may include the creeds of the religion which may decrease or increase the chances of violence, but you will be surprised how people are individuals even while following a religion. They act out because it is their personality or system of belief in secular or religious values.
Saying one religion or the other is violent is stupid and this whole thread is futile. There are always exception but here you may not put people in a box and say that because they are Muslim they can be pacifists... It's ignorant.
I know a pacifist religious Jew. I know a religious Jew that lives in a settlement and has many skirmishes with nearby Palestinians (Although I have to admit I met him only three times). Religion does not dictate violence or non-violence to its people in a way they will follow it to the letter.
Enough with this discussion.

Danyal:

TheIronRuler:
Every Person is an individual.
Believe it or not, they choose how to follow the creeds of their religion. The religion changes based on the perception of the person and the ways he was exposed to it. There are many different sects of a religion. A person may choose to follow certain acts decreed in a religion.

People are violent because they are violent. Saying one religion or the other is violent is stupid and this whole thread is futile. There are always exception but here you may not put people in a box and say that because they are Muslim they can be pacifists... It's ignorant. Religion does not dictate violence or non-violence to its people in a way they will follow it to the letter.
Enough with this discussion.

That would mean that we couldn't say anything about any ideology. Capitalism, the ideology of individualism? Flawed. Communism, the ideology of egalitarianism? Enough with this discussion!

Religions aren't different from ideologies. And to state that it is futile to debate whether Nazism is violent or racist "because people are violent because they are violent, the ideology changes based on the perception of the person" seems rather shortsighted.

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One of the reasons why Nazism had such an impact on the youth and the citizens of Germany is the herd mentality. Children were almost forced into joining these youth groups where peer pressure and influence from their adults literally forced them to accept these believes. It is the same with Religion. Only a few were unchanged as there were many examples of opposing youth groups in Germany that opposed the Nazi regime and worked against it. I liked the pirates, I really did. Most of their leaders were hung by the Nazis.
When you have soldiers kill Jews it was hard to keep them in line. You look at the eyes of children and pull the trigger. Many simply couldn't. So there were these special units, you see, of rather normal folk. They would be the ones to pull the trigger. Peer Pressure and alcohol abuse, orders from above. They would be given liquor and a day off and let them know each other, bond together and later beat a Jew to death because their superiors told them he tried to kill one of their comrades. Then they just accepted killing their fellow men. It was the herd mentality. Everyone was doing it, but why? Attributing violence to a certain creed is belittling the individualism of a person and his right to choose to shy away from violence.

Danyal:

Danny Ocean:
Waaaait wait wait wait. Do you perhaps think that ideas by themselves can be evil?

Yes of course. Isn't racism as an idea by itself evil? I thought we were a little smarter than just saying "Guns don't kill people, thus we shouldn't have any restrictions on guns!". Of course guns or ideas by themselves can't do anything, but that doesn't make guns or ideas not-dangerous or not-harmful.

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Ideas are not dangerous, those who wield them are. They can be perverted and altered to the whims of the user, the same why a firearm can protect and can also harm civilians if wielded by a police-officer or a robber.

Danyal:

Skeleon:
Is Islam more violent? In principle, no. Pretty much as violent or non-violent as Christianity, that is to say: It depends on the cultural surroundings and the way the religion is used and promoted.

Could you say the same in a comparison with Buddhism or Jainism?

I'd have to look into Jainism, but Buddhism? Sure. In Sri Lanka, for instance, Buddhist and Hindu terrorist groups are at each others throats.

That said, the thread isn't about Islam being "the most peaceful", the question was whether Islam is particularly "more violent than other religions". The counter-example of Christianity should've been more than sufficient to debunk that claim, even to you.

You will never see me arguing that Islam is "the most peaceful religion" or some such nonsense, though.

Danyal:

TheIronRuler:
One of the reasons why Nazism had such an impact on the youth and the citizens of Germany is the herd mentality. Children were almost forced into joining these youth groups where peer pressure and influence from their adults literally forced them to accept these believes. It is the same with Religion. Only a few were unchanged as there were many examples of opposing youth groups in Germany that opposed the Nazi regime and worked against it. I liked the pirates, I really did. Most of their leaders were hung by the Nazis.
When you have soldiers kill Jews it was hard to keep them in line. You look at the eyes of children and pull the trigger. Many simply couldn't. So there were these special units, you see, of rather normal folk. They would be the ones to pull the trigger. Peer Pressure and alcohol abuse, orders from above. They would be given liquor and a day off and let them know each other, bond together and later beat a Jew to death because their superiors told them he tried to kill one of their comrades. Then they just accepted killing their fellow men. It was the herd mentality. Everyone was doing it, but why? Attributing violence to a certain creed is belittling the individualism of a person and his right to choose to shy away from violence.

That's a great explanation of how an evil ideology gets it's power.

Do you think it's stupid to discuss whether Nazism is racist and violent, because it's all just individual interpretation and "Racist and violent people are racist and violent regardless of ideology"?

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Nazism has its founding in Race superiority so there is no discussion value in claiming that it did or didn't. It is a fact.
Nazism has violence in its core. One of its creeds is forced expansion. Hitler wanted to take over Czechoslovakia and the German oriented areas and solidify his economics. The thing is, a person following Nazism can disregard this. He can cherry-pick what he wants to believe and simply say that he wants a country for every race and he doesn't want people from his race mingling with other races. Is that violent? Not in my eyes. The means to achieving that, and the way it was executed in Germany was indeed violent. They can peacefully ask the Austrian people to join forces as one German nation. Have them integrated into Germany peacefully.
(Even though it was forbidden by the Versailles agreement)