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2004-09-16 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by tipper 2004-09-16 11:07:04 AM|| || Front Page|| [11133 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Been visiting Sina's site for several months now. Although it doesn't present an alternative, it really is awesome. Especially great is his six or seven part trial of Mohammed. He just rips the Profit, may bees pee upon him, apart.

Posted by The Doctor 2004-09-16 11:17:47 AM|| 2004-09-16 11:17:47 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Another good site is www.prophetofdoom.net which goes though the Qur'an and other 'holy books'.

Posted by CrazyFool 2004-09-16 11:45:57 AM|| 2004-09-16 11:45:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 "Muslims are triumphalists and claim victory even when they are clearly defeated." True. Denial is a biggie in that religion.

I can't think of a more deserving subject for a 12-step program. It may be the ONLY thing the Chirac et al would be better at running in this war on terror.

Posted by jules 187 2004-09-16 11:57:33 AM|| 2004-09-16 11:57:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 "Muslims are triumphalists and claim victory even when they are clearly defeated."

I can think of one instance where Muslim terrorists WON'T claim victory even if they are clearly defeated.

When they are DEAD.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-09-16 1:29:03 PM|| 2004-09-16 1:29:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 Ifidels! Don't you understand moral victories? Like a tie? Going for two and losing? Playing out of your league? Playing with the big boys? Showing some spunk? Good hustle?

Posted by Little Mo Swimmin the Suez Canal 2004-09-16 2:27:39 PM|| 2004-09-16 2:27:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 this is bound to be an unpoluar opinion around here but I gotta say it.

I think this Ali Sina is another guy that goes way too far. He starts out making sense but then he tends to go off the deep end which I think does his better arguments a great disservice.

I am no fan of The Profit, may bees pee upon him (I like your phrase, Doc! Funny!) But Ali Sina is really unfair to him and the cult he started. I think that mohammed was a lot of bad things and i think he was a ruthless and bad man who was a gifted manipulator of people but to say that he was without emotions and empathy etc, in other words, to say that he was a total human monster is actually not born out by all the evidence.

Ali Sina talks about the big lie and he's is on the right track by suggesting that the big lie goes over better if its mixed with something that most people think is good like patriotism or religion. But it goes over much better if the person who passes on the big lie is convinced of it himself and it helps more if that person is convinced that they are doing the right thing and if they have a reputation for some generosity and goodness.

One doesn't have to be a full on raging psychopath without human feeling to start a thing like islam. It actually helps if the leader of that movement is a mixture of good and bad in just about equal parts.

There are many stories detailing how mohammed settled disputes or helped people etc. I think that these stories are probably based somewhat on turth. He, like many successful leaders was able turn on the charm and the goodwill when it was called for. In many ways, he was normal in that respect. Other peasant generals in history were also known to be the same way.

If mohammed were a pure psychopath islam then would be much worse than it is and probably would not have survived. I disagree with Sina's rather condescending assertion that most people are gullible and will do anything for a charismatic leader. I think that most people have a limit that a true psychopath would cross. True psychopaths are unable to succeed for more than a brief period of time before everything blows up on them. Their movements don't last because they cause more misery than even the most gullible people can stand in a very short period of time.

the secret to a cult like islam is that has enough good things about it to make it seem like it is worth all the suffering and horrible consequences that result from it. This is true for a lot of things, including other religions or all religions if you prefer. islam happens to differ from these only in the ratio of good to bad. islam is more bad than good and its believers put up with more misery than most for what little good they get out of it. Cultural conditioning and indoctrination is probably largely responsible for why they put up with more than the normal human misery. But there misery is still within the limits of what we humans can endure for what we think is a cause.

Posted by peggy 2004-09-16 3:02:08 PM|| 2004-09-16 3:02:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 I need to quickly add that I am not saying that mohammed was psychologically normal. He clearly wasn't. I don't disagree with Sina's premise that he was mentally ill, I just disagree on the degree of the mental illness.

Posted by peggy 2004-09-16 3:06:18 PM|| 2004-09-16 3:06:18 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 I disagree with Sina's rather condescending assertion that most people are gullible and will do anything for a charismatic leader. Two words: Hitler, Stalin. (Although they only lasted decades, not centuries.) It is within human capacity to blindly follow.

I agree with Sina to the extent that having a rigid, preloaded philosophy can make people blind to horrific acts going on around them.

I agree with you, Peggy, that there must have been something good in the faith at one time that made others adhere to it as a benevolent religion.

Posted by jules 187 2004-09-16 3:19:05 PM|| 2004-09-16 3:19:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Sina goes too far, you can not believe in God and still recognize religions who have been a postive factor in the evolution of their societies while Islam' role has been completely negative.

Greek religion was largely absent of fear and there was no mandatory enforcement of religious duties. This was a strong factor for Greece's political freedom (even the citizen of the most totalitarian Grek monarcy had a LOT more of it than your average Persian or Egyptian) and creativity in arts and sciences.

While Christianism has not been perfect in the area of religious freedom it ever allowed a freedom of didcussion and conscience unconceivable in Islam where Koran is told to have been written before world was created and not a sinfle letter being changed after that.

Finally let's take a look at Judaism versus Islam. Judaism sets rules of conduct whoi weere a factor in the success of Jews over their rivals (like the emphasis on quaranteening any cattle of person with a wound who looked funny and of destroying what he had touched) but also positive rules for making people and the Jewish society better: "Thou shall not kill", "Thou hall not lift false testimony" are part of the Ten Commandments ie the pillars of Jewish and Christian religions.

By contrast the so called five pillars of Islam don't deal at all with improving people or the society: you must decalre you follow Muhhamad's teachings, you must fast for Ramadan, you must turn five times day towards Mecca, you have to make pilgrimage so your heard earned bucks can go into the pockets of Meccans. The only half-moral requirement is, if you are rich enough, contribute 3% of your revenue to charities (note that the Gospel doesn't give an upper limit). That is all. You can kill, rape, steal you are still part of the Umma provided you observe those five requirements. You can be the better and most virtuous man in world, your chances of salvation are close to nil if you don't make the pilgrimage.

So, I disagree about the: all religions are equally bad.

Posted by JFM 2004-09-16 3:43:11 PM|| 2004-09-16 3:43:11 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 .com once wrote that Islam is Arab culture writ into law.

Posted by Seafarious 2004-09-16 3:46:08 PM|| 2004-09-16 3:46:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 I forgot that both in Greece/Rome and in Judaism/Chritianism the idea of separation between Church and state has ever been present to a degree unknown in Islam. The king was never the direct representative of God with the sole mission of enforcing its will on earth. Even in medieval Christianity or in times of the Monarchs by divine right they never had the same spiritual power and submission to religion than the Caliphs and Sultans. No Christian king, no Jewish king has been named 'the shadow of God on earth".

Posted by JFM 2004-09-16 3:50:59 PM|| 2004-09-16 3:50:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 JFM,

You have opened my eyes to something. And I thought I had all the angles. pssshaw!

Now that you mention it, I have to say that you are right on about the five pillars doing nothing to make the person who does them any better.

Tp put it another way, they are entirely geared towards appeasement of the diety.

muslims might not sacrifice their children or feed little wooden statues milk and produce but the concept is entirely the same. Ie "Do this stuff so the god won't be angry with you and punish you."

I also have a problem with sina's atheism and his belief that all religions are bad things but I believe he has said before that Christianity is not so bad compared to islam and his problems with it are more philosophical than anything. As a Christian that kind of attitude frustrates me that he sees a lot of good in my faith and yet doesn't believe, but what can I do about it anyway?

Everything else you said is something that I can easily agree on. There is only one correction that I would make.

The Emperor of the Byzantines was called things like "equal to the Apostles" and "God's Regent on Earth" but I believe this was a legacy more of Roman practice than of Christian practice. The Roman influence being the more aggressive, it was retained for a long time in the west's notions of kingship. But you are right that Christians were among the leading figures on the cutting edge in the struggle to separate church from state. This might surprise some people, but the separation can be mutually beneficial when kings try to dictate what the church believes and how they should practice. Many Christians throughout the ages used the teachings of Jesus to argue that the state had no business in church affairs and the church had no business in state affairs.

Posted by peggy 2004-09-16 5:12:53 PM|| 2004-09-16 5:12:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 jules,

I didn't mean to imply that people don't ever act like sheep. Its a strong tendency in humanity.

But by the time the Allies came for Hitler, there were no Germans willing to lay down their lives for him. He may have fooled them for a while but his destructive policies soon made them suffer to such a degree that they no longer supported him.

I am just not such a pessimist about the average person as Sina is. I think people tend to be a bit more sensible, if not always perfectly so, than he gives them credit for.

It is condescending to give little credit to the intelligence and common sense of the people. Someone who has that attitude is an elitist end of story. As I said some of his attitudes do his better arguments against islam a disservice.

Posted by peggy 2004-09-16 5:18:33 PM|| 2004-09-16 5:18:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Hmmm...I think I will need to look further at what Sina has written. I admit that my responses pertain only to this post, but what you write, peggy, looks like it is a reponse to something else he has written? Or maybe I misunderstand?

In my life, I have found when something really bad happens to a person or around a person, he can be hypersensitive or have overreactions to anything related to it thereafter. I think it's reasonable to assume that Sina has seen some horrible things happen in the name of his (former)religion-the same things we see happening in the name of Islam today. Maybe his heart has been touched and his soul horrified.

I have met a number of Muslims in my line of work. Of those, I have met only one who I would consider a moderate (not just tolerant of but actually gracious to people of other religions), a person whose obeyance to her God's commandments is expressed through kindness, generosity, humility, integrity, honesty; a person who regards living on this earth to be a gift from God; she is not biding her time here, gleefully waiting for a glorious apocalypse. I find it disturbing that, of all the Muslims I've met, only one treated others as worthy as she of God's love. Out of this large number, only one fits this profile of moderation. Maybe that is what Sina experienced, as well, and that leads to the pessimism you speak of.

Posted by jules 187 2004-09-16 5:50:44 PM|| 2004-09-16 5:50:44 PM|| Front Page Top

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