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IS destroys iconic al-Nuri mosque in Mosul

Arkage

Banned
Propaganda tool or that Mosque is a representation of Islam they disagree with, heresy which justifies destroying it.

Considering they're trying to blame Americans for its destruction they probably thought it'd be a good recruiting stunt since their ranks have been thinning so rapidly.
 

cameron

Member
Sorry if it's already been asked, but why would they destroy a mosque? Is it just a scorched earth thing so they deprive us of being able to raise a flag on a site that was once important to them?

It could be that, from Reuters:
Iraqi officials had privately expressed hope that the mosque could be retaken in time for Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. The first day of the Eid falls this year on June 25 or 26 in Iraq.


But when IS first captured Mosul, they did attempt to destroy the minaret of the mosque. AP: Blowing up shrines, extremists shrug off restraint and unleash their vision on Iraq's Mosul
July 29, 2014

BAGHDAD (AP) — Residents of Mosul have watched helplessly as extremists ruling the northern Iraqi city blew up some of their most beloved landmarks and shrines to impose a stark vision of Islam. Next up for destruction, they feared: the Crooked Minaret, a more than 840-year-old tower that leans like Italy's Tower of Pisa.

But over the weekend, residents pushed back. When fighters from the Islamic State group loaded with heavy explosives converged on the site, Mosulis living nearby rushed to the courtyard below the minaret, sat on the ground and linked arms to form a human chain to protect it, two residents who witnessed the event told The Associated Press on Monday.


They told the fighters, If you blow up the minaret, you'll have to kill us too, the witnesses said.

The militants backed down and left, said the witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the militants.

But residents are certain the militants will try again. Over the past two weeks, the extremists ruling Iraq's second largest city have shrugged off previous restraint and embarked on a brutal campaign to purge Mosul of anything that challenges their radical interpretation of Islam. The militants — though Sunnis — target shrines revered by other Sunni Muslims because the sites are dedicated to popular religious figures. In the radicals' eyes, that commits one of the worst violations of Islam: encouraging worship of others besides God.

The scene on Saturday was a startling show of bravery against a group that has shown little compunction against killing anyone who resists it. It reflects the horror among some residents over what has become of their beloved city.

"The bombing of shrines ... has nothing to do with Islam," Abu Abaida, 44, a government employee, told the AP by phone from the city. "They are erasing the culture and history of Mosul." Like other residents, he spoke to the AP on condition he be identified by a nickname or first name for fear of retaliation.
Nearly daily, the militants have been destroying some of the city's most famed sites.

On Thursday, they lay a wall of explosives around the Mosque of the Prophet Younis — or Jonah, the prophet who in both the Bible and Quran was swallowed by a whale. They ordered everyone out of the shrine, which is said to contain the prophet's tomb, and blew it up.

The next day, it was the turn of the Mosque of Sheeth, or Seth, said to be the burial site of the third son of Adam and Eve. On Saturday, they reduced to rubble the Mosque of the Prophet Jirjis.

Last week, they removed the crosses on the domes and brick walls of the 1,800-year old Mar Behnam monastery, then stormed it, forcing the monks and priest to flee or face death. The move came days after jihadists proclaimed over loudspeakers from mosques that Christians must convert to Islam, pay a tax or die, prompting the flight of almost all the Christians who remained in the city.
 

eizarus

Banned
Another day, another action that enrages muslims, wiping cherished history and culture. Palmyra was too painful for me, and now they've done it again. If it were up to them they'd bulldoze Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Alhambra in Spain, Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, the Pyramids, Nankana Sahib in Lahore, Prambanan of Indonesia, they even carried out bombing outside the Prophets mosque in Saudi Arabia. They care very little for current religion and its people, rather they want to establish their new religion.

There isnt a group of humans i detest more. Fuck these pieces of shits.
This. Bombing the mosque of the Prophet you claim to follow... Something doesn't add up 👀
 

MaxSnake1

Neo Member
This reminds me of Hitler destroying the railroad car that held the 1918 armistice of Compiègne while his forces were breathing their last breaths. this mosque represent a huge symbol for their organization as we all know that it was the theater where their leader declared the "Caliphate" in the climax of ISIS rising.

ISIS worry too much about their image as the unbeatable and the God-aided organization, they are losing badly and they are trying to look as victorious, anyway we are now witnessing the last weeks of ISIS and the losing men hit harder in their very end than ever before.

Brace yourselves for more ISIS attacks and that could be anywhere.
 

Sunster

Member
Yeah, but a quick tour of Aljazeera's comment section shows a lot of conspiracy theories.

"ISIS is a US-zionist creation"

"US did this to upset Muslims"

a quick tour of literally every news website's comment section will display such things.
 

spekkeh

Banned
So typical iconoclasm? Makes sense then. The reformation and Byzantine iconoclast also caused irreparable damage.
 
Yeah, but a quick tour of Aljazeera's comment section shows a lot of conspiracy theories.

"ISIS is a US-zionist creation"

"US did this to upset Muslims"

The comment section on al-Jazeera English is one of the worst.
Really, comment section in any news portal is one of the worst aspect of the modern world. I'm glad it's now disabled by default.

Maybe they did that because the architecture is somewhat persian and one must not forget the weight of arab nationalism in ISIS thinking. They can accept non-arabs provinces as submitted wilayat, but the leading center must be arabic. Everything foreign, especially persian, is perceived as decadent.
 

darkinstinct

...lacks reading comprehension.
They only partially destroyed it and it can be restored.

C57B2rvVUAIR1DN.jpg



Sorry if it's already been asked, but why would they destroy a mosque? Is it just a scorched earth thing so they deprive us of being able to raise a flag on a site that was once important to them?

Have you not realised by now that the whole thing is a fight between Muslims? Sunnis vs Shiites. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. The majority of Iraq is Shiite. ISIS is Sunni. Iran is Shiite. Saudi-Arabia is Sunni. Syria is Sunni with a minority (Alawites, Assad) being in powert. It's all a religious war. The only reason why it influences the West is because we interfered. They don't care about mosques. They wanted to destroy it three years ago.
 

F0rneus

Tears in the rain
Yeah I'm not sure I understand the reference either, could you explain please.

It's an old story about a Scotsman, who is reading his newspaper and sees that a woman has been raped. He shouts out "No Scotsman would do that". The next day he reads his paper and they caught the rapist, and he's Scottish. So our guy screams out "No true Scotsman would do this".
 

RoyalFool

Banned
So disgusting, weve already lost so much of our histories to the passage of time. Destroying relics like these is a crime against all of humanity, transcending religion.
 

Dehnus

Member
Have you not realised by now that the whole thing is a fight between Muslims? Sunnis vs Shiites. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. The majority of Iraq is Shiite. ISIS is Sunni. Iran is Shiite. Saudi-Arabia is Sunni. Syria is Sunni with a minority (Alawites, Assad) being in powert. It's all a religious war. The only reason why it influences the West is because we interfered. They don't care about mosques. They wanted to destroy it three years ago.

Bullshit, the destruction of these things is nothing more than to sell artifacts to rich idiots, using religion as a cover up. Normal digging takes too long, and they thus use heavy handed techniques to do it instead. Same with oil. ISIS uses religion to indoctrinate the cannonfodder and to appear scary to the west. The top of ISIS couldn't care SHIT about Islam, they are just in it for the power, money and being feared. Basically you're looking at Ali Baba and his 40 robbers.
 
Have you not realised by now that the whole thing is a fight between Muslims? Sunnis vs Shiites. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. The majority of Iraq is Shiite. ISIS is Sunni. Iran is Shiite. Saudi-Arabia is Sunni. Syria is Sunni with a minority (Alawites, Assad) being in powert. It's all a religious war. The only reason why it influences the West is because we interfered. They don't care about mosques. They wanted to destroy it three years ago.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria (FSA and Gov), Jordan, Morocco, UAE.... are allied with 15 christians and secular countries against ISIS.
So it's hardly a religious war.
 

Chuckie

Member
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria (FSA and Gov), Jordan, Morocco, UAE.... are allied with 15 christians and secular countries against ISIS.
So it's hardly a religious war.

Well it is a 'religious' war in the sense of ISIS' perverted distorted version of Islam vs the rest of the world, be it Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Christians or Atheists.
 
Well it is a 'religious' war in the sense of ISIS' perverted distorted version of Islam vs the rest of the world, be it Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Christians or Atheists.

Yeah, from their perspective (at least their public stance), it's definitely "a holy war between faith and disbelief".
 

spekkeh

Banned
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria (FSA and Gov), Jordan, Morocco, UAE.... are allied with 15 christians and secular countries against ISIS.
So it's hardly a religious war.
At the height of the reformation following the iconoclasm and wars with the catholic south, Dutch protestants sought alliances with the Ottoman Empire (that was laying siege to Europe at the time) and would wear crescent moon icons that read "rather be Turkish than Papist"

220px-3_Geuzenpenning%2C_halve_maan.jpg


Brittle interfaith alliances may be just as much proof of a religious war as refutation against it.
 
At the height of the reformation following the iconoclasm and wars with the catholic south, Dutch protestants sought alliances with the Ottoman Empire (that was laying siege to Europe at the time) and would wear crescent moon icons that read "rather be Turkish than Papist"

220px-3_Geuzenpenning%2C_halve_maan.jpg


Brittle interfaith alliances may be just as much proof of a religious war as refutation against it.

Awesome anecdote ! Never heard of it, thanks for sharing it.
 
Wasn't this the mosque Baghdadi declared the caliphate from? Seems strange, like, it was good enough for him then but not now?

These shit stains are all off their faces on amphetamines anyway, can't exactly expect rational, or least, predictable behavior
 

IaN_GAF

Member
The people wondering why they did this need to realise that a large group of people, probably invested in the matter, will only hear the "US blew it up" side of this shitshow.
 

Monocle

Member
Not content to limit their depredations to thinking feeling human beings, these psychos have to attack culture as well. They're like all the worst things about our species rolled into a single ball of filth, and religion is the dung beetle.

Claiming a modern liberal interpretation of scriptures is more "accurate" isn't really a good talking point when these scriptures (OT/Koran alike) were the product of openly misogynistic, violent tribalists. And I don't mean misogynistic as in "women should be quiet" I mean it in terms of "how many cows is your daughter worth" or "how big a stick is legal to beat your backtalking wife with" types.

Ancient scripture is inevitably trapped inside unethical, violent, bad ideas, unless you're going to claim no moral progress has been made in the past 1500-4000 years. Isis thinks secular humanism is garbage because it isn't true to the original intent of these tribalistic, violent authors, and they're largely right. It's just that Judaism and Christianity had a reformation that slowly convinced people to symbolize the blatantly unethical verses away over 100s of years, eventually turning those verses into meaninglessness as they continuously played catch up with newer ethical norms. People expect Islam to play catch up in short order, but that's a really big ask.

It also doesn't help that the entire Koran is supposed to be the literal word of Allah, which makes the symbolization/reformation aspect all the more difficult to embrace even for non-Islamist Muslims. Imagine if most Americans believed the constitution was literally written by God himself. You'd have a lot more constitutional literalists today than there currently are. There would be no amendments. It's hard to make a "intent of the words should be shaped by the time we live in" argument even if it's just the word of important humans, let alone God.

Also, anyone claiming Isis has little or no religious motivation is explicitly denying Isis own argument for its existence. I believe most people who don't believe Isis is filled with true believers and scriptural scholars, even at the top, doesn't really understand how a religious person thinks in the first place.
From Dabiq, Isis' now closed propaganda magazine:
Good post.

Yeah, from their perspective (at least their public stance), it's definitely "a holy war between faith and disbelief".
They're sure laying out a compelling case for faith by doing their damnedest to create hell on earth.

Lots of no true Scotsmen arguments in here.
Surprising no one. I don't know if I've seen a single conversation about religious extremism where someone comes to the defense of religion without resorting to that kind of intellectual dishonesty.

The sheer ubiquity of religious hypocrisy is one of the bigger factors that led to my disenchantment with religion. In the end it's all part of the same noxious hydra.

If only we could all agree to run with secular humanism and leave violent mythologies where they belong: in books that teach us what not to do.
 
Claiming a modern liberal interpretation of scriptures is more "accurate" isn't really a good talking point when these scriptures (OT/Koran alike) were the product of openly misogynistic, violent tribalists. And I don't mean misogynistic as in "women should be quiet" I mean it in terms of "how many cows is your daughter worth" or "how big a stick is legal to beat your backtalking wife with" types.

It also doesn't help that the entire Koran is supposed to be the literal word of Allah, which makes the symbolization/reformation aspect all the more difficult to embrace even for non-Islamist Muslims. Imagine if most Americans believed the constitution was literally written by God himself. You'd have a lot more constitutional literalists today than there currently are. There would be no amendments. It's hard to make a "intent of the words should be shaped by the time we live in" argument even if it's just the word of important humans, let alone God.

Please provide the quranic verse where it speak about how big the stick should be or how many cows a daughter is worth. Nothing openly misogynistic or violently tribalistic exist in the Quran. Of course, you'll find horrendous interpretation who reflect nothing but the mind of the interpreter but nothing in the litteral revealed text.

Also your argumentation about intrinsic inability of the muslim to ever be civilized because of the relation they got with their text is a copy/past of the argumentation people made with the jewish faith. A little peak in the history of islamic/jewish philosophy just show that it can go as far/further from what the christian intellectual tradition have accomplished.
And amending the divine law is what muslim jurists have been doing the last 1400 years. Context, greater good or easiness are valid argument in islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). It is also believed that their is to kind of verses in the Quran, the abrogant and the abrogated, so a verse can replace another. For instance, the first punishment for adultery was seclusion and was then replaced by a virtually-impossible-to-apply 100 lashes.

+1 special bonus for the use of Allah instead of God.
 

Monocle

Member
Please provide the quranic verse where it speak about how big the stick should be or how many cows a daughter is worth. Nothing openly misogynistic or violently tribalistic exist in the Quran. Of course, you'll find horrendous interpretation who reflect nothing but the mind of the interpreter but nothing in the litteral revealed text.

Also your argumentation about intrinsic inability of the muslim to ever be civilized because of the relation they got with their text is a copy/past of the argumentation people made with the jewish faith. A little peak in the history of islamic/jewish philosophy just show that it can go as far/further from what the christian intellectual tradition have accomplished.
It's all interpretation. There is no such thing as a religious text with a single objective unalterable meaning. And who's going to accept that their interpretation is wrong if they don't want to hear it?

This is a big bear of a problem for people who truck with irrationalism. This is how you get people opening all-inclusive LGBT friendly churches while their neighbors next door think they all deserve to lynched—and they're reading the exact same book.
 
It's all interpretation. There is no such thing as a religious text with a single objective unalterable meaning. And who's going to accept that their interpretation is wrong if they don't want to hear it?

This is a big bear of a problem for people who truck with irrationalism.

I believe that the objective meaning is with God only and we can only try to reach it. The idea that it's all an attempt should be what prevent us to commit crimes in the name of God, it's the antithesis of fanaticism, it's why fundamentalism always try to destroy the intermediary role of the human reason in the lecture of a religious text.

Also, you're right: most people will stick with the interpretation most useful to them. So if you want to conquer the world, you won't go for the more contemplative interpretation of your sacred text.
 

Monocle

Member
I believe that the objective meaning is with God only and we can only try to reach it. The idea that it's all an attempt should be what prevent us to commit crimes in the name of God, it's the antithesis of fanaticism, it's why fundamentalism always try to destroy the intermediary role of the human reason in the lecture of a religious text.

Also, you're right: most people will stick with the interpretation most useful to them. So if you want to conquer the world, you won't go for the more contemplative interpretation of your sacred text.
Much of the history of religion is people striving for, or believing they've found, the correct interpretation of their source texts. It's 2017 and we still have extremists sawing off each other's heads, treating women like cattle, and destroying priceless art.

Clearly religion is not its own antidote. We have to move past this beastly snare of conflicting beliefs, and embrace shared humanistic values. Religion is part of our global culture, and the benign parts of culture should be preserved. Over 2500 years of this war of interpretations, and here's ISIS in the 21st Century. Can religion ever be entirely benign? How many more generations would that take?

There are no simple answers. It's beyond frustrating.
 

Septic360

Banned
We have to move past this beastly snare of conflicting beliefs, and embrace shared humanistic values. Religion is part of our global culture, and the benign parts of culture should be preserved. Over 2500 years of this war of interpretations, and here's ISIS in the 21st Century. Can religion ever be entirely benign? How many more generations would that take?

There are no simple answers. It's beyond frustrating.

Sorry what? What values are those? The same ones that many of these religions that you're so intolerant of preach or? And what percentage of them should be shared? Who is going to be the arbiter in deciding that?


Over 2500 years of this war of interpretations, and here's ISIS in the 21st Century.

And here they are committing flagrant abuses of the most basic tenets of a faith they claim to follow. Killing innocent women and children, the vast majority of which are muslims, torture, rape, attacking the prophet's mosque, blowing up other mosques- everything they do flies in the face of the religion they claim to follow- their actions are actions against the vast majority of the muslim ummah and yet here you are talking about intellectual dishonesty?
 
J

JoJo UK

Unconfirmed Member
He is angry we are saying that they are not representing islam or muslims.

It's a recurrent meme against muslims. Muslims should condemn terrorism and reject the terrorist interpretation of Islam, but if they do so, they are accused of using the "No true Scotsman" argument.

It's an old story about a Scotsman, who is reading his newspaper and sees that a woman has been raped. He shouts out "No Scotsman would do that". The next day he reads his paper and they caught the rapist, and he's Scottish. So our guy screams out "No true Scotsman would do this".
I had heard the phrase before but was unsure who was 'the Scotsman' in this context (reading back it makes sense, early morning brain fart), thanks guys.
 
Much of the history of religion is people striving for, or believing they've found, the correct interpretation of their source texts. It's 2017 and we still have extremists sawing off each other's heads, treating women like cattle, and destroying priceless art.

Clearly religion is not its own antidote. We have to move past this beastly snare of conflicting beliefs, and embrace shared humanistic values. Religion is part of our global culture, and the benign parts of culture should be preserved. Over 2500 years of this war of interpretations, and here's ISIS in the 21st Century. Can religion ever be entirely benign? How many more generations would that take?

There are no simple answers. It's beyond frustrating.

Abolishing religion won't change anything since the main issue are the motivation of domination in the first place. Religions are not a magical phenomenon distinct from others phenomenons, the worst things you'll find in the worst religious interpretations, you'll be able to find them as well in seculars ideologies or even humanism. Marxism is a form of humanism and history show us where did that goes. French colonialism was made in the name of humanism, but was not different from the "christians conquest" from England or the Spain.

Religion is just used as a tool. Give anything to humans beings, the worst of them will do the same: dominate, kill and conquer in the name of this tool. The only change is the symbol they put on the flag.

I don't think that essentializing religion can lead somewhere, especially when you agree it's "all interpretation". If it's "all interpretation", so it's all humans. If it's all humans, you won't solve anything except by changing human nature. And we also saw where this project went historically.
 

Monocle

Member
Sorry what? What values are those? The same ones that many of these religions that you're so intolerant of preach or? And what percentage of them should be shared? Who is going to be the arbiter in deciding that?
Enlightenment values, basically. It's all laid out by philosophers like Plato whose work shares certain common threads that include seeking virtue and respecting human dignity. We can also rely on the much older golden rule: treating people how we (or better yet, they) want to be treated.

It's actually not that complex, with our vast inheritance of wisdom from earlier centuries, just hard to put into practice because everyone's constantly kicking over each other's sand castles. What we've got to do is use our best tools (science) to understand the nature and causes of human suffering, and then we develop policies and align our behavior toward the goal of minimizing suffering for as many people as possible.

We raise kids a bit like the Ancient Greeks, on stories that inspire virtue (defined by expert consensus and the lessons of the past) and cultivate civic pride. We do so in an environment that conditions children to ask a lot of questions, encouraging them to exercise their curiosity and develop their skepticism, and teaching them how using evidence and their own rational capacities to find answers or ask better questions is intrinsically rewarding. Then we let our educated, well-adjusted citizens use their finely honed consciences to guide them in daily situations that can't be solved by appealing to laws or social mores. It's a cyclical process where better people lead to better conditions, which in turn lift the next generation to higher peaks.

And here they are committing flagrant abuses of the most basic tenets of a faith they claim to follow. Killing innocent women and children, the vast majority of which are muslims, torture, rape, attacking the prophet's mosque, blowing up other mosques- everything they do flies in the face of the religion they claim to follow- their actions are actions against the vast majority of the muslim ummah and yet here you are talking about intellectual dishonesty?
If religion can't even stop people from behaving that way, how can anyone trust it to moderate normal behavior?

And to think people have the gall to say it takes religion to be good. I, an atheist, have no desire to burn down a fucking church or mosque even if the people inside it want to stone or shoot me. Wonder how that happened.

Abolishing religion won't change anything since the main issue are the motivation of domination in the first place. Religions are not a magical phenomenon distinct from others phenomenons, the worst things you'll find in the worst religious interpretations, you'll be able to find them as well in seculars ideologies or even humanism. Marxism is a form of humanism and history show us where did that goes. French colonialism was made in the name of humanism, but was not different from the "christians conquest" from England or the Spain.

Religion is just used as a tool. Give anything to humans beings, the worst of them will do the same: dominate, kill and conquer in the name of this tool. The only change is the symbol they put on the flag.

I don't think that essentializing religion can lead somewhere, especially when you agree it's "all interpretation". If it's "all interpretation", so it's all humans. If it's all humans, you won't solve anything except by changing human nature. And we also saw where this project went historically.
I don't think anyone really believes that overcoming religion would solve the world's problems. However, it would make their solving simpler since we wouldn't have a massive network of cults that propagate highly tenacious brain worms which specifically instruct people to trust their feelings, believe without evidence, mistrust evidence, huddle themselves into hostile little (or not so little) tribes that think every outsider is corrupted and deluded, etc.

I'm not for a second claiming that every religious person is like this. Most of the people in this world are religious, and I coexist with them in peace every day. But religion itself is a uniquely potent compound, and delivery system, of weaponized irrationality. There's nothing else quite like it—nothing that can compromise so many people's minds with such virulent efficiency, convincing them to act against their own best interests and those of their fellow human beings.
 
He is angry we are saying that they are not representing islam or muslims.

It's a recurrent meme against muslims. Muslims should condemn terrorism and reject the terrorist interpretation of Islam, but if they do so, they are accused of using the "No true Scotsman" argument.

No thats not what's happening. What's happening is muslims are saying that Isis has absolutely nothing to do with Islam and that they are not muslims and we should stop doing that.

Its not all 100 procent about Islam. But it also has SOMETHING to do with Islam
 

Audioboxer

Member
Enlightenment values, basically. It's all laid out by philosophers like Plato whose work shares certain common threads that include seeking virtue and respecting human dignity. We can also rely on the much older golden rule: treating people how we (or better yet, they) want to be treated.

It's actually not that complex, with our vast inheritance of wisdom from earlier centuries, just hard to put into practice because everyone's constantly kicking over each other's sand castles. What we've got to do is use our best tools (science) to understand the nature and causes of human suffering, and then we develop policies and align our behavior toward the goal of minimizing suffering for as many people as possible.

We raise kids a bit like the Ancient Greeks, on stories that inspire virtue (defined by expert consensus and the lessons of the past) and cultivate civic pride. We do so in an environment that conditions children to ask a lot of questions, encouraging them to exercise their curiosity and develop their skepticism, and teaching them how using evidence and their own rational capacities to find answers or ask better questions is intrinsically rewarding. Then we let our educated, well-adjusted citizens to use their finely honed consciences to guide them in daily situations that can't be solved by appealing to laws or social mores. It's a cyclical process where better people lead to better conditions, which in turn lift the next generation to higher peaks.


If religion can't even stop people from behaving that way, how can anyone trust it to moderate normal behavior?

And to think people have the gall to say it takes religion to be good. I, an atheist, have no desire to burn down a fucking church or mosque even if the people inside it want to stone or shoot me. Wonder how that happened.


I don't think anyone really believes that overcoming religion would solve the world's problems. However, it would make their solving simpler since you wouldn't have a massive network of cults that propagate highly tenacious brain worms which specifically instruct people to trust their feelings, believe without evidence, mistrust evidence, huddle themselves into hostile little (or not so little) tribes that think every outsider is corrupted and deluded, etc.

I'm not for a second claiming that every religious person is like this. Most of the people in this world are religious, and I coexist with them in peace every day. But religion itself is a uniquely potent compound, and delivery system, of weaponized irrationality. There's nothing else quite like it—nothing that can compromise so many people's minds with such virulent efficiency, convincing them to act against their own best interests and those of their fellow human beings.

The long story short is humans can and will act tribalistic whatever it is they huddle around. Religion does tend to be the most potent source in 2017 as it claims to answer the biggest angst we all face: mortality. It will probably forever be at the head of the table. However, you look at sports teams, favourite games console, favourite brand of clothes, and so on and you can still see tribalistic us vs them behaviour. I'd say politics is right up there behind religion, sometimes overlapping it, but most of the most extreme forms of oppression, abuse, and even killing still happen in the name of religion. I guess political religions are really the most extreme.

All we really can do is firmly keep Church separated from state and routinely hoist up our countries values. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are both immensely important for societies to inch further towards a future that doesn't need to have religion eradicated, but it needs to continue to show people religion should remain a personal choice, not something to oppress/rule others with. That is one of the biggest challenges we face in countries where ISIS reside. Oppression and force used to make people conform or face penalties as serious as death. Putting aside their interpretations of 90% of their book of God, it's the parts about ruling by the sword or spreading the religion by the sword that cause some of the most inhumane actions. Kill the unbelievers, heretics and so on. Then from there we can look at the rest of what they do which is still often seriously abuse and harm those that ARE believers, but are born with vaginas and breasts ~ In other words, women are treated soo bad it's abysmal to see in 2017. Most religions still have serious issues with women though, every text of choice is routinely heavily misogynistic and all about men and power. They all plagiarise from each other so that's not really a shock. Hitchens has always been right here that women in the Middle East need to be propped up and helped, but so often we in the West fail to help them in any way and routinely mock them by our hand-waving of misogyny in our own countries (part of that being we do not want to offend religious people).

Anyway, this topic isn't really a catch-all for religion. ISIS destroying things they do not like/history is precisely them carrying out this oppression and force though, so a little bit of context as to why they do it and where it comes from isn't too offtopic. It does also show as most of us know they do not just target the unbelievers or the West, the majority of their killing and oppression is towards other Muslims for not being the right kind of Muslim. Just scour the internet to see the amount of car bombs/suicide explosions and gun killings going on in any ISIS filled country. You're lucky if the death counts reaching 40~50~60+ from one attack even make our news at times.
 
No thats not what's happening. What's happening is muslims are saying that Isis has absolutely nothing to do with Islam and that they are not muslims and we should stop doing that.

Its not all 100 procent about Islam. But it also has SOMETHING to do with Islam

So Muslims should reject ISIS but accept it as the same time. Interesting. If i say what ISIS does have something to do with my faith, i would be called a terrorist. If i say otherwise, i will be call an hypocrite.

Do christians have to acknowledge as well that KKK have something to do with their faith ? Does atheists have to acknowledge what Stalin did in the name of their ("absence of") faith ?
Let's just people (which are the first concerned, NOT YOU) decide for themselves if they want to acknowledge those group as part of their faith or not.
 
There's nothing else quite like it—nothing that can compromise so many people's minds with such virulent efficiency, convincing them to act against their own best interests and those of their fellow human beings.

Any sense of higher purpose does that, from the perspective of someone who don't share it.

I cannot even understand how you can think my religious practice go against my best interests or the people around me ? For instance, i have to give wealth every year to poor people. I'm highly encouraged to give whatever i can to every person in need i can encounter. I must also give assistance to anybody who may need it. In what sense i am hurting myself or the people around me ?

You can make the case that a lot of evil is religiously motivated in this world, and i would agree. But it's difficult to say that it outweigh the good deed who are religiously motivated. Just look at religious charities or the amazing personnalities like MLK, Malcolm X or Ghandi who were highly inspired and motivated by their religious sentiment.
 
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