Islam and the Quran - (sensational piece on how and why Islam is different from other faiths)

We have seen some disturbing instances lately concerning the perception of defilement of the Quran. First and foremost, I do not condone defilement of any holy book. It serves no purpose, and it is inconsiderate.

However, do those who do such things merit death? This is something about Islam I have never been able to understand, from the death warrant on Salman Rushdie to others in Islamic nations who have been put to death for supposedly blaspheming Islam, to the riots we see around the world presently for an irresponsible act of journalism.

Even if what was reported was true, the deaths and mayhem that followed shows the world the heart of Islam. Now I will most certainly receive a lot of emails from Muslims claiming this is not Islam, but depending on which Quran they themselves read, they may also be guilty of not adhering to Islam according to many scholars in their own religion.

I believe every human has the right to protest if they feel an injustice was done to them. I have no problem with people being angry if they feel their religion was slammed. But I have a huge problem with the mob mentality that screams for the blood of individuals for either a perceived or real action by someone against their religion.

And I will also no doubt receive many emails telling me that the West has committed atrocities against Muslims. And no doubt they have. However, the emails I receive never claim the Western culture as the villain, but Christians and Jews, specifically as a religious entity, not a culture.

And I always need to reply stating that if a Western nation goes to war or does something horrible, they never do it while screaming “God is great”! or “Death to the unbelievers!”, they simply are going the way of mankind and doing what they do for their own self interest.

But Islam seems to differ greatly from the other great religions in this respect. The emails this last year I have received also solidify my feelings on this issue, because many have been quite biting and violent. Yes, I am a Christian. And many times in my life I have heard people bad mouth God. I have seen people desecrate the Bible. I have been told religion is for the weak and stupid. I have been told there is no God. I have laughed at, I have heard the skeptics rail on the Bible, and I have heard the worst of what man can think about God, Christianity, Judaism, and the Bible.

I have also seen Buddhists and Jews endure the same treatment of their religion and God, as well as Hindus. But Between Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, we all seem to take the position that all people have a right to believe what they desire, and all will bear the consequences of their beliefs and actions either in the hereafter, or in the next life however it is perceived.

We feel our God can not only defend Himself without our petty interference, but He is also the only worthy judge of our lives and actions. Though we may strive for a more holy lifestyle, we all recognize our weaknesses and attempt to better ourselves while creating no harm to others.

And we all watch as Islamists word wide are running rampant in the streets without even knowing for sure if the story they heard was true or not. It will not even matter to them that the story has been retracted. They now have a reason to Jihad, and Jihad they will. The truth matters not, the fire has been lit and the violent protests have begun. It also seems not to matter that some Muslims claim the Quran condemns killing and mayhem. They will simply take the other verses that condone those actions and run with them.

And people will die. Homes and property will be destroyed, lives ruined. And all due to a supposed blaspheming of the Quran. Now I may be wrong, but my idea of blasphemy was that a god or entity had to be spoken of irreverently, not a book or religion itself.

But Fatwah have been issued worldwide because someone either blasphemed Islam, the Quran, Muhammad, or Allah. People have been murdered for speaking against a religion that I have been told hundreds of times is NOT a religion of compulsion. They have been ostracized for not believing, killed for leaving, and beheaded for Islam or their take against it.

And I am not talking about the period of the Crusades, or any other time in history where the medieval mind ruled. I am talking now, 2005 in an age of information, an age of education, mass media, telecommunications, and on and on. And I see not one Western Muslim entity who claims Islam is peace over in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, or anywhere en masse in a huge effort to educate their brethren in what they consider a peaceful religion. I have heard a spattering of imams decrying terror and murder, but with 2 billion people worldwide, one might think perhaps that the story we keep hearing of terrorists being the minority in Islam is nothing more than a fairy tale.

If Allah needs his people to kidnap for him, murder for him, riot for him, and if the Quran needs to be shown to the world as a Holy book using the same methods, how will this world ever see Islam, Allah, and the Quran as anything else than a bloody entity?

Yet the so called peaceful Muslims try and talk to those who are not Muslim, and try to teach us the more peaceful ways of Islam they claim exist. But it is not us who need to hear these things. We are not the ones kidnapping, murdering, raping, beheading, all the while screaming out the name of our God. Governments may do these things. But I do not see people screaming out the name of Jesus or Krishna, or Buddha while performing deplorable acts of evil.

It is Islam itself that needs to be educated by you peaceful Muslims. Not the rest of us. We see what we see, and we know what we know, and whether you believe it or not, many of us have read the Quran and felt it was not for us and perhaps chose another religion. But our former religion did not have us killed or ordered to be put to death for leaving. Some have even left our religions and become Satanists. Sad as it may be to the followers of the God of Abraham, we believe they have their choice and will face God Himself. We truly believe our God is strong enough and holy enough to defend Himself and to rightly judge others. He does not want us to, or need us to commit acts of evil to show the world He is Holy and Just. Some will mock Him, mock the Bible, and our ways. But we have no right to slaughter those who do so.

Muslims, teach your own. Go into the world and put your faith to the test. Go to the aforementioned nations and get on those loud speakers yourselves. Decry those actions and diffuse this madness through your teachings and outreach to Muslims who have been deceived. And perhaps the world will believe your message when we see that happen.

Or are you afraid perhaps that those passages they use from the Quran can not be debated? And perhaps by teaching peace and love, compassion and truth, that you yourself may be the next blasphemer and sentenced to death?

I often wonder why those who proclaim peace in Islam never seem to take the message to where the violence is. They simply seem to try and tell us that the atrocities we see in the name of Islam are not what Islam espouses.

But I say, images and actions speak louder than opinion. Until you allow Allah to fight his own battles, your people and religion will always be suspect.

Pete Fisher is a concerned citizen in the Chicago area who has written several articles on the economy, educational system, politics, and religion. He has been feature on several sites such as RenewAmerica.us, Blessedcause.com, Michnews.com, RichardMullenax.com, The Rant.us, and has been circulated on various other sites worldwide. He is a 6 year veteran of the Armed Forces.

>They live in the Middle Ages to those of us in the 20thC.
>That I understand, the question is...why?
>
>Wasn't a major university located in Baghdad at one point before the arrival of Mohammad?
>
>I realize not EVERY Islamic person is violent. Some, like a lot of us, just want to raise our families in peace.
>
>But for one point in time, they EXCELLED the Western world in civilization, so what happened?
>

Not easy to explain such a large subject in such a small space. It would end up as "PzGr43's History of the World".

So ... slowly the earth cooled and ...

History lights upon attractive images and the unusual, not the everyday. So you get features like (classical, Pre-Islam) Arabic scholarship popping up, but don't mistake the fact that someone made a great achievement in Mathematics for the advances in the infrastructure of society necessary to achieve 20thC Industrial Democracies.

You need to understand that from way-back when the transition from hunter-gathering groups transited to tribal farmed-surplues, the guy who was at the top of the tribe, could enjoy the surplus better than anyone else, and could distribute it among his cronies, through which he could control more of the surplus producers (farmers), which gave him even more surplus. (Surplus is a crucial concept because without out, one human only produces enough to feed themselves. You can't do anything else except kill the odd deer and scrabble in among roots for ground-nuts. If someone takes 10% off you, you die). From that point on (homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans only appeared/left North East Africa 60,000 years ago), when we transited from hunter-gathering to tribal organization with surplus, being the head of tribe has brought with it a lot of benefits. Some regions transited to farmed-surplus before others (because they lived in better climates/regions). Some tribal leaders were good ones, and an enlightened dictatorship is a great place to live. As you would expect, the tribal leaders wanted to 'keep it in the family' and hereditary leadership was born. In other places the dice fell differently that day and you get things like democratic rule, elected rule, for example in some of the Greek city-states. They came and went with the ebb and flow of fortunes, climate change, disease, other tribes running out of food and productive land and deciding they could take someone else's - war.

Early history always looks mysterious and murky, but, since nothing changes, and homo sapiens sapiens has not evolved any since not long after moving to farmed surplus, you can bet that if we did know all of early history, it would be depressingly familiar.

The industrialized democracies are few in number and have not been with us that long, but occupy a disproportionate quantity of our attention because we live in them.

You can see as if in a test-tube, the formation of early tribal organization in conditions of surplus when a vacuum is created after the collapse or withdrawal of one organization. Remember Somalia and the warlords like Adide ? The difference between our own categories of tribal-warlord, boss of organized crime, and a Khan in a Khanate is really a question of degree. We all recognize organized crime and crime bosses as bad, hence the label, but what happens when they run a whole country ?

In a different way, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the same, with the standing joke in Russia being that all manner of people wanted to create minor republics because once they had a republic going, they could hand out 'state concessions' in concrete production, highway construction, building, import-export, and tax every import-export at their borders, etc etc, ie they got a shot at being the head of the tribe. That's the way it is run. Once you are head of the tribe, there is no incentive to just hand it over to someone else. Nor to a democracy / executive / legislature. Why ? Typically the fall from the top is a long one with a hard landing.

So most of the world is not industrialized democracy. Some of it is "better than nothing democracy" and a lot of it is tribal leader / organized crime boss. Generally the latter is unstable because the rivals know what great prizes await them if they kill the top man, and the top man knows this and has to run police-state to operations to keep these people down.

Check a map of the Islamic world and then see what type of organization persists in these regions. No surprises.

The other thing would help people understand the situation is a grasp of how cheap life is in many countries. This is not an easy concept to explain in a way which makes it accessible, you just have to experience it. A visit to somewhere like Cairo might help, where the underclasses are just like vermin. It's the same way we think of, say, feral pigeons in cities. There just there. They have a very low life expectancy. If they were placed at your disposal, you would treat them the same way you could, say draft animals, except worse. They are hear like the summer growth of grasses and gone again. Not something you would invest anything in.

The suggestion that inclusive democracy with universal suffrage would require your listener to first make the leap to conceiving off these feral pigeons as human, and just like him. An unusual concept which it require much effort to grasp.

Lastly, don't mistake the visible parts (ie visible in our wonderful media) of these structures or regions for the whole thing. It would be like trying to understand modern Japanese society by watching Kurosawa films, or trying to understand American society by watching TV cop series and Westerns. Remember, most of the world does this, so imagine how distorted their view of the US is, and then look at your own view of the Islamic regions and Muslims. Now do you see it ?

>but don't mistake the fact that someone made a great achievement in Mathematics for the advances in the infrastructure of society necessary to achieve 20thC Industrial Democracies.

Good point....kind of like 'one lucky break does not a society make'.

Never really thought of it that way!

>We all recognize organized crime and crime bosses as bad, hence the label, but what happens when they run a whole country ?

When organized crime runs a country, it's called 'government'....(Yes, I know- off topic and flippant, but I couldn't help myself :)

>The suggestion that inclusive democracy with universal suffrage would require your listener to first make the leap to conceiving off these feral pigeons as human, and just like him.

Probably the BIGGEST point of the differences between cultures. Personally, I could never condemn someone or think of them as 'less' than human just because of where they are on the social ladder. By their own ACTIONS, I could condemn them easily, but not just by virtue of their existence.

.Lastly, don't mistake the visible parts (ie visible in our wonderful media) of these structures or regions for the whole thing.

Very VERY true. Thankfully, we no longer have to totally take the media's word. With the Internet, we can discuss events with people all over the globe, and get our information directly!

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I'd like to thank you, by the way. We seem to have quite a few FReepers who don't really want in depth discussions. They only make a superficial remark and pass on.

It one of the GREATEST things, IMHO, to learn and share what we know!

>>but don't mistake the fact that someone made a great achievement in Mathematics for the advances in the infrastructure of >society necessary to achieve 20thC Industrial Democracies.
>Good point....kind of like 'one lucky break does not a society make'.
>
>Never really thought of it that way!
>

>>We all recognize organized crime and crime bosses as bad, hence the label, but what happens when they run a whole country >?
>
>When organized crime runs a country, it's called 'government'....(Yes, I know- off topic and flippant, but I couldn't help >myself :)
>

At the moment, I am inclined to agree.

>>The suggestion that inclusive democracy with universal suffrage would require your listener to first make the leap to >conceiving off these feral pigeons as human, and just like him.
>
>Probably the BIGGEST point of the differences between cultures. Personally, I could never condemn someone or think of them >as 'less' than human just because of where they are on the social ladder. By their own ACTIONS, I could condemn them >easily, but not just by virtue of their existence.
>

No doubt, but that is largely due to our conditioning. For example, there are those who see us as barbarians: The PETA people, the ALF, etc in the way we treat animals as .... animals. So there is no bedrock in this subject, just temporarily sustainable positions.

>.Lastly, don't mistake the visible parts (ie visible in our wonderful media) of these structures or regions for the whole >thing.
>
>Very VERY true. Thankfully, we no longer have to totally take the media's word. With the Internet, we can discuss events >with people all over the globe, and get our information directly!
>

Agreed. A great, great step forward.

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>
>I'd like to thank you, by the way. We seem to have quite a few FReepers who don't really want in depth discussions. They >only make a superficial remark and pass on.
>
>It one of the GREATEST things, IMHO, to learn and share what we know!
>

You are most kind. My pleasure, glad to do my bit.

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