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christiefan915
01-29-2016, 06:44 PM
There's a lot more to this article than the C & P here and the author makes some very good points.

...Of course it isn’t a religion of violence. If it were, why would so many Muslim societies be so peaceful?

The savagery of the terror assaults perpetrated by ISIS and its franchise groups has helped build support for claims in the West that Islam is a religion of violence. But the faith of 1.8 billionMuslims, almost a quarter of the world’s population, is far too complex and open to far too many competing interpretations, to be reduced to simplistic slogans like a “religion of violence”—or indeed a “religion of peace.” Islam is both.

What is striking about the current debate is how extraordinarily little its participants appear to know about the extent of Muslim—and non-Muslim—violence. It appears, for example, that none of the anti-Muslim critics are aware that, with respect to the single greatest source of deadly intentional violence worldwide, Muslim societies are among the least violent in the world.

This reality might seem to lend credence to claims that Islam is indeed an inherently violent religion, but this is to confuse the ultra-violent ideology of a very small minority of Muslims at a particular point in time with the Islamic religion as it is understood and practiced today by the overwhelming majority of a billion-plus Muslims worldwide. This majority, of course, despises the gross brutality of ISIS, al-Qaida, and the other ultra-violent Islamist groups. The animus of mainstream Islam is hardly surprising—ISIS has mostly killed fellow Muslims...

Given today’s headlines, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the 1970s there were no major conflicts involving Islamist radicals being waged around the world. This raises an obvious question. If Islam is in fact an inherently violent religion, how do we account for these—and many other—long periods of peacefulness within Muslim societies? Discussions about the violence of contemporary Islam focus overwhelmingly on armed conflict and terrorism. But a more appropriate metric for determining the propensity for violence of a particular society, culture, or religion is the incidence of intentional homicide. In almost all societies it is murder, not war, that accounts for the large majority of intentional killings...

It is far more difficult to mount an armed campaign against a state than to kill an individual. And even today, wars directly affect only a relatively small minority of countries. All countries suffer from homicides, however. In 2015, the Global Burden of Armed Violence published by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, found that between 2007 and 2012, for every individual killed in war or terror campaigns around the world, seven individuals were murdered....

So if there really is an inherent—Islam-driven—propensity for deadly violence in Muslim societies, we should expect to find that the greater the percentage of Muslims in society, the greater would be the numbers of homicides. In fact, the reverse is the case: The higher the percentage of Muslims in a society, the lower the homicide rate...

In 2011, a major study by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist M. Steven Fish presented cross-national statistical data showing that between 1994 and 2007, annual homicide rates in the Muslim world averaged just 2.4 per 100,000 of the population. That was approximately a third of the rate for the non-Muslim world and less than the average rate in Europe. It is also approximately half the homicide rate in the United States.

In comparing individual countries, the difference is even greater. The latest homicide statistics from the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime reveal that for every murder perpetrated in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, seven people are murdered in the United States. This reality should give American Islamophobes pause.

It is possible in principle, as some critics have argued, that the lower murder rates in Muslim countries could be due not to a generally low propensity for homicide but to authoritarian governments whose harsh anti–violent crime policies are more effective in reducing the incidence of murder than those of democracies like the United States. But Fish’s careful statistical analyses controlled for this possibility and found no evidence to support it...

(Continued)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/islam_isn_t_inherently_violent_or_peaceful.2.html

anatta
01-30-2016, 09:05 AM
Given today’s headlines, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the 1970s there were no major conflicts involving Islamist radicals being waged around the world. This raises an obvious question. If Islam is in fact an inherently violent religion, how do we account for these—and many other—long periods of peacefulness within Muslim societiesas far as I can tell..much of this started with the Palestinian Liberation Org (PLO) -the Munich Olympics for ex.

That set the stage for "political Islam" -mixing in Islam with political goals -if you look at ISIL/AQ propaganda, it's heavily using Islam
as reasoning for it's goals/tactics.

No -Islam is not an inherently "violent" religion - it's "submission" is to the will of Allah -not to a caliph ( but it does become that)
according to the ISIL types.

However salafi jihad has become virulent and worldwide - so while that may be hijacked ( it's really a non-modernist interpretation)
it's still part of Islam

All of which means Islam has a problem with so called "fundamentalism" -we see it in Shi'a Iran also.
It's the interpretation that is a growing menace

Darth Omar
01-30-2016, 09:20 AM
The modern iteration of militant Islam began with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920's.

The OP writer subtlety conflates Muslims with Islam. It has the effect of ignoring the textual arguments the radicals use in supporting their claim that Islam is a violent and oppressive religion. The OP negates the possibility that peaceful Muslims simply ignore [to their credit] the passages that call for violence against infidels.

Of course, the vast majority of global Muslims aren't violent, but Muslims aren't Islam.

evince
01-30-2016, 09:36 AM
There's a lot more to this article than the C & P here and the author makes some very good points.

...Of course it isn’t a religion of violence. If it were, why would so many Muslim societies be so peaceful?

The savagery of the terror assaults perpetrated by ISIS and its franchise groups has helped build support for claims in the West that Islam is a religion of violence. But the faith of 1.8 billionMuslims, almost a quarter of the world’s population, is far too complex and open to far too many competing interpretations, to be reduced to simplistic slogans like a “religion of violence”—or indeed a “religion of peace.” Islam is both.

What is striking about the current debate is how extraordinarily little its participants appear to know about the extent of Muslim—and non-Muslim—violence. It appears, for example, that none of the anti-Muslim critics are aware that, with respect to the single greatest source of deadly intentional violence worldwide, Muslim societies are among the least violent in the world.

This reality might seem to lend credence to claims that Islam is indeed an inherently violent religion, but this is to confuse the ultra-violent ideology of a very small minority of Muslims at a particular point in time with the Islamic religion as it is understood and practiced today by the overwhelming majority of a billion-plus Muslims worldwide. This majority, of course, despises the gross brutality of ISIS, al-Qaida, and the other ultra-violent Islamist groups. The animus of mainstream Islam is hardly surprising—ISIS has mostly killed fellow Muslims...

Given today’s headlines, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the 1970s there were no major conflicts involving Islamist radicals being waged around the world. This raises an obvious question. If Islam is in fact an inherently violent religion, how do we account for these—and many other—long periods of peacefulness within Muslim societies? Discussions about the violence of contemporary Islam focus overwhelmingly on armed conflict and terrorism. But a more appropriate metric for determining the propensity for violence of a particular society, culture, or religion is the incidence of intentional homicide. In almost all societies it is murder, not war, that accounts for the large majority of intentional killings...

It is far more difficult to mount an armed campaign against a state than to kill an individual. And even today, wars directly affect only a relatively small minority of countries. All countries suffer from homicides, however. In 2015, the Global Burden of Armed Violence published by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, found that between 2007 and 2012, for every individual killed in war or terror campaigns around the world, seven individuals were murdered....

So if there really is an inherent—Islam-driven—propensity for deadly violence in Muslim societies, we should expect to find that the greater the percentage of Muslims in society, the greater would be the numbers of homicides. In fact, the reverse is the case: The higher the percentage of Muslims in a society, the lower the homicide rate...

In 2011, a major study by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist M. Steven Fish presented cross-national statistical data showing that between 1994 and 2007, annual homicide rates in the Muslim world averaged just 2.4 per 100,000 of the population. That was approximately a third of the rate for the non-Muslim world and less than the average rate in Europe. It is also approximately half the homicide rate in the United States.

In comparing individual countries, the difference is even greater. The latest homicide statistics from the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime reveal that for every murder perpetrated in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, seven people are murdered in the United States. This reality should give American Islamophobes pause.

It is possible in principle, as some critics have argued, that the lower murder rates in Muslim countries could be due not to a generally low propensity for homicide but to authoritarian governments whose harsh anti–violent crime policies are more effective in reducing the incidence of murder than those of democracies like the United States. But Fish’s careful statistical analyses controlled for this possibility and found no evidence to support it...

(Continued)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/islam_isn_t_inherently_violent_or_peaceful.2.html

they all want to be the last religion standing



so they slander each other

christiefan915
01-30-2016, 11:20 AM
The modern iteration of militant Islam began with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920's.

The OP writer subtlety conflates Muslims with Islam. It has the effect of ignoring the textual arguments the radicals use in supporting their claim that Islam is a violent and oppressive religion. The OP negates the possibility that peaceful Muslims simply ignore [to their credit] the passages that call for violence against infidels.

Of course, the vast majority of global Muslims aren't violent, but Muslims aren't Islam.

I don't understand your point. Is it the same as saying Christians aren't the Bible?

Muslims are a religious group, not a race or an ethnic group.

Darth Omar
01-30-2016, 11:36 AM
I don't understand your point. Is it the same as saying Christians aren't the Bible?

Muslims are a religious group, not a race or an ethnic group.

The OP says 'The truth about Islam'. Then it goes to talk about how many peaceful Muslims there are but that doesn't neccessarily say anything about Islam.

christiefan915
01-30-2016, 12:14 PM
The OP says 'The truth about Islam'. Then it goes to talk about how many peaceful Muslims there are but that doesn't neccessarily say anything about Islam.

I still don't get it, maybe I need stronger coffee, lol. That's like saying "it goes talk about how many peaceful Christians there are but that doesn't neccessarily say anything about Christianity."

Muslims and Islam are intertwined. A Muslim is a practitioner of Islam. If, as the article says, the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful it's because they're practicing Islam the way it's meant to be, not the way it was hijacked by extremists.

cancel2 2022
01-30-2016, 05:00 PM
There's a lot more to this article than the C & P here and the author makes some very good points.

...Of course it isn’t a religion of violence. If it were, why would so many Muslim societies be so peaceful?

The savagery of the terror assaults perpetrated by ISIS and its franchise groups has helped build support for claims in the West that Islam is a religion of violence. But the faith of 1.8 billionMuslims, almost a quarter of the world’s population, is far too complex and open to far too many competing interpretations, to be reduced to simplistic slogans like a “religion of violence”—or indeed a “religion of peace.” Islam is both.

What is striking about the current debate is how extraordinarily little its participants appear to know about the extent of Muslim—and non-Muslim—violence. It appears, for example, that none of the anti-Muslim critics are aware that, with respect to the single greatest source of deadly intentional violence worldwide, Muslim societies are among the least violent in the world.

This reality might seem to lend credence to claims that Islam is indeed an inherently violent religion, but this is to confuse the ultra-violent ideology of a very small minority of Muslims at a particular point in time with the Islamic religion as it is understood and practiced today by the overwhelming majority of a billion-plus Muslims worldwide. This majority, of course, despises the gross brutality of ISIS, al-Qaida, and the other ultra-violent Islamist groups. The animus of mainstream Islam is hardly surprising—ISIS has mostly killed fellow Muslims...

Given today’s headlines, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the 1970s there were no major conflicts involving Islamist radicals being waged around the world. This raises an obvious question. If Islam is in fact an inherently violent religion, how do we account for these—and many other—long periods of peacefulness within Muslim societies? Discussions about the violence of contemporary Islam focus overwhelmingly on armed conflict and terrorism. But a more appropriate metric for determining the propensity for violence of a particular society, culture, or religion is the incidence of intentional homicide. In almost all societies it is murder, not war, that accounts for the large majority of intentional killings...

It is far more difficult to mount an armed campaign against a state than to kill an individual. And even today, wars directly affect only a relatively small minority of countries. All countries suffer from homicides, however. In 2015, the Global Burden of Armed Violence published by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, found that between 2007 and 2012, for every individual killed in war or terror campaigns around the world, seven individuals were murdered....

So if there really is an inherent—Islam-driven—propensity for deadly violence in Muslim societies, we should expect to find that the greater the percentage of Muslims in society, the greater would be the numbers of homicides. In fact, the reverse is the case: The higher the percentage of Muslims in a society, the lower the homicide rate...

In 2011, a major study by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist M. Steven Fish presented cross-national statistical data showing that between 1994 and 2007, annual homicide rates in the Muslim world averaged just 2.4 per 100,000 of the population. That was approximately a third of the rate for the non-Muslim world and less than the average rate in Europe. It is also approximately half the homicide rate in the United States.

In comparing individual countries, the difference is even greater. The latest homicide statistics from the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime reveal that for every murder perpetrated in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, seven people are murdered in the United States. This reality should give American Islamophobes pause.

It is possible in principle, as some critics have argued, that the lower murder rates in Muslim countries could be due not to a generally low propensity for homicide but to authoritarian governments whose harsh anti–violent crime policies are more effective in reducing the incidence of murder than those of democracies like the United States. But Fish’s careful statistical analyses controlled for this possibility and found no evidence to support it...

(Continued)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/islam_isn_t_inherently_violent_or_peaceful.2.html


There were two wars involving Islamic countries in the 70's, namely Bangladesh-Pakistan 1971 and East Timor-Indonesia in 1975.

cancel2 2022
01-30-2016, 05:01 PM
There were two wars involving Islamic countries in the 70's, namely Bangladesh-Pakistan 1971 and East Timor-Indonesia in 1975.

Nearly forgot Biafra-Nigeria which had a Muslim dimension as well.

Minister of Truth
01-31-2016, 02:53 AM
as far as I can tell..much of this started with the Palestinian Liberation Org (PLO) -the Munich Olympics for ex.

That set the stage for "political Islam" -mixing in Islam with political goals -if you look at ISIL/AQ propaganda, it's heavily using Islam
as reasoning for it's goals/tactics.

No -Islam is not an inherently "violent" religion - it's "submission" is to the will of Allah -not to a caliph ( but it does become that)
according to the ISIL types.

However salafi jihad has become virulent and worldwide - so while that may be hijacked ( it's really a non-modernist interpretation)
it's still part of Islam

All of which means Islam has a problem with so called "fundamentalism" -we see it in Shi'a Iran also.
It's the interpretation that is a growing menace

After Munich, they should have given the PLO the Sudetenland.

cancel2 2022
01-31-2016, 12:40 PM
After Munich, they should have given the PLO the Sudetenland.

Some of the most drop dead gorgeous women come from that part of the world.

christiefan915
01-31-2016, 03:42 PM
There were two wars involving Islamic countries in the 70's, namely Bangladesh-Pakistan 1971 and East Timor-Indonesia in 1975.

Hmm, funny he didn't mention them.

cancel2 2022
01-31-2016, 05:38 PM
Hmm, funny he didn't mention them.

I don't know, it's not as if they were obscure and forgotten wars.