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• Be considerate • No personal insults • Can't think of any more
 
This thread is created for discussions where understanding can be formed and misconceptions can be cleared, some of which are implanted through politics.
 
= = =
 
Let us head right in!
 
 
The Lies They Tell About Islam
By Lee Sustar
Date: 26th April 2013
Source: Socialist Worker
 
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration and the media found a scapegoat in Arabs and Muslims. In this article, which first appeared in the October 19, 2001, issue of Socialist Worker, Lee Sustar exposes the media's fanatical and racist hysteria about Islam and Islamists.
 
WELL-PAID academic experts and media pundits are lining up to give Washington an intellectual justification for war. Basically, the justification is that "they hate us."
 
In a Newsweek magazine cover story, Fareed Zakaria wrote, "The problem is not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious war against America. It's that millions of people across the Islamic world seem to agree."
 
Michael Doran, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, told the New York Times: "Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is just a violent cult leader. But the truth is that he is tapping into a minority Islamic tradition with a wide following and a deep history."
 
Richard Connerney, a professor of religion at Iona College, went even further in article for Salon.com:


"The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Muslim violence against the civilian populations of other regions goes right back to the origin of Islam in the 7th century A.D...Can the world truly continue to tolerate medieval minds with access to 21st century military hardware? Is there really room in the family of world faiths for a religious vision that is terrorist-prone, modernity-proof, plagued by fanaticism and the hellish call of jihad [holy war]?"
 

Such comments aren't meant to explain Islam or Islamist movements, but to whip up bigotry, racism, fear--and support for Washington's agenda.
 
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Muslim violence against the civilian populations of other regions goes right back to the origin of Islam in the 7th century A.D...Can the world truly continue to tolerate medieval minds with access to 21st century military hardware? Is there really room in the family of world faiths for a religious vision that is terrorist-prone, modernity-proof, plagued by fanaticism and the hellish call of jihad [holy war]?
 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 
THE HYPOCRISY of these "intellectual" attacks on Islam is infuriating.
 
After all, it's George W. Bush who constantly justifies his war against what he calls "evildoers" in religious terms. It was Bush who called for a "crusade"--the word used by Christian Europe in the Middle Ages to wage wars of conquest in the Middle East.
 
"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them," Bush said in his speech to Congress, September 20. If Osama bin Laden said this on videotape, the White House would try to block the broadcast as an incitement to terrorist violence!
 
Moreover, the claim that Islam is a uniquely violent religion is sheer nonsense. Christianity itself was split over long and bloody "wars of reformation" that pitted Catholics against Protestants for a century. The Catholic Church's Inquisition used torture to convert Muslims and "heretics" to Christianity. The Church also encouraged the conquest and forcible conversion of Native Americans by Spain and Portugal.
 
The truth is that Islam has common roots with Judaism and Christianity. It considers Jesus to be an important prophet, and it has many practices, such as dietary laws, that are similar to those in Judaism. The teachings of Islam's founder, Mohammed, written down by his followers in the Koran, stresses social justice as well as a respect for order.
 
Mohammed's rise in the 6th century unified tribes on the Arabian Peninsula and built a government organized around the new religion, with its focus on Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia. While doctrinal differences arose in the decades following Mohammed's death, Islam gained millions of new converts over the following centuries as Arab armies created an empire stretching from Spain in the West to South Asia in the East.
 
With Western Europe mired in backwardness, the Islamic world preserved the great scientific teachings of the Greek and Roman civilizations and made scientific breakthroughs, such as the invention of algebra.
 
Much of this region was taken over by the Turkish rulers of the Ottoman Empire, who embraced Islam as an official religion. The European powers periodically clashed with the Ottomans from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but the Ottomans were known for safeguarding the rights of Christians and Jews.
The first "fundamentalist" Islamic state was established by the Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia--with the backing of Britain--amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. Wahhabi leader Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud unified warring tribal leaders in an impoverished region with a religious movement that claimed to "purify" Islam--much as Christian Protestant fundamentalists reject the trappings of Catholicism.
 
After Ibn Saud crowned himself king in the 1920s, he imposed the Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law, which includes stoning women who commit adultery, amputating the limbs of thieves and public beheadings for other crimes. Women were denied all political rights, forced to remain covered and even banned from driving.
 
Wahhabism became the inspiration for the target of Bush's war in Afghanistan: the Taliban. But Saudi Arabia is a close U.S. ally--because of its vast oil reserves and its willingness to do Washington's bidding.
 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 
WITH THE support of the U.S., Saudi Arabia organized an "Islamic front" in the late 1960s and 1970s to build up a conservative alternative to pan-Arab nationalism, socialism and the left wing of the Palestinian liberation movement.
 
Islamism began to gain a popular following among middle class intellectuals and the urban poor in countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Iran. The Islamists' appeal was based on the corruption of the Arab monarchies and the failure of nationalist parties to achieve their aim of development and an end to imperialist domination of the region by the U.S. and Israel.
 
While the Islamists mobilized people based on their opposition to hated regimes, they often directed that activity in reactionary directions--against religious and linguistic minorities and women. However, the official Communist left, having given uncritical support to the nationalists, failed to provide an alternative.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a workers' uprising that was rolled back by parties that maintained the capitalist system with an Islamic face. Elsewhere, Islamist parties have tried to oust governments by assassinating leaders, such as Egypt's Anwar Sadat.
 
But rather than challenge the system, Islamist parties try to modify people's behavior within it. For that reason, they vacillate between bitter opposition to governments and accommodation with them.
Nevertheless, Islamism can seem to the poor to be a model for change in a region dominated by corrupt dictatorships and steeped in poverty.
 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 
THE U.S. attitude toward Islam has always depended on its foreign policy objectives. Washington was hostile to Islamists in Iran and therefore tilted toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. Since then, it has supported the undemocratic suppression of Islamist parties in Egypt, Algeria and Turkey.
 
"Today in most Islamic countries, free elections would produce fundamentalist victories and validate the imposition of theocracy," the New York Times wrote a decade ago to justify dictatorships in the Middle East.
 
But with the help of Saudi Arabia and Islamists allied with a military dictatorship in Pakistan, the U.S. bankrolled Islamist guerrilla warriors in Afghanistan in order to repel an invasion of Russian troops during the 1980s.
 
The subsequent collapse of the USSR was seen as the "end of socialism." This bolstered the appeal of Islamist parties--often bankrolled by Saudi Arabia--in the newly independent states of Central Asia. The U.S. supported these efforts as a means to pull the region out of Russia's orbit.
 
Washington even quietly backed the Taliban in the hope that it would create a government stable enough for an oil pipeline to be built linking the Caspian Sea to Pakistan's ports. But now that the U.S. finds the Taliban in its way, it is once again creating a hysteria about "Islamic fundamentalism."
The aim is to justify America's self-declared right to intervene militarily in any country that it deems to be harboring "Islamic terrorists."
 
Such actions will only boost the appeal of Islamism in poor countries resentful of U.S. domination of the world--which the U.S. will try to use to justify further aggression. That's why we have to expose not only the bloody results of Washington's war, but the lies used to justify it.

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"The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Muslim violence against the civilian populations of other regions goes right back to the origin of Islam in the 7th century A.D...Can the world truly continue to tolerate medieval minds with access to 21st century military hardware? Is there really room in the family of world faiths for a religious vision that is terrorist-prone, modernity-proof, plagued by fanaticism and the hellish call of jihad [holy war]?"

 

...

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The reality and future of Islamic feminism
What constitutes an "Islamic feminism", and where is it headed?
By Rachelle Fawcett
Date: 28th March 2013 08:09
Source: Al Jazeera English

 

201332716470309734_20.jpg
While women's issues in the Islamic world are being addressed,

the central issue of what "equality" means and how it is expressed go largely ignored [EPA]

 

In some Muslim circles, the "f" word (feminism) raises as many tensions as eyebrows, immediately conjuring images of the dominating, angry, family-hating woman. But like other images that come to mind upon mention of any label - including the image of the oppressed woman that often comes to mind when one hears "Muslim" - this gut reaction is based on stereotypes that may be true in a very specific historical and social context, but does not hold water when compared to a larger reality, and therefore does not justify the hostility that follows. While popular Islamic rhetoric touts the liberation of women with the coming of Islam over 1,400 years ago, to continually return to this story does nothing to alleviate women's suffering today except by going back to the beginning, starting with Islam's foundational text, the Quran.

So what is "Islamic feminism", how is it evolving, and who are the players? Dr Margot Badran, a graduate of al-Azhar University and Oxford University, defines "Islamic feminism" thusly:


"…a concise definition of Islamic feminism gleaned from the writings and work of Muslim protagonists as a feminist discourse and practice that derives its understanding and mandate from the Qur'an, seeking rights and justice within the framework of gender equality for women and men in the totality of their existence. Islamic feminism explicates the idea of gender equality as part and parcel of the Quranic notion of equality of all insan (human beings) and calls for the implementation of gender equality in the state, civil institutions, and everyday life. It rejects the notion of a public/private dichotomy (by the way, absent in early Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh) conceptualising a holistic umma in which Quranic ideals are operative in all space."

 

This is an important distinction. "Islamic feminism" is not simply a feminism that is born from Muslim cultures, but one that engages Islamic theology through the text and canonical traditions. A distinctly "Islamic" feminism, at its core, draws on the Quranic concept of equality of all human beings, and insists on the application of this theology to everyday life. Stemming from this basic definition, we encounter a plethora of different interpretations, movements, projects, and personalities, creating feminisms that have diverse faces. Often, women's issues are trivialised into whether or not to wear the veil or shake hands with men outside their family, and while larger issues, such as domestic violence, are being strongly addressed, the central issue of what "equality" means and how it is expressed go largely ignored. For example, domestic violence is wrong because it creates pain and suffering and is unjust, but the central belief of a man's right to rule over his wife is not always part of this discussion.

Teaching what counts

This year, the theme of the 3rd Annual Graduate Student Islamic Studies Conference was "Reconstituting Female Authority: Women's Participation in the Transmission and Production of Islamic Knowledge", and it was here that the future of Islamic feminism was well represented.

No workshops were wasted on the technicalities of veiling or tired arguments about Islam liberating women through the prohibition on female infanticide or the right of women to inherit (which were not totally obeyed even during Muhammad's lifetime). Instead, workshops and the students who presented them demonstrated the complexity and diversity of women's movements, new and old, in the Muslim world. In "The Miracle of Bibi Fatima: Vowing and Women's Authority" presented by Summar Shoaib, women passed down stories of Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad's daughter, appearing and helping other women with special prayers. In such contexts, women pass on special religious knowledge in a matrilineal tradition that functions as a venue for religious activism. Storytelling becomes a means of strength that provides a foundation and support for women, both through the kinship ties forged by the act of storytelling and the history and tradition that is passed on.

Keynote speakers Amina Wadud, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Kathleen Moore, and Asma Sayeed, spoke about inclusivity, the right to and need for personal moral authority, and the history of women in Islamic juristic traditions. The "pure and simple" Islam in which women's issues are sugar-coated with apologetics or streamlined as tertiary and menial was nowhere to be found. Instead, students and teachers spent time remembering history that is often mentioned only in passing or through a few key historical figures, cliche rhetoric, and simplistic, ahistorical arguments. Held to standards of scholarship, this diverse group of students, through their intellectual pursuit of the past and discourse concerning the future, were a small, but important, part of the continual lineage of female scholarship in Islam.

They were examples of the sundry array of "Islamic feminisms" throughout the Muslim world. Women in all these contexts are encountering the tradition based on their respective cultures, needs, priorities, and resources, creating a well-rounded picture of a global movement in which women create their own path to knowledge and move forward with it. In some contexts, this means addressing fundamental rights such as freedom from violence, while in others women carve out their own space and find room to challenge traditional dogma, rediscovering Islam's feminine history and room for future discourse, and in yet other contexts, by creating an inclusive space to pray, worship, and be with God. One such example is that of Ani Zonneneveld, a musician and co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, who promotes peace and social justice by creating inclusive mosques and expressing egalitarian ideals through Islamic music as a means of worship.

Impacting not only women, but society at large

An Islamic feminism is arguably an inherently culturally competent one, since Islam in general is a deeply diverse tradition and allows for flexibility depending on contextual realities, so long as core Islamic ethics are not violated. How those core ethics are defined will vary depending on the context, but the attempts at definition will help spark a larger discussion that may eliminate the apologetics and address the root causes of the issues at hand. It is in such debates that Islamic feminists, rather than relying on tradition or a proliferated feminism - such as a specifically Western feminism - insist on a return to the Quran and employ principles of contextual and rational analysis that disputes traditionally accepted beliefs about women through the very rhetoric by which they were formed.

It may be said that the greatest task of the Islamic feminist is to separate culture and religion. This is perhaps a main reason for the hostility and anger with which this movement is met. In some Muslim contexts, challenges to traditionally held beliefs on authority are not met with intelligent and informed dialogue that is open to a continual search for truth and justice, but with suspicion and hostility by those who seek to declare a single "true" Islam dependent on the social structure supported by a gender hierarchy. It is basic sociology to understand that women are often the foundations of culture because they are the first teachers and often hold the closest bonds with the next generation. Therefore, the "stability" of society is often associated with women staying in their "natural and proper" places.

But this "stability" is not the stability of society, but of the hierarchy and therefore authority. Islamic feminism, as discussed earlier, is not in pursuit of a hierarchy with women at the top, but instead an egalitarian social structure in which character, good work, and piety - not gender - are the defining factors of social authority. Further, as Khaled Abou El Fadl argued in his address to the Santa Barbara conference, each human being is entitled to moral authority which cannot be actualised if they are prohibited from leading a full life. The hierarchal argument is that a "full life" would be had if only women accepted their "natural place", but this argument totally omits the definition, and therefore needs, talent, and aspirations (whether that be astronaut or mother of 10) of women themselves. A "full life" cannot be defined for them.

At one time in Islamic history it was not uncommon to see learned or saintly Muslim women, and the presence of these women did not necessarily mean that they all agreed on women's roles, just as we don't today, but their existence created a more balanced and accessible theology with a greater degree of accountability. By reclaiming that history, women find their footing and support in Islamic feminine discourse.

Further, the struggles facing women do not only impact women, but all of society, as this is the arena in which greater abuses of Islamic theology are most evident. The authoritarianism of puritanical Islam that gave rise to radical movements like the Taliban has made it their special mission to totally control women, as seen with Malala Yousafzai, who was shot for promoting education for all children, especially girls. The same structures and core principles used to oppress women are used to promote terrorism and hatred in Islam's name, and therefore the good that comes from confronting and challenging those structures goes much further than women alone.

The push for inclusive egalitarianism

Some, such as UC Santa Barbara conference organiser Samaneh Oladi, feel that the resurgence of women in Islamic fields of history and theology is happening organically as a grassroots movement in which women themselves are the agents of change.

These organic movements see women working in communities and in social and institutional venues that use religion, rather than a secular understanding of human rights, as their framework for change. Slowly, this changing social demographic creates what is essentially a staircase to greater theological involvement. But this change is also happening politically, as Margot Badran explained to me, since states can play a role in retracting women's transmission of Islamic knowledge.

To use her example, in the early 1960s when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser forced al-Azhar, the first Islamic university, to accept women, it was an effort to "dilute" the institution (make it more secular, alongside other efforts to do the same) and "take it down a notch" by accepting women, but instead created the opportunity for women to access traditional modes of Islamic learning that eventually lead to women scholars at the university. Likewise, with the gradual fall of authoritarian regimes in some Muslim majority countries, women are going back to school and challenging the rhetoric that oppressed them. This gives rise to organisations, legislation, and international efforts to free women from oppression through education, health care, and economic support. In the West, where the state cannot silence women's religious authority, women involved in various efforts - from creating shelters for Muslim women, such as Muslimat al-Nisa in New York, to supporting female imams - meet social and institutional opposition, but continue the same pattern of engaging the text and Islamic theological tradition to counter religiously grounded arguments that women must be, in whatever way possible, subordinate to men.

Clearly, the realities of what "Islamic feminism" is, and how it is lived, are wildly complex, and that is as it should be. The reality of Islamic feminism is a global movement in which women turn to the Quran and Prophetic traditions to argue that women are fully human and equal to their male counterparts. How they express that and how far they take it is up to the women of those specific contexts.

Like secular feminist theories, what works for Muslims in Southern California may not work in rural Afghanistan, and neither can dictate "feminism" for the other. Islamic feminism is a process of evolution in which we start at the right to life and personal moral authority, and work forwards. There may be some who consider themselves "Islamic feminists" that insist on the restructuring of the hierarchy with women - rather than men - at the top, but these would be a minority. Rather, the hierarchy is inherently unjust and is best restructured into an inclusive egalitarianism that includes not only women, but all human beings who are ostracised or left out of traditional Islamic venues.

We do not need a new word to replace "feminism" to avoid the automatic gut-crunch that comes from the popular stereotypes, as it would be equally unjust to demand a new word for "Muslim", but rather to allow ourselves to gain a more open and well-rounded understanding of what Islamic feminism is, who creates and forms it, and the complex and diverse ways they do so not only for their own benefit, but for the benefit of all humanity.

Whether organic or political, or by some other means, women are claiming their places in Islamic discourse and changing their reality, perhaps through a long established storytelling tradition or creating inclusive mosques, and certainly by returning to the beginning, the Quran itself. The future of Islamic feminism may see stronger social institutions and resources that support women and an end to the sugar-coating and apologetics, but most importantly, it may see a renaissance of female scholarship (which was never totally destroyed) in Islam that engages the text and tradition to continually seek justice alongside, not over, our male counterparts. If this is the direction we are heading in, then the future is bright indeed.

 

= = =

 

In the link there are some videos worth checking out that reinforce that struggle today, and where it comes from. It's not from the origins of Islam, but the manipulation of it. Am currently listening to "Why Arab women still 'have no voice'".

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

 

Psy, you're Muslim?

No. As to which religion I belong to, I do not know. It's all rather confusing for me.
I posted these articles because I despise the trend, and acceptability, of anti-Islamic hatred.

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In the link there are some videos worth checking out that reinforce that struggle today, and where it comes from. It's not from the origins of Islam, but the manipulation of it. Am currently listening to "Why Arab women still 'have no voice'".

 

the truth

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LoL!

 

this should have been called a Muslim thread

 

but yea, grouping a whole religion is such  stupid thing to do! unless and unless u live among them and know them very well, u can't judge! No one can

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Yeah, I've learnt to stay out of such discussions, especially when it comes to Islam because it seems that there are numerous sides/opinions of what the faith dictates yaddi yaddi yadda, moreso than I've seen for any other religions and they all seem to be extremely one-sided and biased.

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I am not renaming this thread.

Only started off with the most controversial, and most misunderstood, religion today. It doesn't mean that other religions cannot be discussed because the opening post did mention other religions. The second article focuses more on how politics does distort the Arab World, that is wrongly generalized as the 'Muslim' World. Unfortunately, it's quite hard to separate religion and politics these days.

 

It is up to you guys which direction this thread takes, but please keep all dialogues within respectable parameters.

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naahh we can always talk about religions in a cycle

it makes sense that we talk about one religion at a time since this thread is  small

oohh.. there will be more religions? LoL! the only topics that normally comes in such threads is mostly Islam and then Judaism

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I understand the Muslim Religion is misunderstood and I am not gonna read all that stuff but just like Muslims don't want to be lump together with crazy terrorist  just like some of us American don't want to be lump together with Muslims misbelief about us being war crazy. How can you want others to come to religion with a open minded but you are closed minded to us.

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To be honest,Islams are really something. I understand that they're misunderstood but there are parts that are real. But I don't think that all their acts are just bad and harmful. Even though they're such fanatics of their religion,their denotation is admirable a lot of times.

A lot of other religions lost their adepts and credibility. Taking Orthodoxy as an example,it losses their adepts with each passing day. 

The reasons? Even our lovely priests don't give a sh*t about religion anymore and for them it's just another job. Also people started finding out what really hides behind all those clothes;pedophiles,drug dealers and what not.

 

I started feeling like we don't really need a religion,we just need to believe that there's someone there above who takes care of us all.

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To be honest,Islams are really something. I understand that they're misunderstood but there are parts that are real. But I don't think that all their acts are just bad and harmful. Even though they're such fanatics of their religion,their denotation is admirable a lot of times.

A lot of other religions lost their adepts and credibility. Taking Orthodoxy as an example,it losses their adepts with each passing day. 

The reasons? Even our lovely priests don't give a sh*t about religion anymore and for them it's just another job. Also people started finding out what really hides behind all those clothes;pedophiles,drug dealers and what not.

 

I started feeling like we don't really need a religion,we just need to believe that there's someone there above who takes care of us all.

Yeah but I'd rather have a priest that don't give a shit about a religion that some ignorant fanatic blowing up people left and right

Or stupid and harmful acts. And not necessarily directly harmful, just conveying a bad image of islam and muslims can make a lot of harm.

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I always hate it when ppl said islam is fanatics and all about the war.

im muslim by my self but those things really bugs me whenever ppl ask me if islam is really about war and bombing.

here, some genius answer from a germany scholar when he is being asked about muslim and terrorism :

 

He said :
 â–ºWho Started The First World War ? Muslims ??
â–ºWho Started The Second World War ? Muslims ??
â–ºWho Killed About 20 millions Of Aborigines In Australia ? Muslims ??
â–ºWho Sent The Nuclear Bombs Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki ? Muslims ??
â–ºWho Killed More Than 100 Millions Of Indians In North America ? Muslims ?
â–ºWho Killed More Than 50 Millions Of Indians In South America ? Muslims ??
â–ºWho took about 180 millions of african people as slaves and 88% of  them died and was thrown in Atlantic ocean?Muslims??

†NO, They weren’t Muslims!!! First Of All, You Have To Define Terrorism Properly….If A Non-Muslim Do Something Bad…….It Is Crime, But If A Muslim Commit Same……He Is Terrorist…. So First Remove This Double Standard….Then Come To The Point! “

its a double standard tbh.

 

im fine discussing about other religion tho i have friends who are hindu, buddha, protestant even atheis.

anyway, this is a nice thread but i dont really like to talk about religion here in this forum. 

 

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Richard-Dawkins-Quotes-1.jpg

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^ You bitch! / haha
 

I understand the Muslim Religion is misunderstood and I am not gonna read all that stuff but just like Muslims don't want to be lump together with crazy terrorist  just like some of us American don't want to be lump together with Muslims misbelief about us being war crazy. How can you want others to come to religion with a open minded but you are closed minded to us.

Generalization is indeed unpleasant, but like already stated, politics makes it more messy, and like mentioned in the other thread, Politics and Humans should be separated.

 

To be honest,Islams are really something. I understand that they're misunderstood but there are parts that are real. But I don't think that all their acts are just bad and harmful. Even though they're such fanatics of their religion,their denotation is admirable a lot of times.
A lot of other religions lost their adepts and credibility. Taking Orthodoxy as an example,it losses their adepts with each passing day.
The reasons? Even our lovely priests don't give a sh*t about religion anymore and for them it's just another job. Also people started finding out what really hides behind all those clothes;pedophiles,drug dealers and what not.

I started feeling like we don't really need a religion,we just need to believe that there's someone there above who takes care of us all.

The televised Islam is indeed something. Even I, who spent a small fraction of my life in Muslim-majority countries, get baffled by what I see, read and hear.
Did you read the opening post Mady? Do you believe what the media tells you? Have you ever took the time to read about Islam? Islam is not a fanatic religion.

I don't understand Orthodox religions. They teach religion as it is a way of living, but they have these unnecessary rules that do not bring individuals closer to God e.g. forbidden to use an escalator.

What I find tricky about religion, is seeing the religion itself.
I would like to belong to a religion but religious fanatics blur the true meaning.
We're often told that people are supposed to represent religion, but some don't, which goes to show how Humans can think and act by themselves. Their Brains are not integrated to a Religion. It's independent. In other words, they're unreliable to Religion, but I suppose that is why faith is a struggle that is known as life.
I tend to dislike it when people distort religion and force it upon others.
That is where credibility fades for me. I think religion can be beautiful, but it's people who tarnish it.

 

are you a muslim?

No

... and I agree with your comment about Islam being associated with Terrorism.

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The televised Islam is indeed something. Even I, who spent a small fraction of my life in Muslim-majority countries, get baffled by what I see, read and hear.

Did you read the opening post Mady? Do you believe what the media tells you? Have you ever took the time to read about Islam? Islam is not a fanatic religion.

 

I don't understand Orthodox religions. They teach religion as it is a way of living, but they have these unnecessary rules that do not bring individuals closer to God e.g. forbidden to use an escalator.

 

What I find tricky about religion, is seeing the religion itself.

I would like to belong to a religion but religious fanatics blur the true meaning.

We're often told that people are supposed to represent religion, but some don't, which goes to show how Humans can think and act by themselves. Their Brains are not integrated to a Religion. It's independent. In other words, they're unreliable to Religion, but I suppose that is why faith is a struggle that is known as life.

I tend to dislike it when people distort religion and force it upon others.

That is where credibility fades for me. I think religion can be beautiful, but it's people who tarnish it.

 

Yes I did. I don't believe what TV tells me but I've heard from people that live in Islam counties but aren't Islams that they are much more loyal/devoted to their religion than any other. I don't particularity read about Islam a lot but I'm interested in reading from time to time. 

I know that fanaticism is just a generalization and that they aren't that bad but everyone says so many stuff about this religion that it can't be all false. I just think they have some really harsh rules.

 

True,Orthodoxy can be rather cold when talking about our bond with God. 

I understand that God is Almighty and All-knowing and all that but I wish that religion would stop teaching us that we need to act how society expects us. 

it's a think i can't really explain and especially not in english but I think that our religion nowadays is too much based on what people think of you rather than what you really feel about God/Church and a lot do things just too meet those expectations or else they would be called names.

 

'I tend to dislike it when people distort religion and force it upon others.'

Couldn't have said better. The fact that they force their believes on others and that they think that their religion is superior and more accurate than others makes makes the whole thing a really hard thing to digest >.<

Our believes should bring people closer,no matter what they believe in but we're taught that if people really want Salvation they SHOULD believe in THIS religion because the others are all false

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