Quote:
Originally Posted by lionrock
Thanks for an informed and civil discussion. I don't know any Muslims personally, and don't care for the sensational fear mongering. I am interested in potential cultural conflict based on beliefs. I think women should be free to wear the hijab wherever they want in America. I can think of few exceptions (in hospitals where infection may be an issue, or if someone were a paid entertainer like the recent case at Disney). I started looking at websites about Islam and found two concepts about Islam that precipitated the thoughts of integration in my head.
1) Al-taqiyya- as I understand it (as a non-Muslim outsider) is a concept that allows Muslims to lie to non believers. In fact some places showed that this was a "good" deed.
2) Death sentence to heretics and former Muslims. This comes up again and again on websites. If you were once Muslim and change your mind, you are sentenced to death.
3) Images of the prophet or criticizing the religion being the cause for death threats.
These three concepts which I kept finding again and again on websites both anti-Islam and even websites that try to explain Islam in positive light are what caused me to start this discussion in hopes for a calm explanation for an individual instead of a group. Dlish can you shed some light here?
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Reading the few passages in Islamic texts that these reference and assuming that their religion is incompatible with any other way of life is as fair as taking a few passages from the Old Testament and claiming that Christianity is all about stoning people. The bits that Islamophobes cite are from documents written during the Crusades and other parts of history when Islam itself was under attack and it was a matter of kill or be killed.
There's a lot of fucked up shit in almost every religion's holy texts and it's easy to cherry pick passages that reinforce the fear that drives opposition to that religion. I'm no fan of any religion, but a hateful caricature of Islam in the western world is under attack much like the evil specter of Communism was in the McCarthy days and there's significantly less potential for harm in this case.