The ISIS offensive in Iraq

gourimoko said:

Q-Tip, the problem that I'm having with your position here is that it's all over the map, as in literally the world map, bouncing around different groups of people, in different cultures, and different views of Islam, the role of the State, the role of the citizen, and the nature of participation in government.

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Of course there are different views of Islam -- I've never denied that. As I've said before, the only legitimate way to define a religion is by looking at how it is currently practiced, taking into account the prevalence of those practices and beliefs. I've never said that all Muslims -- which I have defined and will continue to define as those who believe in the religious tenets of Islam (whatever those may be) -- all hold the same beliefs. I've focused on three specific doctrines - apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytization, and called them part of mainstream Islam. For all the volume of words you've used, you've never actually addressed that.

And though this isn't directly relevant to the more focused point I'm making, what you're really doing here is taking any criticism of Islam and saying "well, that's not really Islam because it varies from nation to nation and is affected by all these socio-political factors other than pure religion." But that argument ends up eating itself, because it doesn't just apply to the negative features of Islam, but the positive ones as well. "Islam" ends up losing any meaning at all, because it is practiced differently in different places, and by different Muslims.

It seems you are jumbling nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan together and drawing conclusions blindly, without any consideration for why there may be some levels of correlation but not necessarily identical causation....In other words, it's not necessarily Islam that is driving the more radical interpretation of Sharia.

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This is just throwing a whole bunch of crap against the wall to avoid discussion of the very specific issues I've raised. Again, I was not discussing Sharia in general. I've focused very consistently on three very specific issues -- the prohibition on apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytization. It's like you're trying to make the discussion about something else so you don't have to address those three issues.

This points to non-religious sources of the variations in attitudes, such as tribal, cultural, and sectarian intolerance; rather than anything that is inherent to Islam itself.

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Are you arguing that the common prohibitions on apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytization come from a non-religious source, and don't have anything to do with Islam? Do you believe that the prohibitions on apostasy, blasphemy, and on non-Muslmims proselytizing Muslims are sufficiently prevalent to be considered part of mainstream Islam, or not?

gourimoko said:

As I said, my own step-father is an agnostic pork-eating Muslim. Much of the Algerian, Iranian, Lebanese, Tunisian and Moroccan populations are very very liberal. They don't stop being Muslim because they commit sins, or lose their faith.

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Hotel California, I know. But if someone self-identifies as a Muslim, but does not believe in Allah, or in Muhammed as his prophet, and eats pork, doesn't pray, etc., there are a great many Muslims who would consider that person an apostate.

You can't take your admittedly non-Muslim, very liberal views on religion, and just pretend the rest of the Islamic world agrees with you.

jking948 said:

Finally, I at what point had a religion professor in graduate school who told the class that Sharia Law and the U.S. constitution are 90% compatible. Now, religion is by no means my expertise, but he was brilliant. My question to any Muslim members of RCF following this thread, could you elaborate and or disagree with that statement?

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I'm not at all an expert on Islam, but I am an expert on the Constitution, and while I don't know all of the intricacies of Sharia law, I highly doubt it recognizes individual rights like the common law our society has been based on for centuries, and which the federal government is forbidden to violate, even though they do it every minute of every day. That would disqualify a federal Sharia government from being Constitutional.

The only area where the Constitution addresses the types of state governments there can be is in Article 4, Section 4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government

Can you have a Sharia republic? If so, it's possible that individual states, provided they amend or rewrite their Constitutions to make it work, could do that and the federal Constitution would have no legal say in it.

Though you do have Article 4, Section 2:

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

So I suppose if one state wanted to do it, they all would have to, unless a Sharia republic would have voting privileges for women and non-Muslims and what not.

gourimoko said:

But, if you reference the Pew Report that you cited, rather than the news reports that sensationalized the results, you'd see that the Pew Researches make the exact same conclusion that I have....

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Well, I guess we'll see about that in a bit here....

In nations that have predominantly Muslim populations, the majority of citizens do not want to codify Sharia. This is again, evidenced by Pew Research: But of course, that would not get cited by the news reports.

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Time to go to the "the tape":

The percentage of Muslims who say they want sharia to be “the official law of the land” varies widely around the world, from fewer than one-in-ten in Azerbaijan (8%) to near unanimity in Afghanistan (99%). But solid majorities in most of the countries surveyed across the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia favor the establishment of sharia, including 71% of Muslims in Nigeria, 72% in Indonesia, 74% in Egypt and 89% in the Palestinian territories.



http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-preface/

And Q-Tip, I'm not saying you are misrepresenting the facts because quite honestly, anyone reading mainstream news articles would've come to the same conclusion.

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Not trying to be a dick, but I wasn't the one misrepresenting the facts on this. And if you want me to post the Pew results specific to the questions of apostasy, blasphemy, etc., I can do that as well.

The Human Q-Tip said:

I'm less concerned about the 90% than about that missing 10%.

Did that professor happen to specify the 10% in which they are not compatible?

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That's what I'm unsure about. His statement was in the context of a story so he really did not elaborate on his number. Hence why I was wondering if any of our Islam experts can fill us in. Also, thanks @OptimusPrime for the legal analysis. Definitely interesting.

OptimusPrime said:

That's what I'm unsure about. His statement was in the context of a story so he really did not elaborate on his number. Hence why I was wondering if any of our Islam experts can fill us in. Also, thanks @OptimusPrime for the legal analysis. Definitely interesting.

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I don't believe anyone here has even claimed to be an expert in Islam. Then again, you don't have to be an expert to have a basic understanding of something, or to regurgitate what other experts have said. The issue with your 90/10 formulation is that it was one professors characterization, and without knowing how he defined sharia, it's not of much utility.

The Human Q-Tip said:

I don't believe anyone here has even claimed to be an expert in Islam. Then again, you don't have to be an expert to have a basic understanding of something, or to regurgitate what other experts have said. The issue with your 90/10 formulation is that it was one professors characterization, and without knowing how he defined sharia, it's not of much utility.

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This.

The problem with citing a noted professor as the defining authority in a debate is that there is always another professor who disagrees that undermines that authority (though consensus authorities exist). As such, it should never be taken at face value without conducting one's own research.

I have two masters degrees and spent years in the Ivory Tower. I can tell you that many, if not most, academic arguments have little utility. Academia is, for the most part, an arena for professors to bicker with each other over tiny differences in opinion.

Theory informs, but in itself is not terribly useful; particularly in the social sciences as humans refuse to fit neatly into the criteria and theories that academics keep putting them in.

As Indiana Jones said, people should get out of the library and into the field.

Don't have much time but let me answer these:

The Human Q-Tip said:

First, if the laws relate to purely religious matters, such as the laws against apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytization, then it is entirely fair to conclude that they have to do with Muslims/Islam. That's a separate question from the specifics of all the other things in Saudi Arabia.

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To be clear, death penalty for apostasy is not in the Qur'an. Any mention of apostasy (riddah) is supplemented with consequences for the afterlife, which is irrelevant to this discussion. In fact, the only two reasons ever given for justification of death are "murder" and "creating societal unrest" which would include acts such as terrorism (ironic, re: ISIS). The Qur'an is very clear in the fact that the only reason to fight, kill or react with violence is in the protection of Islam, read: defense.

Second, it's not as if you find those laws only in one or two Muslim countries, shoved down the throats of an unwilling population by a single, oppressive theocratic government. Those laws exist in most Muslim-majority nations, including some with elected governments. Are we to believe that all of those government are defying the wishes of their people by being more strict religiously than the people want? That makes no sense. And even if it were true, then it would be entirely proper for our government to call them out specifically on that.

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These laws do exist in some countries, and although I do not agree with them, they date back the riddah wars that occurred shortly after the death of the Prophet. Islamic belief split into Sunni and Shia, both sides believing the other was guilty of apostasy. Those wars produced the first sequence of punishments dictated by riddah.

During war, apostasy was essentially desertion/treason. The Ottomans can be seen as a transition point, where apostasy did not necessarily mean death. These traditions continued during nation building, as it was a part of Islamic history, not Islam (There's a difference). You can say the distinction is irrelevant because the present is all that matters, but it's important to understand how we got there.

And third, I've posted previously the results of the Pew surveys, which polled the opinions of Muslims in those nations. And as I've mentioned, those policies generally have the support of a large minority, if not an outright majority, or the people. I even just linked the one bit of data showing that 80% of Egyptians agree that apostasy should be illegal. And if you want to argue that Egypt isn't democratic because Morsi wasn't deposed, it's not like Morsi was planning on making Egypt more tolerant of religious dissent.

Those laws/beliefs are mainstream, not fringe, and are backed by mainstream scholars of Islam.

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It may have been pointed out in this thread, but survey results from the population in these countries is something hard for me to get on board with. Citizens are likely to vote a certain way out of fear/uncertainty. Only certain provinces are polled (as the report states). Statistics has taught me that your data is only as good as the willingness of your population to be honest, and to be representative of the rest.

Those laws/beliefs are mainstream only because that's how it is and has been. The opposite would be mainstream if the situation were reversed. The death penalty is mainstream here, but most of us would see hanging and beheadings as a problem. Wasn't always the case.

It's of my opinion that we will see a change in governments throughout the Islamic world, but unfortunately, invasion and exploitation in the ME are allowing radical elements more reign, not less. It's harder to be critical from within when you can unite against a common external threat. It's my belief that we've made it worse...

But this thread is about ISIS, and the reason it veered to Islam was because we had some things being said about there being qualifications from Islam. Hopefully there's been something in these dozens of pages that has helped explain how that's not the case.

kosis said:

It may have been pointed out in this thread, but survey results from the population in these countries is something hard for me to get on board with. Citizens are likely to vote a certain way out of fear/uncertainty. Only certain provinces are polled (as the report states). Statistics has taught me that your data is only as good as the willingness of your population to be honest, and to be representative of the rest.

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If you pick & choose what information you deem worthy to consume, I can understand why this thread has gone nowhere.

Soda said:

If you pick & choose what information you deem worthy to consume, I can understand why this thread has gone nowhere.

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The Qur'an itself has been completely ignored by multiple posters in this thread. Saying the Pew poll results are end all be all is ridiculous to me. Entire countries and populations were excluded.

kosis said:

The Qur'an itself has been completely ignored by multiple posters in this thread. Saying the Pew poll results are end all be all is ridiculous to me. Entire countries and populations were excluded.

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Not trying to portray it as being a one-sided thing. Just evidence as to why it goes nowhere.

Soda said:

Not trying to portray it as being a one-sided thing. Just evidence as to why it goes nowhere.

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I get it, but if you took my hesitancy in using the Report as indicative of all Muslims as the takeaway of my post... then yeah, this definitely isn't going anywhere.

King Stannis said:

This.

The problem with citing a noted professor as the defining authority in a debate is that there is always another professor who disagrees that undermines that authority (though consensus authorities exist). As such, it should never be taken at face value without conducting one's own research.

I have two masters degrees and spent years in the Ivory Tower. I can tell you that many, if not most, academic arguments have little utility. Academia is, for the most part, an arena for professors to bicker with each other over tiny differences in opinion.

Theory informs, but in itself is not terribly useful; particularly in the social sciences as humans refuse to fit neatly into the criteria and theories that academics keep putting them in.

As Indiana Jones said, people should get out of the library and into the field.

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I don't think anyone anyone was citing a noted professor as a defining authority. I was asking people on the forum who are more familiar with Islam to chime in. I never claimed my 90% statistic was correct, or even argumentative, it was a question.

Secondly, if this statement was in reference to my citing of professors I was doing it to allow people to look up their work if anyone so chose.

Thirdly, to say someone who has spent years in the region meeting people and gaining experience knows no more than you or I is wrong. I've stated multiple times I enjoy these discussions because my convos on a daily basis take place in a far away land called academia. But saying that economic statistics and their impact, which are shown by many studies shouldn't be regarded, is something I disagree with.

Finally, Karl Popper posited something called the Falsifiability Criterion. What he basically argued is if you can't argue against a contention than you cannot prove its accuracy. Thus, I'd posit that just because there is debate in academia does not mean arguments they posit are invalid.

P.S. I realize from reading this it may come across as condescending. I don't mean it like that all but am writing it in a hurry.

Just ate some fucking AMAZING pulled pork with slaw.

jking948 said:

I don't think anyone anyone was citing a noted professor as a defining authority. I was asking people on the forum who are more familiar with Islam to chime in. I never claimed my 90% statistic was correct, or even argumentative, it was a question.

Secondly, if this statement was in reference to my citing of professors I was doing it to allow people to look up their work if anyone so chose.

Thirdly, to say someone who has spent years in the region meeting people and gaining experience knows no more than you or I is wrong. I've stated multiple times I enjoy these discussions because my convos on a daily basis take place in a far away land called academia. But saying that economic statistics and their impact, which are shown by many studies shouldn't be regarded, is something I disagree with.

Finally, Karl Popper posited something called the Falsifiability Criterion. What he basically argued is if you can't argue against a contention than you cannot prove its accuracy. Thus, I'd posit that just because there is debate in academia does not mean arguments they posit are invalid.

P.S. I realize from reading this it may come across as condescending. I don't mean it like that all but am writing it in a hurry.

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Wasn't attacking you or your arguments.

I actually don't disagree. There is a reason uprisings against "secular" governments in the Islamic World followed a generational pattern until recently. Unemployed, angry young men are susceptible to the preachings of radicals.