Religion

Do better pls.

Holla Forums hates muslims retard

Similarly, both programs killed millions of white gentiles in their quest for "purification"

edgy. they didn't happen to be protestants did they?

Go back to Religious Studies 101 pls.

I'm pretty sure we're being not-so-subtly raided by Holla Forums right now.

On a related note, isn't it funny how Holla Forums seems to care more about the Frankfurt School than actual Marxists do?

The only people I've ever met either online or IRL who find Frankfurt School more thant mildly interesting are hipsters and Holla Forums tards

Adorno is worth reading and thinking about but you can kind of take or leave Frankfurt School in general imo

I rather enjoyed Negative Dialectics. Huge redpill for me.

correct

Because faith is a terrible principle.

Well, you have faith in the materialist dialectic, do you?

No. I have reasons to believe in it and I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

For what it's worth, I base some of my views upon faith, though I do not assume that everyone must share the same view, nor that I have any duty to "save" people.

I don't think there's anything wrong with faith as a reason to hold certain opinions or views; just as I don't think there's anything wrong with being a materialist, nihilist, reductionist etc.

Whether my beliefs are compatible with socialism is a different matter, which I haven't thought about much.

Even if you discount all the regressive stuff like slavery, concubines, dhimmitude, jizya, dhimmi property rights et al, there is next to no basis for saying Islam has any socialist tendencies, if you're referring to the obligations of charity, that's not socialist, it's a bourgeoisie penance to absolve one's self of guilt and responsibility of taking part in a system that exploits.

Any religions is socialist if Islam can be, it's such a vacuous thing to say, and it's getting boring hearing that one guy spam his shitty thread with that black and white photo of that long dead sandnigger.

If anything Islam isn't even feudal in terms of economic outlook given it arose in mudhut dwelling Mecca and Medina (yes Yemeni Arabs and Roman Arabs were more sophisticated I know), it's a slave based mercantile system with emphasis on martial ambitions.

Exactly, it gives Holla Forums more of a reason to hate us (in their perspective)

no, the vast majority of the world pretends to be relegious and would answer so on a survey.

However, given that both the major religions forbid lending at interest, and our economy is run on interest, it follows that our world is not religious.

- Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts

Does this sound familiar?

I'm not even religious either

Crone put it) that Mecca was an entrepôt of peninsular and international trade;
that the Quraysh were the “bourgeois” entrepreneurs controlling that trade; and
that “the Qurashi transition to a mercantile economy undermined the traditional
order in Mecca, generating a social and moral malaise to which Muhammad’s
preaching was the response.”

clusions: Mecca never was the favorable location for trade that modern scholars
have made it out to be. In fact it made no sense as a commercial site. In late an-
tiquity the incense trade and the transit trade in luxury goods from India did not
usually take the overland route from Yemen to Syria. (The Mediterranean market
for incense, in any case, had collapsed by the third century.) Mecca never domi-
nated Arabian commerce with other countries and failed even to attract their
notice. Meccan trade did not extend much beyond local distribution of such items
as leather, cheap cloth, and livestock.

No, but it feels good to be vindicated, why did you abridge the second paragraph knowing full well that any of us can just look it up on the internet?

I just hate anything that isn't Christian or Buddhist tbh fam.

No religion is "inherently" communistic, charity is not communism

How can you claim to know what your god wills?

creepy

Hardcore protestants. Primitive Baptists, to be exact.

No, really, there is a sect of Baptist that proudly proclaim how primitive they are by putting it on the title.

what about jainism?

Any movement that dates back two thousand years killed dozens of million of people if it was in the right politico-economic position throughout you mong. Fucking buddhism killed hundred thousands and they didn't control a whole continent.

Because Patricia Crone was a hack.

I dont give a fuck about religion if it promotes something akin to liberation theology
Everything else is just opiates

We came from the same source. Life is a test as to who is best in conduct.

Socialism is the epitome of good conduct.

What idealists (as in non-materialists) never seem to understand is that criticizing religion itself is not the same thing as criticizing religious people. As Marx said, religion is an opiate of the masses: just like drugs, people turn to it for solace amidst the crushing ennui of a society that sees them as cogs in a machine. Parallels can be drawn in how both religious figures and drug cartels hold influence over the masses: they are a prime example of how the superstructure legitimizes and reinforces the base.

I think hard drugs can be horrifying, but I don't necessarily think badly of drug addicts. They were pursuing a psychological need to feel happy in life, regardless of circumstances, and found themselves unwilling or unable to compete for dominance in the work force. I do not like it, but I do understand it. Cause and effect is not moral, it just is.

Do people assume badly of their peers anyway? Of course, but aside from "New Atheism" (which is basically a religion of smugness), it is usually other religious people who suspect others personally based on faith, because none of the aforementioned people are capable of seeing their own willful delusions for what they are. Alcoholics see themselves as superior to druggies, often on a basis of legality, despite a wanton disregard for road laws.

I think it's important to note that Buddhism is in general very anti-harm. Anyone who kills out of spite, anger, or otherwise ill intention is not practicing the dhamma. If it is not Buddhism that is being practiced, then what is it?

Well, thank you for shooting random words at me. Would you care to actually answer my question:

You are talking about only the recent history of "happy face buddhism". They were just as brutal as the Christians in the middle ages. Deal with it.
michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Oh actually Jainism and Zoroastrianism are all right too I guess.

...

primarily because it puts the progression of the world to a halt and forces truly stupid beliefs.

don't do that

nope. remove religion and capitalism, so man can live how they wish.

Christianity killed hundreds of millions, and it's a relatively recent program. Honestly, it didn't really come into existence full fledged until around the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Also, Buddhism is pretty much in the same category as Christianity, being a corruption of Satanic beliefs designed to remove spirituality from the population

I'm guessing an apologist for Islam would say something like, "Islam teaches all property belongs to God," "believers are never supposed to be ruled by governments which govern against Islamic principles," "Islam is all about unity," etc.

This is arguably one reason why the Saudis pour so much oil money into building mosques and funding Islamic charities: it prevents them from having to own up to their wrongdoings (such as being so friendly to the West).

Didn't one of the caliphs end poverty entirely?

Crone got in serious trouble for suggesting history that ran counter to the traditional Muslim narrative concerning Mecca and Muhammad.

New Atheism-tier

because religion in general is the epitome of classcukery

It's important to keep in mind though.

People aren't religious because they want to be religious. They want to be religious because they already ARE religious. Or they want to be religious but just can't get past the conviction part. Saying that wanting to be religious leads to religiosity implies choice. Conviction is not choice.

Religion exists because religious people get a monopoly on kids and force conformity. I don't like Sam Harris, but he did say that unless these beliefs were forced, nobody would believe them; children can and do find the obvious contradictions that make these beliefs nonsensical.

Replace 'christians' with 'muslims' and I am this guy:

Islamic apologists need to fucking gulag themselves.

How do you know it's "Islam" that you don't like, rather than, say, certain aspects of Islamic cultures which have nothing to do with theology?

Not him, but I've watched conferences of young European Muslims where they poll the audience for questions like "Should we stone adulterers" and "Should Sharia be the law of the land" and when most agree the host chants "Allahu ackbar". Explain how that shit is Islamic culture.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

Buddhism wasn't always "anti-harm".

How do you know they aren't just saying this stuff because they're poor? How many middle class Muslims feel this way?

...

To clarify, watch this little bit from this doc on the subject.
youtube.com/watch?v=ppT8JK1loSg&feature=youtu.be&t=26m37s

To my knowledge, Islam lacks any concept of tikkun olam or a myth of return to Eden at the end of times. The expulsion from Paradise is not a big thing in the Qur'an, not to mention Islam demands Muslims romanticize a future where everything is running according to the shariah rather than a lost egalitarian past which must be restored; in fact, the past in Islam is referred to as "jahaliya" - a time of great ignorance.

How do poor Muslims afford to rent out space to hold a conference? As for numbers on middle class Muslims, I don't know those, but I do know the change in attitudes is marginal when you go from looking at all Muslims in European countries to second, third, etc-generation Muslims.

from my understanding of Islam Jahiliya is only used to refer to the pagan tribes that ruled the Arabian Peninsula pre-Islam, not all of history.

No, it refers to the time before the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad.

Again, 2000 years.

As an emancipatory »program« it ended around when it became state religion. Webm related.

Anyways, what do you think of Saul of Tarsus? What do you think of him in terms of theological deviancy and political pragmatism?

Also, have you seen this lecture: youtube.com/watch?v=oj4cUduKzlI ?
wut think?

show tits

fug

Still waiting for an answer. Won't bully, I promise.

To clarify, many Muslims today feel as though they're living in a time of jahaliya since there is not a single place on earth where shariah is being "correctly" implemented. The Saudis are corrupt, the Taliban and ISIS implement the law too harshly, southeast Asian and north African countries still mix Islam with pagan traditions, and so on.

If they were well-off religious fundamentalism wouldn't appeal to them.

>Jahiliyyah: "the state of ignorance of the guidance from God"
Interesting. If true, they conceive the (capitalist) post-modern condition (lack of fix points to guide us, to provide meaning, custom) in terms of theology.

And what would shariah provide them with, in all honesty? A strict set of rules, a code of complex rules, fixed sexual positions, etc.

What is to be drawn from this as conclusion from a materialist perspective is that they desire a guiding point that although a sham, works, as opposed to the capitalist subjectivity imposed on all of us. So what we must ask is how would (or does, in already existing conditions, like areas controlled by ISIS muh no-go zones) this function, implemented on top of capitalist economic reality? The answer must be: unsatisfactorily.

The circulation of capital, its revolutionary self-propulsion, and the subjective position it allows (e.g. that of a capitalist who sacrifices his life for capital, or that of a consumer who continually redefines himself via consumption) would no matter what undermine the "shariah ideal."

And that is my point, exactly. There's no way of building "harmony" on top of a system of antagonisms, to go even further: THE VERY FANTASY CAPITALISM PROVIDES US GUIDES US TO LOOK FOR SOME FIXITY WHICH WILL INEVITABLY FAIL. The very search for harmony, the "right balance," is a capitalist ideological production.

By reading the Quran and Hadith, naturally. I find precisely the same elements vile as most fedora-tippers so I won't go into that. Also, I won't claim that Muslims who choose to selectively ignore the nastier parts aren't "true Muslims", but this kind of fanciful revisionism is restricted to countries where there are no Shariah courts or blasphemy laws in power. My country's Muslims assign bogeyman status to "stray teachings," i.e. any attempted offshoots ranging from Quranist interpretations to that one rural commune built around a giant teapot ("Sky Kingdom").

This is perhaps more cultural, but aspects of their practice are conducive to capitalism or at least commodity-fetishism. See for e.g.
themalaymailonline.com/projekmmo/berita/article/harga-dua-kali-ganda-peniaga-ayam-terapi-quran-untung-besar
Article title: "Double-priced 'therapy chicken', which has been read Quranic verses to, reaps great profit."
You might argue this is also a symptom of poor education, but I've endured 11 years of their national curriculum and it's relatively scientific. They simply choose to ignore it whenever convenient.
A more Western example would be the Zamzaam water scare a few years back in the UK. Muslims consider water from the Meccan well to be curative, so much that someone was willing to lace regular spring water with arsenic and sell it as Zamzaam (don't see how that would work but I'd imagine it has something to do with the smell and alkaline taste). Also, in my country there's a major investment body that exists solely to finance wasteful pilgrimages to Mecca and line the Saudis' pockets.

I'll concur with about attitudes held by whatever'th generation Muslim immigrants. It's incredible what opinions those 'nice, upstanding' Muslims will divulge when they trust you're one of them, and that you'll not judge them.

2nd quote meant for

[CITATION NEEDED]
Why come there be rich evangelicals in the US?

Because it is opium of the masses. Always used and abused to spread ignorance. I only hate it because whenever its believers are informed on something, they always fall back to it to ignore reason and faint. I do know this is true to ever ideology as well.

Can you cite said Quranic verses?

There are plenty of "Islamic" practices in today's "Muslim" culture that Muhammad and his companions would feel physically sick from

Superstition is denounced in Islam, with "rituals" (usually from Sunni Muhammad-worshipping tier madhabs) like "read x verse y amount of times to reap z benefit" directly contradicting the Quran.

These are more than likely hangovers from syncretism between Islam and the pre-existing beliefs of converts.

Buddhism was founded as a specifically anti-harm religion. That's one of the defining qualities of the religion, along with Jainism.

Buddhism was *always* "anti-harm", it always has been and it always will be.

I'm not saying that nobody has committed atrocities in the name of Buddhism, but I disagree that the Buddha encouraged or condoned violence. Nothing like that appears in any of the texts which are agreed upon by scholars to be the earliest records of Buddhism; nor do they, to my knowledge, appear in any later texts which purport that the Buddha said this or that. Killing results in unfavorable kamma.

I think socialism purports that the problem is fundamentally rooted in the power of the bourgeois over the proletariat. Buddhism does not deny that this problem exists, but rather Buddhism's position is that it is not the *root* of the problem. The root of the problem is ignorance with regard to the nature of reality; from this, through dependent origination, all other problems, all conflicts, sadness, separation, birth, death, aging ("suffering" or "stress") is rooted in ignorance.

I think Mahayana Buddhism would take on the problems revealed by Socialism; it acknowledges that the root of these problems is not as Marx describes them to be, but that the root of the whole mass of suffering is due to ignorance.

On the other hand, Theravada Buddhism focuses on the path to eliminate suffering, through elimination of the causes by which it is dependently originated, primarily ignorance. This path is the path to enlightenment.

The way I see it, Buddhism can range from apathetic to supportive of the Socialist plight. My personal view is that Socialism accurately describes problems, but these problems are rooted in ignorance.

You mention ideology, which is interesting; the Buddha made a point about the effects of clinging to views.

How do you know this would be the case? Are you an Islamic theologian? Have you studied Qur'an and Hadith as well as the commentaries/exegeses?

Or are you merely parroting whatever your liberal Muslim friends have told you?

Which shows the inability of Islamic doctrine to resolve societal contradictions. In some ways, Islam makes them worse.

Take honor killings for example. Yes, there have been fatawa denouncing them and nothing in the Qur'an supports them. HOWEVER, the Islamic emphasis on honor and shame plays a role in continuing these barbaric traditions. If a girl from said culture is raped, she gets killed by her parents, because it's implied that her bad behavior provoked an otherwise honorable man into raping her, and since the parents know they'll be blamed for having conditioned her into that bad behavior, the parents feel as if they have no other choice but to kill their daughter out of ensuring the family name goes untarnished.

Traditional Islam really can't produce anything which transcends the honor-shame shit. That's the problem.

I'm a Muslim. Anything but liberal, but I'm definitely far left economically.

The parable of Lot makes clear the punishment for rape.

Only savages pretending to be Muslims excuse these things. Honour killing is a pagan belief that begat death in the Rashidun Caliphate. It is murder plain and simple.

Cultural "Islam", yes.

Sufism, no.

A savage can get their hands on any ideology and use it to do evil things.

What qualifies you to decide who is and isn't Muslim?

You can say these people are "bad Muslims" the way we say SJWs and their ilk are "bad Leftists" but you can't make blanket statements about who is/isn't a tw00 Muslim simply because you don't like their behaviors.

Also, if we apply Deconstruction, we can make the Qur'an say anything.

That's exactly the point, what the writers of holy books had in mind have nothing to do with what people actually do in their name.

Islam does condone violence, in comparison, but even then it does not condone terrorism and has strict terms for what constitutes legitimate use of harm; a cornerstone of these terms is the prohibition of forced conversion, which is based in the Islamic belief that other religions are just earlier divine revelations. Terrorist groups don't fucking care and never have. I would argue that what they really want is preservation of Middle Eastern culture and possibly Arab supremacy.

This is the problem of religious dogmatic believers.

People do things in the name of the Holy Book.
Things that "aren't" in the holy book.
Thus, people are wrong.
Holy Book remains absolutely right.

Honour killing is murder.
The Qur'an condemns murderers to Hell as non-believers.
Therefore those that conduct and condone honour killings are no-longer Muslims, but imposters.

They don't get a free card to call yourself "Muslim" because they're brown.

They're Cultural "Muslims", nominal "Muslims", munafiqeen, takfireen.

Exactly the sort of detritus giving the religion a bad name.

Because it encourages ignorance, by making it holy and a virtue. Because it makes people content in being stomped on, making them believe it's the natural order of things because some superior being wished it that way

No, they're bad Muslims.

You don't get to decide other people's identities in such a way, just because you think their behaviors go outside the realm of orthodoxy.

Besides, at what point are you allowed to go full PoMo and deconstruct the Qur'an, upset binaries in the text and whatnot? There are "Cultural Muslim" women who have sex before marriage, call themselves "queer", drink alcohol, and do all sorts of other things which violate Islamic Law but who will still be seen as Muslim. What makes these Judith Butler Muslims "true Muslims" when Muslims who commit honor killings are not? What standards are you following?

I am using the criteria laid down and made clear in the Qur'an. By the same token I believe that Capitalism must be destroyed.

Neither of them are Muslims. I'm going by the book. Just because her name is Aisha or Amirah, and she half-asses Ramadan like a "Christian" teen "has to" visit her grandparents at Christmas and Easter doesn't make her an actual Muslim.

The thing these two types of people share is that they do not actually believe. This is shown by them having respect for what they should believe are God's criteria for living the most fulfilling and virtuous lives.

They suit the religion to themselves, and not the other way around. Hypocrites.

For verses, I like this page as an ex-mus ammo stash:
wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur'an,_Hadith_and_Scholars

The others here will note that the Quranic case for honor killing is nonexistent. 18:60-82 is the closest thing but almost everybody I know considered it an exaggerated parable; when my parents went through it with me, they agreed as much. I'd argue that honor killing is a mostly cultural phenomenon and arises from pre-existing shame cultures.

That said, you're stooping the same 'no true Scotsman' that some atheist authors do in defining a Muslim. My father counted his revolutions around the blackbox with a mechanical hand tally, believed that reciting Al-Ikhlas three times is equivalent to reading the entire Quran, and flip-flopped several times on the issue of waggling your finger during the Tahiyyah. He ought to be a fucking cargo cultist by your standards, but almost everything he learned he did from the Sunni establishment mosques. Would you call him a kuffar to his face?

It almost seems like we're not talking about the same religion. I'll admit that I'm not familiar with Sufism or whatever pacifist variety of Islam you subscribe to, but I feel it's fairly uncommon and impossible to reconcile with the rest of the people who identify as Muslim.

I see your point, but you didn't respond to this:

Perhaps we should be blaming Derrida and de Man for ISIS.

By your own logic, it's hard to say that a "true" follower of Islam or Christianity even exists.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm getting at when I bring up Postmodernism.

We can say "Muslim" is just an idea that has no fixed or static meaning, and that anyone can be a Muslim so long as people relate to them in that fashion, and that the Qur'an is entirely a historicism that was never meant to be followed in the exact same way or according to the exact same principles until the end of time.

Lovely method, isn't it?

Judith Butler is at fault for this, not Foucault - in my opinion.

Completely agree, and let's not forget Butler's big guys are Lacan and Derrida. I just used the image in question because it's kekky.

That's my point, stupid. Religion is not based in empirical reasoning and thus does not benefit from the objectivity it provides.

Really?

Agreed, and it also shows how flimsy statements like: "X, Y, and Z aren't tw00 Muslims because this one Qur'anic verse" are.

Given that all interpretations are equally valuable, and there's no means of deciphering who is correct, we can say ISIS and AND Aisha the queer polyamorous heavy-drinking party animal are all "true Muslims" and not "imposters" or apostates.

Are you an Ex-Muslim, my friend? I hope you are aware that what you were brought up in was probably not close at all to authentic Islam.

WikiIslam is also unabashedly a bias, Zionist website. They have vested interests in their skewing of the Qur'an.

The only thing I would take slight issue with is the recital of Al-Ikhlas. Although it is a beautiful summary of the Islamic conception of God, I don't think it entirely summarises the rest of Islam. Unless you mean he thinks his "reward" would be the same.

I'm also sure you're aware of the countless fake ahadith that do the rounds in mosques.

Mosques in general vary. Would you know what madhab or organisation these mosques were a part of? Slightly misguided, but by no means a kaffir.

Almost. But I reckon it's because of the split between exotericism and esotericism and the fact that the majority of Sunnism happens to be very materialist/superstitious.

I believe that that will be inevitably corrupted by what is within the "hearts" of the interpretors. The Qur'an

It would also have to be conducted through Arabic.

Reminds me too much of that fake G.K. Chesterton quote: "The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything."

You can't just say they're wrong because they're all a bunch of Zionists. You have to demonstrate why their interpretations are wrong.

So how do we judge whose interpretation is correct then?

Who is the judge?

Can the judge be without his/her (most likely his because women are prohibited from being religious scholars in Islam) own personal biases? Will to Power much?

Also, if you're lost this vid on Deconstruction may help you out:
youtube.com/watch?v=RUm-47oMWU4

If I could give a concise explanation as to what I mean with the majority of Sunnism:

They seem obsessed with the physical while ignoring the metaphysical.

To them the religion more about the ritual aspects; as seen by the amount of fighting over trivial things such as different poses during prayer (finger or no finger, takbir or no takbir for x dua) rather than the internalisation of the message of Islam, and the remembrance of God as the Source of All.

It's hard to put my finger on, but it's what I and many others I have talked to see. It's the main reason most people leave the religion they were raised in.

Which was the point I was trying to make.

He actually is right though, WikiIslam is explicitly anti-Islamic and openly admits that it assumes the worst of every verse, i.e. the sword verse says Muslims have to kill everyone when it only makes sense in context.
They are not wrong, but they are also not the objective source they claim to be.

So, you adhere to some sort of Justification by Faith?

So, do you believe the Kurdish factions who are fighting for Kurdish independence from Turkey, Iraq, and Syria are real Muslims? because what they're doing is anti-Islamic, as they're defining themselves along national lines and are fighting other Muslims.

Oh hell, even Palestinian nationalists are anti-Islamic for the same reason: instead of waving the Palestine flag they should be waving the pan-Islamic flag and demanding a pan-Islamic state.

I don't hate religion because as Karl Marx (a good Christian) said: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." and as an opiate, it numbs the pain of the existence.

Sufism is considered heretical by the vast majority of "true" Muslims.

There's a reason why fundamentalists kill them.

Nearly all major religions are class collaborationist.

I don't care what they do as long as they keep it out of politics.
Sadly, they always seems to have a hard time doing that.

You're already halfway there.

How do you expect communism to take hold in Islamic countries without some kind of red shariah?

Eventually these countries modernize their economy and thus have to adapt their customs.
And no, Qatar does not have a modern economy, despite being extremely rich (and it really isn't that rich).

Pretty sure Mao debunked the idea that a country has to be industrialized before it can embrace socialism.

>the self-proclamed Communist leader of a revolutionary movement in a backwards country says a country doesn't need to be developed for him to rule Socialism to exist
How convenient, isn't it?

8ch.net/leftypol/res/669372.html#669382

Hatred is irrational. They are bigoted and gross.

Saul of Tarsus didn't exist, nor did any other Biblical figure. Most of them were invented around 300 AD after the Jews gained control of the Roman government. They were turned into literal people and modeled after spiritual CONCEPTS of the Gentiles. None of the Jewish history told in the Bible is real at all.

Please.

FYI, Muslims refer to the time in which Muhammad lived as the "Islamic Golden Age", given that Islam during its early days was "uncorrupted".

What the west refers to as the "Islamic Golden Age", the time during the Abbasid Caliphate where Muslims were making contributions to math, science, and philosophy (among other fields) is an orientalist term/association which was only promoted in the west by intellectuals making a critique of their own society (basically, the Islamic World was a foil).