Islam and the sword

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

No, it is not true. Unlike how Christianity accepts everything in the Jewish Torah as true, Islamic scripture often points out where both Christian and Jewish scriptures and beliefs are false and erroneous (such as Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus).

Therefore, it's completely and utterly wrong to claim that "Islam, in addition on depending on the demonstrably false claims of Judaism and Christianity, adds falsehoods of its own as well."

No it's not wrong, and it's not like you need Islam to tell Jesus was not divine. Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, believes in the exodus, which is not a historical event. Islam is wrong here. In addition it also believes that Muhammad flew a winged horse to heaven. Not bloody likely. The Quran also asserts to be a book in pure Arabic, despite having lots of loanwords. So you see, Islam does add its own falsehoods in addition to those brought by Judaism and Christianity.

Islam doesn't "correct" the errors of Judaism and Christianity except in the minds of Muslim propagandists. The Islamic Isa (Jesus) is a completely unhistorical figure who is little else than a mouthpiece for Muhammad. Jews don't worship Ezra, and Mary is not a part of the Christian trinity. And on and on.

Other than that, I will admit that I may have gone off a little over the board in this thread. But I still don't buy into the hogwash of Islam tolerance. Zoroastrians were persecuted. Arabian polytheism and Tengrism went extinct.

Muhammad smashed the idols in Mecca for a people who believed in them. How is that in any way different from the Taliban blowing up the Buddha statue?

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by Humes fork

No it's not wrong, and it's not like you need Islam to tell Jesus was not divine.

Tell that to a couple billion Christians who all believe the falsehoods about Jesus' divinity and resurrection that Islam doesn't believe.

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So you see, Islam does add its own falsehoods in addition to those brought by Judaism and Christianity.

And, as pointed out above, it discards many of the falsehoods brought by Judaism and Christianity. Just the "Jesus being the divine Son of God and the Word made flesh" thing is huge, because without that there pretty much is no Christianity.

You want to attribute to Islam all the falsehoods of Judaism and Christianity in addition to its own falsehoods, so you can claim that Islam is thus more false than either of those religions. But you can't, since Islam does not believe all the falsehoods of Judaism and Christianity. It shares some of them, discards others, and adds a few of its own.

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Other than that, I will admit that I may have gone off a little over the board in this thread. But I still don't buy into the hogwash of Islam tolerance. Zoroastrians were persecuted. Arabian polytheism and Tengrism went extinct.

The point is that Islam is not any worse than Christianity in that regard.

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Muhammad smashed the idols in Mecca for a people who believed in them. How is that in any way different from the Taliban blowing up the Buddha statue?

For one thing, Muhammad was on a specific religious mission to convert the polytheists of Mecca to monotheism (to restore the Ka'aba of Abraham that had been taken over and corrupted by the polytheists). The Buddha statues in Afghanistan were something entirely different.

That's why the statues remained in Muslim Afghanistan for a thousand years before the Taliban finally destroyed them, why many Afghans were upset and angry that the extremists destroyed them, and why they're now being painstakingly rebuilt.

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Tell that to a couple billion Christians who all believe the falsehoods about Jesus' divinity and resurrection that Islam doesn't believe.

What are you trying to get at? Are you seriously asserting that you need Islam to tell Jesus was not divine?

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

And, as pointed out above, it discards many of the falsehoods brought by Judaism and Christianity. Just the "Jesus being the divine Son of God and the Word made flesh" thing is huge, because without that there pretty much is no Christianity.

It discards a few, but adds even more. It keeps the core mythology (flood, patriarch, exodus).

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

You want to attribute to Islam all the falsehoods of Judaism and Christianity in addition to its own falsehoods, so you can claim that Islam is thus more false than either of those religions. But you can't, since Islam does not believe all the falsehoods of Judaism and Christianity. It shares some of them, discards others, and adds a few of its own.

It believes in almost all of them, and add many, many more. Did Muhammad flew a winged horse to heaven? Did he split the moon? Do Jews believe Ezra is the son of God? Is Mary a part of the trinity?

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

The point is that Islam is not any worse than Christianity in that regard.

If that's important to you, oh well. I think it greatly depends on the era and the place.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

For one thing, Muhammad was on a specific religious mission to convert the polytheists of Mecca to monotheism (to restore the Ka'aba of Abraham that had been taken over and corrupted by the polytheists).

So if there had still been a lot of Buddhists in Afghanistan, destroying the statues would have been fine? Okay...

For your information, Abraham is a mythological (not historical) figure with no connection to the Kaba. Try not to simply swallow and parrot Islamic mythology.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

The Buddha statues in Afghanistan were something entirely different.

Yeah, no Buddhists around in Afghanistan anymore.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

That's why the statues remained in Muslim Afghanistan for a thousand years before the Taliban finally destroyed them, why many Afghans were upset and angry that the extremists destroyed them, and why they're now being painstakingly rebuilt.

Still doesn't change the fact that the Taliban followed the example of Muhammad, whom Islam thinks was the greatest person who ever lived.

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by Humes fork

What are you trying to get at? Are you seriously asserting that you need Islam to tell Jesus was not divine?

No, I'm trying to tell you that dismissing the fact that Islam doesn't believe in Jesus' divinity only masks the huge flaw in your argument.

That huge flaw, however, is still there.

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It discards a few, but adds even more. It keeps the core mythology (flood, patriarch, exodus).

It believes in almost all of them, and add many, many more. Did Muhammad flew a winged horse to heaven? Did he split the moon? Do Jews believe Ezra is the son of God? Is Mary a part of the trinity?

Again, you're deliberately underplaying the issue of Islam's denial of Jesus' divinity, and trying to change the subject. But if you're trying to argue that Islam is "more false" than Christianity, you simply cannot ignore the fact that Islam flat-out denies the single core aspect that informs the entirety of Christianity. You just blithely sidestep that entirely, as if the fact that Muslims think Muhammad once flew to heaven on a horse completely outweighs the entire redemptive doctrine and theology that surrounds the Christian conception of Jesus and without which Christianity simply would not exist.

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I think it greatly depends on the era and the place.

Funny, when I tried to tell you the same thing, I got accused of "whitewashing Islam".

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So if there had still been a lot of Buddhists in Afghanistan, destroying the statues would have been fine? Okay...

For your information, Abraham is a mythological (not historical) figure with no connection to the Kaba. Try not to simply swallow and parrot Islamic mythology.

What Muhammad did in Mecca was part of his explicit religious mission (whether you think it's mythological or not is irrelevant), and has nothing to do with what happened 1500 years later in a place Muhammad had never heard of. The Taliban of 2001 might have interpreted things that way, but the fact that it wasn't until 2001 that the statues were destroyed kind of highlights the fact that they're a modern aberration in that regard among Afghan Muslims.

Unless you think they just woke up one day a few years ago, realized that they've been Muslims all this time, and said "Oh crap, we totally forgot all about destroying these statues for a whole millennium!"

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Yeah, no Buddhists around in Afghanistan anymore.

And yet the Buddhist statues remained until just a few years ago.

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Still doesn't change the fact that the Taliban followed the example of Muhammad, whom Islam thinks was the greatest person who ever lived.

And that doesn't change the fact that not only do all Muslims in Afghanistan think the way the Taliban do about that, but most Muslims in Afghanistan have never thought that way, otherwise the statues would have been destroyed long before now.

So blaming what happened on "Islam" or "the example of Muhammad" is rather problematic in that regard.

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

No, I'm trying to tell you that dismissing the fact that Islam doesn't believe in Jesus' divinity only masks the huge flaw in your argument.

That huge flaw, however, is still there.

Got news for you: The Jews never believed in Jesus' divinity. Neither the Zoroastrians. Or the Buddhists. Or, for that matter, atheists and religious skeptics through the ages. So your claim that Islam was needed for people to realize Jesus was not divine falls flat, besides being utterly ridiculous.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Again, you're deliberately underplaying the issue of Islam's denial of Jesus' divinity, and trying to change the subject. But if you're trying to argue that Islam is "more false" than Christianity, you simply cannot ignore the fact that Islam flat-out denies the single core aspect that informs the entirety of Christianity. You just blithely sidestep that entirely, as if the fact that Muslims think Muhammad once flew to heaven on a horse completely outweighs the entire redemptive doctrine and theology that surrounds the Christian conception of Jesus and without which Christianity simply would not exist.

You contine to overlook the fact that Islam swallows the core mythology. That is, the flood, the patriarchs, the exodus and so on. Neither of which secular history is kind to.

Further, you can find through history various Christian sects with heterodox beliefs about Jesus' divinity. The Unitarians, popular with some of the American founding fathers (no less than the second president John Adams), do not believe that Jesus was divine.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Funny, when I tried to tell you the same thing, I got accused of "whitewashing Islam".

I think you suffer from some cognitive dissonance.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

What Muhammad did in Mecca was part of his explicit religious mission (whether you think it's mythological or not is irrelevant), and has nothing to do with what happened 1500 years later in a place Muhammad had never heard of.

If I proclaim to be on a religious mission, does it give me the right to destroy the religious items of my declared enemies? This is little else than special pleading.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

The Taliban of 2001 might have interpreted things that way, but the fact that it wasn't until 2001 that the statues were destroyed kind of highlights the fact that they're a modern aberration in that regard among Afghan Muslims.

Doesn't change the fact that they followed Muhammad's example. What did the Afghan Islamic scholars think of it?

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Unless you think they just woke up one day a few years ago, realized that they've been Muslims all this time, and said "Oh crap, we totally forgot all about destroying these statues for a whole millennium!"

Afghanistan hasn't always been a hotbed of Islamic fanaticism. In the 60s it was relatively modern.

The Greco-Bactrian kingdom was located in modern Afghanistan, and despite being dismissed as Jahiliyyah (Age of Ignorance) by Islam, it was more enlightened than anything the madrassahs in the region produce.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

And that doesn't change the fact that not only do all Muslims in Afghanistan think the way the Taliban do about that, but most Muslims in Afghanistan have never thought that way, otherwise the statues would have been destroyed long before now.

So blaming what happened on "Islam" or "the example of Muhammad" is rather problematic in that regard.

As I said, Afghanistan hasn't always been a hotbed for Islamic fanatics. And Islam is not thee only factor that makes up Afghan culture.

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by Humes fork

Got news for you: The Jews never believed in Jesus' divinity. Neither the Zoroastrians. Or the Buddhists. Or, for that matter, atheists and religious skeptics through the ages. So your claim that Islam was needed for people to realize Jesus was not divine falls flat, besides being utterly ridiculous.

I never said that Islam is needed for people to realize Jesus was not divine. Just that, unlike the billions or so Christians, Islam does not believe Jesus was divine. Thus making Islam less "false" than Christianity in that regard.

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You contine to overlook the fact that Islam swallows the core mythology. That is, the flood, the patriarchs, the exodus and so on. Neither of which secular history is kind to.

That's not the "core mythology". You can be a Christian and not believe in the historicity of the Flood, but you can't be a Christian and not believe in the divinity of Jesus.

Any more than you can be a Muslim and believe Muhammad was not a prophet and the Qur'an is not holy scripture.

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Further, you can find through history various Christian sects with heterodox beliefs about Jesus' divinity. The Unitarians, popular with some of the American founding fathers (no less than the second president John Adams), do not believe that Jesus was divine.

Which, as you yourself point out, makes them heterodox. And not heterodox like how the RCC thinks of the Protestant churches, either. Or heterodox like the LDS church is heterodox. Not even heterodox like the Unification Church is heterodox.

They're heterodox like Deism or Marcionism are heterodox.

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If I proclaim to be on a religious mission, does it give me the right to destroy the religious items of my declared enemies? This is little else than special pleading.

Whether Muhammad had the "right" to do that or not, that's what he did, and that was the justification he gave at the time he did it. And any attempt to apply that to situations vastly removed in both time and place from 7th Century Mecca is no longer straightforward and clear-cut, but will rely strictly on interpretation. And that means different Muslims can and will interpret it differently, such that whatever interpretation of Islam the Taliban used as justification when they destroyed the Buddhas applies only when specifically talking about the Taliban.

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Doesn't change the fact that they followed Muhammad's example.

No, the most you can say is that they followed what they interpreted Muhammad's example to be, an interpretation not followed by other Muslims in Afghanistan.

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What did the Afghan Islamic scholars think of it?

There were no Afghan Islamic scholars among the Taliban. I highly recommend you read Charles Allen's God's Terrorists and Ahmed Rashid's Taliban if you want to know the hows and whys of the Taliban, their jihad, and their particular brand of Islam.

The problem stems from the fact that the thirty years of continuous war after the Soviet invasion has shattered the education system of Afghanistan, both religious and otherwise. The Taliban itself was formed of rural Sunni Pashtun men who had only started their religious schooling (which is where the group took its name - they were not anywhere close to being Islamic scholars of any sort, but were only students, talibs...the proper plural of which is taliban). Even those Pakistani recruits who flooded over the border to help the Taliban were only students themselves.

But there was far more to what happened to the Buddhas of Bamiyan than simply the Taliban following their interpretation of Islam. You see, Bamiyan is located in the valley of Hazarajat, home of a group of Afghans of an entirely different ethnic and religious group than the Sunni Pashtun Taliban: the Shia Hazara.

For four years the Hazara held their valley against the attacking Taliban. With the destruction of the civil war and the Taliban occupation of the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, the Buddhas and their cave system (originally used by the Buddhist monks who occupied the area) which had always been a source of cultural pride (and tourist income) for the Hazara became their central stronghold in their war against the Taliban, and was composed of Shia Hazara refugees from all over (including a number of female professors from the cities, who established a new, makeshift university in and around the the Buddhas).

In 1998, Hazarajat finally fell, and the Taliban immediately set about massacring the non-Pashtun, non-Sunni Hazara. Thousands of them were executed, and the Taliban even went so far as to take over their mosques and give the Shia Hazara the choice of either converting to Sunnism, fleeing to Shia Iran, or being killed. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, the Taliban commander who rooted out the Hazara from the cave complex fired rockets at the Buddhas, but Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar ordered that the statues be preserved.

For the next two and a half years, that's how things remained. The Hazara in their occupied valley were harassed and persecuted, and the Taliban assured the world community that they had no intention of destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan. However, the Hazara had been defeated, but not subdued, and even despite repeated massacres and various attempts at ethnic and religious cleansing by the Taliban, the Hazara remained restive. That's at least partially why the Taliban changed their mind regarding the preservation of the Buddhas - destroying them was motivated as much by a desire by the Taliban to deal a blow against the cultural identity of the recalcitrant Shia Hazara as it was motivated by religious concerns (Rashid directly attributes the Taliban's change of mind regarding the statutes to Mullah Omar's desire to punish the Hazara).

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Afghanistan hasn't always been a hotbed of Islamic fanaticism. In the 60s it was relatively modern.

Yes, it was. Then war happened.

As a side note, by sheer coincidence, I started listening to Dan Carlin's latest series of Hardcore History podcasts, about the Mongol Empire, and looking into various sources about the subject. That made me think about what you said regarding Tengrism.

I'm curious as to why you dismissed the Christian destruction of Germanic Paganism because it was not a codified religion and had no defined holy texts, when Tengrism was pretty much the exact same way. I'm also curious as to why you seem to ascribe its destruction solely to Islam - do you know what religion dominates Mongolia today, and when and how that religion displaced the native Tengrism that had previously dominated and spread from there?

[Moss]

Nestorian Christianity? *muddled guess*

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by Moss

Nestorian Christianity? *muddled guess*

No, although that's not a bad guess - early on, Nestorian Christian missionaries did travel through Mongol lands and converted a number of them (including some Mongol nobles). But mass conversions to any religion never took place under the Mongols, because the Mongol Empire, especially under Chingis Khan, did not have anything like a "state religion". One of the oddities of Chingis' empire is that, brutal and rapacious as it was, it also featured a rather modern sort of religious pluralism. There were Tengrists, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and others...and not just among the occupied peoples, but often among the ruling Mongols themselves. This was less an issue of religious tolerance, though, and more an issue of religious indifference - the Mongols didn't particularly care what religion you were, they only really cared about whether you had stuff they wanted or that you were a properly submissive subject of the Khan.

Even after Chingis' death, this remained the same. Most of the far Western Khanates converted to Islam, but back in the steppe homelands of the Mongols and in the Chinese East, the vast majority of the populace continued to follow Tengrism, with the nobles and elites occasionally converting to another religion but pointedly not forcing their people to convert with them. For example, Chingis' grandson Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire and first Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty in China, was converted to Buddhism by a monk named Drogon Chogyal Phagpa, but Tengrism continued to flourish among the Mongolian steppe tribes.

All this changed in the late 16th Century. Altan Khan, ruler of the Tumet tribe, sought to resurrect the glory of both Chingis' Empire and the Yuan Dynasty of the China. He united a number of other Mongol tribes under his rule, raided into China (and besieged Beijing itself), re-occupied the old capital of the Mongol Empire, fought several campaigns to bring the Muslim Western Mongol tribes like the Kazakhs under his rule, and generally acted like you'd expect someone who wanted to be the Second Coming of Chingis Khan to act.

But what Altan Khan lacked in his efforts to resurrect the Mongol Empire was legitimation. Without it, he was simply another ambitious Mongol warlord, like so many before (such as his grandfather, Dayan Khan, who had tried the same thing). In 1577, he decided to remedy that. He invited Sonam Gyatso to come to Tumet. Sonam Gyatso was the respected lama (or abbot) of the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, and the head of the Gelug, or Yellow Hat, sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Altan Khan proposed an alliance to Gyatso - the Mongol Khan would patronize and support the Gelug sect, if in return Gyatso would legitimize the Khan's imperial ambitions.

Gyatso agreed, and publicly announced that Altan Khan was the reincarnation of none other than Chingis' grandson, Emperor Kublai Khan of China, and that he, Gyatso himself, was the reincarnation of Drogon Chogyal Phagpa, the Buddhist monk who converted Kublai. Together, the two of them were to bring Buddhism to all Mongols across all the lands of Altan Khan's new empire. Following Gyatso's direction, the Khan decreed that the old Mongol religion of shamanistic Tengrism was to be abolished, the idols of Tengrist gods were to be burned, and the old practices were no longer to be followed. All Mongols in the Empire were to convert to Yellow Hat Buddhism, either willingly or by force. Numerous Gelug monasteries were built in the Mongol lands, and a massive program to translate Buddhist holy texts into the Mongolian language was undertaken. The Mongol Empire now had something it had never had before - a single state religion, with no other religions allowed and that all subjects from the Khan on down to the lowliest herdsman, had to belong to. And that religion was Buddhism (still the majority religion in Mongolia today, even after the decades of Communist rule during the 20th Century).

Unfortunately for Altan Khan's ambitions to be the next Chingis Khan, he died only four years after meeting with Gyatso. His nascent Mongol Empire came to nothing, and in in the 17th Century the Tumet had submitted to the rule of the Qing Emperor of China. Gyatso's ambitions, though, succeeded spectacularly. Within fifty years of Gyatso's arrival in the steppe heartlands of the Mongols, Tengrism was virtually extinct there, with not just Buddhism, but Gyatso's own Gelug sect of Buddhism dominating. This new influence among the Mongols also increased the Gelug sect's power and influence back in Tibet, with the lamas of the Gelug monasteries quickly dominating that country and becoming its virtual rulers, control that has lasted even through to today.

Because Altan Khan, upon allying with Sonam Gyatso, bestowed upon the good abbot a name that was the Mongolian translation of his Tibetan one - "Gyatso" means "ocean", so the Khan called him by the Mongolian word for "ocean", dalai. His fourteenth reincarnation, Tenzin Gyatso, is one of the most famous and respected holy men in the world today.

Perhaps you've heard of him.

[atavisms]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

And, well, now you know how the Islam spread. Someone making people convert at sword point just was not it.

No doubt. Just look at the Spanish conquest of the Americas for another case in point. People talk about it like it was some overnight process. When in fact that was far from the case. Even long after the Indians were subdued militarily and pretending to be good Christians they were running off into the woods at night to worship and make offerings to their own gods. One of the best books I have found on this subject btw (if someone is interested) is a small one called Ambivalent Conquests by Clendinnen.

I love the quote at the opening of the book: 'When the Spaniards discovered this land, their leader asked the Indians how it was called, as they did not understand him, they said uic athan, which means, what do you say, or, what do you speak that we do not understand you, and the Spaniard ordered it set down that it be called Yucatan.' -Antonio de Cuidad Real, 1588

[atavisms]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

It's starting to bother me to hear about how supposedly "the Islam was spread with the sword" and how in fact that's fundamental to the Islam, or that it's "unlike Christianity." In fact, I was just listening to a speech by Sam Harris where he makes exactly that claim, and it's starting to get on my tits.

Despite the accuracy of your statements within the historical context in which you speak. Doesn't Harris's point that, 'It is not fundamentalism but the fundamentals of Islam which is the problem' have some veracity in today's world?

He goes on to say in comparison to Islam that, 'the crazier you get as a Jain, the less we have to worry about you,' referring it to as, 'the true religion of peace.' He goes on to ask, 'Where are the Tibetan suicide bombers?" (I paraphrase) 'The Tibetans have suffered a military conquest and occupation every bit as brutal, if not more so, than that to which the Muslims in Palestine have been subjected and yet we do not see them blowing up busloads of innocent Chinese citizens.' In fact, the protests that we do see is Tibetans self-immolating showing that they are willing to die for their cause but they do not seek to take as many Chinese citizens along with them as they can in doing so.

You can hear the man himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfFhCwvluVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNOCd...eature=related

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by atavisms

He goes on to say in comparison to Islam that, 'the crazier you get as a Jain, the less we have to worry about you,' referring it to as, 'the true religion of peace.' He goes on to ask, 'Where are the Tibetan suicide bombers?" (I paraphrase) 'The Tibetans have suffered a military conquest and occupation every bit as brutal, if not more so, than that to which the Muslims in Palestine have been subjected and yet we do not see them blowing up busloads of innocent Chinese citizens.'

While the Chinese have a tendency to label even sidelong glances from Tibetan activists as "terrorism", there have indeed been terrorist attacks on civilians carried out by Tibetans. In 1996 Lhasa was rocked by a number of terrorist bombings, for instance, and the Chinese arrested two Tibetans for bombing a government building in Chengdu, China in 2002 (a number of other bombings, some disputed, are described at that second link).

The Chinese are also a lot more brutal and thorough in cracking down on Tibetan independence movements and groups than the Israelis are in dealing with the Palestinians.

EDIT: Suicide bombings were also common during the Tamil uprising in Sri Lanka, which was a Buddhist/Hindu religio-ethnic conflict. But we're getting off-topic, I think.

[atavisms]

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

While the Chinese have a tendency to label even sidelong glances from Tibetan activists as "terrorism", there have indeed been terrorist attacks on civilians carried out by Tibetans. In 1996 Lhasa was rocked by a number of terrorist bombings, for instance, and the Chinese arrested two Tibetans for bombing a government building in Chengdu, China in 2002 (a number of other bombings, some disputed, are described at that second link).

The Chinese are also a lot more brutal and thorough in cracking down on Tibetan independence movements and groups than the Israelis are in dealing with the Palestinians.

EDIT: Suicide bombings were also common during the Tamil uprising in Sri Lanka, which was a Buddhist/Hindu religio-ethnic conflict. But we're getting off-topic, I think.

The two examples you provide, after 50 years of brutality, kind of make Harris's point for him. The first was placed in front of a government building and set off at 1:30am -not a carried into a Chinese university cafeteria at lunch time or bus during rush hour. The second series of attacks were in China, and involved a single death, that of a watchman.

That's a loong way from the level of violence we have seen in the Middle East (or schoolhouse in Beslan) over the years. Be it a novel by Salman Rushdie or outrage over a Danish cartoon depicting Mohammad with a bomb in his turban that led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people in numerous countries. I understand that the initial post was about hypocrisy in describing the history of violence in the spreading of religion, Islam vs Christian, but I was hoping he could share his opinions within a contemporary context and address some the dramatic differences we see today and why he (or anyone) thinks they exist.

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by atavisms

The two examples you provide, after 50 years of brutality, kind of make Harris's point for him. The first was placed in front of a government building and set off at 1:30am -not a carried into a Chinese university cafeteria at lunch time or bus during rush hour. The second series of attacks were in China, and involved a single death, that of a watchman.

So the problem is not that the Tibetans are using terror bombings, it's that they're just not as successful at it?

The plain fact of the matter is that terror bombings of civilians, even suicide terror bombings, isn't even close to being an exclusively Muslim thing (ask the families of the victims of Air India Flight 182, for example), and deliberately ignoring the many non-Muslim attacks and pointing to one group in an effort to say "See? They don't do it, so obviously it's Islam that's the problem!" is deliberately, almost maliciously, misleading. How does Harris explain the suicide bombings in Sri Lanka, for instance?

Dr. Robert Pape studied this subject rather extensively, and discussed it briefly in this Foreign Policy article, and a lot more exhaustively in this book.

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That's a loong way from the level of violence we have seen in the Middle East (or schoolhouse in Beslan) over the years. Be it a novel by Salman Rushdie or outrage over a Danish cartoon depicting Mohammad with a bomb in his turban that led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people in numerous countries. I understand that the initial post was about hypocrisy in describing the history of violence in the spreading of religion, Islam vs Christian, but I was hoping he could share his opinions within a contemporary context and address some the dramatic differences we see today and why he (or anyone) thinks they exist.

Because there are huge historical and situational differences between Tibet and Palestine that have more of an effect on the contemporary context than the simplistic and false explanation that one is Buddhist and the other is Muslim (see Dr. Pape's article and book for more details about these differences).

It also has nothing to do with the topic of this thread, which is the various forcible and non-forcible means and methods that the world's major religions have used during their initial historical spread and expansion. If you want to talk about Harris' thesis regarding suicide bombing vis-a-vis religion in general and Islam in particular, that really belongs in another thread (and, in fact, has been talked about here at JREF before).

[Keeper]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

It's starting to bother me to hear about how supposedly "the Islam was spread with the sword" and how in fact that's fundamental to the Islam, or that it's "unlike Christianity." In fact, I was just listening to a speech by Sam Harris where he makes exactly that claim, and it's starting to get on my tits.

So... long rant and lecture incoming. You have been warned

To start with the easy part, the whole "unlike Christianity" idea is bogus. From Charlemagne doing a borderline genocide to impose Christianity, to the northern Crusades, to the burnings at the stake of heretics (which actually started about a millennium earlier than doing the same thing for witches), and the expulsions and terror campaigns against Jews and Muslims, etc, Christianity WAS spread with the sword. There are no two ways about it. Nobody just waited for the Baltic pagans to see that Christianity is right, and nobody just explained it to them with kindness. Those people didn't just decide to become Christians, and in fact they were known to run to their sacred lakes and stuff and try to wash off that Christian baptism imposed on them at sword point. There were horrible terror campaigns to drive the point that no, you have to stay Christian... OR ELSE.

But let's get to the Islam.

We have first to distinguish between the expansion of the Caliphate, as in, the medieval kingdom founded by Muhammad, and the spread of the Islam, as in, the religion practiced by people. The difference should be trivial: just because you conquered someone, doesn't mean the religion has also spread automatically. Conversions take time, and the question remains how you do it. An empire can be spread "with the sword" without also making people convert at sword-point, and viceversa. E.g., just because the USA conquered Iraq with the army, doesn't mean the army put a gun at any Iraqi people's heads to make them convert to Christianity.

Now it may seem that the Caliphate being a theocracy, it would follow naturally that it would force people to convert. After all, it's what we see our religious nutcases want to do. And it's our understanding of what a theocracy would want. What's the point of being a rabid fanboy of a God, if not to make other people accept your religion? Right?

But as we'll see, that's just projecting.

The Caliphate from the start had a different idea about how heathens fit in. And that was a different role. In their view of the world, the Muslims paid a lower tax called zakat and could be drafted into the wars, but also generally had more access to government functions and such, i.e., more privileges. (Although not always. The Fatimid Caliphate for example was a lot more open and mercantile, so as long as you paid your taxes, they couldn't care less about what you are.)

The non-Muslims paid a higher tax called Jizya, higher than what the Muslims paid, but were excluded from the army and such. In exchange, they could more or less self-organize their communities, and have their own courts of law and all. Non-Muslims were pretty much exempt from Sharia law.

Even the meaning of the words is pretty suggestive. Zakat means "alms" and was at least supposed to be a contribution to social security, so to speak. It was fixed very low by Muhammad. On the other hand Jizya means "part" or "contribution", and it's the contribution of non-muslims to the state that offers them protection. (Whether they want it or not) While the former was a tax by any other name, it had to be very low, while a large population paying jizya was what you really needed to have money for your wars.

Generally the Jizya wasn't very oppressive. E.g., for the people who had been under the Persians until the Islamic conquest, the Jizya was actually a little lower than they had been taxed by the Persians before.

That probably already gives you a hint for a problem with our view of the Caliphate as an equivalent of our own theocracies. The Caliphate(s) discovered very early that draftable beggars are a dime a dozen, but people who pay for the maintenance of that army are more valuable.

This led very fast to such... bizarre situations as the Umayyad Caliphate actually trying to prevent non-Arabs from converting to the Islam. They liked the money more than they liked spreading the Islam, pretty much.

There was however another cultural reason. I suppose the shortest way to describe it is: xenophobia. It was a bit more complex though. The Arab culture was pretty much defined by family and clan connections, and the conquered foreigners just lacked the ties to fit in. Rather than deal with it, they preferred to defer the problem by just not allowing the foreigners to convert and have to be fit in. Although, there was some plain old nationalism and xenophobia too. The customs, culture and art even of, say, the Persians were looked down upon by the Arabs as inferior. (Ridiculous as that may sound to us.) So, you know, all the more reason to not allow those to join in the ruling stratum. Since that was defined by religion, it meant keeping those people out of the religion too, or at least keep them from being officially counted as such.

But at any rate, we have exactly the bizarre case of a theocracy which did spread its empire with the sword, but actually was AGAINST the spread of their religion to the conquered people. Not only it wasn't converting anyone at sword point, it was trying to keep them from converting, or, as I was saying, from being counted as converts.

This would eventually be their undoing. The rise of the Abbasid Caliphate started with basically recruiting for the revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate, and one thing the Abbasids did was allow anyone in who wanted to fight for "a true descendant of the prophet." In effect, they allowed those foreigners to convert to the Islam and fight in the army. It turned out that a heck of a lot of them actually wanted to convert.

The Abbasid Caliphate also didn't convert anyone to the Islam by force, but finally opened the floodgates. Anyone who wanted to be counted as a Muslim and get the full privileges and obligations of a Muslim, was free to. Turns out, a heck of a lot would rather convert than be second class citizens and pay a higher tax It also removed the postulated superiority of Arabs in everything, leading to, for example, the explosion of Persian islamic writings and art.

And, well, now you know how the Islam spread. Someone making people convert at sword point just was not it.

[atavisms]

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

So the problem is not that the Tibetans are using terror bombings, it's that they're just not as successful at it?

No, but that their goal has not been to cause maximum loss of life. Setting off the bomb at 1:30a and that we have but two examples in all this time suggests that the tenets of a religion go a long in dictating how the proponents of that religion will respond at such a time. But as you point out, that has not always been the case.

Of course a large part of one's outlook in any such circumstance comes down to the cultural, educational, and socioeconomic milieu in which one has been raised. Thank you for your excellent references and thorough responses! You make excellent points.

[Courier]

Judaism, Islam, & Christianity were all spread by the sword.

[Robrob]

Originally Posted by atavisms

The two examples you provide, after 50 years of brutality, kind of make Harris's point for him. The first was placed in front of a government building and set off at 1:30am -not a carried into a Chinese university cafeteria at lunch time or bus during rush hour. The second series of attacks were in China, and involved a single death, that of a watchman.

Not to interject too much perspective in the dialog here but those are picture perfect nascent terrorist incidents. Typically, terror organizations follow a predictable progression. Initial acts are nearly anonymous, largely symbolic and specifically designed to minimie injury. A stereotypical first act might be a pipe bomb on a statue or - as here - a government building at 1:30 am.

The actions ramp up as the organization seeks more recognition and support. Eventually innocents get hurt (night watchman or cleaning staff are stereotypical). Later the group moves beyond such anonymous acts and begins seeking direct publicity with hijackings, kidnappings and robberies (double benefit - publicity and money).

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

I never said that Islam is needed for people to realize Jesus was not divine. Just that, unlike the billions or so Christians, Islam does not believe Jesus was divine. Thus making Islam less "false" than Christianity in that regard.

Yes, in that regard. But not overall. As I said, it keeps the core mythology, and adds more nonsense.

The core mythology is attractive to Christians who become Muslims.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

That's not the "core mythology". You can be a Christian and not believe in the historicity of the Flood, but you can't be a Christian and not believe in the divinity of Jesus.

Try to find a Christian who doesn't believe in the exodus or patriarch stories (give or take a few miracles).

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Any more than you can be a Muslim and believe Muhammad was not a prophet and the Qur'an is not holy scripture.

Uhm yeah?

You seem to have trouble accepting that Islam is a fraud.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Which, as you yourself point out, makes them heterodox. And not heterodox like how the RCC thinks of the Protestant churches, either. Or heterodox like the LDS church is heterodox. Not even heterodox like the Unification Church is heterodox.

They're heterodox like Deism or Marcionism are heterodox.

Or "heterodox" as all those "Muslim" scientists in the Middle Ages tended to be...

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

Whether Muhammad had the "right" to do that or not, that's what he did, and that was the justification he gave at the time he did it.

Oh please...

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

And any attempt to apply that to situations vastly removed in both time and place from 7th Century Mecca is no longer straightforward and clear-cut, but will rely strictly on interpretation. And that means different Muslims can and will interpret it differently, such that whatever interpretation of Islam the Taliban used as justification when they destroyed the Buddhas applies only when specifically talking about the Taliban.

Sure. What makes you condemn the Taliban's justification but not Muhammad's?

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

No, the most you can say is that they followed what they interpreted Muhammad's example to be, an interpretation not followed by other Muslims in Afghanistan.

Sure.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

There were no Afghan Islamic scholars among the Taliban. I highly recommend you read Charles Allen's God's Terrorists

The description makes a factual mistake. It is true that al-Qaeda are Wahhabis, but the Taliban are not.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

and Ahmed Rashid's Taliban if you want to know the hows and whys of the Taliban, their jihad, and their particular brand of Islam.

I've heard of that book before. It sounds interesting, mostly as a recent history of Afghanistan and to a less extent Pakistan.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

The problem stems from the fact that the thirty years of continuous war after the Soviet invasion has shattered the education system of Afghanistan, both religious and otherwise. The Taliban itself was formed of rural Sunni Pashtun men who had only started their religious schooling (which is where the group took its name - they were not anywhere close to being Islamic scholars of any sort, but were only students, talibs...the proper plural of which is taliban). Even those Pakistani recruits who flooded over the border to help the Taliban were only students themselves.

From what I know, the rank-and-file Taliban soldiers were mostly Pashtun refugee boys whose families had fled to Pakistan from the Soviet war. The boys didn't grow up with their families, they grew up in madrassahs and military training camps, and had religious ideology drummed into them. Their lack of exporuse to women when growing up constributed to their inhumane treatment of them. They had very little exposure to traditional Afghan culture, it was just Islam, Islam, Islam.

I'd think it depends on what you classify as "scholars". Many of their leaders were mullahs, like the still-at-large mullah Mohammed Omar.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

But there was far more to what happened to the Buddhas of Bamiyan than simply the Taliban following their interpretation of Islam. You see, Bamiyan is located in the valley of Hazarajat, home of a group of Afghans of an entirely different ethnic and religious group than the Sunni Pashtun Taliban: the Shia Hazara.

For four years the Hazara held their valley against the attacking Taliban. With the destruction of the civil war and the Taliban occupation of the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, the Buddhas and their cave system (originally used by the Buddhist monks who occupied the area) which had always been a source of cultural pride (and tourist income) for the Hazara became their central stronghold in their war against the Taliban, and was composed of Shia Hazara refugees from all over (including a number of female professors from the cities, who established a new, makeshift university in and around the the Buddhas).

In 1998, Hazarajat finally fell, and the Taliban immediately set about massacring the non-Pashtun, non-Sunni Hazara. Thousands of them were executed, and the Taliban even went so far as to take over their mosques and give the Shia Hazara the choice of either converting to Sunnism, fleeing to Shia Iran, or being killed. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, the Taliban commander who rooted out the Hazara from the cave complex fired rockets at the Buddhas, but Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar ordered that the statues be preserved.

For the next two and a half years, that's how things remained. The Hazara in their occupied valley were harassed and persecuted, and the Taliban assured the world community that they had no intention of destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan. However, the Hazara had been defeated, but not subdued, and even despite repeated massacres and various attempts at ethnic and religious cleansing by the Taliban, the Hazara remained restive. That's at least partially why the Taliban changed their mind regarding the preservation of the Buddhas - destroying them was motivated as much by a desire by the Taliban to deal a blow against the cultural identity of the recalcitrant Shia Hazara as it was motivated by religious concerns (Rashid directly attributes the Taliban's change of mind regarding the statutes to Mullah Omar's desire to punish the Hazara).

I see. I know the Taliban had an issue with the Shia Hazaras. So destroying the Buddhas was also in part to poke a stick at them.

Originally Posted by ANTPogo

I'm curious as to why you dismissed the Christian destruction of Germanic Paganism because it was not a codified religion and had no defined holy texts, when Tengrism was pretty much the exact same way. I'm also curious as to why you seem to ascribe its destruction solely to Islam - do you know what religion dominates Mongolia today, and when and how that religion displaced the native Tengrism that had previously dominated and spread from there?

Islam never really spread to Mongolia. The Mongols who converted to Islam were those who ruled Islamic peoples, like the Golden Horde. The Mongols who ruled China for instance adopted Chinese culture.

I was referring to the Tengrism of the Turkic peoples, which isn't around anymore, except possibly as a revivalist religion (akin to Norse/Germanic neopaganism).

[ANTPogo]

Originally Posted by Humes fork

Uhm yeah?

You seem to have trouble accepting that Islam is a fraud.

"Fraud" indicates a level of intentional fiction that I doubt was much of a factor (if it was a factor at all). Islam is certainly untrue.

What I'm disputing is that Judaism and Christianity are any more true than it is, however.

Quote:

Or "heterodox" as all those "Muslim" scientists in the Middle Ages tended to be...

They were just as often orthodox, but that's getting off topic.

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Sure. What makes you condemn the Taliban's justification but not Muhammad's?

Because Muhammad told everyone first hand what he was doing and why, while the Taliban have had to look back through a millennium and a half of time and a few thousand miles of distance to try and figure out (and justify) what they think they ought to do.

Quote:

The description makes a factual mistake. It is true that al-Qaeda are Wahhabis, but the Taliban are not.

The book discusses the connections between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and as part of that it discusses al-Wahhab and his alliance with (and ideological dominance over) the Saudis, as well as the origin and development of Deobandism in the British Raj and 19th century Afghanistan (a twisted extremist version of which is followed by the Taliban).

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I've heard of that book before. It sounds interesting, mostly as a recent history of Afghanistan and to a less extent Pakistan.

It's an excellent book, not least because it was originally written just before 9/11, and when Rashid updated it for the second edition, he chose to leave the pre-9/11 part intact, and merely added new sections for the post-invasion of Afghanistan history.

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From what I know, the rank-and-file Taliban soldiers were mostly Pashtun refugee boys whose families had fled to Pakistan from the Soviet war. The boys didn't grow up with their families, they grew up in madrassahs and military training camps, and had religious ideology drummed into them. Their lack of exporuse to women when growing up constributed to their inhumane treatment of them. They had very little exposure to traditional Afghan culture, it was just Islam, Islam, Islam.

As Rashid points out, the "madrassahs" in the refugee camps were ad-hoc affairs, run by whoever was available, irregardless of their actual level of Islamic scholarship or formal fiqh education. Even the fighters who came over from the more organized madrassahs in Pakistan itself were students who left before completing their studies.

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I'd think it depends on what you classify as "scholars". Many of their leaders were mullahs, like the still-at-large mullah Mohammed Omar.

"Mullah" Omar, like most of his fellow Taliban, never finished what little madrassah schooling he did receive, and his becoming mullah of his home village of Singesar was mostly a self-proclaimed thing. That's why, despite his ostensible position as a village mullah, he still considers himself a talib (again, why the Taliban is named what it is).

Basically, it's the difference between someone who has received formal theological education in an established seminary becoming a preacher, and someone who attended Sunday School as a kid becoming a preacher.

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I see. I know the Taliban had an issue with the Shia Hazaras. So destroying the Buddhas was also in part to poke a stick at them.

Yes. Even with the Taliban, some things are more complicated than merely "following Muhammad's example".

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Islam never really spread to Mongolia. The Mongols who converted to Islam were those who ruled Islamic peoples, like the Golden Horde. The Mongols who ruled China for instance adopted Chinese culture.

And Buddhism.

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I was referring to the Tengrism of the Turkic peoples, which isn't around anymore, except possibly as a revivalist religion (akin to Norse/Germanic neopaganism).

No Tengrism is around anymore (except as a revivalist religion). Tengrism didn't survive its encounter with Buddhism, either. So now that's three major faiths who are all guilty of being spread by the sword and wiping out other religions.