How Germany treats the victims of Muslim terror

They are Muslims, but they don't represent them. Just because they commit atrocities doesn't mean they can just be disowned so they aren't associated with muslims.

I believe what guest is saying is that they represent Muslims about as well as the westborough baptist church represents Christians- they consider themselves of the faith but do not practice the elements of the faith. They have selected those parts of their scripture which support their own views, ignoring all other parts of the faith as well as the most widely accepted interpretations of controversial passages in favor of only that which serves a political agenda. It is a political group using religion as a justification, no different than a cult really and in no way true to Islam beyond cursory similarity.

Well, the Westboro Baptist Church does represent Christians, they're just a poor representation. If the WBC can be used as an excuse to hate Christians, why can't jihadis be used as an excuse to hate Muslims?

Firstly a group doesn't represent another group because they say they do, imagine a world where any person could just go around do things and we make whoever they claim to be with responsible. Secondly, can and should are two different things. You can murder someone, people do it all the time and nothing is actually stopping anyone if they really want to. Should you? There are consequences, and ethically probably not. So because some people use the actions of a few to justify hate of a larger group, doesn't mean that be condoned or accepted as the norm. In a world full of terrible people we don't all become right in comparison, we just all become terrible instead of some. Endevour to be better, even when others don't have the strength. If we let people drag us down to their level no one is better for it.

Making sure I understand your point; anybody that does something contrary to YOUR understanding of THEIR religion automatically not a representative of that religion?

I'm glad you checked, it seems you don't understand. I am happy to clarify though. I will try to be simple and direct to avoid possible issues, but if anything isn't clear please feel free to check again.
Someone who does something contradictory to the understanding of the majority of those practicing and responsible for the interpretation of their own religion is not a representative of the whole.
Someone who has specifically been denounced by a majority f a religion as not their representative does not represent them.
Someone who creates a splinter sect of something represents their splinter sect.

Exactly like people who call themselves christian and kill abortion doctors don't come from one certain abortionist-doctors-killer-.churches.

The thing is, though, that terrorist groups like Hezbollah aren't denounced by a majority of their religion, in fact there are many Muslims that hail them as the Muslim ideal.

Where do you get the "majority" or even the "many" from?

Roughly 23% or 1.5 billion of the earths population are Muslim. Something like 50 countries are majority Muslim spanning Asia Africa and more. Of the group of the world which are Muslim we can safely say that by numbers the majority do not support terrorism or actively and knowingly participate in it. Statisticallly you are more likely to be killed by a political radical from your own country who is non Muslim than a Muslim in most of the world. Factor in that for many that do support terror groups it has less to do with religious fundamentalism and more to do with the fact that many of these groups are also fighting for political or ethnic concessions supported by local populations, many also act to provide local communities ravaged by war and oppression with resources and infrastructure. So not all supporters do so out of a religious belief but out of practical or political reasons.

its semantics, but an important distinction as language is powerful. These terrorists do not represent all, or even a majority of muslims. If abu sayyaf commits a terrorist action they do not represent Islam they represent abu sayyaf. The term "Islamic terror" implies Islam is behind it and not an organization or individual. If the majority of muslims on earth or even a very large fraction were terrorists things would be much worse than they are. It's political use of language. One might be appropriate in saying "extremist Muslim terror" or "fundamentalist" just as WBB is a fundamentalist organization and by and large doesn't reflect the christians of the world, many of whom detest the actions of the group and the scrutiny it brings, or who may hold similar beliefs but believe the methods are against the spirit of the faith. Whe. We say something like "American stupidity" we imply it is a trait inherent, fostered, and to a degree harbored by all Americans.

Trust me, it's not exclusive American stupidity. The global right wing has re-invented the endgame wunderwaffe: build on peoples ignorance, greed, fear and laziness: blame it all on an easy to target scapegoat. Goebbel's blueprint propaganda tools beamed into today's semi-virtual reality.

Do you ever stop you insufferable bigoted socialist tool?

No trait negative or positive is the sole property of one group. Humans are capable of anything in the right circumstances. It isn't always or even often an ideological reason we support a thing, it is more often practical. A desire to survive, thrive, and live as we want. Just as many Americans continue to contribute and collect from a government they oppose on many ideological levels, many living in areas of extremist control aren't die hards of the cause but just people provided infrastructure and opportunity, or trying to live in the world they were born to. We can't ascribe one negative trait to a group, or imply it, without opening doors of fear and bigotry and hurting rational discussion and community. We are all different, the arbitrary differences we choose to seize on are absurd. The tenants of the anrahmic religions are all much the same, with only minor differences that vary as much as they do between subscribers within any one of the faiths or population in general.

A muslim is someone who follows the Quran completely and absolutely just like a christian is someone who follows the Bible completely and absolutely. You can't say you're a vegetarian when you eat meat everyday.

I have to stop you write there. I've never met a Christian who didn't believe that the Bible was the literal word of God and that everything in it was true and should be upheld. It's just that most of them have never read it and are told only the good things about it with those that do read it thinking that it isn't actually literal or that it somehow doesn't apply anymore.

I'm right, trust me. The Bible has many contradictory accounts within the gospels. The most famous of which is the two different genealogies of Christ given in Matthew and Luke.

They do not even agree about when Jesus was born with Matthew saying he will be born during the reign of Herod the Great in Matthew 2:1 while Luke says he will be born during the first census in Israel with Quirinius being governor of Syria in Luke 2:2. One of the most important events for Christians is contradictory as Herod died in 4 BC and the first census took place in 6-7 AD making the birthdates completely contradictory.

I live in the South. 'Nuff said.

You're not telling me anything I don't know. In the Southern Area, 41% of people believe the Bible is literally true according to your own source. I'd actually say it is higher in my area as I've only met two Atheists in my area unless you count my brother making it three.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_Planned_Parenthood_shooting

"Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed" - Exodus 22:20 NIV

The NIV is the most accurate translation of the Bible. Christians have many, many translations of the Bible, but this one was made by 15 objective scholars working together with every available resource to make a word for word translation of the Bible into English.

I never said they were good at killing others. Modern Christians are mostly content with poisoning the minds of children through indoctrination.

The Bible is also divided into two parts. The Old and the New Testament. In the Old testament, Yahweh (The Christian God) was a warlord killing all in his path for every minor inconvenience. There were other gods and he was very involved with humans. In the New Testament, Jesus comes around and spreads "peace" and calls for the end of the world. This end of the world was supposed to happen within the lifetime of his disciples around 2000 years ago...

They aren't behaving like Jihadists because they had a slow transformation. You need only look back a few hundred years ago and you'll find that they were pretty similar. The Church would kill anybody who did anything that could be seen as dishonoring the Bible or Yahweh. Christianity is a huge part of the responsibility for the massive technological block and decline that was known as the Dark Ages because they executed anyone who tried to bring forth new knowledge because reality disagrees with the Bible to such a degree that nearly any random fact disproves it.

@dancadmorte Like politicians are Christians? I think our next president is going to be Sikh

They poison their minds mainly through not teaching about any other religion and child abuse through corporal punishment. For example, when I was a kid whenever I asked a question such as how it was possible that heaven was in the clouds when we couldn't see it (I was eight or so and we were talking about the Tower of Babel story) I was slapped and told to be quiet and not to question God. I didn't even know that there were other religions until I learned about it when I was twelve in 6th grade. I had been an Atheist for quite a while, but I didn't know what to call myself. Of course when I said something about it, my teacher told me that I was lying and that I obviously had faith because I was sitting down in a chair and had faith that it would hold me and therefore I had faith in God...

They also are trying to stop the education of science in schools so as to revert us back to the stone ages.

Most Christians won't even vote for a non-christian politician

http://news.gallup.com/poll/183791/support-nontraditional-candidates-varies-religion.aspx?utm_source=Politics&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=tiles

> That's what goes on every day in schools around the Muslim world

And that doesn't make it right. I have to go open gifts now. Cya.

There probably has been an atheist president, but they would never be able to admit it.

Trump may not be a Christian, but he certainly acts like one which is just as bad.

@sir_spiderman Merry Christmas

@pokethebear I mean more like people like Trump or Moore, or the multiple politicians who have had to resign after being found having gay sex after preaching Christian values. There are a lot of them who color themselves Christians for the vote so they can move up the latter but who don't live Christian lives. As another non-religious example, Hillary Clinton paints herself with the feminist brush for votes, but was very quick to defend her sexual predator husband and only gives a shit about women if they're old and white. People lie for power. @asteroid I said nothing about Islam being good, I said you can't equate "jihadist" and "Muslim," and here's why: there are BILLIONS of Muslims in the world, and thousands of jihadists. If you are correct that jihadi=Muslim, then Muslim=jihadi, which means we have billions of people building bombs in their basements. Which we don't. What we have to worry about are power-grab aggressors, because those are the ones who will hurt people.

The common thread you'll find with any ideology religious or not is people using it as a tool for their personal agenda. Propaganda, violence, and hypocracy are not the purview of any one belief system, nor one more than another. Within any group you'll find those who do not follow the supposed teachings of their system, they do not represent that system, merely the well known fact that humans are imperfect and many corrupt. Some of the worst atrocities in recorded history were done by atheists, or with race/nationality/political system as the motivator. Religions and other groups like nationality make convenient scale goats for the fact that we as humans are all guilty of the behaviors we see as detrimental to society. We choose a group to pile out anger on because it gives us a definitive culprit and not just negative human traits universal to us all.

@sir_spiderman There are hundreds of branches of Christianity, most of whom hate each other and most of whom use different parts of the Bible. The Bible is not actually a requirement for being a Christian, it's a holy book most use. A Christian is one who follows Christ as the son of God and savior. About 3/4 of Americans identify as some kind of Christian faith, if they were really trying to "poison" the rest of us as a group they pretty much would have done it by now since they're in a vast majority. What you're talking about is your anecdotal run-ins with fundamental Christians, who aren't the majority. The reason fundamental Christians are pushing so very hard to do things like the Creation museum and getting people in office is because they are in a minority and they are losing ground. In fact, a pretty good sign of that is Moore's recent loss, in a state where Evangelical Christians have kept a Republican in office for decades simply because they were pushing for Christianity.

@sir_SpiderMan “...you need only look back A FEW HUNDRED YEARS” do you know how ridiculous that comparison is? You need only look back a few hundred years to find European men in armor raping and pillaging to steal wealth and spices in the name of religion. You need only look back a few hundred years to see Muslim raiders beheading and crucifying anybody they wanted in the name of religion. The difference is we became civilized and they’re still acting like the savages they were a few hundred years ago.

@asteroid Nah. Westerners support freedom of choice. What happens is, hardliners (like you) conflate freedom of choice with support for something you don't like. I don't care if a woman wears a hijab. I don't care if a woman doesn't wear a hijab. I care that she leaves me alone while she does whatever she wants with her life. Here's the problem: you're taking the example of a Muslim country--many of which are backward socially and culturally, not strictly because they're OMGMUSLIM--and trying to tell me that every Muslim in the world is just as terrible as your country. Your country is your problem, I'm not going to suspect my Muslim coworker of plotting my death because your majority Muslim country happens to suck. It sucks because of the culture, not strictly because of the religion. The religion is just being used by people in power to reinforce the shitty culture that benefits them. Welcome to World History 101: people in absolute power use religion to control the masses.

@dancadamorte Right, and not eating meat isn't a part of being a vegan. I'm done with this chat - I like my star.

@dancadmorte Are you ducking me?

There are people still alive who watched as the atheist Reich burned Jews because of their ethnicity and not their religion. Who watched the Russians massacre ethnic poles and others. Who could see what the Japanese did to the Chinese and Koreans simply because they weren't Japanese, who watched the Chinese communists murder countless thousands. If you want to see where murder happens in the last couple centuries look at politics and hate, look at cries for security and unity against those who were different. These "Muslim" terrorists aren't generally pushing a religion, they are backing political ambitions. Their puppeteers aren't men of strict faith, their men who found parts of their holy writings that justify the world they want to live in. When religion is used as a tool for control those acting are doing so on orders from men, not on the word of any god even if they claim to be.

A wise man who dedicates his life to religion and good deeds will tell you on his grave that he doesn't understand it perfectly. A man who blows up a bus will tell you he does. Perhaps the latter is wiser than he former, who am I to say? What I can say is that Churchill once said we'd kill them on the beaches etc.... when he said that it was reasonable in context. If you kill a German on a beach in 2017 be ready for a legal battle, and that doesn't make anyone doing so a British soldier even if they claim it do. The overarching philosophy is Islam preaches moderation, says specifically that a Jihad to spread ruin, a martyr not in the will of god in accordance with the teachings of the faith is no martyr. The majority of Muslim religious leaders and experts reject fundamentalist beliefs in the same way Christians tend to allow women to speak in church and have rejected many of the passages of the Bible as belonging to that period of time or a given situation.