"The discussion about QURAN being the basis of violence, is clearly misplaced"

HA! HA! HA! Good one Mac, but don't give up your day job.

To the PADDLER OF MISINFORMATION-- continued …

Where is the MORAL COURAGE to say that he MADE a WRONG STATEMENTS?

He said
<< Muhammad had at least one African slave, Bilal, BEFORE Islam. I think he freed him when he converted.>> 20 Jan 8:03 AM

and

<<Yes, according to Fernand Braudel, Bilal became the first Muezzin, presumably after Muhammad freed him.>> 20 Jan 12:50 PM

Both are malicious spins on FACTS that I clarified in my post of 20 Jan 4:30 PM.

He can’t dispute the FACTS

But has NO MORAL COURAGE to say sorry for the WRONG STATEMENTS he made.

Because that is how he is!!

Instead, he appears to have declared his victory on ‘his discovery’ that there were black slaves in pre-Islamic Arab society.

Who said that they were not there then?

There were black slaves and there were ‘non-black’ slaves in Muhammad’s time, in fact the later were more in number than the former (on his << who were the traders, I wonder>> the misinformation paddler needs to study history a bit more to understand how a free person was turned into a slave in the ancient practice of societies, Roman society included - much earlier than the period under discussion here).

Quran declared slaves to be human beings deserving same treatment and respect as their masters assumed for their own selves. And best of all the slaves deserve to be freed, Quran declared.

With his typical style he has once again tried to avoid a format of exchange in which both sides ask as well as answer questions.

He must insist on ‘asking’ questions only to maintain an environment where he can consistently mix his spins with the facts.

Because that is how he is!!

DECONTEXTUALIZATION

(Extract From an Article titled Shame onYou Charlie Hebdo- Making Sense of the Paris Terrorist Attacks, by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University and Author)

"The simplistic and politically expedient explanations of current violence such as incompatibility” of Islam with the modern world or “good vs. evil” have shed more heat than light on the issue.
Such crude explanations of terrorism are essentially popularized versions of the theory of “the clash of civilizations,” which implies that Islam is inherently irreconcilable with modernization and Western values.
The theory, initially expounded by Samuel Huntington in the early 1990s, sets out to identify “new sources” of international conflicts in the post-Cold War world. During the Cold War years, major international conflicts were explained by the “threat of communism” and the rivalry between the two competing world systems.
In the post-Cold War era, however, argue Huntington and his co-thinkers, the sources of international rivalries and collisions have shifted to competing and incompatible civilizations, which have their primary roots in religion and/or culture. It is on the basis of these dubious projections that champions of the theory of “the clash of civilizations” can argue that international conflicts erupt not because of imperialistic pursuits of economic, territorial, or geopolitical advantages but because of non-Western civilizations’ reactions to Western power and values.
Huntington’s theory of “the clash of civilizations” is essentially a subtle version of Richard Perle’s strategy of “de-contextualization.” Perle, a leading neoconservative militarist (and a prominent advisor of the Likud party of Israel), coined the term “de-contextualization” as a way to explain both the desperate acts of terrorism in general and the violent tactics of the Palestinian resistance to occupation in particular.
He argued that in order to blunt the widespread global criticism of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, their resistance to occupation must be de-contextualized; that is, we must stop trying to understand the territorial, geopolitical and historical reasons that some groups turn to terrorism.

Continues

Continued:

Instead, he suggested, the reasons for the violent reactions of such groups must be sought in the arenas of culture and/or religion—in the Islamic way of thinking.
Like the “clash of civilizations” theory, de-contextualization strategy has been part of a well-orchestrated effort to divert attention from the root causes of terrorism, and attribute it to “pathological problems of the Muslim mind.”
Beneficiaries of war dividends, that is, big banks and military-industrial-security-intelligence complexes in major capitalist countries, have found this sinister strategy of obfuscating the root causes of terrorism quite useful for the purposes of justifying their military adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
Ever since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 beneficiaries of war and militarism in major Western countries have been searching for substitutes for the “communist threat” of the Cold War era in order to maintain and justify their lion’s share of their respective countries’ national budgets or public finance.
The view that Western civilization is threatened by militant Islam has provided these beneficiaries with a “perfect” substitute for the communist threat of the Cold War era.
Aside from their poisonous implications for international relations, such obfuscating explanations simply fail the test of history. The history of the relationship between the modern Western world and the Muslim world shows that, contrary to popular perceptions in the West, from the time of their initial contacts with the capitalist West more than two centuries ago until almost the final third of the twentieth century, the Muslim people were quite receptive of the economic and political models of the modern world.
Many people in the Muslim world, including the majority of their political leaders, were eager to transform and restructure the socioeconomic and political structures of their societies after the model of the capitalist West. As Karen Armstrong, author of a number of books on religious fundamentalism, points out:
“About a hundred years ago, almost every leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the West, which at that time meant Europe. America was still an unknown entity."

Continues

"....Many people in the Muslim world, including the majority of their political leaders, were eager to transform and restructure the socioeconomic and political structures of their societies after the model of the capitalist West. As Karen Armstrong, author of a number of books on religious fundamentalism, points out".

What she doesn't point out was that they had an albatross about their necks, to wit, the Koran.

Continued:

Those interested to read the rest of this lengthy article, may Google it.
It traces the origin of some anti-Muslim terms, visible even in this thread.

It is not easy to embrace new ideas. It is convenient to cling to one's world view and to move in the rut; that is what cattle do. Humans have been bestowed with the faculties to differentiate between right and wrong; it requires constant vigilance. We and we alone, will have to answer for the choices we make.

It is time to reflect on rather than embrace the lies being paddled, these days. See the example just witnessed, of the Fox News/Jindal and the No Go Zones in Europe, episode . Fox has since apologized for comments by terror expert Steven Emerson, who claimed Birmingham was "totally Muslim" and ruled by Sharia law.Fox News host Jeanine Pirro subsequently said Emerson had "made a serious factual error. Emerson said he had made an "inexcusable error".
Prime Minister David Cameron responded by calling him "a complete idiot" (BBC).

Other example of falsehood being paddled is the naked pursuit of oil by West in the name of protecting the Western values and how much it has exposed the falsehood of the idea being projected that international conflicts erupt not because of imperialistic pursuits of economic, territorial, or geopolitical advantages but because of non-Western civilizations’ reactions to Western power and values.

The current discussion on violence in QURAN, is indeed misplaced ....but then we all do not see equally; it is the function of our relative vision. And the discussion, we should not forget, is on the argument of the author, that condemnable act of a terrorist, should not be used as a license to harass those who have nothing to do with this act.....no sane person could disagree.

It is time to develop the habit of deeper thought, rather than following the easy course of accepting the superfluous and the obvious. We all need to unearth the truth and then stand firm on it. May it become easy for us to do it, amen.

Concluded