aakalim wrote:So are you ready to view people of faith as “enlightened”, people who “do know”. If not than you are yourself guilty of intellectual dishonesty. If yes, than accusing enlightened and knowledgeable people of immorality and dishonesty will be absurd.
What? I don't even understand you're question. Why would I be guilty of intellectual dishonesty if I viewed people of faith as "enlightened" and ones "who know"? What kind of question is this? Religion doesn't make people more enlightened, if anything it makes them and keeps them gullible and hostile towards dissenting views and
"controversial" ideas. As it is quite apparent, especially and more so in the muslim world.
aakalim wrote:Let me rephrase it "
Apostasy is still NOT punishable by death as per the quran, no matter how much traditional muslims squirm and try to avoid the answer when pressed on the matter"
Tell that to the muslims on whom the media focuses, the ones who call for fatwas (e.g..: In Salmon Rusdie's case), the ones who get squirmy on tv and barely want to say out loud that the penalty for apostasy is death, the ones we can hear a lot more from than from moderates. Most moderate muslims are apparently very silent, even if they don't condone violence. Not saying they're completely silent, there are groups (e.g.: in the UK) that are outspoken, and that's fine and dandy but hardly influential on the 1billion+ scale. It is simply another question of interpretation by fallible human beings whose more primitive and narrow-minded (also illiterate) ancestors came up with the faith and its tenets.
No the quran doesn't say that apostasy is punishable by death. No. The descendants of the same people, who came up with the faith and had a prophet figure to boot, the people centuries later, who interpret the passages in a different way, are the ones who use the passages to justify their holy war and furthering and spreading of islam. And they can do that because they can find plenty of justification for violence in religions, if they can't find it explicitly in it, then they will preach their own interpretation for generations until we arrive at the point where faith-heads and teachers of the faith will get uncomfortable when they have to say out loud the penalty for dissenting views, within their faith. Oh, it's not entirely their fault, it's the culture and tradition, that was invented by men and shaped by men, the same as them, to reflect men's way of thinking and men's desires to spread, own, and conquer mind and matter, even if it meant using violence, violence that is well within men's nature.
And as long as the religious can't see, understand and admit that no god, or any supernatural force was ever behind the creation of the universe and their faith, there will be no end to religion and this ridiculous debating.
aakalim wrote:This has nothing to do with compulsion. If you are not convinced of God or hell/heaven, eternal damnation, than good for you, no one is forcing you to believe in it.
Well, talk about intellectual dishonesty. Nobody is forcing
me, that's true. But, to say that no one is forcing muslims to believe is a rather sad attempt at denying reality and perhaps a momentary inability to or selective comprehension of the language. How can one not see or feel compulsion in being told, or reading, that those who do not believe, who aren't of the faith, who are non-believers will be punished? This is denial. The inability to be intellectually honest when talking about the tenets of the particular faith one has been brought up in.
aakalim wrote:There is a difference between "skipping over" and interpreting differently.
Oh, please. It isn't even a metaphor. The passages that refer to non-believers and their fate are plain and easily understandable, even if it is only a translation. What reason would the publishers of qurans gain by deliberately mistranslating certain parts of scripture? Or, here's a better question. What would men gain by codifying in writing such rules and philosophies and codes of conduct...etc., and then leave it up to the next generation for the coming millenia to interpret their writing, and what would those in the next generation gain by deliberately adhering to their own interpretation of the text (as authority figures, perhaps) and telling others how to interpret the text. A thousand people, a thousand interpretations, but apparently not so.