Thread: The fear and Dogma of Islam.

I don't normally approach a topic this way but I have experienced something recently that has very much opened my eyes.

At work there is a lot of multi culturalism. I understood that and that there are many types of religion. But something recently got my attention. At the moment the Muslims where I work are undergoing a fasting for a month, where they cannot eat or drink from 4:00am to 8:00pm. Which is a very noble act towards their faith if you ask me. But when I realised that the vast number of Muslims having came to England, had dropped their faith, I was utterly gobsmacked.

Tales of intimidation and threats, all the fear of God that children are given in countires were Islam is a must to their lives. It made me very shocked. And stunningly at least every 8 in 10 Muslims originating countires I have asked at work have all said that they are no longer Muslim or hold the Muslim faith.

That was very shocking, I mean just consider that all those people in the Middle East that are put under all this crap that some ascpects of humanity add to the religion. I have no problem with religion, but the extent that religion is preached in those countires is disgusting, and it is not hard to see how terrorists are made. Its shocking.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Does this happen anywhere else to any other religion where you are that you know of?

Religion is at base a faith, if you keep it, you'll be saved or whatever.
I guess coming into more educated places, you start to move away from that.
Or at least get more intellectual about it.
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I need to add that religion is quite political.

An authentic example:
Myself I lived in Lebanon(4 years)(I'm was purely imported there,no Lebanese genetic), I was quite surprised to see that many Chrestian Maronites didn't go to church by faith but more on a political obligation.

Faith is politics there, and if you want to help your party (against Muslims) you go to church. Some of my friends reported to me that they were giving big amounts of money to their church. This is where the power was.

But faith wise lebanese maronites didn't seem addicted to faith itself.



My experience also from Lebanon, is that out of private school education was poor, people were working form an early age, I also had muslim guys who came to me thinking I was american and where pretty agressive towards me.
I felt the hatred. (once I remember very well in front of a Mc-Donald)

So honnestly, I see very well why we do get integrist building up, such amounts of poor education and such hatred towards Americans.
Sometimes you just can't explain the hatred. It was like a wave of hatred passing by. Maybe jealousy on things Western do get so easly compared to them.


Education and developement is key toward some kind of world peace.
Religion will always be there


Sorry if I'm slightly off topic... I though it would feet in.!

No, that was brilliant. Thank you. Its always important I feel to udnerstand what we all think and feel, so we can like you say attain peace, by means of education and development. A small step here, but a giant leap somewhere else maybe?

i bet a high number of those "muslims" were unreligous to begin with, which is why they are where they are, so i don;t think 80% are living in repression, it is just that the unreligous minority is highly represented by immigration populations, as logic would follow

Perhaps we are "brain wired" as a species to have religious sentiments. Maybe this represents a faulty design?

Does a mouse "hate" for example a cat giving chase, or is this simply the way things are? Humans seen to preoccupy with hate and with little objective reason. Evolution should have made us better but perhaps, if we were designed, the technicians may have been under qualified for the task

Religions tend to allow multiple interpretations like people imagine seeing faces in clouds, so religions are interpretable in many different ways from equal sources of "knowledge".

If we ever get to travel in space, for centuries, could we possibly do this with religions on board? Or would we just squabble and fight in space to our eventual demise?

If we need evolution to prepare for century long space travels, it won't be more additional brain mass for IQ, it will be for additional brain mass to suppress anti social attributes we seem to have inherited.

Originally Posted by ishmaelblues

i bet a high number of those "muslims" were unreligous to begin with, which is why they are where they are, so i don;t think 80% are living in repression, it is just that the unreligous minority is highly represented by immigration populations, as logic would follow

Very good point. 100% of Westerners who defect to North Korea absolutely reject capitalism. Where I am, I meet a lot of immigrants who openly state they'd rather be in California (for the lifestyle they've seen on TV), but had to settle for Canada. They promptly dine at McDonalds & make weekend pilgrimages across the border.

I also agree that is a very good point. There are however many people such as Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali who converted away from Islam once they had the opportunity to view it from a non-islamic angle.

And just to confirm what you have seen SV, i found this link on Wiki-Islam which claims that there are 200,000 ex-muslims (apostates) living in the UK alone.

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Originally Posted by Vaedrah

Perhaps we are "brain wired" as a species to have religious sentiments. Maybe this represents a faulty design?

I don't think we are brain wired to have religious sentiments or beliefs. I think we, with our high level of intelligence, simple try to find meaning to our lives. This may be religion, nationalism, career, family etc.

Originally Posted by Vaedrah

Does a mouse "hate" for example a cat giving chase, or is this simply the way things are? Humans seen to preoccupy with hate and with little objective reason. Evolution should have made us better..........

Animals that are successful survive, animals which are not successful don't survive. That is a main part of evolution. If the mouse didn't hate the cat giving chase, would there be any mice? Perhaps our "hate" is also part of our success?

Originally Posted by 425 Chaotic Requisition

No, that was brilliant. Thank you. Its always important I feel to udnerstand what we all think and feel, so we can like you say attain peace, by means of education and development. A small step here, but a giant leap somewhere else maybe?

I tend to disagree that education will do any good under current circumstances. Any oppressive regime's (not necessarily religious) first priority is to control education, to mould future generations the way they desire, if I may say.

The key here is an education that provides "critical thinking".

Cat1981: I also agree that is a very good point. There are however many people such as Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali who converted away from Islam once they had the opportunity to view it from a non-islamic angle.

this is a good point i think that brings light to the subject, muslims are not exactly behind bars in a sense, but more enveloped into their culture - in their own country.

Originally Posted by ishmaelblues

i bet a high number of those "muslims" were unreligous to begin with, which is why they are where they are, so i don;t think 80% are living in repression, it is just that the unreligous minority is highly represented by immigration populations, as logic would follow

Many islamic countries still legally have the death penalty for anyone who wants to stop being a muslim. Obviously that's going to cause quite a few people to pretend to be muslim until they're out of the country and safe. As I recall something like 1/3 of all muslims are living in countries where the legal punishment for leaving islam is death. And even in many of the islamic countries where you can't be legally killed for leaving islam, letting anyone know that you weren't a muslim would likely mean the end of your business/career/whatever. Which raises some very interesting questions about how many real muslims there are in the world.

i screwed up my quote above :?