Oh, you people, you crack me up (or is that, "you're on crack?").

(1) Arabic != Muslim... If anything, given the population statistics, the most common language spoken by Muslims would be Indonesian. Most Muslims actually speak Pashto or Urdu or Farsi or one of a host of other non-Arabic languages. Few Muslims are in fact Arabic.

(2) Arab != Muslim... most of the lands in the Middle East experiencing violence and poverty these days were originally Christian until they were conquered in violent crusades and the conversions were certainly incomplete, especially in Syria and Iraq. It's wrong to assume someone speaking Arabic is de facto a follower of Islam.

To jump to the conclusion that someone is an Islamic Extremist just because he's speaking a language with what seems like a lot of phlegm is what is known as "prejudice," meaning finding someone guilty of something before hearing the facts (pre-judging). So, yeah, the news article is inspired by irrational hatred the way it was presented, and so is some people's reactions. Even here, in this forum. It's a bad thing, everyone should stop and check themselves. Yes, even you.

There is plenty of terrorism in other non muslimic countries... see spain, see ireland some years ago, see parts of russia, just to name a few that are NOT fitting the bill of a third world country.

The thing is, those cases (Except for Russia which is largely plagued by Muslim terrorism) involved political terrorism instead of religious terrorism, and they were quickly felled because they supported an ideology with very little community support. Islamic terrorism has double digit support in areas which allows new fighters to join as soon as we kill the old ones.

4) Muslims commit more violence than people of other faiths: Do we have access to scientific, unbiased material that shows your bold statement is actually true?

While it might FEEL to be true if you read the newspaper and watch all the violence-porn on CNN, that doesn't mean its actually a reality. Even a half truth is still half a lie. So until sombody can present scientific research in this area, I will not comment on that.

I don't get any newspapers nor any TV service. I typically ignore all media sources unless cited. I posted sources in the last thread we had around this topic, I can post them here when I get home. The general gist if that Muslims are vastly over-represented in terror attacks that involve injury/death in Western countries, even excluding 9/11

I don't see Islam changing with the current leaders in power, as they manage to pull decent support even from moderates, which is something I see as part the root cause.

Consider this: If Hillary Clinton wins the election we'll have a female President. Do you think Islamic leaders will meet with her/treat her with respect?

The viewpoints expressed by Sharia/Islamic religious leaders are simply incompatible with the West, and something needs to change on either side. I don't see this being done any way other than force.

The thing about the PLO is, there was a solid decade of terrorist attacks on Israel from them, and whiel they agreed to stop in the 90's, many of the same people who were complicit in the attacks are still in the party, so I don't consider them anything more than a terror organization waiting for a chance to attack.

Most of the rest of the world did not see them as a terrorist organisation. They were only official recognised as terrorists by Israel and by extension the United States (however even the US gave them a pass). The terrorist actions were also not officially sanctioned by the PLO but by splinter groups or groups that had some affiliation such as the PIJ. If you want to consider the PLO as a terrorist group because of past associations then you must also consider the ANC in South Africa, Sien Fein in Ireland or the INC in India to be terrorist groups.

Also my original point wasn't weather or not they were / are terrorists but, that they are a secular group and not an Islamic group so shouldn't be tarred with the same brush as ISIS or Al Qaeda.

There is plenty of terrorism in other non muslimic countries... see spain, see ireland some years ago, see parts of russia, just to name a few that are NOT fitting the bill of a third world country.

The thing is, those cases (Except for Russia which is largely plagued by Muslim terrorism) involved political terrorism instead of religious terrorism, and they were quickly felled because they supported an ideology with very little community support. Islamic terrorism has double digit support in areas which allows new fighters to join as soon as we kill the old ones.

4) Muslims commit more violence than people of other faiths: Do we have access to scientific, unbiased material that shows your bold statement is actually true?

While it might FEEL to be true if you read the newspaper and watch all the violence-porn on CNN, that doesn't mean its actually a reality. Even a half truth is still half a lie. So until sombody can present scientific research in this area, I will not comment on that.

I don't get any newspapers nor any TV service. I typically ignore all media sources unless cited. I posted sources in the last thread we had around this topic, I can post them here when I get home. The general gist if that Muslims are vastly over-represented in terror attacks that involve injury/death in Western countries, even excluding 9/11

I don't see Islam changing with the current leaders in power, as they manage to pull decent support even from moderates, which is something I see as part the root cause.

Consider this: If Hillary Clinton wins the election we'll have a female President. Do you think Islamic leaders will meet with her/treat her with respect?

The viewpoints expressed by Sharia/Islamic religious leaders are simply incompatible with the West, and something needs to change on either side. I don't see this being done any way other than force.

Again, why would anyone want to risk his or her life for a cause if everything was great for them anyways? Again, this problem with Islam is not something that has been around for centuries: it's a fairly recent one as far as problems go. The root of this all starts in the 1980s, when the Soviets invaded a familiar place called Afghanistan, and people in the US are like: "COMMUNISM IS SPREADING! WE MUST STOP THEM AT ALL COSTS!". So then what happens is that we've got the CIA training up something familiar called the Mujhahadeen to fight a guerrilla war in the name of something called Jihad. Sure these ideas have existed before, but this process didn't start until that moment. Has anyone heard of Islamic terrorism before that time?

The point is that Islam doesn't have something inherently wrong with it that cause these problems. This ideology is fairly recent and went out of control because of the Cold War. If a radical ideology can be created in that short of a time, it can certainly be solved too with solutions that don't involve things like banning Muslims, etc.

Terrorism has existed since the beginning of time, it just didn't have a label...

Terrorism has existed since the beginning of time, it just didn't have a label...

Barbarians?

Terrorism has existed since the beginning of time, it just didn't have a label...

Barbarians?

Barbarians were huge into influencing political systems by cultivating fear among the population with the threat of random violence ^_^ . "Beginning of time" may be... a bit of an exaggeration.

Food for thought: there are countless books hidden by the catholic church that some believe are actually a variation of the bible. Some claim it IS actually the bible, with what we have today being a chimera warped beyond recognition by the catholic church (at least it is clear that said church had a window of about 1000 years to do whatever they wanted with that book as nobody besides the church was that versed in latin).
The fact that the catholic church STILL TODAY is extremly secretive about all those books is not helping the cause at all.

How would the christian bible look if you would dig out such old manuscripts? What if what we call the "holy bible" today is just the propaganda of a roman emperor, or the product of the bad dreams of multiple generations of popes and cardinals?

We will most probably never know.

Actually we do know. Guess what we found? Copies of many important pieces of the Old Testament (including entire books of the Bible) buried in jars and accurately and professionally dated to 2000+ years ago.

Guess what they contained? Scriptures that were virtually identical to what we already had. Archaeological evidence that the Bible hasn't been twisted as it came down through the years. This has happened over and over as we've found more and more documents (hundreds of them, if not thousands).

Yes, there are also many "secret books of the Bible" that make all kinds of blasphemous claims. They've been all proven as either counterfeits, or written by groups of people hundreds of years after Jesus, and thus, false (in the same way if you randomly decided to make up that the Catholic Church rewrote the bible, you writing it doesn't actually make it true).

There are also several books of religious significance that didn't make the cut in the Bible. For example, while the New Testament is made up of many letters written by people like Paul, Peter, and Luke (and others), we have other letters written by them and other people, who didn't end up in the Bible. These are "accurate" books in the sense that

And then we have Maccabees, which Jews and Catholics count as God-inspired and Protestants merely count as a non-inspired historic book.

So, yea, we actually do know. Your "food for thought" has been thought over by tens of thousands of people for over two thousand years, but by our vast collection of documents collected from many different locations by many different people, we know for 100% certainty that the Bible has been accurately handed down at least since the fall of Babylon in ~500 BC. We've cross referenced it across hundreds of different documents, across four different languages (Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew).

We know of which (VERY VERY VERY) few verses were added centuries later (less then ten, IIRC), we know which (VERY VERY VERY) few verses we don't have proper translations for (less then twenty, IIRC).

There's alot we don't know. But what we do know, we're very certain of. We have had thousands of professionals dedicate their lives working on Biblical accuracy.

No scientist or reasonable atheist claims the documents are inaccurate (well, many Muslims do, because parts of their religion depend on it). What intelligent atheists disagree with is what claims those documents make, not the legitimacy of the documents themselves.

Scientists (atheists and Christians) debate who wrote which books, and when, and the accuracy of the claims. That only applies to prior to the Bible's formation, not after. For example, because the book of Daniel incredibly accurately prophecies the next 400 years of history, atheists claim it was written 400 years after Daniel. And some scientists think many of the books of Moses were edited or modified by someone centuries after Moses. But no intelligent atheist has peer-accepted claims (even among other atheists) that the Bible was rewritten by the Catholic church.

Ever hear of someone called Socrates? A very famous philosopher. We can't be sure of a single word he said. It was his student Plato who wrote about him, and we have Plato's work, and we don't know if Plato was merely using Socrates to say Plato's opinions, or whether Socrates actually said those things. But Socrates had other disciples - and their recordings of Socrates's views sometimes contradict each other. We don't know what Socrates actually said - surely we have some of his words, but which are actually his and which are merely his disciples? We don't know.

Not so with Jesus, Paul, or Peter. Paul's words are recorded directly by Paul, and have been historically passed down accurately.
Peter's words have been recorded directly by Peter, and have been passed down accurately.
Jesus' words have been recorded by his disciples, and their recorded testimony fits incredibly well with each other, and their written testimony was read by other witnesses to Jesus (of which there were hundreds who had traveled with him - and of which 11 were in the inner circle), with no known complaints from those doing the peer-reviewing. Even atheists don't deny that Jesus said most of those things Christians claim he said (Again, because parts of their religion depends on it, Muslims do claim it's inaccurate, despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise).

It's the notion that there's something inherently wrong with Islam that is Islamaphobia at work.

What if there is something inherently wrong, and people just don't want to look into it for fear of being labeled Islamaphobic?

Many of these labels that liberals toss around just shuts down discussion before it can even begin.

the only reason that Christianity seems moderate is because most people aren't letting the whack-jobs get their way, otherwise there are plenty of whack-jobs, such as the ones who want to deny Darwin's theory, believe that homosexuality is Satan's work, believe that abortion clinics should be bombed

"Christianity is the most adhered religion in the United States, with 70.6% of polled American adults identifying themselves as Christian in 2014. This is down from 86% in 1990, lower than 78.6% in 2001, and slightly lower than 73% in 2012. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation." - Wikipedia

The reason that Christianity seems moderate is because we believe you have to God-given right to choose for yourself what you believe, and we don't try to kill you if you leave the faith like Islam does.

At various points in history, centralized religious authority (or, much more often, centralized political authority using religion for legitimacy) violated those rights. But those rights are in the Bible.

When Europe and the USA decided to separate church and state, it wasn't because atheists had a majority and enforced it. It was because average Christians didn't like the few wielding power against the many and abusing their positions of authority.

The Bible holds that morals are absolute, and thus many Christians (but sadly, not all of us) denies the idea that morals are relative, but we uphold your right to choose to believe something different from us.

"'If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'
[...more dialog back and forth...]
Joshua said to the people, 'You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Him.'" - Joshua 24:14-22

"Elijah came near to all the people and said, 'How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If [Yahweh] is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.'" - 1st Kings 18:21

"'See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. [...] I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him." - Deuteronomy 30:15-19

Christianity claims that sin leads to bondage, death, and destruction, and that following God leads to life and freedom, but that individuals (and nations as a whole) must make that choice willing, not by compulsion.

[Christianity is] basically against any religion that is not *insert Christian denomination here*.

Or Judaism, obviously. :P
Actually, though we disagree with and evangelize other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, we not actively "at war" with the them.

The only ones we're directly "at war" with is demon worship (i.e. witchcraft, witchdoctors, etc...) and Islam. We merely compete with the others.

The only reason we're "at war" with Islam, is because Islam itself is anti-Christianity and anti-Judiasm.

From the Islamic perspective, Islam replaces Christianity and replaces Jews, Jews are an abomination, Christians got it wrong, and Islam has to correct everything by wiping out the other religions (even if most Muslims don't know what the Quran teaches).

Some things that Christians have done in the name of their faith is messed up. But it's counter to the teaching of the Bible (even when the majority of Christians don't know what the Bible actually says). You don't have to go counter to the Quran to be an extremist.

Hyper-conservative "extremist" Christian views are in-line with Bible teaching (e.g. you consider my views extremist), but if anyone uses violence to further those views, that goes against the Bible's teaching.

WTF!?! "Islam is not a religion of peace"... where did you get that from?

The Quran. Many Muslims and ex-Muslims also talk about the inherently violent nature of that religion.

That doesn't make every Muslim violent or dangerous, just as every Christian isn't faithfully walking out everything the Bible says to. The fundamental teachings of Islam and Christianity are superficially the same, but fundamentally different.

People who say all religions are the same, must not understand any of those religions deeply (even the Christians who say it clearly don't know their own religion). Their similarities start and end on the surface, but beneath the surface, almost every religion is very extremely different.

Lets pick todays christian religions: they have almost nothing to do with the christian religion of the first few years after christ...

That entirely depends on where and when you look.

Sure, America is mostly a "prosperity gospel" nation (*vomit*), but even within America, there are many churches that teach otherwise, and in nations like China, where state-sponsored atheists wanted to kill every Christian, it absolutely wasn't prosperity-focused, and looked alot like the first few years after Christ.

Do you know what Christianity looked like in the early days? On what are you basing your claim? Depending on what variables you are measuring, I either agree or disagree.

The catholic church pretty much is the construct of roman emperors that tried to find a monotheistic replacement for the much to polytheistic roman religion.

They weren't looking for a monotheistic replacement. It came to Rome, and they had to deal with it, and so they eventually made it the state religion (after hundreds of years of trying to suppress it) and then tried to control it and wield it (with mixed results, depending on the people in power).

Christianity reached Rome within 20 years after Christ's death (Christ died in 33 AD (IIRC), and Paul reached Rome in AD 50 and found Christians already there). For the next >200 years (until 311-313 AD) it was illegal, and punishable with death. Only in 391 AD did it become the state religion and paganism outlawed.

Polytheism and Dictatorship don't go along to well, a monotheistic religion fits way better - there is only one god and only one dictator at the top, after all.

Actually, prior to Christianity becoming the state-religion of Rome, the emperors set themselves up as gods. Accepting Christianity forced the emperors to (at least publicly) adhere to church teaching and to not be worshiped - i.e. it undermined their authority and legitimacy.
It was later on that non-Roman empowers caught on and realized they could use Christianity to give themselves legitimacy.

Your history of Christianity and Rome seems to be a little off... You must have overlooked the whole having Christians torn apart by dogs or burned alive for entertainment - as witnessed and recorded by non-Christian Roman historians.

Terrorism has existed since the beginning of time, it just didn't have a label...

Barbarians?

Mongols. That's why China built a wall and made Mexico pay for it.

4) Muslims commit more violence than people of other faiths: Do we have access to scientific, unbiased material that shows your bold statement is actually true?

While it might FEEL to be true if you read the newspaper and watch all the violence-porn on CNN, that doesn't mean its actually a reality. Even a half truth is still half a lie. So until sombody can present scientific research in this area, I will not comment on that.

You really aren't reading what people write are you? I posted a link to polling(with no political affiliation) taken across the world among many different countries of the Muslim population, but I guess I just watched the fox news or CNN once and made an argument according to you. Scientific research has been provided.

You may be confusing the word Orthodox with the word peaceful. The orthodox Muslim, or the ordinary Muslim, still hold beliefs that most of the world today considers evil.

The debate has been completely derailed because you keep attempting to make points outside of the context of the original argument. We could discuss world politics to no end, but now we are discussing something completely different.

Okay, true, I missed that link, sorry about that. Actually pretty interest read....

Now, I did more or less skim read it (its pretty long), but what I understand, it lists those facts about muslims worldwide: Many would like the Sharia in their country, but only for the Muslim population. They generally see western pop culture as harmful.... but they are against extremists and suicide bombing. They are for religious freedom and democracy...

Now, when I read this poll I don't see it written anywhere that muslim are more prone to violence than other religions followers. In fact, I read this:

"Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam."

So, how exactly should this poll strenghten your point of view?

We are not talking about the sharia or womens rights here. Granted, I am no fan of religious laws replacing secular laws, and the fact that treating women differently then man is still pretty much accepted in the muslim world is just stone age. But this is not what we are talking about.

1) there is no "The world"... there is the US... there is Alabama, or California, or New York City. Even if there is "the West" is debatable... views differ quite extremly between the US and europe (if you look at what the majority thinks and believes).

Some people think abortions are evil... yet in most parts of the western world, its legal, and a majority here in europe has no problem with it.

A good portion of the world population are actually Muslim. Do the muslim think of themselves or their faith as evil? If not, how can "the world" think of it as evil, when a good part of "the world" is mulsim themselves?

2) there is no "evil"... you could say the ISIS is doing evil things. Are they evil? Well, at least to some of them they think of doing the right things. Some might be plain psychopaths just thinking about their own gain. Is that evil? Maybe, though we are entering philosophical territory here.

If you are thinking about the Sharia and womens right in case of the common Muslim... well, there is nothing really evil about it. Backwater, Stoneage maybe. Not evil.

Would you say our ancestors in the stone age were evil just because they were living a way more primitive life of hardship and violence?

Not catching up to "modern standarts" is not evil. People suffer from it (women for example), that is why everyone that has the power should strive to reform such societys. But marking the believes of one of the biggest religions on earth as "evil" is not doing anone a favour.

3) Orthodox is anything but peaceful IMO... I am thinking about Israel and how most of the population has to suffer so some very few ultraorthodox can live on their "holy land" in the desert, no matter who objects to it. I understand very well what orthodox means. That doesn't make the orthodox into suicide bombers yet. They might be more prone to become extremists... but as long as their actions do not prove it, they are just innocent people with very strong believes.

What exactly are we discussing if not world politics? I was making the point that this is NOT about religion, yet some people are adamant to keep attacking muslims instead of discussing how islamophobia and on the other end muslim extremism is just world politics gone wrong.

On both sides, you have very selfish people manipulating others to do their bidding by either making extremists commiting crimes, or doing hate speeches against one of the main religions worldwide.

I am NOT derailing the thread. I am just defending the muslim faith which is nowhere as bad as some people making, nor any better or worse than other religions. People try to derail the thread about islamophobia into a thread on how bad muslims are.

Which I don't object to. Really, its good to discuss such things, even if some point of views are rather extreme... if we stop talking about it, hatred and violence will only become worse.

Food for thought: there are countless books hidden by the catholic church that some believe are actually a variation of the bible. Some claim it IS actually the bible, with what we have today being a chimera warped beyond recognition by the catholic church (at least it is clear that said church had a window of about 1000 years to do whatever they wanted with that book as nobody besides the church was that versed in latin).
The fact that the catholic church STILL TODAY is extremly secretive about all those books is not helping the cause at all.

How would the christian bible look if you would dig out such old manuscripts? What if what we call the "holy bible" today is just the propaganda of a roman emperor, or the product of the bad dreams of multiple generations of popes and cardinals?

We will most probably never know.

Actually we do know. Guess what we found? Copies of many important pieces of the Old Testament (including entire books of the Bible) buried in jars and accurately and professionally dated to 2000+ years ago.

Guess what they contained? Scriptures that were virtually identical to what we already had. Archaeological evidence that the Bible hasn't been twisted as it came down through the years. This has happened over and over as we've found more and more documents (hundreds of them, if not thousands).

Yes, there are also many "secret books of the Bible" that make all kinds of blasphemous claims. They've been all proven as either counterfeits, or written by groups of people hundreds of years after Jesus, and thus, false (in the same way if you randomly decided to make up that the Catholic Church rewrote the bible, you writing it doesn't actually make it true).

There are also several books of religious significance that didn't make the cut in the Bible. For example, while the New Testament is made up of many letters written by people like Paul, Peter, and Luke (and others), we have other letters written by them and other people, who didn't end up in the Bible. These are "accurate" books in the sense that

And then we have Maccabees, which Jews and Catholics count as God-inspired and Protestants merely count as a non-inspired historic book.

So, yea, we actually do know. Your "food for thought" has been thought over by tens of thousands of people for over two thousand years, but by our vast collection of documents collected from many different locations by many different people, we know for 100% certainty that the Bible has been accurately handed down at least since the fall of Babylon in ~500 BC. We've cross referenced it across hundreds of different documents, across four different languages (Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew).

We know of which (VERY VERY VERY) few verses were added centuries later (less then ten, IIRC), we know which (VERY VERY VERY) few verses we don't have proper translations for (less then twenty, IIRC).

There's alot we don't know. But what we do know, we're very certain of. We have had thousands of professionals dedicate their lives working on Biblical accuracy.

No scientist or reasonable atheist claims the documents are inaccurate (well, many Muslims do, because parts of their religion depend on it). What intelligent atheists disagree with is what claims those documents make, not the legitimacy of the documents themselves.

Scientists (atheists and Christians) debate who wrote which books, and when, and the accuracy of the claims. That only applies to prior to the Bible's formation, not after. For example, because the book of Daniel incredibly accurately prophecies the next 400 years of history, atheists claim it was written 400 years after Daniel. And some scientists think many of the books of Moses were edited or modified by someone centuries after Moses. But no intelligent atheist has peer-accepted claims (even among other atheists) that the Bible was rewritten by the Catholic church.

Ever hear of someone called Socrates? A very famous philosopher. We can't be sure of a single word he said. It was his student Plato who wrote about him, and we have Plato's work, and we don't know if Plato was merely using Socrates to say Plato's opinions, or whether Socrates actually said those things. But Socrates had other disciples - and their recordings of Socrates's views sometimes contradict each other. We don't know what Socrates actually said - surely we have some of his words, but which are actually his and which are merely his disciples? We don't know.

Not so with Jesus, Paul, or Peter. Paul's words are recorded directly by Paul, and have been historically passed down accurately.
Peter's words have been recorded directly by Peter, and have been passed down accurately.
Jesus' words have been recorded by his disciples, and their recorded testimony fits incredibly well with each other, and their written testimony was read by other witnesses to Jesus (of which there were hundreds who had traveled with him - and of which 11 were in the inner circle), with no known complaints from those doing the peer-reviewing. Even atheists don't deny that Jesus said most of those things Christians claim he said (Again, because parts of their religion depends on it, Muslims do claim it's inaccurate, despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise).

This ^^^

Plus Gian-Reto's post completely missed the point of this thread. Though no direct quotes, I believe his post was in response to the quote below

The above quote and this thread is not about competition about which holy books is authentic and which is genuine, but this Thread is about "Islamaphobia" and "Islamaphobia" could also examine how the religious books exposed to the people, and popularly read by the people, has influenced the people to violence or to tolerance. The fact is the Koran has influenced Muslims negatively, while the bible has not had that effect on Christians.

Even if the New Testament is the most faked book in the world, what people read (effectively) - the bible (including the new testament which overrides to old testament) preaches peace. And thus unlike the Koran which does not have an overriding new testament, it means the Bible's net effect has not influenced Christian to the wars, violence and "an eye for an eye" kind of justice of the old testament

(whether the Catholic church had hidden most of it away becomes irrelevant in this context, in any case @Servant is right)