So, obviously I think all religion is unethical, and until recently pretty well lumped all religions in the same category. But I recently had a conversation with some muslim cohorts, and managed to flip through the Koran a little bit:

• The Koran seems angry. Every line seems talking about how unbelievers are evil or going to hell. Which, is in Chrsitianity too, but it seems more prevalent in that religion.
• The Muslims I talked to seemed a lot like conservative Christians, but I think they aren't as used to people being contrary to their views as christians are.
• I was really taken aback by how easily they defended the whole justified killing thing in the Koran. Like, obviously you should kill people that are going against the government.
• Then there is the whole Mohammad child-rape thing, which is either denied or defended.

So anyway, I keep wanting to say, "I'm against all religion, but Islam seems especially ****ed up." But, I don't know if that is racist of me.

And don't get me wrong, I think, probably, scientology is worse than islam, or certain sects of mormonism or suicide cults or whatever, but as far as mainstream organized religions -- maybe it's just my western background -- but islam seems the most ****ed up.


Am I racist?

If you don't find as much brutality, and terrible advice in the bible that suggests killing, raping, maiming, etc, then it is probably due to a biased lens.

I can understand where OP is coming from and I think that you also need to take 'culture' into account. The culture that the Koran and its adherents cultivate may be seen as 'backwards' or 'angry' or 'intolerant'. The culture that Christianity cultivates was once upon a time very similar to this (e.g. dark ages), however in the current world, the Christian culture has improved significantly.

Perhaps I am seeing it from a biased lens as well, or perhaps I've only ever known intolerant muslims and thus share a similar view, but I wouldn't say that one is racist for saying this, in the same way I wouldn't call someone 'sexist' for saying that the most influential books were written by men.

Yes this part reads as at least close to bigoted. Not racist of course (muslims are not a race). As in, if you had said "Muslims....arn't as used to people being contrary to their views as christians are" I would say this is straight up bigotry. If you were just making an observation about people you have personally talked to well perhaps you are just observing a legitimate fact that I can't falsify, but I don't think it generalizes. I live in Toronto where several of my friends and hundreds of my students are muslims. I see no reason to think they are less use to contrary views, in fact I would say they are likely far MORE exposed to contrary views given that they are a minority in a majority christian culture. And if you want to start talking about people from, say, Pakistan, then you are no longer talking about people you talked to, and I can compare to Christians in, say, Uganda.

Look if you want to make a textual comparison along the lines of saying that Sauron is more evil than Lord Voldemort, you can do this, but it isn't too meaningful. The amount of "bad stuff", especially in the OT, that we can criticize is enormous. Yes I find apologizing for child rape abhorrent, but so to are christians apologizing for biblical slavery (as has been done many times on this forum). I doubt there is a good objective way to say one is far worse than the other. However, even if you were right and there was some big meaningful difference textually, there remains just enormous differences between various cultures that have little to do with adherence of the respective canonical religious texts. As in, the difference between Saudi Arabia and the US is not that the koran is worse in some measure than the bible is.

Yes, Islam is worse as a whole than Christianity, because there are more adherents with extreme views. You merely have to look at countries which are predominantly Muslim and what their laws and crime rates are like and then compare that to predominantly Christian and/or secular nations.

Now whether that's because one religion is inherently worse or because it's followers live in crappier countries or because Muslims often suffer from the delusion that things would be better with religious laws in place, I don't know.

Third world christian countries, particularly in Africa, are pretty ****ty places. 5 million people died in the second congo war. Rwandan Genocide. Uganda is a poster child for lack of human rights. All of these countries are 90%+ christian. So yes if you compare first world countries like europe and the US to the middle east and south west asia ya you get a pretty stark difference and it might seem like that is christian countries vs muslim countries. But the difference is largely selection bias and there is little reason to suspect this is a product entirely of religion.

Wow, good post. And I agree with everything, but I might be misunderstanding you (or vice versa) but the muslims I was talking to were from muslim countries, only in the states for a few months; so I doubt they've had that many religious conversations here. But when talking to them, even my atheist Iranian friend seemed surprised by how I was talking:

It is probably my confirmation bias, but I imagine there is a difference in saying one doesn't believe in God when in a muslim country (essentially a theocracy), and saying you think Allah is immoral and Muhammad was a lunatic.

But I do think you have a point saying they are probably more exposed to anti-islamic views than the typical christian is exposed to anti-christian views, but I'm not sure...

But just based on the text, from my maybe twenty minute perusal, it seems like all the evil **** in the bible is well hidden, like its pages and pages of peoples marriages and boring stories and then something ****ed up like "we should stone women who get raped." Whereas the Koran it seems like every other paragraph has something to do with "we should fight these people, and these people, and **** that guy over there", I don't know, I guess it just seems more aggressive.

Probably a stupid reason for thinking a religion is "worse" though.

For what it's worth, all the guys I was talking to were super nice.

Here is a quick religious history of me. I am a 3rd generation atheist. I have some Jewish and Lutheran heritage in my roots. I have never read 1 page of any of "the books" (aka religious propaganda). I live in Canada. My view of religion comes from watching TV, having very weird Christian neighbors, and people knocking on my door.


To me fanatical Christians appear more violent, invasive, war mongering, crazy, and bent on spreading their religion then the fanatical muslims.

Your racist.

Yes and very ignorant about Islam. Racism and ignorance usually go together.

While I agree with your second sentence, I encourage you to elucidate your thoughts so I might be of benefit. Writing a pithy sentence or two is easy, enlightened communication not quite as.

Yes, and the Muslims I've met are nice as well. In fact, Muslims I meet online are nice but with the anonymity of the internet, are happy to justify all kinds of barbaric theological laws. Religion and laws are a bad combination.

There are very few "theological laws". It's all about interpretation. That's what Islamophobes refuse to acknowledge.

Visit central or southern Africa or south-east Asia or even latin America to see how awesome Christianity is compared to Islam.

Did you take the 'Implicit association' test in the uke_master's thread about that?

Grammar is the difference between knowing your sh*t, and knowing you're sh*t. Saw that on FB this morning funnily enough.

So do ignorance and religion, which is a fact by the way, the less educated someone is, the more likely they are to be religious. Maybe you hit on something important there...

One doesn't excuse the other

I'm just pointing out that OP is clearly very ignorant about Islam. A lot of people with strong negative views about Islam are also very ignorant about it eg it could easily be argued that the Western justice system has its roots in Islam as this was the value system by which they ruled a large part of Europe.

I agree. In fact, I believe that one is often the cause of the other, but that's a conversation for another time.

I think there's a lot more to this than just ignorance, although the prevalence of Christianity in the Western world and methods of recruitment (mainly by the urging of Christianity on young children) necessarily involves a lack of exposure to Islam, or any of the other religions, until a much older age. In primary schools in the UK, children aren't even exposed to other religions until they've already been at school for two years. Until then all they get is Christianity. It's not in the interests of the Christian churches to educate their followers about the other religions.

Further to that, there's a lot of negative press in the UK (and presumably in the USA and Europe too) about Islam (For example, The Daily Mail newspaper has a circulation of over 2 Million and continually bashes Islam). I'm firmly of the belief that the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the predominantly Islamic countries and predominately Christian countries is the greatest threat to world peace that currently exists. Am I perceptive or just a victim of my own confirmation bias or of some high level conspiracy that benefits from creating this illusion of a war brewing to keep the populace compliant?

Whatever, it's not hard to suggest reasons why people in the West might be ignorant of Islam or have negative feelings toward it.

Holy work for holy work you won't too much difference. A major one is ofcourse that Muhammad is essentially a warlord, whereas Jesus is fairly peaceful. Then again, the teachings of Jesus are also in the Quran... and the OT certainly does not lack warlords. Historically speaking... it is again difficult to claim one side is worse than the other. Both have peaceful periods and both have extremely violent periods. As for terrorism... both Jewish, Christian and Muslim terrorists have existed throughout the times. We can't use this to note much of a difference either. Historically a lot of middle-eastern terrorism in the 1900s was secular or jewish... something which is lost on many people. The Quran doesn't have the commandments, but it does have verses which correspond to the commandments.

I don't really think either religion would have played its role much differently if we had switched them around. However, Christianity has been tempered by Europe's strong tradition for roman law, it has been tempered by the reformation and it has been greatly reduced in impact by the peace of Westphalia. All these events lack counterparts in the middle-east, and Islam as such has a much greater impact on courts (almost no predominantly muslim countries have secular courts), culture (individualism plays a much lesser role in predominantly muslim countries) and political model (only 2 predominantly muslim countries are counted as democracies in the democracy index, and both as "flawed") respectively.

So while I think you might not very reflective on the issue... I do actually in part agree your conclusion. If we count religion as a combination of belief and cultural impact - I have little problems stating that Islam is definitely the worst of the Abrahamic religions.



I'll note in advance that I will not respond to people who selectively quote this post. The last time this subject was debated, certain individuals would quote one sentence out of 50 and use accusations like "hate Islam". I have zero interest in polemic of that nature.

This is nonsense. The wars were mostly defensive. Would you say the same about Moses, Joshua or David etc ?

That's because you are ignorant about Islam the religion and its cultural impact. As an example the justice system in Medeival Europe was based on "trial by ordeal" and other such nonsense. The modern day values were heavily influenced by Islam.

You post isn't very factual it's mostly opinion.

Its not racist, its prejudice, and since you called it racism then yes that makes you racist from my understanding.

Sure Cwoc, theological laws tend to be open to interpretation. One of the things that makes them so dangerous is the tendency for God to mandate or forbid things in exact accordance with the interpretators' own personal prejudices and interests.

I couldn't open that test and ended up checking out how racist I was instead. I'm somewhat unconsciously prejudiced against blacks and not against whites, what I was suprised about is apparently I view Hispanics in a dimmer light than blacks but I like Asians even more than whites.

He basically did in the part you cut out.