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From Reuters:
A Pakistani counter-terrorism court has sentenced to death a man who allegedly committed blasphemy on Facebook, a government prosecutor said on Sunday, the first time someone has been handed the death penalty for blaspheming on social media.
[...] Shafiq Qureshi, public prosecutor in Bahawalpur, about 500km (300 miles) south of provincial capital Lahore, said Raza was convicted for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammad, his wives and companions.
"An anti terrorism court of Bahawalpur has awarded him the death sentence," Qureshi told Reuters." It is the first ever death sentence in a case that involves social media."
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Pakistan Sentences Man to Death for Blasphemy on Facebook
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
When in panic, fear and doubt,
Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Soylentbob on Monday June 12 2017, @10:30AM (11 children)
So is Christianity. And before someone claims that this is only the old testament, I'll start with a cite from the new testament:
The Old Testament is irrevocably part of the teachings of the Christian church.
There are many other people who should die according to the bible. The above cites are only nice one-liners. There are other nice passages as well:
I'm not saying all so-called "Christians" are monsters. The vast majority apparently just blends out the unpleasant parts of their religion, or they don't know about them. Even the pope of the catholic church disobeys socially less acceptable rules of the old testament. I'm just saying, people are people, and western culture and logic can influence societies way beyond their alleged religious rules. In western culture, practical considerations and a sense of logic lead to ignoring the harsh parts of our major religion. If we let the islam countries participate in our lifestyle, they will also adapt. Most Muslims I know are no more Muslim then I was Christian before I left the Church officially.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Wootery on Monday June 12 2017, @10:31AM (7 children)
But we're not talking about the holy texts, we're talking about the religions as they are currently practised in the real world.
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Monday June 12 2017, @01:35PM (3 children)
If we are talking about fundamental incompatibilities which cannot be overcome, we are talking about the "holy" texts, not current practices. When we talk about current practices, we can find different atrocities for nearly any country, I guess. Not in any order of severity:
Russia - non-existant gay rights, murder of journalists
Germany - NSU (a small terror cell killing Muslims and other foreigners over years, apparently funded [inadvertently or intentionally] by police due to generous funding of rough liaison officers)
USA - High rate of police violence, especially against black people
Philippines - Murder-squads against alleged drug-dealers, without any judicial supervision
...
These are only the acts where the state does not react / did act. The homicide-rates in USA (and also other countries) are an additional issue. The >100.000 dead people caused by USA invading Iraq and other illegitimate wars are even worse (and could be claimed to be religious motivated violence, given that the commander in chief of that time claimed the voice of God told him to start this war [theguardian.com].
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday June 12 2017, @02:04PM (2 children)
Not so. The fundamentals of Christianity have shifted over the centuries, no?
Thankfully, most modern-day Christians are pretty good at doing the folk-theological gymnastics necessary to disown the nastier parts of their holy book. You'd be right to point out that modern liberal Christianity is liberal despite its holy text, and not because of its holy text, but that's just the point: the real-world manifestation of the religion is what really matters, and it's subject to change.
The rest of your comment doesn't really speak to this topic, but anyway:
Sure. So what? Who's claiming that any society is perfect?
Well, not really, no. If the intent was to kill as many muslims as possible, the Iraqi body count would have dwarfed the approx. 120,000 that resulted (as tragic as that figure is). It is also plain to see that the intent wasn't to convert anyone to Christianity. Bush did indeed couch his motivations in religious language, but that's about the extent of it. Disastrous as it was, the Iraq War was decidedly not a crusade. An oil war, or a war based on poor-quality intelligence, or an ill-advised effort to topple a tyrant, perhaps, but not a religious crusade.
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Monday June 12 2017, @02:37PM (1 child)
If the real-world manifestation is subject to change, I'd assume it is per definition not fundamental, and therefore cannot be the base of a fundamental incompatibility. The text of the sharia is incompatible with our western values, the laws in some countries, based on this sharia, are therefore also incompatible. But the interpretation of the law is apparently fluid and can be adapted to public perception, otherwise we would see way more executions. Therefore I agree there are incompatibilities between western culture and muslim countries, but seeing how Christianity manages to cope with democracy and capitalism, I dispute that these incompatibilities are fundamental.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday June 12 2017, @02:46PM
I don't softball sharia law: it's always awful and always incompatible with modern civilized values. You're right though that there is some room for interpretation, such as sharia countries which give people 'whippings' so tame as not to leave a mark. It would be comical if it weren't so medieval.
Right. I just apply the same thing to Islam too. While I don't deny that most of modern global Islam is incompatible with civilized values, it's not always that way, and a religion's brand isn't really tied to any set of fundamental values (as odd as that might seem).
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday June 12 2017, @06:18PM (2 children)
But we're not talking about the holy texts, we're talking about the religions as they are currently practised in the real world
Lord's Resistance Army [wikipedia.org]
Name a religion and I can name a group of assholes abusing it to do evil.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Wootery on Tuesday June 13 2017, @08:24AM (1 child)
The Onion put it better than I ever could.
(NSFW) http://www.theonion.com/article/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image-29553 [theonion.com]
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Tuesday June 13 2017, @05:58PM
I didn't realized we needed a "+1 WTF" mod until now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by srobert on Monday June 12 2017, @01:16PM (2 children)
shh! Stop telling them what's in their holy books. They believe that what's written in those books are instructions from God. The only thing holding back the bloodbath is that they don't actually read them.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday June 12 2017, @02:09PM (1 child)
Not really. Most Christians will happily tell you that they don't believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, they instead believe it's God's word as recorded by fallible men. This gives them the elbow-room necessary to disown the nasty passages: they're just corruptions introduced by the text's scribes.
They can also say that the nasty passages are at odds with the book's overarching message (which is itself very open to interpretation, of course).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @06:24PM
Actually most Christians are supposed to follow Jesus. While Muhammad is supposedly an excellent example for Muslims: https://quran.com/33/21 [quran.com]
Unlike Muhammad, Jesus didn't go about waging wars and killing people. And the Great Commission was to spread his teachings and make disciples of men, not spread terror and kill people: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+28%3A16-20&version=ESV [biblegateway.com]
Since Jesus said he came to fulfil the Law. What that means is subject to interpretation and there's certainly enough room for Christians to consider the Old Testament as not applicable especially given the example of his disciples as allegedly recounted in the Acts of the Apostles. That's why non-Jew Christians are eating pork, wearing clothes with mixed fabric etc. Most may not know why, but those issues have actually been thought about and resolved centuries ago. They're not Jews and most aren't in Israel. The Levitical laws and even the Ten Commandments arguably don't apply to them - it's not part of their contract. In some ways it's harder to do Jesus's commandments: love your enemies, "love on another as I have loved you" etc.
Luther's Reformation was about "returning to the Book" and the early Protestants weren't terrorists.
In contrast any analogous Islam reformation is more likely to result in ISIS style Islam if it involves returning to their Book and examples of Muhammad and his followers. They'll be waging wars across the Middle East and trying to form a Caliphate*.
* That it's so easy to get Muslims to kill each other is very convenient for the CIA, the US Gov and Israel; and they certainly appear to be taking advantage of it.