A good question. thx for asking. since insulting the prophet and his companions will cause extreme unrest and bloodshed, a secular govt cannot sit quietly and therefore i support a secular govt to stop it but not based on Islamic rulings per which you will enforce the death penalty. it is a very fine point and I hope to make it clear.
blasphemer law shd not be for certain personalities or for religious reason. it shd be to keep society safe and peaceful. blasphemy law shd be generically applicable for all religions with the same sentence for overruling it. so if someone insults hindu god or Jesus, he shd be punished the same what someone will be punished for insulting prophet PBUH. PLus, the level of punishment will not be decided by any sharia court but by Parliament by mutual discussion, in which the whole Parliament including minorities will debate for it. remember no religion at the state level
more importantly, a stricter punishment shd be hurled upon those who misuse it.
so in its current form of the blasphemy law in Pakistan, i dont support it as it is getting its ideological and constitutionally support from a certain religion and is applicable to certain personalities from one religion too plus its misuse is not even in the picture in a proper way. so all of it is against the fundamental spirit of secularism.
Nonmuslims with correct knowledge of Islam and their own respective religions would differ to you. And if there was a good scholar here among us, he would easily prove you wrong.
You are not saying that a PM or a president should be a prime minister??? What again??? Are you confused? Sure you are.
P.S: "How strange is that you quote my reply to Phoenix to reply to me instead of quoting my reply to your post to stand by your argument.
It’s a matter of principle. Religion is a personal thing and it has no place in government affairs. How does that not make any sense? No one would stop you from practicing or preaching your religion in a secular state. The same can’t be said for people of other or no faiths who want to practice or preach. A person can convert from any religion from Islam but a Muslim can’t convert from Islam to any other religion. There is no semblance of equality.
My problem with Islam is lack of evidence for it’s claim that there is a god. That’s my problem with any religion. We can teach people good without the use of religion. One does not need to believe in an imaginary being in the sky to do good.
ok good, your views have not impressed me and mine have not impressed you. so all good. and not sure where did you get impression that i called you a madrassah educated. so pls stop repeating that you are not madrassah educated.
and told you several times that good for you if you studied islam and other religions and if you chose to follow islam and more importantly you don’t enforce and dont want state to enforce it on others. if you call it true islam, no problem, i am with you. the issue is that our state is not following the same principle and that is what we are debating . thx
So you’re an athiest. If you were honest in your quest of knowledge or in the existance of God, you would have found it. Your insensitivity for Islam and for other religions and towards God clearly says you were not sincere in your search.
And the ideas you stated related to Islam are again based on wrong interpretation of the verses by the ignorant ones. I try to educate those Islamic followers who are misguided by the wrong interpretations whereever I can. But those who dont believe in the existance of God are insensitive and I cannot make anyone to become sensitive. Thats their own job to work on. And once you do then try studying & interpreting the book yourself instead of studying the people with wrong islamic concepts. If/when you are sincere to yourself and to gain in knowledge & get to the truth, you will be blessed with & guided to it. It’s all upto you.
^^ I always make it a point to surround myself with positive people and surroundings & stay away from negative people. Confused peoole, especially people confused about religions and live only to always undermine knowledge that comes through religions are negative people. I prefer to leave them alone as they are happy creating disharmony. My job is to to spread harmony and create awareness in environments and among people who are open to accepting it. All those links you sent, am not i interested to see. There are plenty spreading jahalat. I try to gain from good sources of knowledge one on one, face to face. People such as those whom you are promoting drain out my positive energy. Evil energies attack too strongly and badly if you are not well protected. So I focus on raising constructive positive energy in and around me which happens by keeping a good company of wise people. Sorry the anti religions, anti islamic, athiests you are promoting are confused and negative people so not going there. Thanks.
I respect you for admitting that the law favors just one religion. However, you fail to admit the right of non-believers to promulgate their ideas. As a non-believer convincing the believers that the people they follow are deeply flawed is an important tool. They might not agree with me but I should have the right to preach my ideas just like they have the right to preach their. The only speech that should be banned is where someone calls for death of someone (preachers do it all the time) or calls for any other harm to someone else. You saying something inflammatory about my momma isn’t excuse for me to get violent. It would be nice if you didn’t do that but you have the right to use your words. Slander is different though. I guess the prophets or companions (if they’re still alive) can sure me for slander if I make a false statement about them.
All that said, I’m not stupid. I understand that abolishing blasphemy laws will not put an end incidents where people kill because of their religion. Killers of Salman Taseer and Mashal Khan don’t care about the law. Educating people, teaching them to think critically and being tolerant of other people and their ideas is the only way to mend that.
Nor do such murderers care about Islam. They are tools & agents of fascism which recently has been establishing itself by taking Islam as its cover.
Your last line about educating the people is exactly what I havr repeatedly said in rhis thread about providing common people with the correct Islamic knowledge. When people will be equiped with the correct knowledge of Islam, you guys will be begging for it to be implemented and do away with anything unIslamic.
All of you are so influenced by madrassah mindset that your eyes have become blind to the fact that all the things that secularism takes credit for are actually borrowed from Islam.
I’m an agnostic. I can’t prove god\gods exist and I can’t prove they don’t. The thought that anyone who does not believe in a supreme being has not been honest or sincere in their search for knowledge is arrogant IMO. You know nothing about me or my journey and you make these sweeping, baseless generalization.
Question Islam, questioning what had been my truth for most of life was extremely difficult. The easy thing would have been to just reject all doubt and maintain the status quo. I tried to find ways to justify my religion but couldn’t.
I don’t want to debate whether Islamic ideas are wrong or right or how they have been interpreted. At this point in my life I don’t really care about it. The only time I do care is when a religion is used to govern a country of 200 million people. A country I grew up in, a country where I hope to move back to one day, a country where I still have family. I can’t begin to imagine how horrible life would be, here in the US, if Christianity was made the state religion. Bless our founding fathers, for the first thing they talk about in the Bill of Rights is religion. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Can you please state my ideas about Islam you think are wrong and refute them please.
And if it’s all up to me why does the government enforce Islamic laws on me.
How can you say the people I mentioned aren’t positive. How do you pass judgement on someone without even listening to them? Is it because you have a bias against anyone who does not believe in the existence of god.
I mentioned four names and none of them display any confusion when it comes to their position on religion. They back up their speech with facts and evidence. The same can’t be said for religious personalities.
When I say education, I mean science, mathematics, history (unbiased & unadulterated), reading at school level. Furthermore, educating kids about civic responsibility. Government should not enforce religious education of any kind. Religion and it’s effects can be covered in history lessons without a bias for any one religion.
Sorry to burst your bubble lady, I will never beg for Islamic education in schools. I would suggest reading something other than religious propaganda for a change.
As to your claim that secularism takes credit for ideas borrowed from Islam. Islam plagiarized a lot from religions before it. I’d suggest reading this article on ethics without god. https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/ethics-without-go
I was not interested to know about our journey nor was it my intention to know.
Government implementing Islam is great, IMO but governments and people and fascist groups such as daaesh implementing fascism in the name of Islam is what the problem is. So the need is to create awareness and equip people with correct Islamic knowledge. When they are not sleeping in ignorance and have the correct information in the hearys and minds then the same people will go to form governments and policies and laws. So nobody can misguide them. Right now, there are hardly any scholars teaching the correct knowledge so how can you expect governmenr officials to form correct Islamic policies?The most accurate and closest with tons of wisdom I find is javed ghamidi. He is most superior in his knowledge than the mainstream scholars spreading jahalat in the name of islam. That is most probably why he and his circle of scholars was on the hit list of the islamic groups trained for political reasons and had to flee. He still teaches through online lecrures. Actually they kill everyone trying to educate people with correct k knowledge & make the fools become mainstream scholars.
Where do you find Quran restricting people to gain knowledge about science, mathemetics, history, astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry, commerce, engineering, literatures, cultures, places, people, mannerism, or knowledge about anything?. On the other hand, Islam encourages that so it opens up limited thinking patterns of people & limited beliefs.
Sorry ro burst your baboola mister but if you woke up in your life time then you will. Take my word. Enough draining my energy. Bye now.
I seem to have missed to reply this one. Read a bit of hitchens long time ago. He is a loon and an intellectual tool who criticizes for the sake of criticism and he has alot of time for that because most probably he gets paid for it just like many others who get paid for misguiding. He passionately believes in misguided ideas so is good at it. Great tool of spreading mass ignorance like many of his counterparts. The remaining i dont know about and dont care not because i am baised but because and as mentioned before prefer to preserve energy for good things. Dont have stamina to fight foolish resistence going around in circles not wanting to pick the truth when they see it. I prefer to find the positives and common ground and what connects and gain in knowledge.
Yet you accuse me of being insincere and dishonest in my search for truth.
Daesh is implementing their version of Islam and to them that is the truth. They probably think that your version of Islam is wrong. Who decides which Islamic knowledge is correct, Daesh’s, Salafi, Hanafi, Sufi, Maliki, Shafi, Shia, Ahmedi? Removing religion from government is a far simpler solution.
Ghamidi sounds fairly sane but he is regarded as a heretic by my many mainstream Islamic scholars. I’d take his version of Islam over others if there getting away from religion wasn’t an option. However, secular government would be the end goal, the ideal.
I never claimed Islam restricts people from sciences. You said we need to educate people on Islam. I disagreed saying we need to educate people in sciences. When I think of Islamic education I think of theology, Islamic History not science and mathematics.
Haha. You’re funny I’ll give you that. The funny thing about losing religion is that you lose bias for any one religion. You realize they’re all equally pointless.
Offcourse anyone who does not believe in the existance of God is confused. And anyone claiming to have studied enough but still not believe in his existence then they have not studied enough so they are dishonest and insincere to claim of studying with honesty and sincerity because when one does, the nature opens a 1001 ways for him to get to the truth.
Your common sense decides if daaesh is islam. What does your common sense tell you? Same for any other sector whether they practice commonsense or complications in the name of islam because islam is also as simple as commonsense. Unless your commonsense has also turned into nonsense by reading too much from pseudo intellectuals then nobody’s fault.
You believe in the coming of another porphet? If yes, then ahmedis will suit you because they are the only ones who believe that and that belief directly contradicts what the quran says and the prophet mohammed himself said. About the rest, you have to study yourself which sector beliefs your heart settles with. Personally, i dont categorize myself. Dont out nyself with any specific sector. Im without sector. Only follow commonsense taught in quran.
Ghamidi is not for confused heads. His knowledge is too superior for m.cre minds. He his very clear headed and so are most of those who follow him. Those mainstreams that oppose ghamidis are influenced by political islam and not the islam of Quran. While I may disagree with some of his views but that’s pretty normal and could be due to the fact that he is too superior in his knowledge. Or could be that he is also human and can make mistake. So does not mean people must start pointing guns on him. But mostly, all he speaks is back by solid accurate knowledge and study of islam.
If you admit that islam encourages gaining and spreading knoeldge without bias then what is your problem with islam? As i have guessed, your problrm seems to be with the politically driven oppressive and fascist movements which is not islam. Then the next minute you are confused whether daesh is islam. How come anyone has to even ask if relentlessly murdering people is islam or not???
And thanks but no thanks. Please keep your prayers for yourself to see the light. Im pretty content. Thanks.