Zuruck wrote:How about... we try to understand exactly what causes them to hate us so incredibly much
Lothar, on the [url=http://forums.warpcore.org/Forum1/HTML/000849.html]IDL forum[/url] on September 18, 2001 wrote:The reason we are hated in that part of the world is because of ISRAEL.
... [also]
It is because of our morality. Islamic code is very legalistic (by this I mean, it's very much by-the-book and by-the-letter.) It is very specific about clothing women in certain ways, oppressing them in certain ways, praying in certain ways, and so forth. American culture is not just different from that, but in may ways, absolutely counter to that.
Not my best piece of writing ever, but I think I pretty well nailed it. (Read it in context -- there's a lot of clarification that goes on in the next few posts.)
dissent wrote:The problem I see with the heirarchical structure, or lack thereof, within Islam is that some schools of religious thought condone and support this kind of behavior whereas others do not, and there does not seems to be any kind of concensus for Muslims on a 'standard' interpretation of their scriptures.
In Christianity, there really isn't an overarching heirarchy to speak of (outside of the Catholics, anyway.) There are influential figures like the Pope, James Dobson, and various leaders of individual denominations, but most of Christian theology is set through debate among theologians. Different interpretations sort of compete in the free market of ideas -- and if individuals buy into what one denomination or another says, that denomination gets more members. Over thousands of years of debate, it's pretty well settled what theological views are reasonable vs. which are total crap. There's still discussion about which view (among the set of reasonable views) is right on some issues, but the most wacky ideas have pretty much been filtered out because individuals have rejected them.
With Islam, there seems to be a lot more structure. There are individual sects, but clerics within each sect have a lot more power over their groups than most Christian leaders (not counting the Pope). They have the power to tell people what to believe, and furthermore, in many cases they have the power to enforce it through the government or intimidation. If a sect endorses violence, and also has control of a government and influence over a lot of people, they're going to cause major problems.
Now, I think another major issue is that Islam is both a religion and a political philosophy. This makes it much more like (ancient) Judaism than Christianity. Ancient Jewish scriptures (the Old Testament) set up a government system, and the religion was strongly tied to that government system for as long as the government survived. Furthermore, the Jewish government system was a pretty reasonable and nonviolent one that treated every Jew (male, female, young, old, etc.) as a human being. Christian scriptures (the New Testament) don't set up any government system. Rather, they tell people to live righteously in whatever situation they're in. Again, it's a nonviolent system that treats everyone as human (even non-Christians.) Islam, on the other hand, describes everything in life in detail -- it tells you how to wipe your butt, how to prepare your food, and how to set up the government. Rather unfortunately, it's tied to a 7th century philosophy of government, which is rooted in conquest of other nations, subjugation of women, etc.
Understanding this, it's pretty obvious why at least some sects of Islam continue to engage in violence against women (as well as in violence against the US.) Extremist Christians can pretty well be smacked down using their own scriptures ("love your enemies", etc.) and rendered powerless, while extremist Muslims are harder for the non-extremists to deal with and they hold a decent amount of power. It's hard to stop people from acting like it's the 7th century when they can make their own scriptures justify it...
