The Trump Presidency

[Calliander]

Does Islam need to be reformed?

Yes. So does Christianity, Judaism, and every other religion.

Reformed, here, means eradicated via education, discussion, and critical thinking.

[Fe 26]

Yes. So does Christianity, Judaism, and every other religion.

Reformed, here, means eradicated via education, discussion, and critical thinking.

The first one does not cause the second two. Americans are too scared to change child education (though they are fine with under funding it and making the old system we have even worse)

[kedawa]

So you're saying all three will take effort?
I think it's worth the trouble, but where do we start?

[Drewbacca]

The problem is that many Americans wag a holier-than-thou finger at Muslims for that "barbaric law" while saying NOTHING while their government schmoozes with many countries that support said law. And don't even get me started on the same anti-Sharia shitheads who want Creationism taught in schools and same sex marriage and abortion outlawed specifically because it goes against their holy book.

Of course this is true but we're talking about imports here. You can ask potential immigrants this prior to having to put up w their bullshit. Unfortunately you can't really do that to domestic shitheads as they walk out of the womb.

[Satsuki]

I love watching Maher but the Islam stuff gets wayyyyyy too out there and ignorant for a Jewish guy to be speaking like he does. If we factored in the violence and mental health issues that "domestic" religions cause (think suicides from families who practice religions that don't accept LGBTQ members, mental illness/self harm/drug addictions/overdoses stemming from religious family abuse, etc) the whole Muslim thing becomes the least of our problems. His ethnocentric nonsense can get annoying. But the guests are usually good so there's that.

[Fe 26]

I'd say the majority of murder in the us is caused by people that think of themselves as Christian.

It probably jumps up even higher with gun violence and death as both rural Americans and urban minorities self identify as Christians.

[Frogacuda]

There's a significant proportion of muslims who support sharia law, which is just as bad if not worse. Terrorism is just a mode of conflict. The ideology that justifies and tolerates it is the problem.

This is kind of bullshit though, because that phrase doesn't have the same meaning to Muslims that it does to us. Ask them "Is ISIS Sharia law?" and most will say "Fuck no, Sharia law can only come from God."

Sharia law is something described in the Quran and thus something they believe in but they're going to rationalize that belief in different ways. Where we think we're asking "Should the government be replaced with a caliphate that claims to talk to God and imposes it's laws on everyone" that's not how a Muslim will understand the question.

[kedawa]

ISIS has nothing to do with it. The religion itself promotes horrible behavior, and some cultures it flourishes in have largely failed to mitigate it.
You won't find many honor killings or death sentences for leaving Islam in places like Bosnia, Albania, or even Turkey, so there's obviously a huge cultural component. The problem is that there are still a lot of stunted cultures that haven't progressed that far socially, and the way they view religion is a huge impediment to change.

[Drewbacca]

I love watching Maher but the Islam stuff gets wayyyyyy too out there and ignorant for a Jewish guy to be speaking like he does. If we factored in the violence and mental health issues that "domestic" religions cause (think suicides from families who practice religions that don't accept LGBTQ members, mental illness/self harm/drug addictions/overdoses stemming from religious family abuse, etc) the whole Muslim thing becomes the least of our problems. His ethnocentric nonsense can get annoying. But the guests are usually good so there's that.

I wonder if it's as simple as he's just mad you can make fun of Jesus but not Muhammad.

[kedawa]

I think he harps on it too much for something that isn't a statistically significant threat, but he's not wrong about religion being the toughest part of the problem.