I think it is justified to feel that way and I expected as much when I made that comment. I realize that there are Muslims who have wholeheartedly earned what I believe is not representative of us all. I don't expect others to devote their life to understanding Muslims, but I don't agree with the assertion that all, or even most of us, project hatred and intolerance. In my time in Canada, Pakistan, and on this forum, I have met many who categorically and quite vocally reject the same people who you find so deplorable. There are many Muslims condemning Muslims for the same wrong doings you condemn them for. It is then, the idea that all Muslims are somehow intolerant of those around them, that I find misleading. To those of us who detest extremism as much as the next non-Muslim, we do feel we are misunderstood.
But like I said before, my issues with Islam is not confined to extremism. War is an extreme form of diplomacy, to rephrase what Von Clausewitz said. It is a rarity in human relations, in a manner of speaking. Societies usually attempts to resolve differences through more peaceful, if not friendly, ways. So let us put aside extremism for now.
I consider myself a 'man of science', even though I am too much of a numbskull to go beyond the engineering stage and into hard core science. What I said back in post 199, regarding when Muslims can 'say and do anything', encompasses more than just extremism but to include things like how the Quran is a never ending source of scientific knowledge and that us non-Muslims must acknowledge that so called 'fact'.
What are we to make of that when it has been the non-Muslims who have been making -- pretty much -- all the major scientific and engineering progresses in the world within the last 200 yrs? Irrational it may be, but that assertion about the Quran bothers me more than even the extremism of Al-Qaeda. At least the political justifications for what made Al-Qaeda what it is have some semblance of logic to them.
While it is amusingly observed by some that it is ironic that a non-Muslim invention -- the Internet -- is being used by the Muslims to propagate that nonsense, it is puzzling and even frustrating to non-Muslim working engineers and scientists that their creations, labor, blood, sweat, tears, and even deaths, are being diminished publicly by a community that contributed little since the Industrial Revolution. For example, Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning from her pioneering work in hard core science. While there are legitimate issues with chauvinism and women in our non-Muslim societies, the fact that a society where women are oppressed beyond what Curie experienced claims that their holy book have been predicting this and that scientific discoveries all this time is a great and extreme offense to working scientists and engineers the world over.
It is equal measures of us who are amused and who are angry. I belong to the latter group. We view the gent who, in this discussion propagate the assertion that the Quran predicted all the current scientific discoveries, as our version of 'extremist Islam'. And we who labored in science are expected to give way to that meme out of the fear of being branded negatively.
What is a meme, for the benefit of members who may not be aware of this word...
Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
..."an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
Indeed, the meme that the Quran is a never ending source of scientific knowledge is popular enough among the Muslims that I dare say that this form of 'extremist Islam' is even more popular and prevalent than the military styled extremist Islam of Al-Qaeda. We have a dedicated sector of our society to counter the 'extremist Islam' of Al-Qaeda: the military. When the military clash with Al-Qaeda, their members are not made to feel ashamed for what they do in the line of duty. But when members of the scientific and engineering community speak to challenge Islamist claims about the 'scientific' Quran, an extremist form of Islam in its own right, we are labeled as 'phobes' and bigots and that we should be ashamed of ourselves for our insensitivity.
That is an interesting take. I don't believe being a Muslim and a sane human being has to be mutually exclusive. Attaching one's self to a higher calling is not the issue. Why does this higher calling have to be a specific brand of extremist Islam? Of hate and intolerance? I have no problem identifying as a Muslim first, but why should that Muslim identity be the one you proposed? Can we not be peaceful and accepting of others?
I did not proposed any version of Islam. I only said that when you subscribe to a higher cause, you are beyond your own base biological self. Effectively, you became a greater human being and helped, to any degree, to advance humanity, and it is through these subscriptions throughout history that subsequent generations owe an unpayable debt. If there are versions of Islam-ism, or of Christian-ism, or of Buddha-ism, those -isms can only come from within each religion.
Whether a Muslim voluntarily subscribed or borned into Islam, he has complete freedom of will to delve into those different versions of Islam to suit his taste. However an 'extremist' version came to be, the burden of elimination, intellectual and moral methods, falls upon the members of this community, not on outsiders, provided that enough numbers of the community deem the extremist version to be too unpalatable or even poisonous to the community.
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