i think you need to compare the worst with the worst. I watched a video recently about muslims in africa who nailed a little boy to a tree for sneaking into a church. They gang raped a little girl to death for some other minor sin like mispronoucing a Islamic word. Compare that to the worst case of apostate shunning in the Org and I think you'll get a more realistic picture.
Islam More Lenient on Apostates than the WTBTS!
by 00DAD 47 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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BluesBrother
Why is the title of this thread a surprise? .....MAINSTREAM Islam is pretty relaxed (at least around here) the Muslims that I worked with were far more tolerant and understanding than your typical dub would be...
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dgp
00DAD,
You wrote that
Harris Zafar, national spokesperson of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, does not mince words on the subject, stating in a Huffington Post opinion piece that "Islam prescribes absolutely no punishment for apostasy."
English being my second language, I am not sure if there are any nuances to the expression "mincing one's words". I would take this to mean speaking clearly, honestly, boldly and in an upfront way. I think you are giving Mr Zafar more credit than he deserves. As a head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, I would assume Mr Zafar is an informed man. If he is, then he was lying, and he knew.
Mr Zafar spoke about "apostasy". That is to say, about those who leave the faith. He didn't make any reference to "blasphemy". Because it is blasphemy that Rushdie was charged with. Let us read what the Wikipedia says about this matter. This is Khomeini's fatwa:
In the name of God the Almighty. We belong to God and to Him we shall return. I would like to inform all intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an, and those publishers who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, where they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctity. Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a martyr, God-willing.
Mr Khomeini did not "mince his words". He imposed a death sentence not just on Rushdie, but also on those who published the book. Whether the publishers are Muslims or not is irrelevant. Islam is a religion where clerics issue death sentences even against unbelievers. And why shouldn't it be so? The Koran itself instructs to "Slay all unbelievers wherever ye find them".
According to the website No God But Allah, with which I am not familiar, but seems to be a website that cannot be accused of being anti-muslim,
"To kill the Unbelievers is applicable only during the time of battle; and even then Muslims are urged to take prisoners and to set them free–(Qur’an 47:4); and more importantly, to make peace with the enemies when they desire peace: “And if they incline to peace, incline thou also to it”–(Qur’an 8:61). In fact, Muslims are required to make peace even in the face of possible deception by the enemy–(Qur’an 8:62). Thus, to “slay the unbelievers wheresoever ye find them,” refers only to those who fight against the Muslims–(Qur’an 2:191). Even today we have nations flying thousands of miles to another country in pursuit of their enemies. And Mohammad was no occupier, no oppressor, no usurper, no exploiter; no transgressor; and those who were dedicated to annihilate him were on his own soil.
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That Muslims are urged to fight the Unbelievers until they say none has the right to be worshipped but Allah does not mean that the Unbelievers must accept that Allah is the only One that has to be worshipped. All it means is that just as how they (the unbelievers) have the right to their belief, they must also accept that the Muslims have the right to practice their belief that ‘none has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’
It would a most glaring contradiction for Allah to instruct Muslims to kill all Unbelievers and yet tell us to not revile their gods–(Qur’an 6:108); that Mohammad’s duty was only to deliver the Qur’anic Message not enforce it–(3:20; 5:95, 102; 16:82; 24:54; 29:18; 46:35; 64:12); to invite people to Allah through wisdom and best arguments–(16:125); and that there is no compulsion in religion–(2:256; 6:107; 9:6; 10:99-100; 17:7; 18:6, 29; 42:15; 50:45; 76:3; 109:1-6). “We have truly shown him (man) the way; he may be thankful or unthankful (or he may accept or reject). It is only ignorance or bigotry to claim that Islam forces religion at the point of the sword or to kill all Disbelievers. To propagate Islam with the sword or to kill all Disbelievers is no where mentioned in the Qur’an. For: “The truth is from your Lord, so let him who please believe, and let him who please disbelieve”–(18:29).
When, exactly, do Muslims feel they are "at battle"? September 11, for example? Where they at battle with America, or where they at battle with the foreign-born people of so many nationalities that got killed there?And since when is it right to kill in the name of your God?
Check the website: http://nogodbutallah.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=684:a-god-who-hates-wafa-sultan-3&catid=4:content&Itemid=6
An uninformed person could claim that the fatwa was not executed (nice word). Well, again, according to the Wikipedia again,
In the mean time there were several attacks on those involved in the publishing of the book and who "were aware" of its "contents." Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the book The Satanic Verses, was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991. Two other translators of the book survived attempted assassinations.[27] Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month as his Japanese counterpart. Aziz Nesin, the Turkish language translator, was the intended target in the events that led to the Sivas massacre in July 1993, which resulted in the deaths of 37 people. William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo in October 1993.According to the Wikipedia, Salman Rushdie apologized, on advice from Ali Khamenei, and this was the answer
The imperialist foreign media falsely alleged that the officials of the Islamic Republic have said the sentence of death on the author of The Satanic Verses will be retracted if he repents. Imam Khomeini has said:
This is denied 100%. Even if Salman Rushdie repents and become the most pious man of all time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has got, his life and wealth, to send him to Hell.
The Imam added:
If a non-Muslim becomes aware of Rushdie's whereabouts and has the ability to execute him quicker than Muslims, it is incumbent on Muslims to pay a reward or a fee in return for this action.[30]
Author and scholar on Islam, Anthony McRoy said that Khomeini's interpretation of the Islamic law that led him to refuse the apology follows the same line of reasoning as the eighth- and ninth-century Muslim jurist Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i. In Al-Risala (Maliki Manual) 37.19 Crimes Against Islam, Shafi`i ruled that an "apostate is also killed unless he repents... Whoever abuses the Messenger of God … is to be executed, and his repentance is not accepted."[15]
Now let's look at another case. According to Ibn Warraq's "What the Koran really says",
"The plight of Nasr Abu Zaid, an unassuming Egyptian professor or Arabic who sits on the encyclopaedia's advisory board (reference is here made to The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an) illustrates the difficulties facing Muslim scholars trying to reinterpret their tradition.
"The Koran is a text, a literary text, and the only way to understand, explain and analyze it is through a literary approach", Abu Zaid says. "This is an essential theological issue". For expressing views like this in print - in essence, for challenging the idea that the Koran must be read as the absolute and unchanging word of God- Abu Zaid was in 1995 officially branded an apostate, a ruling that in 1996 was upheld by Egypt's highest court. The court then proceeded, on the grounds of an Islamic law forbidding the marriage of an apostate to a Muslim, to order Abu Zaid to divorce his wife, Ibtihal Yunis (a ruling that the shocked and happily married Yunis described at the time as coming "like a blow to the head with a brick").
Abu Zaid steadfastly maintains that he is a pious Muslim, but contends that the Koran's manifest content -for example, the often archaic laws about the treatment of women for which Islam is infamous- is much less important than its complex, regenerative, and spiritually nourishing latent content. The orthodox Islamic view, Abu Zaid claims, is stultifying; it reduces a divine, eternal and dynamic text to a fixed human interpretation with no more life and meaning than "a trinket... a talisman... or an ornament".
For a while Abu Zaid remained in Egypt and sought to refute the charges of apostasy, but in the face of death threats and relentless public harassment he fled with his wife from Cairo to Holland, calling the whole affair "a macabre farce". Sheick Youssef al-Badri, the cleric whose preachings inspired much of the opposition to Abu Zaid, was exultant. "We are not terrorists; we have not used bullets or machine guns, but we have stopped an enemy of Islam from poking fun at our religion... No one will even dare to think about harming Islam again"."Absolutely no punishment for apostasy"
00DAD, you also said
"That being said, there are of course still many hard-core "True Believer" muslims that see things differently than Mr. Zafar, as the particular issue that prompted the CNN article make obvious."
I just thought it was interesting that even among muslims, there are some that are more open-minded and less fanatical. Among active JWs there is NO room for a difference of opinion, none. You can't even discuss having a discussion about doctrines. The GB simply will not allow it.
I would like to emphasize that I am no Watchtower apologist. It would not even suit me to do it, because I am what they would call a worldly. I speculate that the most religious witnesses would not behave very differently from Muslims if they held a similar power. There is even a famous quote about not being able to kill apostates because witnesses live in a secular world. But, whether for external pressure or for internal decision, the Watchtower does not go to the extreme of issuing physical death sentences on someone like me, for example. I have done and said many a thing that the Watchtower would find grossly insulting and disrespectful (and true, if they were honest), and, to my knowledge, there is no Watchtower fatwa on me.
I have also met Muslims and they do treat you nicely and they do mingle with you in a way that Jehovah's witnesses don't. And some are much less fanatical than others, yes. I have no question that many of them are nice and decent and kind people. When I met a very likable girl of Palestinian descent, however, I could but notice that she never left her home, and my friends and I agreed that it would be insane to even entertain thoughts about that girl "considering her seven brothers". I have run into Iranian-born women and you can admire their beauty, but from a distance; you can never be as stupid as to court them. And I can but wonder how come these very people do not revolt against things such as the morality police in Iran, or madrassas in Pakistan, or the rulers of Saudi Arabia. And I wonder how it is that these nice people are involved in so many so-called "honor killings" throughout Europe.
I believe that many of them are hostages to the same kind of mindset as many a religious fanatic of a different persuasion. And then, every religion has fanatics. Only those fanatics hold real power in their countries, and they enforce it. And they also enforce such things when there is a sizable number of them in a single country. -
glenster
Regarding "mainstream" Islam:
The vast majority, 80-90%, of Muslims are Sunni--Orthodox, with various
estimates showing that 10 – 13% to 10 – 20% are Shia--conservative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunniA small percent are liberal, such as Qur'an Alone Muslims who reject the
hadiths considered essential by Sunni and Shia Muslims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_movements_within_Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qur%27an_Alonehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy#Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takfir
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Persecution_of_Ex-Muslims#Pakistan
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2402
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Islamic_countriesControversial Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq
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00DAD
dgp wrote,
00DAD,
You wrote that
Harris Zafar, national spokesperson ...
dgp, I most emphatically did NOT write that. Rather I quoted a CNN article in which Mr. Zafar said that! Please refer to my original post and READ THE WHOLE THING! I realize that English is your second language and understand the challenges that go along with that. My wife is Hungarian and trying to teach me that difficult language. Nevertheless, please don't make the mistake of attributing the opinions of others which are clearly quoted with my own opinion.
Yes, I know. There are a lot of bad, evil, vindictive people that are Islamic religious zealots. Thank you for "instructing" me in what I already know. That was the point of my post.
My post was/is about JWs, not Islam. The irony is that Islam, while not being homogenous, is generally thought of as being among the more extreme and punitive religions when it comes to issues of tolerance, conversion and apostasy. That was why the statement by Mr. Zafar was so striking. It shows the contrast of viewpoints among muslims, something NOT possible among JWs.
BTW, and as you speculated in your last post, I too am sure some of the more "True Believer" type JWs wish they could stone apostates to death. There are plenty of them that would make sharia look like a kinder, gentler form of worship.
Cheers,
Daniel
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dgp
00DAN:
All right, you didn't "write" what Zafar said. You just quoted it as part of your essential point, as stated by the title you chose for this thread, namely
Islam More Lenient on Apostates than the WTBTS!
Does your quoting it, not writing it, means that you don't agree with it? No. You did write this in the post above:
That was why the statement by Mr. Zafar was so striking. It shows the contrast of viewpoints among muslims, something NOT possible among JWs.
The use of the exclamation mark in the title that you chose for this thread denotes surprise. That is to say, you are aware that Islam is intolerant in the extreme, and the point you are trying to make is that the Watchtower is even more intolerant than Muslims.
I am fully aware that there is a witness out there that would gladly stone apostates to death, or the like. But, in the world as it is now, you don't see any Overseer ordering the death of a translator because he dared translate what a supposed apostate said. Or the death of a filmmaker because he dared make a movie with an apostate. So I beg to disagree with you, on the basis of what I have learned about Islam.
By the way, if Mr Zafar made such a statement, then apparently he is a very uninformed man, or a liar. In my humble opinion, his being uninformed would not suit the position he occupies. How he can say that "Islam prescribes absolutely no punishment for apostasy" is beyond my understanding. I assume he would not lie, however dear his religion were to him, if he had evidence that apostates are indeed severely punished in Islam. What's more, even unbelievers are punished -Theo van Gogh comes immediately to my mind- if they dare speak against Islam.
I trust you will examine the evidence, 00Dan.
Again, this is not a defense of the Watchtower. I would never do such a thing. It is just that, in my opinion, it is extremely intolerant, only not as intolerant as Islam. Maybe it is because the Watchtower has to coexist with secular authorities, and with far larger groups of other religious people. Maybe it is because only secular ideas allowed for groups such as the Watchtower to exist in the first place, or to survive persecution. I would like to see what would happen if the Watchtower tried to sentence someone to stoning. In the balance of power as it is now, the Watchtower wouldn't win, and they know. But, what happens in Britain, with their Sharia courts? Would Muslims "win" there? No, but they bully the English to get what they want. What happens all over Europe with the so-called "honor killings"?
Sometimes it's best to admit that one's point was wrong, and leave it at that. I suggest you do that.
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00DAD
dgp: First of all, it's 00DAD, not 00DAN.
Second of all, OMG, what is your reason for wanting to make this an argument when none exists?
You've misquoted, misrepresented and misunderstood just about everything I was going after in creating this thread. Every time I respond to you explaining that this is about JWs NOT Islam you give me a lesson in the worst examples of Islamic extremists applying sharia law. Dude, I get it. I got it before you ever posted. Perhaps it is because English is your second language you miss the subtlety of the sarcasm in my ironic style of posting. But it's a common thing in American editorializing. For that I can forgive you. But don't jump in when you don't understand and try and correct me when I'm not wrong.
I will however concede one point to you regarding my "use of the exclamation mark in the title". In fact, I already conceded that point five days ago on the 8th of October. If you'd closely followed this thread before you decided to "correct me" you would already know that I responded to JT regarding that point saying, "I suppose in retrospect, I should have ended the title with a question mark instead: Islam More Lenient on Apostates than the WTBTS? Please accept my humble apologies."
There is one thing I do agree with you, "Sometimes it's best to admit that one's point was wrong, and leave it at that. I suggest you do that."
Cheers,
00DAD
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dgp
I understand this is about JWs. I disagree with your idea that the Watchtower is worse than Islam. The evidence of Islam's misdeeds is there to help you see that point.
Ok, now accuse me of misquoting you again:
BTW, and as you speculated in your last post, I too am sure some of the more "True Believer" type JWs wish they could stone apostates to death. There are plenty of them that would make sharia look like a kinder, gentler form of worship.
Please let me know how this goes with
"I suppose in retrospect, I should have ended the title with a question mark instead: Islam More Lenient on Apostates than the WTBTS? Please accept my humble apologies."
Anyone misquoting you?
In my humble opinion, the answer to your question above is no. Not that anyone should take this to mean that the Watchtower isn't evil enough.
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00DAD
dgp: wow, you're a real piece of work.
I NEVER said the " the Watchtower is worse than Islam ". You pal, are out of your mind.
I recommend this thread to you:
have the last word.................
Go annoy someone else. We're done,
Peace
Daniel
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dgp
I sure am a piece of work. But I don't want to have the last word. Would you please reconcile your two statements above?