This is going on right now.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/05/07/world/middleeast/07reuters-saudi-activist-sentence.html?referrer=

DUBAI — A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced the editor of an Internet forum he founded to discuss the role of religion in the conservative Islamic kingdom to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes, Saudi media reported on Wednesday.

...

In a separate ruling on Tuesday, the court also convicted the administrator of a website on charges of supporting Internet forums hostile to the state and which promoted demonstrations, Sabq reported on Wednesday. It said he was sentenced to six years in jail and a 50,000 riyal fine.

...
Also in April, a Saudi court sentenced an unidentified activist to six years in jail on charges including taking part in illegal demonstrations and organizing women's protests.

Another was sentenced to three years in jail for spreading lies against King Abdullah and inciting the public against him.

Those lashings of "1000 lashes" are usually given on the installment plan - maybe 100 lashes this weekend, 100 more the next weekend, etc.

ETA - Also, a DOCTOR attends the lashings! So there! And that punishment of cutting off a thief's hand? They still do that, but the amputation takes place in a HOSPITAL!

And don't worry if you get the supreme penalty, either. The Saudi Official Excutioner is a very big guy who's guaranteed to remove your head in one clean stroke.

One of the most interesting Saudi legal penalties is the one for highway robbery - crucifixion.

I know all that because I lived in The Magic Kingdom for 2 years. And "sentenced to lashing etc." stories often appeared in the English-language newspaper, the Saudi Gazette.

Pour encouragement les autres, etc. Make sure the foreigners know what will happen if they screw up in our lovely country. Even though the Saudis often turn a blind eye to furriners, unless they do something really egregious.

One of the most famous stories involved a British man who got caught drunk and in possession of home-made alcohol. IIRC, there was such an uproar over lashing a foreigner that the Saudis reduced the number of lashes, then finally commuted the rest of the "sentence" after 20 or 30 lashes.

Useless trivia - in Saudi Arabia, home-made booze is called "saddiqi" - Arabic for "my friend."

Hobby Lobby prove they have a religious belief preventing them from doing something? Do they have to fill out some form or something to prove this??

Because if you are a CO ... there is an application that must be filled out and approved.
http://www.centeronconscience.org/images/stories/pdf/The_Guide_for_COs_in_the_Military.pdf

Did Hobby Lobby have to do that?

Why all the religious exemptions (taxes, etc) when not one has shown to be really a member of X religion? And is it just "belief"? Are some sorts of actions or behaviours required to be shown? Do we have to define what being a X means?? (X = some religion)

I would also like to know what is involved in being a "believer" of X religion. How do they have to live their lives? Surely there is some code of behavior that they would have to follow if they really are believers. I completely agree with this.

And that is a very good point about the conscientious objectors. They have always been put through the ringer by the military, and so many of them are deemed to be less CO than they must be to avoid military service. Interesting.

is people that say that Atheism itself is a religion.

But exactly how many stamps you don't collect is important here.

First the victim blaming, then the assertion that the Paris attacks had nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with religion, despite the fact that Charlie Hebdo often satirized Islam in general and Mohammed in particular, despite these passages,

art.

I think that many liberals think that Muslims are "the enemy of our enemy" and feel compelled to defend them because the right-wing criticizes them. I have also seen Muslims referred to as an "oppressed minority" that they need to protect. Um.... they have 1.6 billion followers. They are neither oppressed nor a minority.

Religion is just the tool they are using to manipulate people in order to get more power.

The terrorists attacks happened in order to incite a backlash. That gets them more recruits, more power, and the ability to carry out more attacks. Which continues the cycle. 9/11 and its aftermath is a perfect example of how it's done and how well it can work.

The response from non-Muslims attempting to blame Islam for it are also seeking power. Declaring it all about Islam is great when you want to get non-Muslims to vote for you out of fear.

Just like religion can be used to keep control over the poor, it can also be used to manipulate people into giving power to sociopaths.

Take away religion, and the same people will just use another tool. Stalinists called it "sharpening the contradictions", and obviously did not use "religion" as their tool.

Well, at least that implies that you think religion had something to do with it, even if you don't think that it was the primary motivator (and I disagree with you about that).

As far as the whole power thing goes, sure, terrorism has been used to gain power in the past, but every case if terrorism isn't an example of using it as a tool to gain power. I think that ascribing motivations of gaining power to these psychopaths is giving them too much credit and minimizing the most dangerous component of this tragedy, which is religious extremism.

It's a lot easier to motivate someone to martyr themselves with promises of rewards in the afterlife.

and obviously religion was not used in those cases.

Religion is a tool. It has advantages and disadvantages as that tool.

Only that religion makes it easier.

The tool for the Oklahoma city bombing was white supremacy and "government tyranny".

Only that religion makes it easier.

On edit: Also, Tim McVeigh didn't martyr himself - if so, he would have stayed in the truck when he blew it up.

Singling out religion means you don't deal with the problem - the sociopaths in positions of power.

Don't fight the symptoms, fight the disease.

Sociopaths are in power. Taking away their tools helps fight them too. Religion is a highly effective tool, and motivates a lot of people to do some nasty things.

It is also true that at least some of those sociopaths accept what they see as the teachings of religion and are simply trying to carry them out. I don't think they're all atheists - do you?

and the bits they choose to ignore, I don't think they're really practicing their religion.

The Abrahamic religions have all have something along the lines of "god will handle the infidels", as well as "don't hurt each other, even if they're infidels". These sociopaths are talking up the former, and ignoring the latter.

If you pick and choose, you aren't really following the religion, IMO. And yes, that means there's a lot of "not religious" religious people out there.

That argument gets spun 180 right back at the moderate believers by the fundamentalists. But I'd say there's not a single believer on earth who takes 100% of their holy text literally. Simply cannot be done.

So by saying:

If you pick and choose, you aren't really following the religion, IMO.

You're claiming that there isn't a single person in the world following ANY religion.

Because we aren't in the bronze age anymore. Lots of things that were acceptable when the books were written will now land you in jail.

Some people choose to eliminate the "unpleasant" parts so they can keep pretending they follow the faith their ancestors followed.
Others choose to eliminate the "pleasant" parts so they can rampage.

IMO, if it has bits you have to ignore, that's a sign that it's not the religion for you.

are those who properly ignore the ignorable passages while knowing which righteous ideas should be embraced. If you're religious, you have to pick and choose. The Abrahamic religions all have something along the lines of women are chattel and the owning of slaves it just dandy, too. But,you know, those are the passages that some religious folks choose to read over like they're not even really there. . I think the hubris is large in deciding that folks with a different understanding of the same texts are less religious.

Read the Turner Diaries, and watch Blood in the Face (it's a documentary, the name refers to people being able to show blood in their face, IE: blushing, IE: white people) So, yea, religion played a big part in that terrorist act as well, they just downplay the christian angle because, well we know why.

I'm a lifelong atheist who's been fired for not going to church. So no, you don't have a clue why. But thanks for assuming I'm a Christian. It's not like that hasn't bit me in the ass.

McVeigh was not religious beyond identity. While lots of white supremacists tie their racism with Christianity, McVeigh was "just" a racist. Terry Nichols was somewhat religious. Neither was anything like, say, Eric Rudolph.

And don't act like you're the only one whose lack of belief has caused them trouble.

I was taking a class on white supremacy in high school a few years after the bombing happened, and religion is inexorably intertwined with the ideology. He may not have been screaming "GOD BE PRAISED" while he hit the button, but it was most assuredly a component in the whole scheme. And like I said, read the turner diaries, cause if you haven't then you "don't know why"

you should probably stop making them about others.

And guns aren't about killing things. They are just a tool.

Jeff47 might also be just a tool.... because when religious fundies kill people because they think their religion has been insulted by their victims, to insist it is not about religion is about as dumb as a hammer.

And it's an extremely useful tool for that.

But power-craving sociopaths will use whatever tool gets the job done. Again, Stalinists used similar tactics, but obviously could not motivate via religion.

Religion is the excuse. Just like government tyranny and white supremacy were the excuse for the Oklahoma City bombing. And "innocent babies" was the excuse for Eric Rudolph's attacks.

It wasn't exploited. The rules are written down clearly what to do to blasphemers.

You have to convince someone that they are "an instrument of god" to get them to do an attack like this. Which is exploiting religion to motivate people.

Just like religion is a fantastic tool to keep the poor from revolting against the rich, it's a fantastic tool for sociopaths to build power. But it's still just the tool. If someone is bludgeoned to death with a hammer, you don't put the hammer on trial. It's the person that used the hammer that is the problem.

The two arguments being made in these threads are:
1. not real muslims;
2. blaming all muslims is WRONG! So stop saying Islam had anything to do with this.

So it is no true scotsman plus a Big Butt Strawman, propelled by a non sequitur.

There isn't even an attempt to make an honest case.

I've been very very mindful of discussing Islam and the ideology and never ever once came close to accusing "all Muslims". Yet a few people here cannot make the distinction and have literally called me a bigot. Some are carrying old grudges against me which I think of the tell reason.

Meh, fuck 'em.

Just for conversation...

Are all Muslims equal? all Christians? all Jews?

I would imagine if a believer in any of the myths were confronted with acts by people of their own myth that are not acts they condone, they would have to defend themselves and their beliefs with a logical fallacy just to survive. Any logical fallacy would do just as long as it explained away the rift in their paradigm, a life long immersion in religion.

The idea that "no true Scotsman would do such a thing therefore they are not a true Scotsman" should be an invitation for them to examine their beliefs... but they won't or more likely they can't.

If a person of the Christian faith commits an uncivilized act, is that person equal to all other believers in Christianity? Maybe the statement in the case of this atrocity should not be whether they are a real Muslims, Jews, whatever, but are all these people the same (equal) because of their belief system. I would say no.

Ultimately, the thing that is more relevant? that we are all equal because we are human beings and that has nothing to do with religion.

Religion has done great harm to the human species and if it didn't exist we would be better off in my opinion, but it's here. So illuminating the blame is only a exercise in anger management and frustration. Now, what plan do we have to bring peace to humanity so we can begin the process of illuminating reason and facts in this world of illusion?

BTW, are all atheists equal?

Just food for thought.

No really it all falls apart in the mechanism for evaluation, as in there really isn't one when it comes to religion. If you claim you are a christian, you are a christian. If you claim your christian gods demand that you murder doctors providing abortion services, I have no good way to rule that claim out, so your claim is as valid as any of the other ridiculous claims made by christian believers. Worse, you have the support of a substantial minority of other self proclaimed christians, of recognized christian leaders, and of self identified christian media personalities. How do you invalidate these claims? I can state the obvious: morally repugnant, but I do so outside of the framework of the specific religion.

Atheists I think are otherwise morally repugnant are still atheists,, unless of course they are simply liars pretending to be atheists for some reason, but how would I know, short of a confession?

into my seeding of the discussion. What you claim I have done in this post is ad hominem in the least. Use simple logical reading skills and you will see what I have written is for discussion. Reading your anger toward the subject into my post only reduces the validity of your position(s), so you can quit with the, "your mother wears army boots" reply.

Please disagree and we can have a proper discussion. I left plenty of loopholes to make it interesting; possibly even thought provoking... If you want to kick the wall, go kick a wall. Since I have to spell it out for clarity, I agree with the post and most points made in the replies to the post.

I think you construed Warren's use of "you" to be the specific "YOU" and not a generic "you" or just a person. I took it as a generic you and not pointed at you in particular. Maybe I'm wrong.

Not everyone is equal. Certainly no two Muslims are exactly equal as no two Christians or no two atheists. People who claim all followers of any system are equal are just being overly simplistic.

Maybe you are right... but...

If two different people claim to be Christians, they are equally Christian, unless there is a clear logical test to evaluate the claim. Such as, one cannot be an atheist yet believe in a god.

Is this possible? Is it possible that two different believers can believe two different philosophies within the same textual framework? Does it matter?

I think where the logic fails at times is that some see the believers as equally guilty because of the context of their holy texts. Personally, I blame the text and those who wrote it. I also blame those who promote it without evaluating the consequences as well as those who evaluate the consequences and expect the outcome. Those who use it to commit atrocities are probably beyond reform and have some other proclivity toward violence for any number of reasons. Yes, I blame them too but their condition is an added ugliness not an excuse (sorry this needs to be spelled out sometimes).

"If two different people claim to be Christians, they are equally Christian..?"

But does that make all Christians equal? Two different things.

"one cannot be an atheist yet believe in a god." True beyond a doubt.

Can one be a Muslim and believe in non violence while another believes in violent acts in the name of the same deity? To not fall into the "true Scotsman syndrome" I'd have to say yes. If I lump them all together then I am actually falling into the same trap they use to justify their religion's faults.

I'll bet that comment will go over really well with those who cannot be criticized.

Pope Francis on Monday denounced the religious fundamentalism that inspired the Paris massacres and ongoing Mideast conflicts, saying the attackers were enslaved by "deviant forms of religion" that used God as a mere ideological pretext to perpetuate mass killings.

In his annual foreign policy address to Vatican-based ambassadors, Francis called for a unanimous response from the international community to end "fundamentalist terrorism" in the Mideast. And he called for Muslim leaders in particular to condemn "extremist interpretations" of their faith that seek to justify such violence.

"Religious fundamentalism, even before it eliminates human beings by perpetrating horrendous killings, eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext," he said.

now we find out that they all actually have ATHEISTIC agendas.

Pretty neat, huh?

yet commonly used trap. There's that Straw Pope again. Why do people like this guy? He says some reasonable social liberal things, then after gaining a following starts injecting the same hatred toward atheists of whoever is the bad guy of the moment. What a scam... and many will fall for it.

They just can't so without a Satan character, a bad guy, a nemesis. If they can't find one they have to make one up so their religion doesn't crash. Atheistic agenda.... a person has to be truly disconnected from reality to eat that one... that reduces it to... oh... a few billion.