As far as I know some people here are form Middle eastern, or muslim backgrounds. Here are some questions for You:

my point was that neither are in the qur'an and thus it seems contradictory to wear both

Waaait wait wait, if NEITHER are in it then that means it would not matter at all in the first place. How could they be contradictory?

Because one is a symbol of sexual modesty, and one is… well, the opposite.
Thus the contradiction.

Raised in a Shiite Muslim family here

No my friend, you are the ideology. The hijab is a cultural artifact. Nearly all women who wear it don't have some romanticized notion of it that you apparently do. Its not some holy symbol of chastity nor is it evil and oppressive, its a fuckin cloth you wear on your head. Let people do what they want, and fuck off

Its bait you retard

I'd take cosmopolitan fools apologising for a savage faith over savages scrupulously following the savage religion.

how about neither

you mean all of them of course

Oh no.
I never noticed his mom took that pic before…

Oh no.

Palestinian living in the West here.

It makes sense given how Western hegemony has done whatever it can to wipe out the traditions of Arabs and Muslims and force its own upon us. In that respect I'd say, yes, the clash of civilizations is very real. But it is NOT the West drowning by being "infested" with brown people. Rather, it's the West forcing itself onto brown people.

Islam is a danger to capitalism because it stands AGAINST everything capitalism stands for. Islam is pro-family, anti-consumerist, pro-tradition, pro-community, anti-usury, anti-liberalism, and promotes a market socialist economy based on Islamic values (so no usury, a strong Gold Standard, free markets, religious charity for social services). Islam itself deconstructs Western paradigms by forcing Western culture to be disrupted. Muslims do not submit to Western liberalism easily so we have the ability to "break" the West, if you will.

Give us our own communities, similar to Kiryas Joel in America. Americans had no problem giving the Jews their own cities so why can't France or Germany give us our own autonomous cities?

Also, Spain needs to publicly apologize for the theft of Islamic Spain.

Speaking as a Palestinian Muslim, we believe modesty is a very important concept in Islam (meaning, yes, we see the hijab as entirely religious). That isn't to say the hijab isn't revolutionary in its own right given the sexualization of women in modern society but that it symbolizes commitment to Allah's commandments.

Islam did not invent hijab my friend. It existed long before. Pre-Islam it was a cultural artifact and it just happened to be custom to the place and time period that Islam began. The Koran does not specify that the hijab must be worn. It only advises modesty. It is up to the woman how she can interpret it

Qur'an does call for modesty. Besides, Qur'an is not the only texts Muslims read. We also have a long tradition of exegesis which does dictate modesty as part of submission to Allah.

Yes, hijab pre-dates Islam in that Jewish and Christian women used to wear it as well. Armenian and Assyrian women cover their heads in the same way.

This is wrong. Islam does not hold to liberal individualism. A Muslim woman who wears the hijab typically doesn't believe she is doing so for any other reason than what Islamic doctrine says.

Besides, "deconstructionism" (which is what you're implying) is not an Islamic thing. We Muslims believe words have meanings that are not arbitrary. Qur'an is very direct in what it says and most Islamic commentaries arrive at very similar conclusions because of it.

Lol, I'm this guy. If you're a Palestinian in the west, you're a westerner too, buddy.

I said specifically that Quran does advocate modesty, but it does not advocate hijab specifically, nor does it clearly define modesty.

That said, I'm not actually religous, and I think there comes a point where at least parts of the Quran become outdated and irrelevant

Sorry to interject, could anyone recommend a good English language translation of the Qu'ran for a potential revert?

Thanks.

well you could just wear a hijab because it's really cute not necessarily because you're muslim user

...

Kek

Western-ess is defined by the mind, not by the physical location of the body. I'm not "Western" because I do not adhere to Western modes of thinking.

No it isn't . It's traditional values simply clash againsts modern neoliberal values. The Islamic economy is in no way shape or form a market socialist economy. What an incredible dishonest statement.
Why should the Spanish apologize for kicking an imperial force out of their continent. If you think the Islamic Empire was justified in its action then you have absolutely no right to criticize the American Empire's activities in the Middle East.

I grew up Muslim. Muslims are extremely conservative even when considered moderate and have a lot in common with the Christian fundamentalist. Muslims ,in America at least, are not against capitalism in any way shape or form. In fact, the noble "job creator" meme is very prevalent in the Muslim community. If you have a lot of money in the Muslim community. They just assume you've earned it and that you're a good person.

There is also a lot of racism in the Muslim community. I don't even know where the deeply triggering and problematic meme comes from. Most Arabic people I know basically worship white people and think blonde hair and blue eyes are the most beautiful traits a human being can have. Don't believe any of the liberal crap about noble brown people. If you don't like the average Republican you wouldn't like most Muslims. I mean they're aren't rapists and terrorist like the alt-right tries to make them out to be but they're aren't all leftist anti-imperalist freedom fighters either like a bunch of asshole make them out to be.

There are Hadith which state that Prophet Muhammad told women to only show their faces and hands. Hijab is absolutely a part of Islam, and while it may be present in other cultures it is no less of an Islamic thing.

Like I said, Islam does not believe in "deconstructionism", which is entirely the product of kabbalistic Jewish philosophers (Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, etc.). We do NOT NOT NOT believe hijab, salat, Ramadan or any of our other traditions, doctrines, values and holidays can have their meanings changed on a whim. We believe words have meanings, that language is not arbitrary the way postmodernists believe it is, nor is there an infinite number of meanings to everything.

Telling Muslims they must "deconstruct" our religion is just as colonial as telling Muslim women they can't wear the hijab. In both cases you're telling us you're better than us and we need to be more like you.

I'm going to guess you were raised Shia because you're entirely off.

Correct. Islam despises everything neoliberalism stands for: no restraints, individualism, narcissism, consumerism, superficial ideas about the family and marriage, etc.

While I agree you can't force Islam into a Western paradigm, Islam has always been closest to what Westerners see as market socialism: free markets, sound money with no inflation, worker control of the means of production, no usury, all profits are donated to the community through religious charities, social services are paid for by charity and everyone is entitled to those services. Remember that the only regime in history which successfully eliminated poverty was the Caliphate.

Also, if Islam isn't socialist, then what was Gaddafi's Islamic socialism?

Do your research. al-Andalus was a bastion of human progress. The Christians who kicked us out replaced our system with a barbaric one which perpetuated feudalism and kept Spain one of the poorest nations in Western Europe for centuries.

How are the two scenarios even comparable?

Then they are not Muslims. They are apostates.

This is entirely un-Islamic. No one in Islam is allowed to "have a lot of money." A real Muslim would give most of their money back to the poor.

Funny because our Prophet spoke out against racism on several occasions.

It's a desperate plea for you to join the 21st century before the brown shirts whip the population into a xenophobic frenzy and you end up in a concentration camp.

I'm not a Medievalist and I don't support un-Islamic pieces of shit like ISIS and neither do most Muslims. Why tell us we need to "join the 21st century" instead of telling fascists not to hurt us?

The Islamic revival is a relatively new phenomenon. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Middle Eastern history can attest.

We live in global times; parts of the world do not exist in a vacuum, like in a Sid Meier video game. There is even strong evidence that simply having access to Western media makes Muslims less antipathetic toward the same West: pewforum.org/2013/05/31/among-muslims-internet-use-goes-hand-in-hand-with-more-open-views-toward-western-culture/

The idea of a "Clash of Civilizations" is one borne from necessity to justify the US and UK completely destroying Middle Eastern society for its own ends, leading to a radical sociopolitical resurgence based on a hatred of Western society, and thus what it represents: secularism and social liberty.

Everyone forgets because explosions are scary. Immediate emotional stress always overtakes learned knowledge and experience, and normies don't care enough to gain the discipline to see past this.

There are Muslims who support ISIS?

Why not both? ISIS is actually the exception to the rule of terrorists because most terrorist groups have political motives, which can just so happen to involve religious motivation, i.e. al-Qaeda wants the US out of Muslim territory. ISIS is a nonsensical death cult that is willing to break Islamic rules of warfare if it means killing more people faster.

That's my point. The vast majority of the world's Muslims hate ISIS because ISIS is un-Islamic.

Islam does not need to change. Certain people calling themselves "Muslims" do.

Well, in some places with Muslim majorities they are gaining support. Pakistanis even like them in general, not just a large exception.

Source?

You do know the closest the world has ever seen to anarchism were the self-managed communities in the Ottoman Empire, right? The Ottomans were one of the most libertarian states in existence and gave religious minorities more autonomy than any modern Western state does to its minorities.

Lel, I guess Shiites are actually more prone to critical thinking. I've always wondered what would have happened if the socialists took over instead of Khomeini. Can you guys give some insight?

Please disregard my flag I'm by no means anarchist. The board just lacks of political flags.

smh ngl tbh fam

Islam at its core, whether Sunni or Shia, is socialist. Workers are entitled to the products of their labor. You are not allowed to charge interest. You are also not allowed to hoard wealth or make excess profits.

oh not this shit again.

This is just not true. Isis and similar groups like lashkar a janghvi have been conducting mass killings for a very long time now. There is almost no support among the general public for these assholes

How is it wrong? Christians and Jews lived in anarchy under the Ottomans. They were not subjugated to Islamic Law and were allowed to set up their own courts and lawcodes divorced from the state.

I'm an ex-Muslim that grew up mostly in the West, by I think my perspective can still be helpful to some of these questions.

I think it does have merit, but it's a bit more complicated than just being a "us vs them" kind of thing. It depends on where you live, in my opinion.

I used to lived in a little town in England as a kid, and my mother made my brothers and I heavily involved in the Muslim community there. I even had to go to an Islamic studies centre on weekends to study the Qur'an and also learn Science and Mathematics in Arabic, while already learning them in English at the normal school I went to on weekdays. Even though I was just a kid, I noticed how socially isolated we were (even the other Muslim friends I had from Islamic school. Their parents wouldn't let non-Muslims into their houses) from the rest of the non-Muslims, besides having a couple of non-Muslim friends. Even my teachers in Islamic school would discourage us from associating with them. My mother and father are pretty liberal compared to the other Muslims in the community, so they encouraged us to perfect our English, allowed us to bring over non-Muslims to play, and constantly made us deliver food to our neighbors as a show of good will.

Things were pretty different when I moved to the US, almost every person I met of Muslim background in America was pretty much like my parents. Even the Muslim kids I used to play with, 90% of them didn't even know how to speak their native languages, besides understanding it and responding in English when speaking to their parents.

To be completely honest, I understand Holla Forumss concern about the "Islamization" of Europe, because that's what happened in my home country and Iran, for example. I even think Merkel has a bit of a screw loose doing what she did to Germany. I've seen how much alot of Muslims value their own traditions, and refusal to assimilate into societies very different from their own. However, this just doesn't apply to Muslims.

The other half of my life I've spent living in Qatar (probably the second porkiest country in the Middle-East behind Dubai), and westerns do the same thing as Muslims do in Europe. Partying, drinking alcohol, woman not dressing in a modest manner, sex outside of marriage etc. But the Westerners get away with it because they're granted special muh privileges. The only way to obtain these muh privileges as a Muslim is if you have a western passport, and that's something I did have living in Qatar. My American passport, and the American embassy there helped me and family get out of some pretty messy situations. If you were an Indian, Pakistani or a Filipino living in Qatar, your life is basically going to be shit unless you're highly educated. Qatar's social hierarchy is really messed up.

People just don't respect each other I think is the problem. So Islam being an inherit danger is a bit of an over-exaggeration.

Remove kebab.

In all seriousness, the west just needs to be a bit more aggressive with enforcing their laws. Don't let Muslims govern themselves with their own Sharia courts, among other things, like England does. The US is a good example of not being too lenient.

You are a really good troll you know right?

How was the millett system not anarchistic?

Cute.

You sound like you agree with Zizek on the refugee crisis.

I do

It's not surprising that all these neo-liberals don't agree with him. Liberalism isn't what it used to be anymore.

The only ones who don't are dumb liberals.

You act as if its a bad thing.

What is wrong with that? Are you one of those Zizek hating liberals?

How do you feel about the stifling of free speech? Because besides the open-arms invitation by Merkel (which I think was naive and she was disingenuous of stating her true intentions, which was to create a larger labour pool due to Germany's declining population), I think the true worry here is people imposing their views on others. The whole debacle surrounding first the Danish cartoons of Mohammed (which were never revealed due to the interventions of foreign nations), and then the French cartoons (which ended in murder) really unnerved me. I understand that if you're going satirize extremely venerated icons in such a large religion, that comes with a lot of baggage, but this is a very slippery slope. And it's worrying that people like Cameron and other Western leaders are using the scapegoat of living in the age of the Islamic state for passing laws with ambiguous surveillance of your email and internet history.

Besides that I really have nothing against Muslims, and I'll always vote far-left (voted Green last time in the elections), but this whole naivety about how Islam isn't as totalitarian as they think, will certainly lead to small clashes and introspective moral questioning. The left parties really don't know how far and fast this leads to usually level-headed people to the far-right. European social democracy and overall left parties are in very serious decline.

To add on, with the proliferation of the internet I'm very glad that Muslims in the Muslim world with usually draconian media and internet laws in their home countries, can easily go on something like /r/atheism or download a Hitchens/Dawkins book and readily have their beliefs questioned. Or at least realize that the state uses religion to subjugate and pacify people for their own personal profit. With all this hand-wringing and fear-mongering in today's world, I'm sure our descendants hundreds of years from now will look back at this as another slate in history, as when a religious civilization clashed with a matured, naive yet still staunchly secular civilization. It'll all be just ink (or electronic pixels) in the end to commemorate all of this.

As to your last point, North America and other non-European Western countries are usually stringent in what immigrants they accept, so I think even people that are quite religious are for the most part integrated and economically mobile. I mean for goodsake, we have Hassidic Jews in New York who have lived for a couple of generations who have never fully integrated, having 7 kids per family and forcing their offspring to only read the Talmud.

I live in the US and people still complain that we're "too lenient" with Muslim rights, which basically means that we treat them with real fairness and they reciprocate it. So Muslim Americans are only religiously violent when they get personally recruited by terrorists.

I'm not sure how Europe could fuck that up when they are where the Enlightenment happened.

I think Westerners in general have misconceptions about religion that lead to double standards in both "directions" because Christianity in the West was basically neutered into symbolism. So they're shocked when fundamentalists aren't "true" Christians when, like Islamists, they're just taking the religion to its logical conclusion when viewed literally without historical context. Abrahamic faith is extremely violent.

Still, like I said in it's weird for Americans to grasp how liberal-tarded the situation is in Europe because our secularism is, in theory, based off of theirs: the church is out of the state, period. If you don't like it, tough titties. You can make choices in secular civil court that suit your faith, but you can't bend the law to it.
How exactly has the situation devolved in Europe? Are they just ignoring laws?

But you just said that people in certain areas still wear it as a cultural thing, and that Christians and Jews sometimes wear it…

The non-muslim populace of the Ottoman empire I believe was required to pay Jizya to simply be allowed to live, keep and practice their religion in the Ottoman Empire. I would hardly consider this to be above how modern western states treat Their religious minorities, this special form of taxation imposed on religious minorities is absent from modern western nations and is more something which we see happening in the horrid monstrosity which is the Islamic state.

Additionally the legal autonomy of minorities in the Ottoman Empire I believe was second in priority to that of Sharia law and most cases which involved both a religious minority and a Muslim was dealt with Sharia law due to this preference.

These practices are extremely far from anarchism and make the point that you are trying to make so ridiculous it makes you seem delusional.

There is also another thing which I would like to bring up and this is the practice of devşirme. While devşirme was fazed out before the later periods of the Ottoman Empire's existence, it was a brutal system of forced conscription pushed onto the Christian population of the Balkans and was very imperialistic in nature. As the practice of devşirme is considered to be anti-islamic I raise this last point more against your idolisation of the Ottoman's treatment of religious minorities than that of how Islam treats religious minorities in general.

Like I said, I'm ex-Muslim, so I'm not a fan of people wanting to suppress what others say. I'm actually quite surprised why alot of "liberals" make apologetic excuses when Muslims do shit that goes against what liberals SHOULD believe in. They criticize heavily conservative Christian values and perspectives, yet they let it slide when Muslims do the same thing? Sometimes I think whether or not liberals realize if Muslims had their way, liberals would probably be the first to be beheaded for being homosexuality-enablers, among alot of other things. It literally boggles my fucking mind because Islam has more in common with the far-right than vice versa, so naturally I would've thought filthy fascists would be their best friends.

The Danish cartoons incident is very revealing as to how sensitive Muslims are not just towards the prophet, but the other important figures like Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, because no matter which Muslim you ask, conservative or liberal, they will condemn and try to censor the cartoons if it was up to them.

This is pretty much how I ended up. It's still pretty dangerous for any Muslim to publicly renounce their faith. Because even in a heavily westernized country like Qatar, you'll still face the consequences of a decision like that.

You're right. But to be fair, most people would rather stick to people who look like them, think like them, act like them and share the same religion as them as opposed to learning other people's opinions and perspectives. I don't really know much about what Jews believe, but I think the difference here is that alot of Muslims, even in the US, believe that Sharia law should outplace the Constitution. That's a big problem in my opinion.

Realistically, I don't see a difference between conservative, or even far-right Wahabi/Salafi Muslims and Christians who are the same way and bomb abortion clinics.

You do realize that Charlie Hebo fired a guy for anti-antisemitism only a few years before this right?

telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/4351672/French-cartoonist-Sine-on-trial-on-charges-of-anti-Semitism-over-Sarkozy-jibe.html

Freedom of speech only has meaning so long its speech that the individual approves of. Muslims just happen to dislike their most important thinker from being meme'd. Assholes with bombs tried to forcibly stop it.

I'm writing an essay on this issue. Refugee movements have pretty much defined the 20th century and it usually follows two separate narratives that attempt to "Other" the migrants.

One depicts the migrants as a spreading mass of violent people who are using their refugee status as a "free pass". The other depicts them as sad, distraught peoples that need our help and are deserving of their refuge status.

These two narratives play off each other and make people not critically analyse the economics of the situation. Right wingers don't see the economic potential, while leftists don't see the economic dangers. This way politicians can just do whatever they need to stay in power (i.e. pick the most preferable narrative) whilst maintaining the neoliberal agenda. Remeber, products can be sold anywhere in the world, and corporations can set up business anywhere in the world, but human capital is restricted by governments. If they want more or less human capital its a simple has altering migration and citizenship laws.

Whereas the Philippines will literally sell the labor of their citizens overseas, Western countries keep a close eye on the trends of migration and enforce a media narrative where appropriate.

Zizek made the meme about how the right wing are ironically on the side of the workers, but its less about "yeah fuck the refugees" and more about how people just don't understand the economics and world is literally topsy turvy.

This is because liberals see themselves as saviors of the noble savages.

This is sadly common with most religious people, in my experience. I think it has more to do with the psychology of religion than any specific belief system. In many Western countries, blasphemy laws are still technically a part of law, and in the UK they were invoked as late as 2007. Hell, blasphemy in Germany can still get you prison time.
This might actually be why demands for Islamic law have gained some ground in Europe: there is already legal precedent for them. In the US such laws are banned at the highest levels of government.

IIRC, this is actually an unpopular view in Western nations, even among people who are oversensitive about their faith. Middle Easterners and North Africans love their theocracy, but Muslims in the Balkans are extremely more supportive of secularism, especially in Albania. Muslims that are small minorities in Western nations generally share the same view.
In comparison, there is also a modest minority of Western natives that think the Old Testament should be part of law, but instead of special pleading, they claim that existing European and especially American government already is about their religion and that secularism is somehow invalid, either philosophically or sometimes even practically.

I'm a Christian from the Middle East (Iraq) so I'm biased. But I'll answer.

Of course. Islam has a different set of values than Western enlightenment values which were built upon a foundation of classical liberalism. When you import Muslims you import their culture and their religion too. And when you have conflicting ideologies and cultures there will always be conflict involved as cultures try to achieve dominance. It is unavoidable.

Yes. Islam is a right wing ideology which is why it is was praised by Hitler. It has a dislike for secularism and religious plurality, it has a dislike for feminism and advocates for strong traditional gender norms, it has a dislike for LGBT, etc.

Obviously Muslims may be moderate and a lot of them are but these moderates are overshadowed by the loud voice of the fundamentalists. Also it's the fundamentalists who believe in implementing the laws of the Sharia into Western lands.They're a threat. And the fundamentalists will only gain more power as the population increases and cultural conflict increases.

Honestly if Holla Forums was a religion it would be Islam. The only reason Holla Forums right wingers hate Islam is because it is primarily non-white. A Holla Forums user must face so much cognitive dissonance for being against Islam because it is against everything they're against.

I honestly don't know. All I know is that it is going to continue. Terrorist attacks in Europe will only get worse and this will fuel the right wing to gain more power and influence which in turn will lead to more terrorist attacks as Muslims become radicalized due to feeling more and more alienated and marginalized. More terrorist attacks = more votes for Farage, Le Pen, Trump, etc.

It is sad..

That being said. I would say most Muslims don't care for Islam. Most just want to live their lives but they can't because of Western imperialism. I hope you guys don't take this post the wrong way.

Islam is simply a bad ideology. But Muslims are good people and are victims of it.

not only that, but Islam has a relatively rigid system that has answers for a lot of society's structure and fundamentals. It's borderline totalitarian nature which can't be questioned and is very fraternal (literally says that it's God's final revelation) is not surprising in its appeal to Hitler, who himself thought Christianity was a meek and submissive religion (Europe has already moved on from the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades and its proselytizing in the lands it conquered, even though adherents were aplenty).

that's what happens when you take the memes too far and uses confirmation bias and skewed obfuscated sources to confirm your own twisted sociopathic prejudices. It's human nature to find scapegoats and it will continue to do so as long as there's strife and a feeling that they're ostracized from the main world.

no doubt, but socio-economic standards have a lot do with it. All those people are deep-down good manipulators of public opinion, and know how to attract those who will be very loyal to them.
Even if Trump gets in (which seems more likely at the present than in Europe in my point of view), those Muslim ban/Mexican wall laws will very likely be deemed unconstitutional and/or be extremely watered down. He instead will no doubt enact laws that will benefit him and his cronies i.e. lower top rate and other slanted bullshit.
Even then, Hillary Clinton is just as abominable and it astonishes me that Americans are voting in droves for her for the Democratic primaries. The Clinton Foundation is corrupt as fuck and has been reported to accept money from Chinese businessmen to family barons in Indonesia/Malaysia and even the Saudi Royal family in SA. In fact, I'm sure the Saudis are hoping for a Clinton win and they'll be very glad to see Obama's back. It's a pay-to-win foreign policy portfolio.

Fuck them all.

What I don't understand is why Holla Forums fantasizes about Christianity? Christianity is about equality and peace. It is not a religion of war and hate. The earliest Christians lived in anarchist type communes. They shared everything. They did not care to gain political power, they did not care about racial superiority as they were called to spread the gospel to all nations. They did not care to force their values over others. They were peaceful and were heavily persecuted by the Pagan Romans. In fact the Christian Holla Forums users remind me of the pagans who persecuted Christians. It is only when Christianity gained more power that it became corrupted by the states. yet Holla Forums supports this corruption and they idolize the barbarity of the Crusades.

Holla Forums Holla Forums is a lot more consistent as it is against Christianity and likes paganism more because it understands that Christianity is inconsistent with their views.

It's all about identity and a feeling of faith. Holla Forums and forums in general just rally around some sort of thing that is in decline and stigmatized by society. No one gives a fuck about paganism and the average middle-class person in Western countries identify more with atheism/agnosticism or even deism (believing in values of the Enlightenment) or whatever. It's dying out and people are more interested in their jobs and socio-economic fulfillment. Corporatocracy and consumerism is the new religion. Most Jews are secular (excepts the Haredis, and most Jews hate them a lot) and don't believe in some of the brutal and sadistic teachings of Moses though some keep cultural rituals like taking the Shabbat or having a Bar Mitzvah for their kids. It merely transcends to a cultural thing that envelops their lives.

Those on Holla Forums do it for a laugh and its descends to more of a tribalism instinctive thing. Like "us-vs-them". It's not just in religion, it's prevalent everywhere in society. Imageboards and anonymous forums are largely used by people to let off steam and express their most restrained sociopathic thoughts without punishment. The less you take it seriously, the better you will feel. I just browse this board occasionally when I want to take some rest and that's it.

Also for what it's worth, I actually find the lore of the Bible pretty compelling at times and look forward to the day that I can invoke its myth and symbolism without treading on someone's theistic toes, much like pagan folklore or grecian legend. It's allegories have been incredibly influential in Western society. There's nothing wrong with reading such stuff.

For most people in general, religion is cultural, not ideological. Very few religions are compatible with modern secular values, and even these are often persecuted, like Raelism. It is also not uncommon for the nonreligious to have their own irrational views and behaviors–I would even argue that the far-right pseudoscience clique was borne out of need for a substitute for organized faith. HBD is the new Calvinism.

There is also a difference between secularism and irreligion. In an odd way, secularism allows religion to thrive by virtue of civil rights.

Most importantly, though, it is highly naive to assume that social liberalism and absence of the church in public life are even universally accepted in the Western world. The "traditionalist" sect of the right believes that Enlightenment values are against true European values.

Religion is whatever a person wants it to be. You can argue day and night that the perpetrators of the Thirty Years' War or French Wars of Religion weren't "true" Christians, but isn't this just as pedantic as arguing that ISIS isn't "truly" Muslim?

What makes religion dangerous is not hurt feelings or belief in a nonexistent entity. It is how religion derives truth and objectivity. Its doctrine can be twisted to suit virtually any agenda or worldview.

It is true that 8/pol/ is shirking Christianity, but it has nothing to do with love and peace. These deranged fucktards genuinely believe that they are the harbingers of peace. They hate Christianity for the same reason they hold most of their views: it's "Jewish".

Google says that the Haredi sect is rapidly growing as a post-Holocaust movement.

That sounds awfully familiar…

I see tonnes of pol/ fags get triggered when they hear about Islamic preachers I'm western countries. Freedom of speech doesn't extend to them apparently

I would say that capitalism is to blame here, which is of course a part of "western culture" but by no means is unique to the west nor a good representation of the entirety of that culture.

Why not assimilate and retain the important parts of your culture? It worked for many other waves of immigrants in the past which has helped shape much of the positive elements of the culture (food, drink, music etc). I can tell you first hand that communities like Kiryas Joel are not looked upon in a positive light by pretty much anyone living outside of them.

Now I know a lot of liberals try to make this kind of argument to deflect criticism, but doesn't Christianity take the exact same stances? That virtually all devoutly religious Christians are classcucks shouldn't be surprising to anyone, even when factoring in local cultural values.

If anything, when liberals are willing to criticize Islam, they're even bigger hypocrites (because liberals are dumb). Before Islam became the new geopolitical scapegoat, liberals took the piss out of the Bible, but now they say Islam is shit because it's not peaceful and tolerant like Christianity is.

Seriously, when has religious doctrine not been at odds with secularism? If we can reconcile it with Christianity why can't we reconcile it with Christianity 2: Electric Boogaloo?

That would be seen my the majority of Muslims as a defeat. The reason why we're so reluctant to assimilate is because WE KNOW we'll be taken advantage of by Westerners. Our culture and faith are important to us and we will not be bought off.

But they exist, that's the point.

Are you Syriac/Assyrian/Chalden?

In a sense, Muslims are very good "Althusserians" in that they understand how ideology works and what must be done to ensure a particular ideology remains in place. Islam has no concept of "original sin" and instead, believes everyone is innately born Muslim (hence, you don't "convert" to Islam; you "revert"). However, everyone's innate Muslim-ness becomes tainted as soon as they're immersed in a society that's not run according to God's Laws. From there the formula remains the same: you must undergo extreme moral purification in order to regain your "true Islamic self".

Also, I'm an American living in Europe and can tell you un-assimilated Muslims are HUGE assets to the far-right for the same reasons mentioned here. It's very easy to use "Muslim ghettos" as a means of drumming up fear in the white population, hence more votes for UKIP and FN.

The thing is, the Left seems completely unwilling to deal with this issue. They're afraid of grabbing Muslims by the balls (proverbially of course) and feeding them our own leftist ideologies. So what happens? Angry Muslim youth run off to join ISIS rather than the communist party. Who wins? The far-right does.

I don't know where you live, but here in the UK you'll see plenty of hijabistas wearing brightly coloured headscarves with multiple layers, all while wearing blue jeans and shirts which don't cover their elbows.

Hijab IMHO is more of a symbol of Arab/Islamic nationalism and a reactionary one at that. 50 years ago most Arab women hated the hijab and laughed at being forced to wear it. Now Arab girls as young as 11 can't wait to put it on because they think it's "subversive" or whatever Postmodernist jargon is used to describe it.

It could still be used as a cultural thing, but I agree, there could be a subversive intent. But not all intents are malicious.

It's a shame that Muslim countries are among the most porkiest in the world. I have read some stories about the "Islamic Socialist" movement in Iran and in other places, but a lot of countries in the Muslim world are still neo-liberal and repressive of their populaces. Their leaders are often corrupt and unaccountable but we have seen in places like Morocco where the King doesn't intervene with the Government and has co-opted with opposition critics. And as of now, Morocco is quietly prospering amidst the strife in MENA.

Meh.

Those "Islamic socialists" in Iran were mostly Western-style intellectuals who merely called themselves "Islamic" and "traditional" as a populist thing. They were also exiled, imprisoned, or killed after the Ayatullah took power.

Islam itself is heavily class-collaborationist. Zakat is nothing more than social democracy used for the purpose of negating class struggle (which flies in the face of people who like to pretend zakat is a "radical form of Islamic socialism mandated by God").

Hijab merely represents a *national* consciousness, not a *proletarian* consciousness in this case. Huge difference. Hijabi Huma isn't going to just pick up an AK and wage People's War because France won't let her wear that rag on her head in school.

National liberation comes first.

How is a Muslim woman supposed to identify as "proletarian" if the primary oppression she knows is national?

AKA it's better to have a capitalist patriarchy controlled by your own race than a different race.

These "hijabi feminists" do not fight for feminism. They fight for taking control of what it means to be a "woman" from modern woman hateric institutions (fashion industry, cosmetics industry, porn industry, etc.) and moving it to the hands of pre-modern woman hateric institutions, specifically the religious ones.

So the answer for you then is to establish hierarchies of identity?

Yusuf Ali and/or Dr. Nazeer Ahmed

turd position

No seriously.

turd position aka fascsim.

Pan-Arabism is, ideologically, really no different from Zionism in that respect. Gadafy was basically an Arab Hitler, not only in regards to race (remember his regime expelled every last Libyan Jew) but economically as well.

Sure, he gave everyone free health care, free electricity, free water, etc. but that's pretty standard of Nazi regimes. Doesn't mean they're egalitarian or worker-controlled. Gadafy was also thinking about implementing a Gold Standard which would have been a disaster.

Gaddafi did not implement the islamic socialism that he wrote about in his book, he was a dictator ffs.

...

Islam never mandates male authority over women. Qur'an only states that men must protect women, which they are currently not doing hence the amount of rape and assault in the so-called "Islamic" World.

Islam prohibits dictatorships. You are literally not allowed to just seize power in a coup and declare yourself dictator or king. That's why Sunnis did NOT celebrate the Iranian Revolution, because we understand it to be unjust (not that the Shah's regime was just but his overthrow was equally unjust). All the early caliphs were elected by popular support and a state which is actually governed according to Islamic principles must serve the people first and foremost.

Those "Islamic socialists" in Iran were mostly Western-style intellectuals who merely called themselves "Islamic" and "traditional" as a populist thing. They were also exiled, imprisoned, or killed after the Ayatullah took power.
Are you saying the People's Mujahedin of Iran were a bunch of petty-bourgeois intellectuals? Were they ever relevant?

reddit.com/r/islam/comments/1kfs7v/fellow_muslims_what_are_some_things_that_are/cbomoix

Holy shit (no pun intended) they were tailing the clerics so hard they had to change their slogan from "Workers of the World Unite!" to "God is Great!".

I'm not kidding. Fuck 'em.

Which implies a gender hierarchy. In fact, traditional Islam is full of gender roles, given that "man" and "woman" are viewed as metaphysical entities.

Islamic metaphysics goes completely counter to Marxism. In Islam, everyone is thought to be born a Muslim; you don't "convert" to Islam but "revert". This goes entirely against the Marxist idea of men not making their history as they choose but being subjected to social forces which in turn create our character.

Please. Read Ibn Khaldun where he goes about celebrating the fact that corrupt dictatorships were overthrown *by the people* and installed with new, equally-corrupted dictatorships.

By this logic, there hasn't been a "tw00 caliphate" since the reign of Ali.

It also means the Abbasid Caliphate was "unjust" given that it was a monarchy. So much for the Islamic Golden Age being under the ISA of Islam.

no NOT this shit again. why can't we get checkers or satanposter back instead?

Yes, condescending fedora atheism will be the downfall of radical Islam.

What? Patriarchy is not an actual institution in the modern secular west. You have to be a complete moron to think that. Those hijab feminists are asshole but that doesn't make regular feminism any less shit.

actually, the Ottomans WERE very lenient with minorities
t. baghdadi jew

Agreed. But that was NOT a caliphate or the Ottoman Empire.
The minute the British and Ottoman empires disengaged, the secular pan-Arabists and Arab Nationalists began ethnically cleansing, mass rape and murder etc of Jews, Jewish nationalism arose as a counter to that. The only force to truly unite the Afro-Asiatic world has been the Ottoman Empire.
T. Baghdadi Jew

How the fuck is that a good thing if it's "uniting" them through violent imperialist dictatorship? Would you support an American invasion of the entire Middle East for the goal of ending ethnic conflicts?

The Ottomans were quite lenient with their minorities yes, as with those of Jews and Greeks.
That doesn't at all exclude the disgusting massacres they committed against the Greeks, Assyrians and let's not forget, the Armenians. One which they are still in complete denial of when Germany recognized it this week, going through mental gymnastics that Merkel was trying to spite or backstab them over the migrant deal or whatever.

As expected of Erdogan and his despotic regime. Another chauvnist filing along the ranks of Putin. Another opportunistic bully like Netanyahu.

Justifying imperialism I see? The expansionist Ottoman empire was no different than any benign imperialist empire in human history with minorities under its rule that occasionally expressed somewhat pragmatic approach to said minorities. If I was a Greek or a Jew, I'd rather not live under the Ottoman empire thank you very much, no matter what "status" I had.

Well, you can't just bust one spook, you have to bust all of them or the rest will fill in the gaps. When religion loses its authority, ethnicity is usually next in line.

I think there's some confusion here since modern Islamic terrorism has left the impression that the Muslim world spent most of its time killing people, so the old Muslim world has a double standard against it that very few nations of its time could meet.
So, he's probably assuming you mean far worse than you do.

Social hierarchy is still hierarchy.

By that logic, Islamophobia in the West doesn't exist because Muslims in most Western countries are allowed to build mosques, wear religious garb, and pray in public.

It's stupid.

If you look at the rise of Islam it was actually very liberal doctrine, straddling the line between a handful of major theological beliefs and making common cause with Jews and Christians as best as they could. Muslims when they rule will force everyone to abide by their rules but a good muslim in a foreign country, that would be most muslims in this case, are not trying to take control and not trying to force anyone else to either be a muslim or do as muslims do. People forget that Islam is a secular religion, it has a hand off approach with other people of the book.

In saying the above I don't intend to ignore the violence perpetrated in the name of Allah but I seriously don't think we should see groups that are funded by westerners to topple governments and who end up killing many more muslims than anyone else as representative of Islam. The whole narrative is more than over blown, and I think we need to realise that some of the elements that generate it are co-ordinated.

Improve the economic conditions of the people so that populist nationalism doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Why does everyone keep insisting Marxism-Leninism is halal?

If anything, a true "Islamic socialism" would look almost identical to Proudhon's mutualism (sans the "to be GOVERNED" stuff of course; Muslims want a strong state), so why not advocate that if we're trying to have the subaltern speak?

the ottoman empire was unique because it was literally liberating most of the groups it took under its wing, spreading education, etc

Jump off a building pls.

millet system =/= chattel slavery

The milet system was hardly anarchistic, you fucking mong.

Also, the Ottoman Empire wasn't even run according to shariah in the first place. You saw people in Constantinople and Alexandria drinking wine in public, which under an actual shariah system would have been strictly prohibited.

Not to mention, Ottoman landlords were one major reason why Zionists were allowed to buy up land in Palestine. The Zionist takeover literally happened on the watch of that oh-so progressive empire.

Is that pic real? Also is the guy replying an actual islamist?

t. Young Hegelian

actually, it was due to the British European imperialist working with the zionist imperialists

The Ottomans let Jews settle there because they acknowledged that the Southern Levant was the indigenous homeland of the Hebrew people, from whom the majority of Jews today descend from, at least in part.

How is Zionism inherently imperialist? It is an indigenous liberation movement.
T. Baghdadi Jew

Palestinian landlords sold their own people out, that's my point. There are records of absentee landlords (mostly emirs) sitting on their asses in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Damascus who willingly sold Zionist settlers Palestinian lands, leading the Palestinian serfs to be displaced.

Explain in detail.

Can you cite an academic source for this claim? It sounds like horseshit.

Because Jews came from that region- it's common knowledge. What displaced Jews? Colonialism. Do you think that the erasure and Arabisation of many indigenous West Asian cultures and ways of life is different from other cultural hegemonic expansionist processes?
Even today, pan-Arabism was effectively Arab supremacism, Mizrahi and Maghrebi Jews were not largely Zionist at all until things like the Farhud, Nebi Musa riots, Hebron massacre, Aden Riots, Jaffa riots, Aleppo riots, Safed Riots, Tripoli Riots, Constantine pogrom, etc - all perpetrated by these secular Arab supremacists. Why can Jews not have a home, of any size, somewhere in the Levant, where we know we will not get our assets stripped, families attacked, etc. Jews have been in North Africa and much of West Asia since before the Arabs entered the region, why must they be an accepted hegemon?

T. Baghdadi Jew

This is actually a good point, and honestly, if the Left accepts Pan-Arabism as an "anti-imperialist fascism" why not accept Zionism on the same terms?
So what?

Pan-Arabism also displaced indigenous populations. Why are there no more Jews in Libya and only a tiny amount of Jews left in Yemen and Egypt when those places used to be full of Jews and Judaic culture?

Turkish nationalism lead to the displacement of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Arab Christians - why isn't Turkey held to the same standard as Israel?

Likewise, Balkan nationalism heavily displaced most of the ethnic Turks living in what are now Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc.

The problem is, in each of these conflicts there is no clear-cut "colonizer" or "colonized". You can say Ashkenazi Jews in Israel/Palestine are "colonials" but most Jews in Israel are actually Mizrahi and thus indigenous to the region. Are Greeks being "colonial" when they talk about Istanbul/Constantinople being the center of Byzantine culture and thus rightfully Greek? Are Albanians right for wanting control of Kosovo? See what I mean?

Plus, the only way a true "decolonization" of Palestine would be possible is if the future one-democratic-state-Palestinian president instituted a massive land reform; if not, it would be like apartheid never ended given as to how Ashkenazi Jews would still be the big landowners and business owners. You'd have to remove the kibbutzim and find the lands' original inhabitants from the thousands if not millions of returning Palestinian refugees. It would make Mugabe's land reform look like child's play.