The faces of Muhammad

[The Postman]

Theyre not converts and theyre not visibly christian outside their churches. Its not just christians btw, converting to any other religion, even atheism is treason

I suggest you make a thread on fundamentalism in general if you'd like to pursue this further. You're getting this entire thread off-topic enough as it is.

[DaanO]

Why not let a discussion go where it goes as long as it's a decent discussion and it's related to the topic? Which, it is. Anyway, i can see your point about convertion, but what about Christians that have always been Christians? Since when has this law been in effect, what cause, what reason? If it's sharia law, do you know which part of the Koran describes it, i have one here so i could look it up.

[The Postman]

Why not let a discussion go where it goes as long as it's a decent discussion and it's related to the topic? Which, it is. Anyway, i can see your point about convertion, but what about Christians that have always been Christians? Since when has this law been in effect, what cause, what reason? If it's sharia law, do you know which part of the Koran describes it, i have one here so i could look it up.

Suit yourselves. I just find it better to argue specific points when there aren't tangents that don't exactly deal directly with the main point.

[RD]

Posty, they have as much control over their government as we have over our press and artists.

And Daan0 I was talking about muslims that convert to other religions or become atheist. Read 3:5 , 3:85 , 16:106. The koran also says to live like Muhammed and he said to kill converts.

Remember Salman Rushdie? Ask any muslim what should happen to him. You too Posty, if you actually know any muslims. Youll find a hidden chamber of secrets in their mind that you didnt believe existed.

Btw here is a secret story of a muslim that converted to christianity.

Has no one ever wondered why we rarely if ever publicly hear of Muslims converting to other religions, given the sheer numbers of Muslims in the world?

I live in a Western country and every Ramadan there are programmes on television, profiling Western converts to Islam. Their faces and names appear on television and they openly discuss the reasons for their conversion. How often, though, do we hear of converts from Islam to other religions, to Christianity, for example, even here in the West? Muslims to whom I have put this question in the anonymity of chat sessions on the internet, express incredulity at the idea that a Muslim should ever want to convert to another religion – “are there any [converts from Islam to Christianity]?” was the response of a recent, Western convert to Islam! When I declared my own, “apostate” status, after the initial disbelief the response of the majority of the Muslims on line, all living in the West, was that I “deserved to die”. An American Muslim explained it as “treason” – and, after all, “treason incurs the death penalty in America”!

I was a Muslim and I converted to Christianity. Mine was not a dramatic conversion. I was exposed to both religions within my family. Yet, under Islamic law, which applies in my native country, I could face a death sentence for exercising a choice that Muslim converts in the West exercise in freedom and in safety. Even though the death penalty in my native country is not enforced by the state, it stays on the books to deter potential converts. In practice, a family member or friend may do away with the apostate and the police will be sympathetic. Converts to Christianity, that great, rival missionary religion, are, together with “heretics”, the chief targets in the Muslim world today, as they have been since the earliest days of Islam (which is paradoxical when you consider Muslim disbelief that anyone could abandon Islam). Much is made today of the subjugation of women in Islam, yet no mention is made in the Western media of the persecution of religious minorities under Islamic law – and especially of the apostate.

Those who renounce Islam like myself, even in the West, are too afraid to allow their conversion/apostasy to be publicly known, for we live under a kind of permanent fatwa, for Muhammad himself, as recorded in the Hadith (Traditions), explicitly decreed that we be killed. If I appeared on television to talk about my reasons for converting to Christianity, with my face and name appearing for all to see, I would never know if or when I might be attacked, who my attacker might be or when the attack might come – here, in the West. This sort of thing is incomprehensible to most Westerners, yet it is a feature of life for us even in the West, a life Westerners know little about. And what about members of my family still in my native country? Would they be safe if my identity were made known, albeit in a Western country?

I recently attended a public, interfaith dialogue meeting between Christians and Muslims (very popular here in the West since September 11th – but not so popular where Muslims are in a majority!), where, though I did not give my name and did not reveal that I was a Muslim convert to Christianity, I was critical of Islam and quoted from the Quran and the Hadith to make my point. On the way back I changed my transportation even though I would not usually do so. When I got home a family member drew my attention to the fact that I was wearing a brightly coloured, easily recognisable garment. I will not wear it again.

It is rare to hear publicly of Muslims who renounce Islam, not because it doesn’t occur – it occurs despite persecution – but because we are afraid, for ourselves and for our families. Tolerance in Islam is a one-way street.

I have Muslim family members and have had wonderful Muslim friends in the past. Individuals always defy patterns. Yet the pattern is real, it exists and it remains largely unchallenged.

Sehr (Not my real name)

[Fletch]

Do the cartoons that were drawn inspire disgust and anger in anyone of Islamic faith? Yes.

Does free speech protect such drawings? Yes.

Does free speech keep people from being insulted, angered or disgusted by such drawings? No.

Does lowering one's self to the level of antagonism and bigotry of the Fundamentalist Islamic states make us better than them? No.

Does deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states do anything to secure peace or foster understanding between the two cultures? No.

Are the European states deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states by reprinting these cartoons after the facr? Yes.

Is that helping? No.

That's the nuts and bolts of it. Go post some more pictures, though.

That is pretty much my exact stance on the matter. There is a huge gap between what legal rights and what the 'right' thing to do is. The papers can print this stuff all day long. It's freedom of the press in the finest sense of the word. To a certain degree, I think their hearts are int he right place standing by their fellow journalists.

That being said, it's an incredibly dumbfuck thing to do. In fact, I 'm actually going to quote George W. Bush without any sense of irony. "They hate our freedoms." In the western-democratic world, we abide by the freedome of the press. In the eatern-Islamic world, the concept just isn't on the table for discussion. It's not that they disagree with the concept. But in their world, freedom of the press isn't a moral priority. Religion is #1 and the government is an arm of the religion. You don't question religion, therefore you don't question government, therefore you don't need freedom of the press. That whole mentality went without saying for a long time, and this just brought it to the forefront. It's like trying to putt two positively charged magnets next to each other. They ain't sticking.

I wish the media in Europe would have had a bit more sincerity when doing this. For once, I think the American media is being very respectful of the issue (then again, I don't watch Fox News, so I have no frame of reference for what they're talking about). I think part of that is an unconscious attempt to let the extremists go after Europe for a while instead of America, but I digress.

The overall point is, that the media has the legal right to do this. Just like the KKK has the legal right to march through Harlem. Just like Fred Phelps has the legal right to hold signs that say "God Hates Soldiers" outside military funerals. Freedom of speech is a two way street. But just because you're legally in the right, doesn't make you a good person, or a nice person. You've still got a mroal responsibility unto yourself, and I think a lot of editors screwed up.

[RD]

IN MY OPINION there's a purpose to these kind of toons. This is really about European muslims learning to use European laws to get what they want. We all know the latest ones are too much, its not really the reason why other countries republish them. Before these ones there were others, PEOPLE get killed over it or go into hiding. Any criticism of Islam is getting pretty dangerous here. If Fred Phelps was beheaded on your streets you would see the problem.

Take it to the court or go demonstrate. If you see your friends in the Middle East doing all this shit, condemn them or go live with them. Not backing up Denmark basically means condemning the authors to death and Denmark into a everlasting world of shit.

edited by Postman. Seriously RD, this isn't IRC. Take the time to write out words, please.

[Steppenwolf]

edited by Postman. Seriously RD, this isn't IRC. Take the time to write out words, please

lol this is lame, i think i know who censored the islamic pics of mohamed that i posted before.

Well this seems obviously not to be the right place to discuss stuff. Im back to eot. CU!

[The Postman]

edited by Postman. Seriously RD, this isn't IRC. Take the time to write out words, please

lol this is lame, i think i know who censored the islamic pics of mohamed that i posted before.

Well this seems obviously not to be the right place to discuss stuff. Im back to eot. CU!

You posted a series of pics that had nothing to do with the argument. You weren't answering arguments with anything constructive and you were mindlessly trolling with those pictures. I deleted your posts for those reasons and RD knows full well that I've been on his ass about posting like a 9 year old playing CS for a while now. You can go ahead and post here, but there are rules.

[Steppenwolf]

You posted a series of pics that had nothing to do with the argument. You weren't answering arguments with anything constructive and you were mindlessly trolling with those pictures. I deleted your posts for those reasons and RD knows full well that I've been on his ass about posting like a 9 year old playing CS for a while now. You can go ahead and post here, but there are rules.

Seriously i shut up now because if i answer this post adequately i will be banned from mapcore. And thats something that i dont want.

[The Postman]

Seriously i shut up now because if i answer this post adequately i will be banned from mapcore. And thats something that i dont want.

Seeing as I have no power to ban, that's not really an option. You can go ahead and post, all I request is intelligent arguments and constructive criticisms. Not trolling pictures or posts.

[ginsengavenger]

Posty I agree with your position in this thread. You're repeatedly bringing up propriety though, so somebody's got to do it:

www.dictionary.com

...

state-run industr...institutionalized it's party philosophy...germanic...after the facr...how their nation's react...because the west should...

I agree that Political Discussion should be conducted in proper English as best we can manage, but please keep in mind that not one of us is infallible and many of us aren't even native speakers.

[Steppenwolf]

Seeing as I have no power to ban, that's not really an option. You can go ahead and post, all I request is intelligent arguments and constructive criticisms. Not trolling pictures or posts.

You Sir, really pissing me off! A constructive discussion with you is not possible. You don't accept other arguments, you disrespect other people (me) by calling arguments not intelligent or constructive, you play the grammar nazi card against people who are not native english speakers, you censor comments of other people without telling them and you act childish.

SORRY that my english isn't good enough to find the right words to discuss with you on your "niveau".

The pictures that i posted were pics of mohamed made by muslims! They have very much to do with the discussion since they show much the people in the islamic world overreact.

I wonder wtf is wrong with you. You take position for the radical muslim and do exactly what they want you to do - censor pictures of mohammed and disrespect people with a different opinion. You should be ashamed!

[zpanzer]

politic is the roots of all evil things in the world

[DaanO]

I know what happened to Salman Rusdie RD, i haven't been living in a cave the last 10 years

I just read those verses and all i get from them is that Allah is the only god and that everyone that says otherwise is a liar. Those that choose another path will receive a severe punishment, but it is implied that they will receive it from Allah. This only adds to what i've already read in the Koran and what i already knew, it doesn't say anything about killing converts.

The story is interesting and i believe what he writes about converts these days. The writer of the story is, however, ill informed when it comes to Islams past. As i pointed out earlier, Islam rulers used to be very tolerant towards other religions. Freedom of religion was a custom hundreds of years ago at least. 'Better the tulban than the tiara' was a saying among some groups of Christians in those times because the Islam was more tolerant towards them than their 'fellow' Christians of the Holy Roman Empire. In the Koran (read 1:63) it says that the Jews ( !! ), the Christians and the Sabians that believe in Allah and the Last Day and do good deeds will receive a reward from their Lord and there will be no fear among them and they won't have grief. Proof enough that his claim that Islam has always seen Christians as their enemy, is a false claim. This also makes me doubt his story about these days a little, but because it seems to make sense, i will believe it.

Please point me to a verse that proves that Mohammed decreed that converts are to be killed.

Another interesting point. I do know a Muslim that converted to atheism (i think so, at least), and you know her as well. Her name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It's publically known that she converted, yet she was only threatened after she had that silly movie, for insulting Islam and the prophet.

Oh and Posty, freedom of speech has it's limits. It is, for example, forbidden in all Western countries to say things that can lead to violence and i don't think insulting others is allowed in extreme cases either.

Besides that (i don't want to stir things up, do as you please) i am interested in those pictures that Steppenwolf described. If they're not allowed here - i don't see a reason for this but i can accept it - please send through private message, thanks.

[TomWithTheWeather]

...smart on topic stuff...

IAWTP^