Joe,

Your an intense character. Perhaps there is an element of racism on your part, but I'm focusing on the bigotry in these posts.

Let's examine the psychology of bigotry and see what sort of parallels we find in these posts. From Nicholas Kristof "America's History of Fear"

"A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don’t. Most of the opponents aren’t bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in

From

"A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don’t. Most of the opponents aren’t bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in American history, it was just the same.
Screeds against Catholics from the 19th century sounded just like the invective today against the Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque. The starting point isn’t hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans."

"Historically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy. And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women. The pattern has been for demagogues to take real abuses and exaggerate them, portraying, for example, the most venal wing of the Catholic Church as representative of all Catholicism — just as fundamentalist Wahabis today are caricatured as more representative of Islam than the incomparably more numerous moderate Muslims of Indonesia (who have elected a woman as president before Americans have)."

Anyone reading these posts, and your remarks regarding slavery( "But it's all part of their culture, so it must be all right.") will see the parallels.

To Grateful.

Your premise appears to be, that there are stupid people who are intolerant, and smart people (like yourself) who are intolerant.

I disagree. While intolerance against harmless people can be stupid, tolerance towards people who openly declare their intention of doing you harm is also stupid.

Now, you are implying that Muslims are not a danger to your people. To me, that is stupid. Muslims belong to a religion which is not just a religion, it is a complete legal, political and religious system. Islam was started by a warlord who wanted to make his warriors invincible in battle, and justify his aggression against other people. It is the only religion in extant today who's sacred scriptures justify aggressive wars to spread itself. It is the only religion to have holy scriptures which call for the murder, torture, beheading, dismembering, humiliation, and crucifixion of non Muslims.

Many Jews in Europe in the 1930's were tolerant of Nazis. Do you think that their tolerance was smart? When a group of people have an ideology which openly calls for your extermination, you would not be smart if you ignored what they say.

Islam's value systems are diametrically opposed to the tolerance that you cherish, yet you defend them? Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. The last thing you would want to be is a minority in a majority Muslim country. Which, I might add, Sweden is to said to become in 2032, and all of Europe by the turn of this century. That is when the fun will start.

The Islamic system has failed it's people in creating peaceful, prosperous and stable countries. Even where Muslims exist in prosperous societies, they form a poverty stricken underclass noted for their violence, criminal behaviour, and endemic welfare dependency.

Christianity once went through a Reformation to conform to the teachings of it's founder. Islam today is also going through a Reformation. It is going back to the original teachings of Mohammad, who said kill anybody who is not a Muslim, take their property, and improve the progeny of their women.

Defending Islam is not smart.

Lego
Its simply a matter of discriminating between those who seek truth and those (the bigots) who have this yearning to belong to a superior group. The irony of your Nazi example wouldn't be lost those with knowledge of the genocide being committed against Muslims in Burnma. And i do not use the word loosely, but according to the Yale University Law School who have concluded that "intent to commit [genocide] is present."
https://www.burmamuslims.org/content/al-jazeera-documentary-uncovers-strong-evidence-coordinated-genocide-against-rohingya

For the last 3 decades they have been subject to Government orchestrated campaign which began with the dehumanisation and stigmatisation ....in other words the sort ratbag garbage that you and your friends propagate. It is now in its final phase of total extermination: murder, starvation, denial of citizenship, a job, schooling, pushing them sea in boats.

Lego, what you say about Muslims is false and its simple to show. All i have to do is issue a challenge.

You say "Islam was started by a warlord who wanted to make his warriors invincible in battle, and justify his aggression against other people." Now i don't want to spend to much time in the gutter with the likes of you, but the challenge is this: provide a scholar who supports this view. By a scholar i mean someone whose publications are accepted in peer reviewed mainstream journals. A recognised scholar in Islam. For example, Bernard Lewis or John L. Esposito.

And Joe, i challenge you to do the same for your 'slavery is a part of Muslim culture' remark

And runner, ditto for your remark that the Prophet Muhammad was evil

Enough..lets see what these haters can deliver.

Me thinks they are cowards....and would rather go hide than admit they can not meet the challenge.

But lets see...over to the Bozos (who are deserving of nothing but contempt)

Hi Grateful,

There are none so blind ......

Try these from the Koran, for a start:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/says_about/slavery.html

and these references, from Hugh Thomas' definitive 'The Slave Trade: The History of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870'.

"Muslim slave traders, 559; African 'razzias', 23; Bereira trade, 340; Hausa slaves, 400; trade with Portuguese, 58-9; trans-Saharan trade, 13, 23, 43-47, 149, 401, 792; treatment of slaves, 379."

Perhaps someone should write something similar on 'The Trans-Indian-Ocean Slave Trade', but it would have to cover a much longer period, and up to the present. And of course, the trans-Mediterranean slave trade, of earlier years: an estimated ten million European slaves were traded by Muslims, from as far afield as Iceland and the Baltic, up until the nineteenth century. But that was okay, they weren't Muslim ?

I hate slavery of all kinds: it massively diminishes the lives of so many fellow-humans. Perhaps that doesn't worry you ?

'Any century but this, and any country but his own .... '

As an atheist, I do believe that we each have one and only one life, here on Earth, and nowhere else.

And of course, I fully support the struggles of the Rohingya against their blatantly-fascist oppressors in Burma, and their freedom from their enslavement. You don't have a monopoly on that.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi again Grateful,

If you're really keen to find out about Muslim slavery, look up 'Google Scholar' and type in "Muslim slavery".

You may like this article:

http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/archaeology/Publications/Islamic%20Archaeology/Islam,%20archaeology%20and%20slavery%20in%20Africa.pdf

Here's an excerpt from it, in the second paragraph:

'Quranic teaching from the first distinguished between the Dar el Islam (the land where its inhabitants have made their submission
(Islam) to the Muslim faith) and the Dar el Harb (where they have not). Slavery, including chattel slavery, was permitted by the Holy Quran and further defined in the Hadith (traditions of the Prophet Mohammed’s lifetime). It became codied in the Shari’a (sacred) law codes administered by members of the Ulama (those learned in its interpretation). In general, its concept of slavery followed the practice of the Roman Empire and its predecessors in Western Asia (Snowden 1970), the main difference being that, in the Dar el Islam, Christianity and Judaism were accepted as permissible if incomplete religions. Believers in them, if they made their (non-religious) submission to Islamic rulers, paid the required taxes and accepted Shari’a law, were citizens (Dhimi) and not subject to chattel slavery unless condemned to it for crimes carrying that punishment under Shari’a law in the same way as Muslims were.'

I'm fascinated by that last sentence: so that's the fate that awaits us under Hizb-ut-Tahrir ?

Joe

Hi Grateful,

If you can't wait to find that article, it goes on:

"The distinction between the Dar al Harb and Dar al Islam had profound effects in Africa. Inhabitants of the Dar el Harb (Figs 1–3), which Muslims were under obligation to conquer and incorporate into the Dar el Islam, could be enslaved, although, if individuals voluntarily accepted the Muslim faith, they could mitigate their status, although, unless manumitted, they remained slaves (Fisher and Fisher 1970).

"During the first Muslim penetration [now, isn't that an apt word, Grateful ?] of Africa in the seventh century AD these concepts were put into practice (Lovejoy 1983).

"The sedentary populations of North and Northeast Africa had long professed Christianity within the provinces of the Late Roman Empire, which stretched from Egypt to Morocco and outside it in the Middle Nile Valley and in modern Eritrea/Ethiopia.

"Nomadic transhumant Berber and Beja communities south of the northern coastal plains or away from the Nile Valley had been a little affected by Christianity and Judaism but remained largely animists (Brett and Fentress 1996; Paul 1954).

"The submission (Islam) of the various Roman provinces to the Muslim Arab invaders meant that their Christian inhabitants were accepted into the Dar el Islam and not subjected to chattel slavery.

"Desert-dwelling animists were part of the Dar el Harb, and could be enslaved so that the boundary between the Dar el Harb and Islam in North West Africa roughly followed the old Roman (Christian) frontier. A slave trade bringing Saharans and sub-Saharans through the desert to North Africa, which existed in Roman times, continued and documentary evidence in the Nile Valley shows it to have been regulated there by treaty.

"In succeeding centuries the desert routes were increasingly used as camel nomadism became commoner and the frontier of the Dar el Harb was pushed further and further southwards until in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries it had reached the West African forest zone and the sub-Saharan savannahs became known as the Bilad es Sudan (the land of the blacks) and the source of slaves...."

Cheers,

Joe
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