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President says Islam is a religion of peace

Deuce said:
Also motivating people to kill:

Money. Power. Food. Territory. Women. Men. Anger. Revenge. Skin color. Arbitrary political boundaries. Insanity. Infidelity. ****s and giggles.

The worst people in history didn't need a holy book. Sometimes they just write their own book.

I don't believe a holy book ever motivated someone to kill who wasn't going to do it anyway.
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Further evidence that you have no idea what you are talking about.
 
Fletch said:
Further evidence that you have no idea what you are talking about.
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Further evidence that you have no idea what you are talking about.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Well, seeing as how:

1. ALL stable Islamic nations have a homicide rate lower than America's, and

2. The terrorist attacks in the Middle East are almost all inside nations that are NOT stable, and

3. According to stats provided by the American Medical Association, Muslims in America are ten times more likely to become doctors than 'normal' American citizens...

...yeah, when compared to the baggage that all major religions (including "Christianity") carry over the centuries, YES, with that perspective, Islam is a religion that does value peace.

Y'all need to get a clue that right now - right now! - is the most peaceful time in recorded human history...so when y'all start doing the chicken little thing about the sky falling 'cause Islam, you need to bear in mind that nearly every corner of the planet is MORE peaceful today than it ever was.
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Is that because of the religion?
 
It is actually funny how so many people are speaking ill of Islam without even knowing what it is really about. Before debating if it is a religion of peace or violence, please go and read extensively about Islam. Read Quran. Don't let terrorism decide your views on Islam. You read for yourself and decide. Read about Islam without any bias. Don't just follow the herd like a clueless sheep bashing Islam because it is a popular opinion.
 
tracy18 said:
It is actually funny how so many people are speaking ill of Islam without even knowing what it is really about. Before debating if it is a religion of peace or violence, please go and read extensively about Islam. Read Quran. Don't let terrorism decide your views on Islam. You read for yourself and decide. Read about Islam without any bias. Don't just follow the herd like a clueless sheep bashing Islam because it is a popular opinion.
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Yes, and let's not give ISIL what it wants and start a war with Islam.
 
Dittohead not! said:
So, now we're at war with a billion and a half Muslims all around the world. Where should we start bombing? Indonesia? Saudi Arabia?
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We should probably just round the Muslims up like the Jews and gas em'.
 
1.6 billion confirmed Muslims in the world, and they read a book with 109 verses of cruelty & violence.

What could possibly go wrong?
 
RetiredUSN said:
1.6 billion confirmed Muslims in the world, and they read a book with 109 verses of cruelty & violence.

What could possibly go wrong?
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It's a good thing there are fewer Jews, then, right buddy?
 
Mason66 said:
Is that because of the religion?
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Well, I Googled your question, and here's what I found in less than five seconds:

(Hesham Hassaballa is an intensive care unit physician, co-founder and Executive Director of the Bayan H. Hassaballa Charitable Foundation, and serves on the board of directors for the Chicago Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. He is also a freelance writer and author of Noble Brother. This is his response to questions we asked him about his Islamic faith and profession as a physician.)

“So, you are going to become a doctor, right?” This question, I am quite certain, has been asked of scores of Muslim children by their parents all across this world. Does Islam, somehow, motivate Muslims to become physicians? Perhaps slightly, especially since the Qur’an says that saving a life is like saving all of humanity. But I think that is more of a “fringe benefit” than a major motivation for Muslims to become physicians.

Most importantly, when the Lord blesses a person with being a physician, He gives them the opportunity to do His work on earth: help relieve the suffering of His people. Each and every day, physicians are given the honor and privilege to help people feel better, breathe better, feel less pain, and – through the Lord’s healing power – treat and even cure disease. If smiling to one another – as the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) once said – is a charity, then how about helping someone’s asthma attack? Or helping someone overcome a cancer diagnosis? Or relieving the pain and suffering of someone afflicted with a terrible infection? For me, as a Muslim, being a doctor goes hand in hand with my mission in life: to help God’s people be better.

I did not deserve this honor, and so that’s why I am thankful for it each and every day. God blesses men and women in becoming doctors in two ways. First, and especially in the United States, most physicians are blessed with a good, stable, and well-paying occupation. Additionally, although it has been eroded significantly, most people have enormous respect for physicians and the difficult job they must do.

Has being a doctor ever conflicted with my religious belief? Never. In fact, I hang my religious faith, as I hang my coat, on my desk chair before I see any patient in the office or hospital. My job is to take care of my patients and do what is medically best for them. Period. My religion has never entered into the equation, and that is how I think it should be. I would never, God forbid, impose my own religious belief upon my patients. To me, I would betray my mandate as a physician if I were to do so.

Was Islam a factor for my becoming a doctor? No, not really. For me, there was absolutely no pressure from my parents to become a doctor. Ever since I was a young boy it has been my life dream to be a physician, and I am eternally grateful to the Lord for His granting me my dream to be a doctor. I help people and, in the process, do God’s work at the same time, without ever preaching or even mentioning God at all. What a tremendous gift, Lord, and I thank you so very much for it.
 
Is Islam is the religion of peace, why isn't there peace in the Middle East?
 
Captain Adverse said:
Missed the point entirely. :roll:

You were comparing stability with lower homicide rates, ignoring the fact that most Muslim states are either dictatorships, monarchies, or theocracies. That those under sharia law can have their citizens killed or maimed for being gay, adulterers, or anytime some sharia law enforcer thinks the citizen is not adhering to some other point of sharia law. Also, not much liberty in most such "stable" nations either, sharia law or not, meaning laws are enforced fairly brutally at the hands of government law enforcement.
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'Scuse you, but those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. You should bear in mind which nation has not just the most people in prison, but the highest percentage of its population in prison: AMERICA. WE, sir, are quite literally the greatest offender on the planet when it comes to being a prison state. AGAIN, you are well-educated, you are well aware of this world - but how many of these nations have you personally been to? Have you seen first hand how oh-so-unhappy the populations aren't? Go to any of these stable Muslim nations and you're going to find a LOT of non-Muslim Westerners who are living quite happily, thank you very much...and such would not, could not be the case if these nations were as tyrannical as you seem to think.

Are these stable Muslim nations perfect? Far from it! There's indeed a laundry list of complaints I'd have against them, too. But it is hypocritical for us to look down our noses at them when the overall results of the peace and prosperity they have brought the overwhelming number of their citizens meets or exceeds our own results.

No, it doesn't. In most monarchies, dictatorships, and theocracies, there is no real freedom of the press. Just because you don't hear of any Sunni or Shia acts of terror does not mean none have occurred. It is where the divisions have created instability that we hear of such things, typically from the one side when the other does something they'd like to bring to the world's attention. :shrug:
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You're demanding that I prove a negative...and you know that's a logical fallacy. What's more, this is the age of the internet and smart phones, of Facebook and Twitter. Will there be things happening that we don't know about? Sure. But we're going to hear about most of what happens...and the more egregious the event, the more likely we're going to hear about it - not within days or weeks, but within minutes. All we have to do is to have the courage to listen...and not just to our side of the story, but theirs, too.

Well, I could point out that it was a Muslim U.S. Army physician who committed a mass shooting at Fort Hood TX back in 2014, but that is as irrelevant as your unsubstantiated claim that "Muslims in America are ten times more likely to become doctors than 'normal' American citizens..."
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Ah. So because the Fort Hood shooter was a Muslim physician, that somehow calls into question all Muslim physicians? Really? I think you know better than to try to use that as part of your argument.

BUT I have to give a mea culpa - I used a stat that I didn't verify, and no, Muslims do not comprise ten percent of American doctors - it's actually about 2.7%...but that still speaks well of the demographic that comprise a hair over one percent of our nation's population.

Normal citizens? WTH does that mean?
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Okay, "non-Muslim" American citizens. I was being a bit snarky there, trying to point out by inference that most on the Right don't seem to think that Muslim-American citizens are "normal" American citizens.

Now try as I might I found no such AMA statistic. What I did find was this: FALSE: Muslim American Doctors and Shooters : snopes.com
 
Captain Adverse said:
But your point has no relevance even if it were true. It is a fallacy of equivalence; trying to associate a subset (Muslims more likely to be medical doctors) with the peacefulness of all members of said group.
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I could as easily use your same argument there against the Right's claim that Islam is a violent religion: "It is a fallacy of equivalence to associate a subset (those Muslims who commit terrorist attacks) with the degree of violence (much less the statistically-significant lack thereof as compared to America) within stable Islamic societies."

Again, a false equivalency. If your sole basis for being more peaceful is the homicide rate, there are a number of nations Muslim or not, that are not as violent as the USA. Where are the national statistics for ALL violent crimes? Oh that's right; we don't know for sure because most Muslim nations don't seem willing to report these figures. You know, rapes, assaults, batteries, arsons, robberies, etc. Or report homicides honestly when they do report such figures. Got to keep up with appearances you know?
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Come on, CA! You're starting to go down the road of silliness here! You're better than this! "Oh, well, ha-rumph, we can't be sure that those statistics are accurate, you know, 'cause how do we know that they actually report all murders et al."

Your claim would almost require that they're a different kind of human, that in their stable, peaceful, prosperous nations (that ALL have significantly lower percentages of their populations in prison), the people somehow don't report murders or arsons or assaults or robberies! Rapes? Last I recall, that's the least-reported crime - not only there, but here, too!

It's as if you have convinced yourself that their stable nations simply cannot be as safe and as prosperous as our own, apparently based on nothing more than right-wing media claims and your own assumptions. CA, you need to get a clue that people are people are really people, that YES, Muslims are human beings with the same bell-curved set of wants and needs and desires - and sense of outrage at obvious injustice - that we have! GO there! Go travel to those nations and see for yourself! Are they perfect? Hell no! But they are nowhere near as terribly tyrannical as you seem to believe, as right-wing media would have you believe!

Democratic nations like ours are self-revealing because our citizens demand it. Trying to compare and contrast is a bit more involved than quoting available figures.
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Y'know, if I hadn't been to several of those places, if I didn't have extended family members working and happily living in those places, you might have a point. But when I "quote available figures", I'm using them to back up what I've experienced first-hand in Dubai, Bahrain, and Indonesia, what those members of my family who live in Riyadh and Dubai experience every day.

And one more thing: I do love democracy - I really do. I would love to see all nations become democracies. But I've seen enough of this world to know that democracy is not the only path to peace and prosperity for a nation's people...especially given that there's a heck of a lot of third-world nations out there that ARE functioning democracies, but nonetheless ARE significantly more corrupt, that still have significantly LESS freedom of the press than the stable Muslim nations you denigrate.

Broaden your mind, CA - and if you haven't, go spend some time in the stable Muslim nations, see them first-hand...and ask yourself why it is, if we're so much freer than they are, that we are by definition the worst prison state on the planet.
 
eohrnberger said:
Is Islam is the religion of peace, why isn't there peace in the Middle East?
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...because violence is a product of a great number of variables and religion barely even registers?
 
Deuce said:
...because violence is a product of a great number of variables and religion barely even registers?
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I think there are a number of historians that would disagree with "religion barely even registers" part. First 1/2 is OK though.

I'd contribute:

.... because Shia and Sunni have been at each other's throats, killing, raping and pillaging each other for some 2,500 years? Does that makes Islam the religion of peace?

Mind you, this is not all Muslims nor all who practice the Islamic religion, but there are a fair percentage that actively run around killing, raping and pillaging on an on going basis, and do so by justifying their actions on their interpretation of Islam. That's the part that many have a problem with, and rightfully so.
 
No. Islam has a terrorism problem and it's not "phobic" to say that.
 
eohrnberger said:
Is Islam is the religion of peace, why isn't there peace in the Middle East?
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same reason there have been wars in Christiandom for hundreds of years. The trouble is, the Middle East is still living in the middle ages by and large.
 
Josie said:
No. Islam has a terrorism problem and it's not "phobic" to say that.
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I agree. But there are such a great many that would equate even saying that observation with their invented phobia, resulting in the purposeful and intentional distortion of reality. In other words, just so much more excessive PC bull****.
 
Deuce said:
...because violence is a product of a great number of variables and religion barely even registers?
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That's true for most religions. However, extremist Islam teaches violence and hate from a young age.
 
Dittohead not! said:
same reason there have been wars in Christiandom for hundreds of years. The trouble is, the Middle East is still living in the middle ages by and large.
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Fair enough. Christendom did have a long and bloody period, but has since grown up, matured, that this isn't nearly as prevalent now, if it's happening at all.

I suppose one of the reasons that some of Islam are still living in the middle ages are by their own fundamentalist religious dictates. This is something that Christendom was never burdened with (at least that I can think of) at least not since the times of Galileo and Copernicus.

So how much longer is it going to take them to achieve the same, and then become a religion of peace both by fact and by deed?
 
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