Islam: What the West Needs to Know

Warning: this video is long!!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9395775858867#

(There are Dutch subtitles in it, but you can see it without them)

capitalism: what the Proletariat needs to know.

Uh, this thread is about the Islam, not the class struggle...

Why do we need to watch another islamophobic item that says islam is a political cult not a religeon and goes, oh, the koran has horrific shit in it. I got news for you, so does every religon, Islam has done far less damage than say christianity has and is doing across for example Africa, inspiring killing of children, murder of muslim tribes and ethnic cleansing etc etc.

Unless your calling out the video as pogrom material, then i apologise

Obviously I oppose Islamophobia. The real enemy is theocracy and religious fundamentalism as far as this issue is concerned, not Islam as a religion intrinsically. Historically during the Middle Ages for instance the Islamic world was far more enlightened and tolerant than the Christian West and the barbaric massacres Christian Crusaders conducted in the Middle East, and other shit such as witch-burning.

However, in the context of contemporary socialist activism, sometimes there is a point in highlighting the reactionary nature of Islamism, because frankly some leftists become too fond of Islam. Islamophobia is wrong, but then Islamophilia is also wrong.

In China for instance some reformist Maoists say non-sensical things like "the alliance between the Chinese nation and the Islamic nation against the Anglo-Saxon nation"...

I think all theist institutions are insane, however I do not get why some people see Islam as some encroaching threat, as if its somehow more of a danger than capitalism and monopoly capitalism and its imperialist outcome.

It is not just stupid but its basically the same thing the extreme right are doing, its like people supposedly for human liberation who want to FORCEFULLY BAN a woman from wearing religeous garb of her choice lol.

what next, ban abortion to liberate unborn women in some warped feminism akin to laura bush supporting imperialism for womens rights?

It isn't more of a danger objectively, but then leftists don't have illusions about capitalism either.

The point I'm making is that some leftists have illusions about Islam, so sometimes it's good to highlight the reactionary nature of Islamism more specifically.

I agree some people fetish things they should not in some wierd anti american self hating way like third worldists for example.

But I seriously think islamophobia is a real problem on the left wing, as this nationalist populism has infested the left, its so ridiculous, the "islamofascists" are no threat, they are only a threat to the peoples of some other places like for example, the middle east, but there we as a political group do not as far as i am aware support the taliban or AQ but support the smaller groups fighting for genuine liberation and the peoples in these places as a whole to liberate themselves.

Well theocratic Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia really aren't so different from fascism in the concrete empirical sense. (Of course, SA is actively supported by the US)

There is a difference between countering racism and supporting the poor masses of the Third World and actually supporting, however critically, explicitly reactionary socio-economic and political institutions that exist there.

If you don't want to watch the video just say so instead of reacting with an argument that is explained in the video.

I do not support the Taliban or Hamas etc, I do not support dictators for "anti imperialist reasons" i just dont see why we need to be constantly told of the encroaching threat of islam.

Most muslims I know are far more normal than the christian ford focus driving cardigan wearing im going to heaven because i donated tinned peaches at the harvest festival assholes who look down at me all the time.

Not every muslim does war cries and tries to marry 4 year old kids.

We are speaking about the majority of muslims. And please watch the video.

Objectively in the pre-modern era, Islam was actually a lot more tolerant and peaceful than Christianity was. Remember the Crusades? Witch-hunting? Burning scientists to death on a fucking stick?

In the Middle Ages Christian Europe was a land of barbaric savages in comparison to the Oriental civilisations of Islam and China.

There is nothing intrinsically more reactionary in Islam, other than the fact that all religions are reactionary to some extent. To think that Islam is intrinsically worse than Christianity is simply Eurocentric cultural essentialist non-sense.

The only thing I'd say is that today Islam does tend to be more explicitly theocratic and fundamentalist than Christianity. But that's not because of anything intrinsic in Islam, rather it is the result of the underdeveloped nature of the Islamic world, something which is ultimately caused by Western imperialism.

I think Anti-Flag summed it up best in their song, Sodom, Gommorah, Washington D.C.

Allah, Jesus, and Muhammad
Their words have way more in common than*the Midwest or Middle East like to preach
It's a tragedy
It's a strategy
To prey on contrast to not indulge fact
Divide conquer and subcontract
The scriptures blind followers read are not as cryptic as they seem
The pages serve the sick and poor, not to serve the capitalists of endless war
Religion is the opium of the meek

There's a church in southern Italy that contains the skulls and bones of the 800 christians murdered by the Ottomans as infidels (despite being People of the Book) in the pre-modern era.

As usual, it's always anyone or anything against all Christians and Europeans.

Yeah, Rome, Florence, Pisa and Bologna with the oldest university in the world, Byzantine Constantinople and Southern France were all completely barbaric and inferior....

Give us a break with your narrow-minded prejudice.

By the way, serious anthropologists and historians don't go around using terms like "barbaric savages".

Does that mean that you consider some so-called "primitive" peoples today to be barbaric savages? And by what means do you justify describing people as barbaric savages?

As usual you defend one thing to the contrary of how you attack the other. There is no "one" Islam to start with, just as there is no "one" Christianity. In the mean time ask the Zoroastrians, Bahais, Coptic Christians etc how tolerant their Islamic neighbours are at times.
(Not aimed at all Muslims by any means).

In trying to defend Islam, you actually insult it. Well done. The underdeveloped nature of the Islamic world? GTF!!!

Have you ever read the Qu'ran? :rolleyes:

As a city, Rome was pretty inferior until the Renaissance. For instance, in around the 600-700's (IIRC) its draining system fell apart (the visiting Byzantine Emperor stripped all the metal from the public works and no one could repair them) and the forum area filled up with sewage and wasn't really cleared out for around 700 years. The Colosseum was used as a graveyard. The papacy became a pathetic self-mockery (look up the Cadaver Trial) controlled by rival powers.

Only when 1000 rolled around did Europe start to get back on its feet. That's when the Italian city-states you mention started to become something of regional powers in a region that included the presence of Islamic and Byzantine domains.

One of the ironies here, I think, is that the Islamic world's wealth of knowledge really came from other peoples. They learned administration, math, astronomy, architecture, paper-making, philosophy and more from Byzantines, Persians, Chinese and even Visogoths (you know that horseshoe-style arch that's so closely associated with Muslim Spain? That was actually a Visogothic innovation adopted by the rulers of Al-Andalus). But the Muslims absorbed it and added to it when others couldn't, and that's what made the Islamic world such a source of knowledge for so many centuries.

All peoples committed atrocities throughout history, but relatively speaking during the Middle Ages the Islamic world was generally more enlightened and tolerant. Consider for instance the treatment of Jews: Jews were treated terribly in Europe, but were tolerated in the Middle East, even though they had to pay a slightly higher tax.

It's relative. There is a reason why the Middle Ages in Europe were referred to as the Dark Ages.

I might have been deliberately stressing a point, but if you note the context, it is mainly to counter the ridiculous Eurocentric cultural essentialist and Islamophobic idea that Islam is intrinsically more reactionary than Christianity. (See the video link)

For reference, have a look at Chris Harman's A People's History of the World, global history from a Marxist perspective.

I used this term deliberately to counter Eurocentrism. Objectively it just means back in the Middle Ages Europe was less developed and more primitive than Asia. There is nothing discriminatory in pointing this out.

My point here is to counter the ridiculous idea the Islam is intrinsically worse and more reactionary than Christianity.

You are truly an idiot. What does the Qu'ran have to do with anything? Do you understand anything about contemporary economics or geopolitics? How the fuck is it discriminatory in any way what-so-ever to simply point out the objective fact that the Islamic world is generally speaking significantly less developed and advanced than the West today? (Back in the Middle Ages Muslims were generally more advanced but today it is the other way around) It's like I'm Chinese but I would explicitly state that China today is still on the whole a poor developing country. Does that mean I'm self-racist towards the Chinese? :rolleyes:

Yeah, I say explicitly again that the Islamic world today is significantly under-developed, so are China and India. 99.9% of socialists would agree with my objective statement here. If you think this is racist or discriminatory, you have a serious problem with the understanding of basic concepts. A serious problem.

You seem to view history in a metaphysical and static way, which is contrary to the methods of Marxism.

If memory serves, the documentary is bullshit further, the West (in general) seems to know jack shit about Islaam.

I only watched close to 20 minutes of it and came to the conclusion that these people had no idea what Islam teaches. Pure propaganda, supplying next to no sources and where they do it was twisted out of context to make a lame argument. I've read the quran and hadith and what they're trying to claim simply isn't there.

Their verses about killing were in the context of war, it wasn't encouraging psychopathic killing sprees as they seem to suggest. And what about the Jewish "massacre" of the Qurayza tribe? They broke a treaty that they had with the muslims when they decided to join the Quraysh tribe in an offensive, after the muslims won they asked to be judged by Sa'd who was a former Jew, who then proceeded to judge them with their own Jewish laws for treason.

I'm an Atheist and I would love to agree with them but I'd rather talk the truth.

Dark Ages is not a term used any more, apparently, and referred to the "darkness" when Latin learning and the Latin language faded and the European vernaculars arose.

Two wrongs don'tn make a right.

Well in the Islamic world I would say it might just have a slight influence.... :rolleyes: