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Is Islam incompatible with democracy?

Is Islam incompatible with religion?

  • No, there are other factors

    Votes: 16 44.4%

  • Yes, because there is no separation between church & state over there

    Votes: 6 16.7%

  • Yes, because the Koran is their only law, and it is against democracy

    Votes: 10 27.8%

  • Yes, because it's "foreign" to their culture, democracy is a Western concept

    Votes: 2 5.6%

  • other

    Votes: 6 16.7%
  • Total voters
    36
Glücksritter said:
For me it is an obvious contradiction. So if you are that conform to Western value why are you (as I read in another thread) against the Turkish people joining the EU and immigrate in e.g. UK? According to the Western value they are the same people like you! So why don't you like lets say 20 Million Turks living in the UK when there is no difference to UK people? According to Western values I would say you should welcome your brothers.
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Because i may be Turkish by race but my nationality is British. I was born in this country and grew up here and i know whats good for this country and whats bad for it in most cases. I dont have a problem with Turks immigrating here but like ANY group of people i dont want them immigrating in the hundreds of thousands, because thats bad news for the natives who cant find jobs because of mass immigration, the cultural identity of the nation and the social structure of the UK in general. I say i dont want thousands of Poles or whatever it is immigrating here and taking our jobs, so to say i dont mind if Turks come would be hypocritical of me so i have to stick to this decision. And yes, therefore it would make a difference to the people living in the UK. What impact have 2 million Turks had in Germany? From what i hear, not good at all.

2. I am sorry, I simply do not like to tranlate all the text and these were some texts I remembered when you asked me - I can only tell you what I read from time to time in the newspaper, what I experience and what my impression is. And my daily life takes place in Germany. Nevertheless one of these texts is in English, maybe we can discuss that.
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Okay sure. I didnt expect you to translate so its OK.
 
Agent Ferris said:
...
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Ok, what we learned:

1. The terror of the French revolution has nothing to do with Western Democracy.
2. In Western Democracies all torturers and war criminals have been sentenced. From the French Revolution - ah sorry, nothing to do with Western Democracy (lol) - up to the Iraq War. Splendid.
3. To the different laws for males and females you cannot give any comment instead of you can give general comments on Spain. Was not asked, but nice.
4. To the fact that affirmative actions is NOT blind for race or gender you cannot say anything.

To sum up:
You rewrite history and you ignore arguments when you cannot reply. Congratulations.
 
kaya'08 said:
Because i may be Turkish by race but my nationality is British. I was born in this country and grew up here and i know whats good for this country and whats bad for it in most cases. I dont have a problem with Turks immigrating here but like ANY group of people i dont want them immigrating in the hundreds of thousands, because thats bad news for the natives who cant find jobs because of mass immigration, the cultural identity of the nation and the social structure of the UK in general. I say i dont want thousands of Poles or whatever it is immigrating here and taking our jobs, so to say i dont mind if Turks come would be hypocritical of me so i have to stick to this decision. And yes, therefore it would make a difference to the people living in the UK. What impact have 2 million Turks had in Germany? From what i hear, not good at all.
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I do not want to generalize, there are some good effects you tend to take for granted and there are bad effects which oftentimes occur to you. I do not want to be injustice, let us say at least there are negative effects as well. Let's say at least we should protect against new mass immigration, just as you say.

You talk about "cultural identity". I do not see any possibility to reconcile concepts like "cultural identity" with those of Western Democracy at least as politician interpret Western values today.



Okay sure. I didnt expect you to translate so its OK.
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I think the second is the link which is in English. It is about White men with blue eyes which created the finance crisis. :roll:
 
Glücksritter said:
I think the second is the link which is in English. It is about White men with blue eyes which created the finance crisis. :roll:
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Racists in every walk of life, besides it's not like it was stated by someone from a credible country [No offence to Brazil]
 
Laila said:
Racists in every walk of life, besides it's not like it was stated by someone from a credible country [No offence to Brazil]
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Pardon me, may I laugh?

If he had taken another scapegoat, let's say Jews, there would have been consequences, at least serious reactions from the Western world.

Lula knows, which group he has to blame for the crisis that the Western World wonn't do anything. In what way is Brazil not credible?
 
Glücksritter said:
I think the second is the link which is in English. It is about White men with blue eyes which created the finance crisis. :roll:
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Right, but this part is weird you see. The Brazilian President was the one who said the financial crisis was created by white people with blue eyes. You'll also notice the Brazilian president is white, so he has just basically victimized himself. Then again, he doesnt have blue eyes. :lol:
 
Glücksritter said:
If he had taken another scapegoat, let's say Jews, there would have been consequences, at least serious reactions from the Western world.
I agree with you but the Brazilian president is white and anti-semitism is a crime, which is why it would have had serious consequences, but i get where you are going with this, but you cant say your argument is credible since it came out of a white mans mouth.
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kaya'08 said:
Right, but this part is weird you see. The Brazilian President was the one who said the financial crisis was created by white people with blue eyes. You'll also notice the Brazilian president is white, so he has just basically victimized himself. Then again, he doesnt have blue eyes. :lol:
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Why do you think he mentioned the blue eyes? Of course the good Brazil of Portuguese or Italian origin wasn't the subject to create hate against.
 
Degreez said:
I don't see what point you're bringing up about Sudan since it is clear it is not a democracy. It would be like me asking you how much democracy exists in the PRC?
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My point was your play on words. Stating that it is democratic to want Sharia is a contradiction in definitions since once Sharia is instituted there is no democracy. It's like stating that it is democratic to vote for Naziism. Once the Nazi took hold, there was no democracy or choice in Germany.
 
Glücksritter said:
I do neither support Islam nor the Western Democracy as such.
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So you live in a plain somewhere between where the rest of us has yet to attain? This is our world. The civilization in the west gained its status because it fought for it and continually fights to maintain it against those who recognize the old prescritions of communism, dictatorship, and religious oppression as the choice organizational tool of societies.

There is no utopia. But only in the West can one find people so intent on complaining about how bad they have it without fear of punishment for speaking out.
 
bub said:
Your theory is interesting but in fact I think that you the real factor is not religion but economy.
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I don't think it has to be either or. Obviously all things can be traced back to economy and to who's making the money. But in the Islamic world we can trace things back to significant events that occur before economy was a factor.....

1) We know that in 1579 Istanbul got an observatory and that in 1580 Arab clerics had it demolished. A few centuries before this, Islam led the world in astronomy and math.

2) In 1728, Muteferrika remarked that "it is vital for the Muslims, formerly in advance of the West in sciences, not to let themselves be eclipsed" when he started the Islamic world's first printing press. By 1745, Arab clerics had it shut down and prohibited the printing press.

3) Towards the mid of the 1700s Muhammed ibn Saud struck a marriage of convenience with a religious "reformer" named Abd al-Wahhab. You know where this went.

4) In the 1840s (?) Arab clerics bullied the Ottoman Empire to drop three seminal issues of religious reform: ending the Muslim role in the African slave trade, freeing the women from the yoke of the veil, and letting unbelievers live in the land of the Prophet. Mecca's chief clericleveled a fatwa against Istanbul....."The ban on slaves is contrary to the Holy Sharia, permitting women to walk unveiled and placing divorce in the ands of women are contrary to the pure Holy Law, and that such proposals make the Turks infidels."

Once the Ottoman Empire took custody of Islam's care after the Crusades, the only undisputed glory that the Arabs could claim was the glory of Islam's founding moment. By preserving this declaration at every attempt by outsiders to reform the religion to the world's evolution they petrified it. As they slipped further behind Europeans in military and material honor, momentum gathered for fundamentalism.

In the 1920s a Turkish General would abolish the Caliphate all together and by the 1950s Sayyid Qutb would go on to declare the West, especially America, as evil and the enemy of Islam due largely to cultural differences.


The oil and fight against Soviet communist influence came after these historical prescriptions that guided Islam into today's state. This was cultural suicide and in the twentieth century thay found themselves far behind the industrialized and fast progressivley moving world. Oil and America's dictator support during the Cold War are distractors and only serve as a crutch. As long as these distractors serve those who wish not to accept responsibility for their own cultural prescriptions they have the convenience of accepting that their is nothing they can do. Individuals do it all the time. If they can blame some one else for their troubles, then they make for themselves a state of acceptance while holding true to blame because it is not their fault. The same is true for civilizations.

There is no coincidence that the nation to finally abolish the Caliphate (Turkey) is the most westernized and socially progressive Islamic state given its earlier attempts to reform the religion and the culture. And there is no coincidence that the tribe that fought those reforms to preserve the old prescrioptions lags so far behind and produces the vast majority of religious extremism today.

In this case, perhaps the lack of economy is a factor because it was never allowed to gain momentum before the West discovered oil in the desert. Without observatories and printing press', creativity is all but stifled. Exportation was no-existent while the exportation of Western states were crossing oceans. The cultural prescription to look religiously inward while the rest of the world was encouraging inginuity and creativity is why the West gained and the Middle East didn't. And I've said this enough times..... where's the competition between a civilization that denies contribution from half its population (women) and a civilization that encourages contribution from all citizens?

I just refuse to give them their convenient excuse that the West's oil greed is why they exist in a barbaric state of thought.
 
Glücksritter said:
So how about you giving a comment to the civilized Western way I gave examples for?
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You gave examples of imperfection. Not definition.

Centuries of innovation and creativity with the goal of humanitarianism and liberal thought is summed up with the exceptional picture of a prisoner on a crate? I suppose the exception of Abu-Ghraib sums it up too? Surely you could have shown pictures of Jewish slaughter inside Germany to declare your disgust for the civilized West but that would have been too close to home wouldn't it? Your criticisms are obviously about America...not so much the West. But here are some examples of the "civilized" west.....

1) All citizens are equal to vote and to contribute to their societies.

2) Immigration to the West far exceeeds the almost non existent demand for immigration into the Middle East. (think its because of the weather?)

3) Civilizations are judged by their militaries and by their educational insititutions. Where are the Court Martials in the Middle East when their servicemen et out of line in accordance to a "civilized" society's demands? All "worldy" universities are in the West. Where's the Yale, Harvard, or Cambridge in the Middle East that people from all over the world flock to? Given the choice, would your children like to attend the University of Tehran?

4) Very little international aid comes out of the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East is the recipient of some of that Western aid.

5) And when it comes to Islamic nations and Islamic peoples condemning the acts of their religious tyrants and extremists....where are the Muslim armies when it comes to the West doing battle against them?

6) The West has managed to humanize the religions. A Muslim, a Christian (Catholic and Protestant), and a Jew may share a small town where their holy structures are preserved and maintained. Where in the Arab world can one find a Star of David or a Cross on the same street as a Crescent Moon?

These, along with so much more, are true examples of definition when it comes to civilization. What you offered were exceptions to the rule. Even your example of torture came with an outrage from the West and a demand for better behavior because we recognize that this is not the norm and beneath us. Do we see such citizen or media demands from the Middle East when their people and cultures are chopping off heads or stoning women? When their people condemn their religious nuts do they not also condemn the West for battling them?

There is a vast confusion and contradiction in the Middle East about what they believe in because they are trapped between religious prescription and the educated world. Generally speaking, they are trying to emerge while maintaining their monopoly on God. And in history, one could argue that sharing God rather than locking him up in a single religious structure makes all the difference when trying to"civilize" a civilization.
 
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GySgt said:
I just refuse to give them their convenient excuse that the West's oil greed is why they exist in a barbaric state of thought.
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Then I'm affraid you didn't understand my argument. You gave us a nice history lesson but you did not refute any of the factors I gave.
 
bub said:
Then I'm affraid you didn't understand my argument. You gave us a nice history lesson but you did not refute any of the factors I gave.
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Well that's because I wasn't looking to refute your factors. I attempted to produce the more defining factors that paved the way for future factors that had nothing to do with the direction they chose to take. It's like using the fact that the ground is hard when defining why a man's head cracked open without regard to the fact that nobody shoved him over the side of the building. I'll state it another way.....Is Islamic extremism to blame for GITMO? Life is about choices. As true as this is for individuals it is true for civilizations. Responsibility is too easily cast away in the Middle East. Down through history and to this day, A Muslim's worse enemy has always been another Muslim. The West came after they chose their path and clung tightly to it.
 
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GySgt said:
Well that's because I wasn't looking to refute your factors. I attempted to produce the more defining factors that paved the way for future factors that had nothing to do with the direction they chose to take. It's like using the fact that the ground is hard when defining why a man's head cracked open without regard to the fact that nobody shoved him over the side of the building. I'll state it another way.....Is Islamic extremism to blame for GITMO? Life is about choices. As true as this is for individuals it is true for civilizations. Responsibility is too easily cast away in the Middle East. Down through history and to this day, A Muslim's worse enemy has always been another Muslim. The West came after they chose their path and clung tightly to it.
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Well, it was not only a question of choice, since oil is an extremely important factor, and that they did not choose to live where there was oil.

And Islam does not seem to be an important factor, since half of the muslims live in democracies.
 
bub said:
And Islam does not seem to be an important factor, since half of the muslims live in democracies.
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You mean muslim immigrants to the EU/US? Because last time i looked, most muslim countries where democratic on the tin, but the contents inside resembled more of a dictatorship in disguise.
 
bub said:
Well, it was not only a question of choice, since oil is an extremely important factor, and that they did not choose to live where there was oil.
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But they were born there and they spent centuries and centuries too afraid to stand up against those who demanded God's power on earth. The West did the very same thing until the Protestant movement defied the establishment and paved a new path for Christianity. It was at this moment in history that the West excellerated in progression. This was not a coincidence. But Christianity had something that Islam does not - Jesus was not Ceaser. Muhammed was. And this makes it all the more difficult for them to seperate one from the other since the founding inventor was the soveriegn, "pope", and government wrapped in one.

bub said:
And Islam does not seem to be an important factor, since half of the muslims live in democracies.
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These are Muslims that left the Islamic world because Iran and Egypt's "democracy" are hardly about what the people want for themselves and their children. They left for a better world where opportunity and education were normal prescription and trumped religious barbarism and backwardness. They left for a world where religion lived peacefully amongst itself. They left for a world where economy wasn't denied due to religious prescription declaring what was and what was not against God.

Itjihad - the free interpretation of the Qu'ran. Banned by Arabs soon afer the Crusades. Mobile Printing press banned. Observatories denied. All these things and more all but demanded a brittle concrete and unquestioned observance of the Arab tribe as Islam's root. So much was done to completely destroy creativity and education beyond that which Arabs didn't prescribe that it is entirely pathetic for the Middle East to choose to start history when the West discovered oil in the desert and went into business with Muslims who had the same care for their fellow Muslim that they had since the Crusads ended.

And make no mistake....the end of the Crusade saw the Ottoman's victorious. For the Arabs, they had lost just as the West had. And no matter what the Turks tried to do for the religion, this was the root of Islam's spiral into darkness.
 
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kaya'08 said:
You mean muslim immigrants to the EU/US? Because last time i looked, most muslim countries where democratic on the tin, but the contents inside resembled more of a dictatorship in disguise.
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You should look again then:

Indonesia => 200 millions muslims => "free" (= democracy)
India => 150 millions muslims => "democracy"
Bangladesh => 150 millions muslims => "partly free"
Nigeria => 75 millions muslims => "partly free"
Turkey => 75 millions muslims => "electoral democracy"
Morroco => 33 millions muslims => "partly free"

freedomhouse.org: Map of Freedom in the World
 
GySgt said:
But they were born there and they spent centuries and centuries too afraid to stand up against those who demanded God's power on earth. The West did the very same thing until the Protestant movement defied the establishment and paved a new path for Christianity. It was at this moment in history that the West excellerated in progression. This was not a coincidence. But Christianity had something that Islam does not - Jesus was not Ceaser. Muhammed was. And this makes it all the more difficult for them to seperate one from the other since the founding inventor was the soveriegn, "pope", and government wrapped in one.



These are Muslims that left the Islamic world because Iran and Egypt's "democracy" are hardly about what the people want for themselves and their children. They left for a better world where opportunity and education were normal prescription and trumped religious barbarism and backwardness. They left for a world where religion lived peacefully amongst itself. They left for a world where economy wasn't denied due to religious prescription declaring what was and what was not against God.

Itjihad - the free interpretation of the Qu'ran. Banned by Arabs soon afer the Crusades. Mobile Printing press banned. Observatories denied. All these things and more all but demanded a brittle concrete and unquestioned observance of the Arab tribe as Islam's root. So much was done to completely destroy creativity and education beyond that which Arabs didn't prescribe that it is entirely pathetic for the Middle East to choose to start history when the West discovered oil in the desert and went into business with Muslims who had the same care for their fellow Muslim that they had since the Crusads ended.

And make no mistake....the end of the Crusade saw the Ottoman's victorious. For the Arabs, they had lost just as the West had. And no matter what the Turks tried to do for the religion, this was the root of Islam's spiral into darkness.
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Indonesia is the biggest muslim country in the world, and it is a democracy.
India is the 2nd biggest muslim country in the world, and it is also a democracy.


China is the biggest country in the world, it is not muslim and it is a dictatorship.
Russia is one of the biggest non muslim countries in the world, and it is also a dictatorship.

How do you explain that?
 
bub said:
Indonesia is the biggest muslim country in the world, and it is a democracy.
India is the 2nd biggest muslim country in the world, and it is also a democracy.


China is the biggest country in the world, it is not muslim and it is a dictatorship.
Russia is one of the biggest non muslim countries in the world, and it is also a dictatorship.

How do you explain that?
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This is kind of silly, you could call Russia a democracy as well as you do it with Indonesia.
India is not a muslim country, it has a muslim minority, nothing more, nothing less. Russia e.g. too by the way.
 
bub said:
You should look again then:

Indonesia => 200 millions muslims => "free" (= democracy)
India => 150 millions muslims => "democracy"
Bangladesh => 150 millions muslims => "partly free"
Nigeria => 75 millions muslims => "partly free"
Turkey => 75 millions muslims => "electoral democracy"
Morroco => 33 millions muslims => "partly free"
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Partly free is not a Democracy.
And 405 muslims is not half of all the muslims on this planet. This is all irelevant with the discussion at hand: is islam compatible with democracy? I dont believe in religion is compatible with democracy, not just islam. Only difference is, the west practicies secularism successfully and most Islamic nations have not; so it may seem its paticularly incompatible compared to the rest when this is not the case. The case is, its JUST as incompatible with democracy as the rest.
 
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Glücksritter said:
This is kind of silly, you could call Russia a democracy as well as you do it with Indonesia.
India is not a muslim country, it has a muslim minority, nothing more, nothing less. Russia e.g. too by the way.
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the Freedom House disagrees with you.

As for India, well there are 150 millions muslims, they accept democracy. That's the point.
 
I have wrote an extra long response to one comment of GySgt which was meant for me but it took too long and got lost due to difficulties of re-logging in.

I am frustrated and will rewrite an answer later.
 
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