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Originally Posted by Trapper John
I agree that the tenets of Islam are a static belief system as PRB suggests (no evidence of its evolution) and that it is designed as such. Wouldn't that, therefore, be its fatal flaw? I contend that Islam was contrived by Muhammad merely as a method for controlling people for his own personal interests. That it has been expanded to what it is today is nothing more than a tool for control by oppression. Every system that has endeavored to control people by oppression has ultimately failed. Islam will also fail. We can either hasten that end or prolong it.
In my view we are at War with Islam and Islam is at War with us and every other non-Muslim, by definition. My question is, are we approaching this the right way? History would suggest not.
To continue the fight from the perspective that I am right you are wrong and justifying our position from a historical context leads to the problem Sig points out -
There's no advancing from that position - stalemate.
I think the battlefield is the human domain. The most striking lesson I learned in SF while working with indigenous peoples (although only briefly with Muslims) is that at the core they are just like me. We aspire to the same things. That's a common ground from which we can win.
De Oppresso Liber  |
In my mind, we prolong it by challenging it in a manner, as Sigaba pointed out, few of our own could effectively argue. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims, or 23% of the world’s population, making Islam the second-largest religion. So we can argue that they must all read more and then convert or be terrorists... or we can try and co-opt the moderate muslims to separate from the extremists as they keep their cultural identity. There are areas of differences. They seem a better starting point than getting 800 million people not only literate (the current estimate of non-literate muslims) but also well-read and versed in their religion. Statistically, not even the literate will be as well read in Islam as some members of this site. Here is an except from Pew Research.
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The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are united in their belief in God and the Prophet Muhammad and are bound together by such religious practices as fasting during the holy month of Ramadan and almsgiving to assist people in need. But they have widely differing views about many other aspects of their faith, including how important religion is to their lives, who counts as a Muslim and what practices are acceptable in Islam, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The survey, which involved more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews in over 80 languages, finds that in addition to the widespread conviction that there is only one God and that Muhammad is His Prophet, large percentages of Muslims around the world share other articles of faith, including belief in angels, heaven, hell and fate (or predestination). While there is broad agreement on the core tenets of Islam, however, Muslims across the 39 countries and territories surveyed differ significantly in their levels of religious commitment, openness to multiple interpretations of their faith and acceptance of various sects and movements.
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Generational differences are also apparent. Across the Middle East and North Africa, for example, Muslims 35 and older tend to place greater emphasis on religion and to exhibit higher levels of religious commitment than do Muslims between the ages of 18 and 34. In all seven countries surveyed in the region, older Muslims are more likely to report that they attend mosque, read the Quran (also spelled Koran) on a daily basis and pray multiple times each day. Outside of the Middle East and North Africa, the generational differences are not as sharp. And the survey finds that in one country – Russia – the general pattern is reversed and younger Muslims are significantly more observant than their elders.
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http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/t...utive-summary/
Reading the full report, there seems to be logical places to start. Something I recall about divide and...
IMHO, it certainly points out (within the full report) a potential for a force multiplier strategy.