Will Islam survive the next few centuries?

Rathark · Post by **Rathark** » 2002-10-16 10:16am

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/10 ... index.html

I'm sorry to say this, but I sincerely hope not.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-10-16 10:22am

I sincerely hope no religion survives the next few centuries. Islam is merely where Christianity was not too long ago.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2002-10-16 10:55am

What everyone fails to come to terms with (perhaps intentionally) is that Islam has the most practiioners of any reliigons...A BILLION followers I beleive from PBS' documentary on Islam. The middle East and alot of the near east and southeast asia. That's alot of followers and you cannot ignore that. I can't beleive that a few centuries down the road such a vast follower base will simply disappear.

We may not like it (particularly when it comes to Fundamentalist Islam) but it is a fact. Other religions may fade away (doubtful) but Islam will still be going strong just by the fact that in the nations where Islam is strongest, you will always have a poor struggling underclass that is willing to accept the vision of this religion. Like most major religions Islam is most popular with those who are struggling and have little hope...why? because as much as you hate religion there is one thing it provides that makes it self perpetuatiing..that's hope. A false hope to be sure for many but hope nonetheless.

People have been predicting the fall of religions for millennia, they're still kicking around because there is a need in humanity for it.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2002-10-16 11:01am

Stravo wrote:What everyone fails to come to terms with (perhaps intentionally) is that Islam has the most practiioners of any reliigons...A BILLION followers I beleive from PBS' documentary on Islam. The middle East and alot of the near east and southeast asia. That's alot of followers and you cannot ignore that. I can't beleive that a few centuries down the road such a vast follower base will simply disappear.

Especially when the majority of these people are poor, uneducated and isolated from the rest of the world.

Stravo wrote:We may not like it (particularly when it comes to Fundamentalist Islam) but it is a fact. Other religions may fade away (doubtful) but Islam will still be going strong just by the fact that in the nations where Islam is strongest, you will always have a poor struggling underclass that is willing to accept the vision of this religion. Like most major religions Islam is most popular with those who are struggling and have little hope...why? because as much as you hate religion there is one thing it provides that makes it self perpetuatiing..that's hope. A false hope to be sure for many but hope nonetheless.

Guess that I should have actually read all your post before I repeated what you said!

Dark Primus · Post by **Dark Primus** » 2002-10-16 11:05am

"SWEDEN: Two dead, the hospital said"

And 15 are missing from what i have heard.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2002-10-16 01:29pm

Dark Primus wrote:"SWEDEN: Two dead, the hospital said"

And 15 are missing from what i have heard.

What?

When?

Where?

How?

Why?

Who?

Post by **Kuja** » 2002-10-16 01:33pm

click the link.

Jesus H Christ.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-10-16 03:41pm

Stravo wrote:Like most major religions Islam is most popular with those who are struggling and have little hope...why? because as much as you hate religion there is one thing it provides that makes it self perpetuatiing..that's hope. A false hope to be sure for many but hope nonetheless.

Islam is popular among the poor and ignorant because it's s religion of hate rather than hope. Islam is popular among the likes of arabs and US blacks because it gives them someone to blame for their own plight. Islam provides a ready path for these people to channel their resentment not at eachother for failing to create decent lives and societies but rather at the Christian and Jewish infidels. It gives them someone else to blame.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-10-16 03:46pm

I'm quite sure the extremists will die out, but the religion will survive.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-10-16 03:54pm

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:I'm quite sure the extremists will die out, but the religion will survive.

The extremist sects are the fastest growing branches of the I-explode-for-Allah religion. It's the moderates who are dying out.

Why? A huge quantity of Saudi Arabian oil money goes to creating and organizing extremeist mosques and 'islamic centers' around the world. This is the route cause of both Islamic terrorism and the expansion of Islam in general.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-16 03:59pm

So what about Bahia (Jews for Jesus and Mohammad), or that one Islamic/Buddist Hybrid in some parts of Asia.

Newtonian Fury · Post by **Newtonian Fury** » 2002-10-16 04:47pm

God is dead. Too bad some people don't realize it. I hope all religion will die out soon. Then maybe people will start living for life instead of death.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2002-10-16 04:49pm

Religion won't ever 'die' of its own accord. I think it's frankly impossible for humans to abandon their silly need for universal self importance, fear of death, or need for higher purpose in life.

The best we can hope for is that a pile of really smart, sensible people with no pretensions of religion at all go off and successfully colonize a far off Earth-like planet without telling anyone else.

Newtonian Fury · Post by **Newtonian Fury** » 2002-10-16 04:58pm

Yeah, I guess I'll be happy with an atheist majority. Afterall, faith in a greater power is very strong, for good or ill.

THEHOOLIGANJEDI · Post by **THEHOOLIGANJEDI** » 2002-10-16 05:05pm

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:I'm quite sure the extremists will die out, but the religion will survive.

I'd rather see that, than the death of Religion. I just think it's sort of a cop out when ppl blame Religion for molding intolerance in the world, when it is quite the opposite in my opinion. Its what humans alway have done and will continue to do, even if religion never existed, because it's Human nature.

MattTheSkywalker · Post by **MattTheSkywalker** » 2002-10-16 07:58pm

Islam at approx 1400 years old is similar to Christianity at the same age: Embraced by the poor, sued by the powerful to subjugate people and direct hate elsewhere, etc.

As long as there are unanswered questions, man will need religion.

XPViking · Post by **XPViking** » 2002-10-16 10:38pm

Religion will be with us since Man is an irrational animal.

XPViking

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-10-16 10:56pm

MattTheSkywalker wrote:Islam at approx 1400 years old is similar to Christianity at the same age: Embraced by the poor, sued by the powerful to subjugate people and direct hate elsewhere, etc.

As long as there are unanswered questions, man will need religion.

No, Man will think he needs religion, because religion claims to have the answers. The fact that its answers are just plucked out of thin air is its dirty little secret, and Man tries to ignore that.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-16 11:13pm

ahh., but, sense of wonder, and loose all touch with the defining characteristics of our cultures that would be a BAD thing. Now let's face it. Almost every religion tells people to be good to each other, and be respectful of your fellow humans. These are basicly Good Things. It is not the belief in God that fucks this up, it's politics using religion as an excuse for Expansion and conquest. If they didn't have religion, they can commit atrocities in the name of State, Nationalism, "Race" etc.

Anyone want to argue with that?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-10-16 11:22pm

THe Yosemite Bear wrote:ahh., but, sense of wonder, and loose all touch with the defining characteristics of our cultures that would be a BAD thing. Now let's face it. Almost every religion tells people to be good to each other, and be respectful of your fellow humans. These are basicly Good Things.

Almost every philosophical or secular system of morality says the same thing, with no superstitious baggage attached.

It is not the belief in God that fucks this up, it's politics using religion as an excuse for Expansion and conquest. If they didn't have religion, they can commit atrocities in the name of State, Nationalism, "Race" etc.

Anyone want to argue with that?

Yes, because it's a false dilemma; no one said that the removal of religion would cause instant utopia; we only implied that it would probably improve the situation. Those other motivations you spoke of would still exist, but if you take, say, 3 motivations for hate and intolerance and cut them down to 2, that is an improvement, is it not?

Want to argue with that?

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-17 12:22am

I do believe (Irrationally) in some force I can not explain, because I have survived a number of things that for all purposes I really shouldn't have survived. Now childhood abuse, and international injustice caused me to embrace Existentialism, and Nilism when I was in High School (Fuck who didn't) however my return to spirituality, came as a result of huddling under a desk waiting for some idiot was shooting at my fellow Civil Service employees. At some point I counted how many times I should have died (Drunk driving parents, abuse, a sudden wind change on a fire, the fact that Kevin People's pistol jammed, etc. I could find no rational explanation for what happened. in any of those cases.) I do not hate people based on their beliefs, nor do I redicule others for their beliefs. Now people's actions are an entirely different matter. I HATE my mom's second husband, and feel very glad to live on occassion with her third. Things he did to my mother, and scars I still wear I hate folks like Arimiss or Willy Forsyth who exist for no other reason the to express their hatred for others and seem insistant on passing that hatred down on to the later generations.

I under stand that the moral rules apply, be it Religion, law, other forms of Philosphy Growing up with liberal Jewish and Catholic parents, I was encouraged to question authority. And I have. The hatred expressed by the fundamentalists is an inability to take a work created in Prose for oral tradition, and then taking a POLITICALLY MOTIVATED translation, that deletes many key passages at face value. The Talmud, Bible, Koran, and Bagata-Divita are excellent cultural epics, full of exactly the same legends that makes Cu-Culan, the Iliad and The Stories of Anchient Egypt.

I don't think there is any thing wrong with religion or with any other philosphy They provide a nice basic set of rules, that provided people were to look at their simularities not their differences. The whole belief that Religon is a force existing only for strife is just as ludacrise. (Yes I know my spelling is awful. That is one of my neurological quirks)

Post by **haas mark** » 2002-10-17 12:25am

In short: prolly.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-10-17 12:30am

THe Yosemite Bear wrote:I do believe (Irrationally) in some force I can not explain, because I have survived a number of things that for all purposes I really shouldn't have survived. Now childhood abuse, and international injustice caused me to embrace Existentialism, and Nilism when I was in High School (Fuck who didn't) however my return to spirituality, came as a result of huddling under a desk waiting for some idiot was shooting at my fellow Civil Service employees. At some point I counted how many times I should have died (Drunk driving parents, abuse, a sudden wind change on a fire, the fact that Kevin People's pistol jammed, etc. I could find no rational explanation for what happened. in any of those cases.)

I don't see any laws of physics being broken there, so I don't see why you must invoke the divine in order to explain what I would describe as a few lucky breaks mixed in with some bad ones (for example, was it a miracle that you survived some nutcase going postal, or was it shit luck that you were in the vicinity of some nutcase going postal in the first place?).

I under stand that the moral rules apply, be it Religion, law, other forms of Philosphy Growing up with liberal Jewish and Catholic parents, I was encouraged to question authority. And I have. The hatred expressed by the fundamentalists is an inability to take a work created in Prose for oral tradition, and then taking a POLITICALLY MOTIVATED translation, that deletes many key passages at face value. The Talmud, Bible, Koran, and Bagata-Divita are excellent cultural epics, full of exactly the same legends that makes Cu-Culan, the Iliad and The Stories of Anchient Egypt.

"Excellent"? I beg to differ; most of those legends are rather hateful, intolerant, and war-mongering. They're typical of a civilization which has not yet grown up, and they're certainly not suitable for children. If someone made a movie with anywhere near as much violence and cruelty as the Bible and it did not have a religious basis, the MPAA would slap an NC-17 on it and all of the religious "family values" people would use it as an example of what's wrong with society today.

I don't think there is any thing wrong with religion or with any other philosphy.

Actually, most forms of organized religion encourage irrational thought. Irrational thought is behind a vast number of crimes and social problems.

They provide a nice basic set of rules, that provided people were to look at their simularities not their differences. The whole belief that Religon is a force existing only for strife is just as ludacrise. (Yes I know my spelling is awful. That is one of my neurological quirks)

Religion does not exist only for strife, but it deliberately engenders irrational thought, and certain specific religions (ie- Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) do explicitly encourage strife in their respective "holy books".

If someone made a religion based on "The Turner Diaries", would you stop criticizing it?

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-17 12:56am

There's already a "Religion" based on the Turner Diaries. and while the litary works I have sited are very bloody minded, one should remember, humans as a whole are a very bloody minded lot. Long before we had Christianity, or Judeaism, we had folks clubing each other over Land, resources, and mating rights.

Murder and rape are wrong, so is child abuse, but to deny that these exist is to bury our heads in the sand. They are unfortunatly a characteristic of the darker elements of the human nature. They have been with us for longer then we can remember, and they are not going away. It is by imposing our darkest nature and our best intentions on our gods from the Greeks, to Christianity, to Islam, to modern communism)

There are mysteries that can't be explained, luck, the grey tones of human emotion, for that we will always need some form of external salve for.