The agony of islam

In Islam, there is no such thing as ‘conversion’ to a ‘faith’. These are Christian concepts that can only be applied to Islam with barbaric imprecision. What exists is adhesion to a legal community, through a public declaration that is valid regardless of any inner ‘faith’ or ‘sincerity’. Therefore, the subsequent abjuration — if it happens — is not an ‘apostasy’ in the Christian sense (the abandonment of an inner belief), but an act of high treason, which is qualified by criminal law and must be punished with death.

As soon as confirmed by an Islamic authority, Mr. So-and-so, after joining Islam, abandoned it, not only the Islamic courts but all Muslim citizens in the world have not only the right, but the duty to kill him if they have the means to do so.

The superiority of a civilization is not measured by its material or even spiritual achievements, however admirable they may be, but by its capacity to absorb and integrate the worldviews and “points of view” of other civilizations without losing its unity and identity, strengthening them. The superiority of the West, in this respect, is not only evident, but overwhelming. Islam lost this capacity around the 14th century of our era, and today it has less capacity than ever. The helpless hatred that translates into sterile violence is the hallmark of a dying civilization, unable to renew itself through the achievements of its competitors. It would be enough for Islamic countries to absorb and integrate one Western creation — freedom of the press — in a few years its face would lose any recognizable Islamic trait. The “decay of the West” is nothing compared to the agony of Islam. In this, as in everything else, the image seen in the mainstream media and in the current opinions of the university class is a symmetric inversion of reality.

The West can study Islam in depth and with complete freedom, but Islam cannot study the West without filter and censorship, because if it does, it dies in two generations.

If you add up all the books published across the Islamic world over the course of a year, you can’t compete with New York City. Worse still is that you compare the number of pro-Islamic books published in the West with that of pro-Western books published throughout Islam. Islam owes the West even a good deal of its knowledge of itself. Read the biographies of Henry Corbin and Louis Massignon. Many traditional tariqas texts, which have been circulating privately for centuries, were published first in French and English and only later in their original languages. No one in Islam has written a history of Islamic philosophy comparable to that of Henry Corbin.

In the US, when a guy falls into diabolical possession, he cuts people into pieces. Many Muslims do the same thing, they say, without any help from the devil. A Muslim, when he becomes an extremist, hangs a bomb around his neck and goes to blow up a church. The Catholic, when he becomes an extremist, hangs a third on his neck and goes to pray in front of an abortion clinic.

A superior civilization is not one that is able to destroy its enemies, but one that is able to absorb and accommodate them as parts of it. Can you imagine Islamic civilization absorbing and accommodating Western science, Western technology, Western literature, Western art as the European barbarians absorbed the Greek and Asian legacy? Can you imagine Muslim boys reading Rabelais, Flaubert and Henry Miller in schools? Can you imagine multitudes of ladies of burqa enjoying Western figurative arts in a gallery, which their religion forbids? Do you imagine an Islamic government preserving the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals and the entire legacy of European religious art as valuable civilizational heritage? These things will never happen. Do you imagine Muslim governments publishing and disseminating the great works of Christian mysticism as Europe publishes and disseminates those of Islamic mysticism?

Islam can only grow by destroying, suppressing and prohibiting, as it has always done.

And don’t tell me about the beauties of Islamic philosophy, Islamic mystique, etc. These things are admirable and existed, but banned from public life and only worshiped in closed circles, almost always viewed with suspicion by the authorities (read Al-Ghazali). Islamic civilization does not absorb even what it produces best. The Islamization of Europe will be the biggest suppression of civilizational values ​​that has ever been seen in the world.

A careful reading shows that the Koran affirms the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ instead of denying it as so many Muslims proclaim. There is no escape. What is the Koran according to itself? It is “Kalimatullah”, the Word of God. What is Jesus according to the Koran? “Kalimatullah”, the Word of God. If the Word of God is not God, what is it? A created thing? Impossible. By definition, and the Koran itself states, the Word of God is eternal, it is the creative Word. Jesus is Eternal, he is the creative Word.

Even vulgar Islam admits neither free will, nor divine affiliation of Jesus Christ, nor the death of Him on Calvary, but in esoteric Islam (the tariqas) any of these three things can be perfectly accepted without contradiction with the official orthodontics. This is so because Islam does not understand itself as a “way of salvation”, like Christianity, but as a “sacred society”, a kind of divine Civil and Penal Code (“din”), which regulates only external conduct of people and not the intimacy of their souls (which for Christianity is everything). The inner life of souls is the subject of “tariqat” (“the way”), which largely escapes the control of the “law” (shariah). From the perspective of tariqat, all Christian dogmas can be accepted as true, because they concern the salvation of individual souls and not the regulation of social life.

Did Our Lord Jesus Christ take any action that could be considered criminal, immoral or inhumane by today’s criteria, and that has to be justified retroactively by the “cultural standards of the time”?

Now ask the same question about the founder of Islam.

Bruno.

This is an atheist forum. What are you expecting for presenting an old post like this “Jesus vs Mohammed, whose more holier?” for atheists to discuss. You need first to establish that Jesus actually existed. Atheists rather think he didn’t and I know some very cynical ones who even question whether Mohammed did.

Why do you persist in cutting and pasting old posts from such sites as latin-society.medium.com*, western-fury.medium.com*, and thephilosophyforum.com*. People on another site, also commented on your impenetrable “walls of text”. They read like articles rather than debate forum entries. In little over a week you have posted five lengthy complex articles in quick succession and not engaged in any meaningful exchange or answered the many questions they have raised. Without a reasonable amount of involvement I would guess you are just preaching or reliving old glories.
May I suggest you limit your output and focus on discussion? Otherwise I would second the advice given by someone on the Philosophy Forum who judged you were not a philosopher and that you would be better off posting your ranting preachings on a theology site.

Boa Sorte.

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We’ve had many Christians that visit here do just that: trying to rationalize the mythological actions of this Jesus guy with something akin to cultural relativism; all the while complaining that atheist have a subjective morality. Go figure.

@campello

You are quite possibly one of the most ignorant bigots we’ve seen on here.

Your ability to espouse errant nonsense with sweeping ignorant and facile generalisations is beyond tedious, and FYI your chosen archaic superstition is as vapid and unevidenced as all the rest. As your own posts have amply demonstrated.

Yours, not mine, since I don’t adhere to your ludicrous superstition.

Simple! His brain :brain: doesn’t work. He can’t think for him/herself :crazy_face:

Well…since there is some “fear” of a NWO or “Big Brother” (some of which is valid); and there are many a Christian in a spiritual war against “globalists (a Satanic cabal???)” HOW ABOUT GOOD OLD FASHION THOUGHT CRIME???

Jesus: Matt 5:21,22

English Standard Version
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

27-28. “ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.“

… so good ole’Jesus (the same as Jehovah or a separate being??? -doesn’t matter) STILL judges by the mere act of thinking, one may violate a commandment, Thou shalt not covet

Lol :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: a worst nightmare “government” EXCEPT the punishment is eternal hellfire …

It’s some of those things in the gospels which convinced me the the writers of the gospels were not only not Jews but knew little if anything about Mosaic Law and Jewish customs.

A paradox which I raised at my Catholic boys school when I was about 16:

We were taught Jesus was both god and man. BUT if he is man, he is capable of sin ,by definition. If he is god, he is perfect and incapable of sin, again by definition. I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways.

It’s one of those questions experts in biblical hermeneutics live for.

Another is the special pleading when believers claim everything must have a cause. Ok, fine. Then who caused/created god? The answer is always; nobody, god has always existed. That makes god the exception of an absolute rule. That’s called sophistry, and not even very good sophistry at that.

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Campello,
Both Jesus and Mohammed demanded absolute obedience from their followers on pain of death.

Jesus also broke bad on the merchants and moneychangers in the Temple and in the Book of Revelation, Jesus is coming back to destroy the Earth in fire, just as his Sky-Daddy JHVH-1 once destroyed the Earth with flood.

Oh, and in Islamic Escatology, Jesus and Mohammed and (according to Shia,) The Twelveth Mahdi, will be destroying the Earth.

While Mohammed may have personally brutalized more than Jesus, both of their followers were and are equally violent in different ways, and both Prophet and Messiah are saving the worst for last.

Campello, I gotta say, you and your fellow believers are just gluttons for punishment.

Whitefire13,

According to George Orwell’s biographer Bernard Crick, Orwell was also an Unbeliever and had The Abrahamic God in mind when creating his Omnipresent, Omniscient dictator Big Brother.

Boomer47,

Very wise words on Jesus. I’ve had the thought that if Jesus was really God Incarnate, doesn’t that mean he was talking to himself on the cross when he said: “My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” and “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit?” Hmmm… :thinking:

According to the bible he created the notion of torturing people forever after they died, with no hope of reprieve, and just for not sharing a belief in an abhorrent archaic superstition.

He also beat money lenders going about a legitimate business of course.

Encouraged people to have no thought for their futures, abandon their families with no thought for the consequences, and that’s just off the top of my head from memory.

The of course I can’t be reasonably certain that Jesus even existed as an historical figure.

That is the issue with which thinking Christians struggle and non christians(such as Jews and Muslims) reject outright; The triune god, great paradox of the trinity. Each simply is .putting aside the simple fact that this concept is not found in Judaism. I’ve never been able to get my head around it, even as a devout catholic.

There were three answers I received on asking difficult theological questions:

Dad: “Shut up” he would explain.

One of the brothers at school ;“Oh, that’s a mystery of faith, we just believe it”

ON mandatory retreat at a local monastery, with the rest of my year eleven class:

Ask one of the priests, trained in theology and apologetics. He replied; “'The library is just down the hall. Go and read some Aquinas”

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In the fourth century, the church came up with a mission statement. It’s called The Nicene Creed and and still supposed to be believed by all catholics. There have been revisions .Below is the current Catholic text. These is also an ecumenical version. You might notice that the trinity isn’t explained all that well. I’ve always thought it’s deliberately obtuse to stop people from asking embarrassing questions. The king has no clothes kind of thing.:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.[1]

The Roman Empire is recorded as having assimilated many other cultures and religions, maintaining its own distinctive identity. Rebellions and mutinies were brutally put down, but the Pax Romana enabled a wide ranging stability essential for social cohesion.
Effective empire builders up to that time had long learned the advantages of toleration. Forces at work seeking disruption were common enough without provoking unnecessary outbreaks through costly administrative intolerance. Weakness in Roman administration became obvious when natural calamities and terrible losses on the battlefield seem to demand appeasement of the Roman gods for perceived lack of respect and worship. Scapegoats were sought, general pogroms were ordered, and it was not only the two Abrahamic faiths that suffered and in this way the stability of the Empire was largely maintained.

However by the time Constantine took power the Christians had only endured intermittent empire-sanctioned persecution for no more than 20 to 30 out of 300 years. The defiant Jews were squashed and dispersed. The more compliant Christians, did little else but move to fill the void of Jewish influence.

When the Edict of Milan prompted the ascendency of Christian social and political power, the notion of tolerance and accommodation were completely ignored. Pagan temples and academies and libraries all over the Mediterranean and Europe were either destroyed or recommissioned as churches. Pagan priests and their faithful followers were murdered in their thousands by mobs, like the zealous parabalani, infamous for their murder of Hypatia and the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

Conversion by the Holy Spirit was subverted by conversion by violence, club and torch. Baptism was enforced, not inspired. Thousand of years of Greek and Roman culture were outlawed, artworks, books and libraries sacked and destroyed, all sanctioned by state legislation and church proclamation. Necessary, “merciful savagery” as Saint Augustine tried to justify it. Within 200 years every conceivable aspect of life that did not reflect Christian sentiment was outlawed and punishable by death. It came to a climax under Emperor Justinian, whose laws demanded everyone in the empire had to be Christian; even mere pagan thought was legislated against; the first recorded actual legislation against thought crimes.

The absolute power of the Catholic Church continued for almost 1500 years. In the 12th century, in an unusual and short-lived moment of toleration, in Seville, Spain, the Muslims re-introduced the West to the long lost works of Aristotle for translation into Latin. Aristotle’s empirical musings and observations eventually undermined the Platonic Christian faith and helped lead to the rise of the Age of Reason and Science.

Today the sundered Christian churches, much weakened by humanist aspirations and achievements, still represent the worst of parochialism and hypocrisy, while the fundamentalist Muslim faith has taken the lead as the religion of intolerance.
Science is now the leading example of toleration and understanding, unrestrained by dogma and unevidenced faith.
Science comprises a truly international community and a global enterprise with specific practical goals, unmatched by any past theocratic authority. Its purposes and hopes are aimed at the universal improvement of lives and health for people on all levels without discrimination and as a uniquely human endeavour is clearly far more superior than any theocratic civilisation can ever hope to be.

You really need to abandon your meaningless fundamentalist religious squabbles which are all, unnecessary, unproductive and ultimately useless. Move out from under the shadow of the Medieval, give up the divisiveness of your bigoted dogma and engage in more constructive inclusive thoughts and activities.

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Boomer47,

You might be amused to note that “‘Shut up,’ he explained” was a quote from American writer Ring Lardner. Your experience with your Dad is evidently a common one. :grin:

Whenever I hear talk of the Trinity, I’m reminded of radio comedian and prankster Phil Hendrie. One of the cast of crazy characters that Hendrie trolls his audience with is Pastor William Rennick. A lady calls up Rennick and says: " My God is three in one…"

Pastor Rennick replies: “Three in one??? Lady, you have serious confessing to do!” :rofl:

My locality has a Catholic radio station that is basically a satellite feed of the EWTN international Catholic Shortwave broadcast. I’ll tune in sometimes to hear both the Nicean Creed and The Rosary with the Paternoster and the Four Mysteries.

It doesn’t translate into rational thought when I hear it any more than when I read it. :grin:

Another bit of biblical horror and nonsense to think about during the Holidays: Mary was an unwed teenage girl who wasn’t given a choice to consent to be impregnated by God and The Holy Ghost.

Basically, she was, by most modern Western legal standards, statutorily raped, not to mention literally, physically raped, by God and The Holy Ghost.

Also, Joseph, by marrying Mary and raising Jesus, was basically a cuckold.

Is this what we’re supposed to celebrate at Christmastime??? :confused:

See??? Women are just baby making factories :factory: (:laughing:)

But they’re so good at it.

That’s the exit over there, yeah?

Yes I know, I pinched it because it’s so apt. As a teen I was also very fond of O’ Henry.

In reality Mary would probably have been stoned for adultery OR if her betrothed was in a generous mood, made to abort the child of another man. (Christians tend to ignore the biblical teachings on abortion)

Well, I celebrate spending time with family and an excellent lunch. My turn to buy and cook the turkey.

As a child, we all went to midnight mass on Xmas Eve. That chore completed, we were free to focus on the real purpose of Xmas; lots of presents and a food coma after lunch.

Like many other things,. Christians lifted December 25 from Deus Sol Invictus, a Roman sun god. It marks the Winter Solstice.

IN Australia our seasons are the opposite to the Northern Hemisphere . Here Xmas is in summer. It often reaches 35 C (90F) or above. Hence, the belated move to the cold Xmas lunch.

Here in very secular Oz, Xmas marks the beginning of a week off work for many thousands, ending with New Year’s Day. Many smaller businesses simply shut down for a week.

It should be noted that our Xmas break is in addition to the 4weeks annual vacation, which is generally set at a legal minimum of 4 weeks.

We also have several Monday public holidays during the year.—New Zealand is called the land of the long white cloud. Australia is called the land of the long weekend.

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Boomer47,

In reality Mary would probably have been stoned for adultery OR if her betrothed was in a generous mood, made to abort the child of another man. (Christians tend to ignore the biblical teachings on abortion)

You’re right. The fetus was euphemistically called a “thigh.” Whether read literally or as a Hebrew euphemism, the idea of embibing special tainted water to rot off a thigh is a gross thought.

I looked up the list of Winter Holidays celebrated from November to January and it is quite an assortment. I knew about Winter Solstice, Sol Invictus, Saturnalia, Yule, Channukah, Diwali, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, the Feast of St. Steven, and Epiphany, but I didn’t know there was also a Humanist Winter Holiday HumanLight, as well as Winter Holidays in Sci-Fi /Fantasy book and movie series’ and in video game realms. Wookies even have their own celebration! :grin:

List of Multinational Festivals and Holidays–Wikipedia

It sounds like Aussies have a uniquely fun time at Christmas. I only recall one Christmas where it was warm enough to wear shorts. Must be nice to play with aquatic gifts on the beach.:palm_tree::christmas_tree::man_swimming: