Saudi Arabia has long been criticized for its extreme religious beliefs as part of its devotion to Wahhabism. Now the Kingdom has generated more controversy by giving one of Saudi Arabia’s most prestigious prizes to Zakir Naik, an Islamic school who said that the Koran (Quran) “allows Muslims to have sex with female slaves” and seemed to support Osama Bin Laden, at least to the extent to which he was “fighting the enemies of Islam.” Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman gave Naik the King Faisal International Prize (KFIP) 2015 personally.
Naik, 49, has been barred from travel to Britain because of what the country cited as “unacceptable behavior.”
The statement on slaves came when the Indian Islamic scholar observed that “There are many verses in the Quran which say you can have sex with your wife and with whatever your right hand possesses. . . . Right hand possesses . . . which means your slaves.”
The King Faisal International Prize recognises the outstanding works of individuals and institutions in five categories — Service to Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic Language and Literature, Medicine and Science. Naik received his award for awarded the KFIP for his services to Islam for a lifetime’s teaching about Islam, including his work founding of the Peace Channel, a comparative religion TV channel. He was given a handwritten Arabic certificate on the laureate’s achievements, a commemorative 24-carat 200-gram gold medal and a cheque of USD 200,000.
While Saudi Arabia has opposed such extremist groups like ISIS, the country continues to maintain medieval laws that deny women basic freedoms, deny basic freedoms of speech and religion to other faiths, and impose extreme Sharia law on its citizens.
George Steele,
Interesting tribal analogy. Found an isolated Indian tribe in Peru.
They don’t know what planet they live on, nothing about bible or other religions.
They are nomadic, hunter gatherers. They don’t even know that Peru government found a billion barrels of oil in their territory. Take a look at the future oil millionaires.
Pogo Hears a Who
“One month without Islamic terror.
Is that too much to ask?
As usual, you don’t answer the points made, pogo. You go right back to to your talking points.
But yeah, isn’t too much to ask. I’ll check with terrorism HQ, I” put in a formal request for one month without islamic terror. You do the same on your side.
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on 1, March 4, 2015 at 12:27 pmPogo Hears a Who
“either all religion is bogus or all religion is relevant and valid, they are “fundamentally” all the same.”
If all religions are relevant and valid and “fundamentally” all the same, then they are all bogus.
Not what I said, pogo, but let’s go with that and at last agree on something. Your religion as well as mine!
po – pogo makes a valid claim. quit trying to move the goalposts.
George Steele
I think that post of yours is incredibly insightful, it answers what is going on right now worldwide, which is capitalism on steroids, which is also based on dogmatic democracy, dogmatic freedom and dogmatic commerce.
Dogma is ‘to sacrifice the being to the ideal, the spirit of the law to its letter, the optimism to the fear. It is a necessary part of patriarchy and of control, and it also requires the identification and division of people into groups of conformed and non-conformed.
This extreme capitalism seeks to gather all the world, its resources and its people into a pool that provides both the means for unchecked growth and the clientele. This capitalism seeks to shrink the world so to control it even better.
Globalism has thus been sold to us as the answer for everything, but we all see that it has only profited the corporations, costing the people a great deal.
When the interest of the people and of the corporations collide, we all know who loses, mainly because local control and local affairs are no longer in the hands of the locals, the decisions that affect them, whether about the economy or the effects of industrial development, are made elsewhere.
Yes, George, everything starts with local control. No village would take social, financial and political decisions that affect it directly. The capital would.
Humanity was made/evolved to revolve around small cores, small units, family, compound, neighborhood, village, town, city…
There is a return to that…people are trying to re-unify their small cores…they are trying to buy local…downtowns across the country are looking inward…even the arts and crafts movement is self-featuring…
“either all religion is bogus or all religion is relevant and valid, they are “fundamentally” all the same.”
If all religions are relevant and valid and “fundamentally” all the same, then they are all bogus.
Words are just air, po.
One month without Islamic terror.
Is that too much to ask?
Well, sir Pogo, that argument is fallacious in the extreme, and lucky me, I need not break it down as the following 2 posts by George Steele (“The smaller the government the more it can work regardless of system. An agreed-to communism works in monasteries and many extended families. Small democracies, where everyone knows everyone else, work. Large democracies do not. Small hierarchies work, large ones become bureaucracies.” and Vix pix answer you quite satisfactorily.
I’d add however, and this furthers Vixpix’s post, since Islam is built off the bones of Christianity, which is built off the bones of Judaism, their structure is the same. Whatever ills afflict one afflict all, whether it is (and it mainly is) patriarchy, or control.
So your insistence in making one inherent violent says much about your lack of understanding of human and religious history (which is one and the same really) as it speaks of your ignorance of your particular faith.
Listing the extremist acts of Muslims is akin to listing the biting acts of bulldogs to prove how dangerous they are, or of demonstrating how inherently violent black people are by listing their crimes, doesn’t mean much.
Ultimately, either all religion is bogus or all religion is relevant and valid, they are “fundamentally” all the same.
po – bulldogs were bred to take down bulls and bears. It is in their DNA to be violent.
Vixpix,
Not only is pentecostalism a tenet of Sarah Palin’s church, it’s also a tenet of Scott Walkers’s church.
Be dogmatic about eschewing other dogma, of course. That is the way dogma works.
“The truth is that all religion is bogus and breeds intolerance”
In contrast, atheism bred the annihilation of over 100 million people in the 20th century, more than all the deaths from all religious wars and persecutions in history, combined.
So you got that going for you.
In both cases, Pogo, dogma led the way.
Moderation in all things. Especially eschew dogma.
Rather than dumping all over Islam, why don’t we look at all religions, and how they work in the real world, starting with Christianity. You have that sect that goes to the funerals of veterans, with their signs about God hating homos. You have the evangelicals opposing gay marriage, hating gays for being the way nature made them and supporting anything Israel does because when all the Jews wind up in Israel, Jesus can have his second coming. You have people denying global warming because only God has the thermostat. Until recently, you had Northern Ireland, with Protestants and Catholics gleefully killing each other. You have people rolling on the floor, babbling in tongues (Sarah Palin’s church), and other people dancing with poisonous snakes coiled around their necks. You have the Catholic Church being the only organization in the history of the planet to institutionalize the sexual abuse of children. Of course, all this is a vast improvement on Christianity’s historical record, with hundreds of years of people murdering each other over minor doctrinal differences, with the burning of tens of thousands of women as witches, with the burning of heretics by the Inquisition, and that bloody attempt to conquer Arab lands called the Crusades.
Because Jews were an oppressed minority, their historical record is less bloody, but you have today’s Orthodox Jews, who require women to sit in a separate part of the synagogue, who require women to take a monthly ritual bath to cleanse themselves because their period makes them unclean, who make women wear wigs so their hair doesn’t unbearably excite men. Let’s not overlook Israel, where they think they can steal that little bit of land the Palestinians have because it’s Eretz Yisroel, the land that God promised them.
The truth is that all religion is bogus and breeds intolerance, and the fact that so many people feel the need to put it at the center of their value systems explains much of the world’s misery.
Yes, po.
Pogo
The That’s what you are what am I defense doesn’t work for grownups.
Come up with something else.
Are you saying that Islam is to Christianity as communism is to democracy?
Is that what you are saying?
Is it?
I won’t bite, please answer.
on 1, March 4, 2015 at 11:07 amPogo Hears a Who
“Moderation in all things, even religion is wise. ”
Not bleach ingestion or suicide bombing.
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I haven’t heard of any moderate Muslims forcing bleach ingestion or suicide bombing anyone, have you?
” the more you attack Islam, the more you undermine your own faith.”
That’s be like saying the more you attack communism, the more you undermine democracy.
Nope.
“Moderation in all things, even religion is wise. ”
Not bleach ingestion or suicide bombing.
The similarities of religious fundamentalists are very evident for most thinking people to see, only people who are weighed down with the anchor of ignorance and fear will continue to proclaim that their form of fundamentalism is harmless. Moderation in all things, even religion is wise. Extremists just yell that they know better, they don’t.
Moderation in liberalism would be a first.
Gestapo Nick and his side attacks:)
Pogo
I don’t owe you anything. I am actually not talking to you, rather, through you. I am reaching out to those behind you who care about truth and knowledge.
It’s funny to me that you don’t see that the more you attack Islam, the more you undermine your own faith. Speaks volumes about your distance from faith and the love it is supposed to embody.
I hereby name you official accountant ‘of Islam. Keep tallying brother!
There are religious nuts of every stripe. It would be the equivalent of Obama giving a medal to, say, an extreme fundamentalist Christian. If we were a Christian nation, that is. That is the nature of a theocracy — it is a nation. There are other views as dogmatic as religious views. Communism, Naziism, Nationalism (my country is special), and they can all lead to acts that make no sense to people outside the group.
Of course, we are a tribal species. Most of what has mattered for the bulk of our evolutionary history is dealing with others of our tribe. It has been so valuable that an instinct for it has evolved.
A new kind of tribalism has arisen, though, taking advantage of our inborn tribalism to invent new tribes. My religion — my tribe, my nation — my tribe, my city — my tribe, my political views — my tribe, my economic views, my tribe.
The upcoming world war will, when it comes, be a hypergolic mix of all the tribes we divide ourselves into. Just as it has always been, the most dangerous animal in the human environment is other human beings exhibiting human tribalism. We have met the enemy and he is us.
The only way out is almost dogmatic: Run the world in the small. Do many county sized governments fight other counties? Why, yes, all around the world. And the fight rarely involves killing. Damage in the small is, too, in the small.
The smaller the government the more it can work regardless of system. An agreed-to communism works in monasteries and many extended families. Small democracies, where everyone knows everyone else, work. Large democracies do not. Small hierarchies work, large ones become bureaucracies.
The utopian solution? Humanity — my tribe. All people of the same religious view (some particular theism or generic atheism), same nation, same economy, same moral system. Same access to tribal resources. Everyone perfectly equal. Everyone exactly like us.
A realistic solution? No world courts nor government. No national courts nor government. The 50 States will form the equivalent of NATO — the federal mandate would be limited to defense. The Joint Chief of Staff will advise the 50 governors who collectively decide if military action is required. When a five star general is needed one would be appointed. And, in the marketplace of ideas, there may be others more realistic still. My suggestion may be either too large or too small in scale.
Your thoughts?
Po, get back to me when the Islam daily terror count is blank for a month.
You know you’re desperately drowning when you reach for a cinder block to save you.