bad stuff about islam is mentioned then we must immediately drag something up about another religion or culture. Probuably better to realise that some cultures are better with some stuff and rights than others and all have good and bad points.

meant to add for me id rather live in the western culture than the middle eastern anyday.

In the last decade, American government has worked hard to worm its way into the morally inferior position in the war on terror, with "successes" on many fronts. But the prosperity and freedom that comes from a liberal society has a moral power all its own, and won't be easily taken down by fundamentalists or US the security "experts" dreaming up ways at night of how to morally undercut them.

Yes, in some ways we're less humane, but in the middle east particularly, Islam does indeed terribly oppress women- not to mention gay folks. Islam is no more monolithic than Christianity. I wish folks would grasp that.

It's kind of stupid to compare. When it comes to individual rights, western culture is more humane than the Arab/Muslim culture. On the other hand, there's nothing humane about launching illegal wars that kill hundreds of thousands or drone strikes that remotely kill civilians.

And like ALL other forces at war, Muslims did terrible things- no matter what Mohammed commanded. That's just the nature of warfare. It ain't ever pretty.

I think it is reasonable to say that Islam, in theory, that is in what is in writing, contains elements that are more progressive than Christian theology, for instance practical regulations on how to end a marriage (including that a mediator needs to be consulted and the couple must live separate for a period of time until the marriage legally ends) where as Christianity explicitly forbids divorce.

From what I have read of the Quran (it is pretty damn hard to read), the misogyny is somewhat damped in contrast to the Old Testament (you have to understand that Islam understands itself as a "reformation" or "fulfillment" of Christianity and Judaism). This is not surprising, considering that Islam is almost 600 years younger than Christianity.

I also think it is accurate that society was much further developed in the Middle East than in Europe during the medieval days.

Today is a different story and I think there are a number of reasons for that, from the present resource wars, to the Cold War going all the way back to the First World War.

Yes, Islam understands itself as a perfection of the monotheism of Judaism and Christianity. Certainly there is ample reason to conclude that Islam during the middle ages was a more developed and civil society than that of the middle ages in Europe, but then came the Reformation and Renaissance and that started to change.

I think the important thing to keep in mind today is that Islam is by no means monolithic. Islam in Indonesia which is the largest Islamic country in the world, is different from Islam in SA, for instance.

I think it's worthwhile to point out Islam's history.

...there are plenty of splinter sects that still have a very poor track record with their "chattels". Not to mention that one of the of the recuring memes here how hard certain X-tians are fighting to turn the clock back for the rest of us.

It's only in very recent decades that ADULT gay sex has been decriminalised in large chunks of the Western World. AND its almost as recently that, taking an underage boy (even by force) was considered acceptable practice.

When Muslims were conquerers they brought civilisation with them and shared it with the locals. When Europeans conquered, what civilisation they brought was solely for their own benefit, and exploitation was the goal and it seems the US has taken over where Europe left off.

For most of the last thousand years or so Western "Civilisation" has litterly pounded home to the rest of the world that the proper way to get ahead is to be the meanest, baddest, neck stomping motherfucker on the planet.

And now that we're on top, we pretend that the past never happened (or at best has no bearing on the present) and cry foul when the rest of the world, more or less in extremis, says "Enough is enough. Here, time to have some of your own back."

I believe the philosophy of Jesus:

All people are guilty of "sin". No man or woman, no group, no culture,
is better than the other in the eyes of God.
To think of one's self as "better", in any way, reflects the sin of pride.

The discussion always seems childish and immature, primitive and tribal.

The republicans wore their red ties during their convention, and the
democrats wore their blue ties during their convention.
No different than Bloods and Crips wearing their colors, except Bloods
and Crips don't pretend to be something other than gangsters.

I also believe that the devil only has one tool to use against us -- a wedge.

...for lack of a better word, seem more backward than us in a cultural sense. But I don't think that has anything to do with good and evil. We have a superior attitude in the US. Horrible things happen here everyday. All the shootings we hear about, parents killing their own children....I could go on and on. But when these things happen we blame it on the person who did it. When violence happens in other countries we blame the culture, their religion...we lump them all together and blame the whole population.

Oklahoma was a white Christian, Columbine two white Christian guys...all the serial killers have been white....yet who ever says white people are evil or Christianity breeds violence. Yet one black guy commits a petty crime and we blame them all. A black thief will spend more time in jail than a white murderer.

Those who consider this a Christian nation are the most un-Christian of all. They should look to the teaching of Christ:

Matthew7:1, 2 Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Luke 6:31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

A democratic system and a bill of rights that includes freedom of religion, speech, and press give progressive people a fighting chance at making positive changes. That along with a bit of luck and wise moves by some individuals has allowed us to slowly (and painfully) arrive where we are today. I don't know how many of those changes will survive going into the future, but I feel lucky to be a modern U.S. citizen despite some eroding of rights previous generations won for me. Most Islamic countries haven't even had the slightest chance at implementing those sorts reforms for various reasons. Ironically, our own foreign policy has been at the center of some of that with arming and propping up dictatorships and Islamists depending on which perceived threat we were trying to fight, or who stood to gain the most financially.

Historically, it's interesting and good ammunition against some of the more idiotic Conservative historical views, but I don't really consider it all that relevant to today's world. I still find ancient Islam fairly barbaric compared to modern day progressive ideals.

with Salafists and other fundamentalists and the Saudis who have been spreading their brand of Islam the last 40 years.

There is no such thing as a single Muslim 'culture'. In fact, the different Muslim factions at at each other's throats all the time. That's how it is easy to see the right-wing is dead wrong when they start screaming about a new Caliphate. I laugh when I hear that.

Salafism and other radical Muslim fundamentalists are a threat because it is essentially an intolerant and often separatist (in many countries) cult that is backed by the biggest bankroll on the planet (KSA)

As Democrats (many of us liberals, and yes that includes me) we need to get past our first instinctual notions of cultural relativism and look at each of these groups in each of these countries (yeah, they are not all the same) and come to judgement about them. In the meantime, we need to put KSA out of the Iman and Mosque building business.

And yes, American fundamentalists are a threat... damn straight. Just recognize they are not the same animal at all.

with some scholars disputing that interpretation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Qurayza

Do you also analyze historically unverified incidents in the Bible and Torah to make broad brush statements about Christians and Jews?

Why don't you show us where in any collection of Islamic biographers that shows us Muhammad never ordered the executions and enslavement of the prisioners? Disputed numbers? LOL Yeah, if the disputed murdered numbers were only 400 hundred, I can see how this would make him an advanced humanitarian.

I disagree with the OP and I disagree with your point of view that we can somehow prove that one culture is better than another based on specific historical or religious incidents.

I've seen anti-semitic comments that allude to all sorts of horrible things that may or may not be in Jewish holy books and history (that was the atmosphere that led to the events of the early and mid-twentieth century). Most of them probably aren't true but, even if some of them are, you can't hold a whole people accountable for obscure incidents in ancient history that they may not even be aware of.

For example, do you see yourself as responsible for things that happened in the Crusades?

Thanks, but no thanks. My point was to show the BS that Muhammad introduced such niceties such as no killing of women. Well, why kill them, when you can enslave them as sex slaves. Much more humane. LOL such a nice man. Don't you think so, too? Killing of children? Nah as long as they have one pubic hair they're not children. I object to the whitewashing any history in any religion, since I'm an Atheist. No I don't see myself responsible for the Crusades. How does that equate? You do know that Muslims consider Muhammad perfect man to be emulated, don't you? So his past history and conduct has a direct bearing on what pious muslims consider OK today. I suppose that's why we see court cases in the Muhammad's birth place where 8 year old children are seeking divorces from their 50 year old husbands. Insane, no?

or history or religions inside out.

Most people just pay lip service to their religions, they have very little idea of the intricate details or even the general spirit of it.

I know people of many different religions and most of them don't read their holy books or historical treatises day and night. They know a couple of talking point and that's it.

If religious peope actually read their holy books then the motto of the Republican Party would be "love thy neighbor" or "turn the other cheek". But they don't because they don't really care what's in the book.

The world is not really divided into people of different religions. Religions are almost immaterial. In nearly every country we see the same pattern: fundamentalists, conservatives, moderates, liberals.

A liberal christian, a liberal muslim and a liberal atheist will have fairly similar views, in the same way that a fundamentalist christian and a fundamentalist muslim will have a similar moral code.

We need to see people as individuals not as robots programmed with some kind of holy computer language.

Well, if people don't read their holy books then they can't be all that pious, or religious to begin with. If I understand it correctly fundamentalist (or pious) Muslims want to follow Sharia law (Qur'anic law) which entails the stoning to death of adulterers, the execution of anyone denouncing Islam, the amputation of of limps for thievery and so on. Are those sentiments of a tiny minority of believers? According to Pew Research the vast majority (80%+) of those in just two of the most populous Islamic countries, Egypt and Pakistan want Sharia law and specifically the same practices mentioned. And just those two countries amount to a quarter of a billion believers. So your moral equivalence with fundamental Islam and other religions seems a fallacy.

I teach overseas students from many different countries including many muslim ones.

Get to know people as individuals not as statistics or stereotypes and you'll learn something.

As for people being pious, usually the ones who are holier-than-thou don't know what they're talking about.

Have you ever heard a Conservative Christian extensively quote the words of Jesus?

No, because they're too busy calling for various things to be banned and various places to be bombed.

Thanks.

And, fwiw, Indonesia (203 million), India (161 million) and Bangladesh (145 million) all have larger Muslim populations than Egypt. Indonesia actually has more than either Egypt or Pakistan.

http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/Mapping-the-Global-Muslim-Population(3).aspx

million human beings, tortured, raped and sodomized even children, destroyed their infrastructure, contaminated their environment to the point where generations of their children will be born with tragic defects and stole their resources?

Maybe there's an equally good reason why the hell hole known to the world for its cruelty and horror, known as Guantanamo Bay where innocent human beings were tortured and destroyed and murdered. A gulag that will go down in history as one of the worst examples of man's inhumanity to man in modern times.

Wait, I know the answer. When we torture people it is not as painful as when other people do it.

When we kill a million human beings, it's because our leader George W. Bush was told to do it by his 'Heavenly Father' and our religious icons are far superior to other people's religious icons.

Here's the problem with Americans pointing fingers at other cultures, we destroyed our own moral authority over the past number of years by the atrocities committed in our name so when we get up on our high horses, people show us the photos from Abu Ghraib, the pictures of the dead children blown to bits by our WMDs.

The best thing we could do right now is to refrain from smearing entire cultures because doing so is sure to attract attention to the horrors we have been responsible for over the past decade.

And what of the persecutions of Protestants at the time around the Reformation?

Those were old times - of course they seem savage now.

Sorry, we don't have any control over our past. But we do have control over the present.

Not being the worst conquering armies in the dark ages doesn't make them nice and peaceful today.

Currently predominately muslim nations do seem to be more violent than predominately christian nations.

You can argue the cause of that. But quoting ancient texts doesn't really play in to it.

The whole "my religion/culture is better than yours" just leads to endless tit-for-tat arguments.

That's axiomatic. We don't behead women for minor offenses. We don't stone people because of their sexual identity.

We have big problems with these and other issues, that's also obvious, but to say we are the same as the cultures in the Mideast is to ignore reality.

In addition, Mideast cultures typically don't let women have much of a say in their lives so the comparison is even more uneven since we don't know what fully half of Mideast cultures really believe.

and talking about things that may be a lot less prevalent in most of the countries there than the perception. However, I'm not an expert and I've never been to any countries in the ME, so I'll leave that to people who have (although even there I'm sure there'll be differing viewpoints).

Also, I'm not going to counter with negatives or statistics about America or the West in general, as it's not my intention to prove one or the other is more violent.

But just think about all the negative propaganda that Middle Easterners see about America, all the things they think are crimes or atrocities. Do you think their perception of America based on that would be accurate?

If it's a culture that keeps half its population as servants and beheads people who dare to be different, atrocities in the West probably don't even show on their radar.

You're right, not every culture in the Mideast is violent and oppressive. But many of them are.

The OP comparing East to West does not take into account how things are NOW. What happened 1000 years ago has no relevance to those who are routinely killed for their beliefs today.

As many problems as Western culture has, in general we don't rise to the level of public beheadings and stonings and, again, in general, we stand for equal rights for all.

That is a difference and a significant one.

of atrocities against their countries by the West in the last decade and the last century. They would see that as violence.

However, I can't defend whatever repressive regimes there are in the ME but I think we're also in danger of having tunnel vision. The MSM focuses on the ME (or certain places and incidents in the ME) and we often don't look at the wider world. It's only a small part of the world. There are countries which statistically speaking have more violent crimes and more death penalty cases than the ME but the MSM doesn't care and we don't care about things happening outside the tiny scope of our interests. Again, my point is not to say any particular place is better or worse but just to have a sense of perspective on these things.

But I have to agree with you that in terms of rights they are way behind the Western world. They were trying to get there with the "Arab Spring" but they have the conservatives and fundamentalists trying to stand in the way.

We get a one-sided view of things unless we dig deeper on our own.

The Arab Spring has not ended by a long shot. Change is still coming to that part of the world.

I have no tolerance for religious extremists of any stripes but I give credit where it's due.

Ours block funding for planned parenthood. That's bad. Theirs stone homosexuals and rape victims to death with the full sanction of the law and throw acid in the face of girls. That's worse.

if we specifically compare today's American christian fundamentalists to ME muslim fundamentalists.

But if we're taking about East vs West throughout history and up to the present day including violent crimes, invasions and wars...then I think they're pretty evenly matched.

nor can anyone.

So it is less relevant.

However what people are doing today is very important.

The germans were once pretty violent. I wouldn't call Germany a threat to world peace today would you?

Mongolia had a time when they were the greatest threat the world have ever seen. I don't think we should redeploy our nukes based on this fact though.

The one thing the video riots (which sparked these types of discussions) have proved is that the world may be connected by technology, but the rest of the world still needs to catch up on concepts of freedom of speech. Technology has outpaced human wisdom yet again.

we're clever at working with our hands.

Dealing fairly with large groups of unrelated humans though? Nothing in our history prepared us sufficiently for this.

/we're wired to think of "humanity" as a small group (perhaps a hundred, usually less) consisting of extended family members that we see and interact with every day. At no point in our time on the plains of africa did we ever need to even comprehend the concept of thousands of people, let alone billions, nor did we have to treat strangers nicely.

No culture has a monopoly on peace or violence.

I tend not to believe the things that come out of a Beck or Limbaugh hateful free speech mouth. But I am saddened that many here do.

revisionism. Just stunning in its reaching.

As is argued in the article, had Europe been conquered during the middle ages, they would likely have been much shorter.

If an Islamic mob wants to kill a dozen people, they have to get their hands dirty.

When we want to do it, we just order a Predator Drone strike.

Easy Peasy....

Your snarky response to hundreds of innocent civilians killed not withstanding.

Tell you what. Let me kill two dozen of your relatives at your next family reunion, and we'll see if you response is still to just roll your eyes.

How many laws would be created for the express purpose of pushing their agenda or punishing anyone opposing them?

She laid out what a Christian theocracy in North America might be like.

games in the arena including the gladiatorial conquests. The decline of the Empire accomplished that. Christianity never ended the bull fights in Catholic Spain and Spanish culture to this day although most countries of Spanish heritage in the Americas have outlawed them. The Church has never stepped in to end them though. Of course, there was the burning of witches in the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition, which invented many of the torture techniques we use today by proxy in our gulags in other countries.

Whereas, in every culture, no matter how depraved or enlightened, most of the people in those cultures never experience war, never murder, never rape, never pillage. Throughout history the tendency among people is to get along as best they can.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton And, therein lies the problem with all cultures.

I don't see how it is at all relevant to discussing the cultures that exist today.

At least to a Sunni Muslim, the Quran is the infallible word of god. The Arabic original is the same now as it was then. It goes to show that when terrorists murder innocents, it is in violation of the Islamic religion.

Teabaggers are just as willing to go bloody savage on people as the craziest Muslim, and they're not the only example.

Our military is raining death on the Middle East right now.

Sorry but that is definitely hyperbole.

ridicule is relevent information to substantiate a claim.

The questions still stands yup yup.

or murder their daughters for becoming too westernized. The big diff is the treatment of women IMO. Otherwise all we need to even it out is to have a lot more of the Westboro church types and even then it wouldn't be as violent. At least Westboro church people don't kill others directly but they sure are some crazy ass fucks. How about those LDS Warren Jeffs types? Nope, still not as bad. Yea you can go back in history about this for comparisons but I think that the focus is the "here and now". It's just my opinion.