the Sri Lankan civil war was regularly on the news around 2000 when i used to watch Star news, an Asian news channel
Cara,
I clearly said I did not want to get engaged too much in the discussion, and oh misfortune, now I get engaged more than I had ever wanted.
Because I did not want to engage too much in the discussion, I kept my message very short, but it did relate to the topic.
For me Brenna’s first message was prejudiced, very one-sided and therefore I wanted to show that islam is a religion that has characteristics that are bound to incite hatred.
There is this interfaith marriage prohibition, there is the horrible ritual slaughter of animals amongst other things.
That is what I wanted to show: that these anti-moslem feelings are not just coming from “islamophobia” (a word used much too often these days) or “fierce loyalty to Buddhism”, but from true, factual parts of islam.
Brenna mentioned “other religions” and “other religious practices” - that can’t be atheists. Atheism is not a religion and certainly not a religious practice.
Hi Leon,
I understand that you don’t want to get too engaged, but unfortunately once you post something for all to see, one has to accept the origination of dependant phenomena 
What you want to ‘show’ or express is up to you, we just ask that you do it in a gentler manner.
As for your last point, I’m not sure. I will leave it up to Brenna to clarify her point, I won’t speak for her.
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I said, Islam is not a friendly religion - I explained why I think so. I think I already put it in a very gentle way.
And the islamic prohibition of interfaith marriages is fascist. I’m not going to make it sound better. I already was gentle by not comparing that kind of islamic superiority with Hitler’s sense of superiority concerning the Arian race.
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Ah, so we’ve reached that point of the online discussion have we 
Let me phrase it this way. If you called an individual on this forum a ‘fascist’ it would be considered fairly offensive. I’m not evaluating that what you are saying is right or wrong. I think you can make your point using less harsh words.
“Monks, a statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless & unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five?
“It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will.
AN 5.198
(emp. mine)
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But I didn’t, please stay with the facts. I called an islamic rule fascist.
Why is it that people feel a need to distort other people’s words?
I’m happy to see you did not make that bold, suggesting that at least you see the truth of what I said
I’m out of this thread - enough said.
Islam isn’t the only religion with stringent rules about marriages outside the faith.
Whether or not we find such rules oppressive in some way, I think it best not to throw around the term “fascist” in casual ways to refer to every oppressive or authoritarian practice or custom we oppose (like kids calling heir parents’ curfew rules “fascist”). Fascism is a more-or-less definite political ideology or tendency, and it’s good to confine the uses of terms to their established meanings, rather them swinging them around wildly as weapons.
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Well, it’s not for me to decide what your truth is. I merely ask you to also make it affectionate, timely, beneficial and with good will, as much as possible.
I’m sorry if you feel I distorted your words. I wanted to express as an example how that kind of speech can be harmful.
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I’m not quite sure I understand the point you’re trying to make here. Interfaith marriage is frowned upon in some denominations and traditions of all Abrahamic religions (e.g. in Judaism and Christianity) predating the birth of the prophet Muhammad himself.
I’m also not sure why you’re citing this article – aren’t the Burmese doing exactly the same thing by requiring the report of interfaith marriage? In essence, maintaining the ‘purity’ and tradition of the dominant religion?
I agree with @DKervick that fascism isn’t a word that should be used liberally. I also think you should clarify your statement, due to the fact that the majority of “Islamic rule” is not fascist or violent.
Indeed, I did not mean to implicate Buddhists in particular who believe all religious practice are blameworthy, but rather “how do we educate people on other religions who adhere to particular beliefs and are unwilling to learn about other religions?”
I’d imagine it would be a very culturally and religiously rich place – and maybe there would be less Islamophobia if people had more neighbors who were Muslim.
I profoundly disagree with these statements.
As I understand it, studies on violence often utilize the perspectives of the victims and not perpetrators. The Human Rights Watch is considered reputable, I believe.
Nevertheless, the sentence he received in no way matched the weight of the crime.
Would you be able to point to specific places in canonical Islamic literature that you feel justify your “anti-moslem feelings.”
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About dogs, in AN 5.191, Brahmans that marry non-Brahmans are criticized with ‘dog’ analogies.
In AN 4.55, it is said, in the idea marriage, husband & wife have the same faith.
Therefore, it seems interfaith marriage is also frowned upon in Buddhism. 
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What is your point? You started talking about conflicts between Buddhists and moslems. What has Judaism and Christianity to do with it? If they would have exactly the same rule against interfaith marriage, would that make it any better?
And, dear Brenna, there is a big difference when something is frowned upon and when something is punished with 100 lashes or capital punishment.
Please do your homework before talking so lightly about islam.
Action and reaction.
No I should not. I was very clear. I stated that a prohibition to marry those of another faith is fascist. “The fact that the majority of “Islamic rule” is not fascist or violent” (according to you) does not bear on that.
I’m happy your wording suggests that you agree with me that at least part of the islamic ideology is fascist.
Lol. You have no idea. I don’t know the situation in the US, but maybe you should come to Europe and see for yourself. A few years ago, two men recorded a video holding hands walking through Brussels. The threats and dirty remarks they heard almost all came from moslems. Moslems are over-represented in statistics on violent crimes against gays and lesbians. Gay men and lesbians in Dutch and Belgian cities have been forced to move because they were threatened by their islamic neighbours all the time. Gay and lesbian teachers are massively harassed by islamic pupils. No, I do not need more islamic neighbours.
Mosques (and not just one) have been inviting extremist imams from abroad - causing much upstirring - if that is your definition of “very culturally and religiously rich” / no thanks.
In the United States people can get capital punishment even when they are innocent. Compared to that, 3 months of jail is NOTHING. Judged by European standards, many, many sentences don’t match the weight of the crime. As the Christians say: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
Yes, but I’m too lazy to look them up right now. Do your own homework. You don’t need to look for anti-islam sites in internet. If you search and have a look at islamic websites, you will see for yourself.
Not exactly. First look up the meaning of “Brahmin”:
Brahmin (/ˈbrɑːmənə/; ब्राह्मण) is a varna (class, caste) in Hinduism specialising as priests of sacred learning across generations.
So if the Buddha speaks about Brahmins, it is about Hindu priests. From that you cannot deduct that in Buddhism interfaith marriages are frowned upon.
And as I already explained to Brenna, being frowned upon or being punished by lashes or capital punishemnt is a BIG difference.
And AN 4.55 does not prohibit interfaith marriage either.
@Leon74 you need to chill man, I’m sure you aware that your hatred to that religion is making you not happy and angry. I’ve been through that also, my colleague used to tell me all kinds of repulsive teachings in that religion and it made me angry and unhappy. It’s especially so, living in Malaysia, it got better (or worse?) that another two Indonesian colleagues (one Christian and one Muslim) gave even more “information”. But in the end we decided that we should not bring those topics up again to have more peace. No matter what religion, especially the big ones, you really don’t want to criticize it openly, bad ending my friend. Just let the ideas go away unconditionally, no harm will be done, only more happiness and kindness.
I think any religion can harbor extremists, Buddhism included, this is because old text contains wrong translation and mistakes, too many ancient ideas and stories, all subject to misinterpretation. And if you add politics into the mix, extremism guaranteed! But I think some religions can harbor more extremists than another, just my speculation without statistical basis.
Also we should not forget about the timeless principle - quantity vs quality. Can there be so many people with pure mind? Or are they just normal untrained people in robes? If they are too many people with untrained mind in a religion, surely it will become worldly.
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I think it’s probably best if we call this conversation a draw at this point. We obviously have very different beliefs/perspectives/experiences, and obviously I am not going to be changing your mind, and you’re not going to be changing mine.
We also are straying off the central topic, which is to look specifically at how we can educate Buddhists who hold the idea that Islam is an inherently dangerous religion or vice versa, to educate Muslims who hold grievances against Buddhists.
I think education and discussion are key. To read about the foundations and history of Islam, on one hand, and to discuss beliefs and practices with Muslims, on the other. I’m reading this book for a class I’m currently taking on Islam, and so far it’s providing a wonderful contextualization of both the history of Islam and the formation of the Qur’an. I think this practice of study is important so that we can see how certain practices were established and in what context.
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Leon, please keep it cool. I tend to agree to some of your points, even though I would formulate them somewhat less drastically, but even I am not happy with the overly emotional way you are presenting them. Using emotionally laden language can be part of the Right Speech, but my opinion is that discussions like this one call for a more level-headed approach. Affective language and sarcasm will hardly convince anyone who is not sharing your opinion and will not allow you to see something that you may be wrong about. As a matter of fact, it even prevents me and possibly other people from following this thread because instead of looking at arguments we have separate the argumentative wheat from the emotional chaff, and this is no easy task.
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I did in fact read a lot about the early period of the Islamic history and the formation of the Quran and other theological works, and boy is it violent. While some of the ideas found in the Quran are very beautiful and worthy of veneration, others are inherently wrong on very many levels that I don’t want to discuss in order not to derail the discussion (just as a sneak peek: ’ for the male, what is equal to the share of two females’, ‘Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth’ as well as death penalty for male Muslim apostates, etc.). Reading the Sunna will provide you with even more examples of highly problematic practices and ideas, that I would again prefer to talk about in a private conversation.
Now, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that these things are inherently hateful, but they are bound to be a source of many problems, especially because so many of them come form the most authoritative sources in the entire Islamic tradition. Many of these things are literally considered to be the Unchanging Word of God the Almighty given as the perfect instruction for the perfect community of the faithful, so you can’t just say ‘Oh, just ignore it’. Sometimes, it takes considerable mental gymnastics to mould these authoritative religious facts into something agreeable to us Westerners (take, e.g., the story of Ā’ishah’s marriage). The authoritative nature of these statements and ideas makes it a lot more difficult to modify them or even apply the practical methods of the literal criticism to them. As we all know, it is pretty difficult to do in the Buddhism as well, and the Tipitaka texts themselves, while revered, are still less authoritative for the Buddhists than the Quran and Sunna are for the most Muslims.
So, I would rather suggest we use an imaginary spectrum for measuring the potential violence of a given religion against the accepted values of a secularized Western society like the US. Except for very few fringe cults, there are no religions that are pure evil and inherently hateful, so we may just say that some religions have more problematic ideas than the others. Moreover, these problematic ideas should not necessarily be important for the adherents of these religions, they can be lying dormant in the holy books or they might have been important in the past but are insignificant today. Another important factor would be how rigid the religion is in embracing the non-religious views, like non-discrimination of the LGBT people, etc. At the same time, even religions having a low ‘score’ on this scale can be abused, as we are observing with the Buddhism, and religions scoring high can be still accommodated to the Western societies and not create many problems at all.
E.g., the Mormonism with its blood atonement and other peculiar doctrines is, I would say, more at odds with the contemporary Western world than the mainstream Christianity, but the overwhelming majority of the Mormons are just nice people who don’t kill other people for their sins, have fifty wives or are racist. The mainstream Christianity is itself rigid than the Buddhism. My personal impression is that Islam, from the modern Western point of view, is a pretty rigid religion with a pretty high number of very problematic doctrinal points, beginning from the crucial tenet of the absolute sovereignty of God and almost no autonomy of the human being. A good empirical proof is the sheer number of Islamist terrorist attacks in comparison to the Christian terrorism or Buddhist terorrism or even right-wing terrorism. It means that accommodating it to the Western values will be tougher than it is with the Buddhism. It is still not impossible, it is just quite a bit tougher. A good starting point would be to admit that Islam does have very problematic docrtines and practices and try to find a way they can be re-interpreted or - dare I say it? - made irrelevant in the Western countries at the very least. Saying that Islam is the religion of peace period or is a truly feminist religion full stop, no further discussion needed, is in my view just as unproductive as bluntly stating this is a fascist religion and can never adjust itself to the democratic society. The same procedure should be applied to the Buddhism, of course, and I am very happy we are doing something of this sort of thing in our SC community
Sorry for the long reply, brevity is sure not my strentgh 
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Indeed, but I think it’s also worth noting that women had even less rights than before the revelation of the Qur’an. The Qur’an, for instance, guarantees women’s right to an inheritance of which they were not allowed before Muhammad’s time. This is not, of course, to say that by modern feminist standards Islam is ‘progressive,’ but it certainly was for its time.
This is an excellent idea/point.
Not sure I understand this point, can you clarify?
I agree. I also didn’t mean to suggest that Islam or the teachings of Islam are blameless, but in attempting to cultivate a middle ground I think it’s necessary to establish the ways in which Islam is also a product of its time and the location in which it was ‘created.’
Thank you so much for this post Vstakan, it is tremendously well written!
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I think it is better to reformulate this as:
“how we can educate Buddhists who hold the idea that moslems are inherently dangerous or vice versa”
I think I made clear enough how I think about islam but at the end of the day all that counts is how I think about individual moslems. There, something can be gained. We can recognise that although people adhere to a religion we even might despise, that doesn’t usually mean that all the adherents of that religion are despicable or dangerous.
Yet, I also would advise against claiming the moral high ground.
The US together with many of their European allies are responsible for so many atrocities, committed both in the recent and the less recent past - who are we to lecture others?
What do you know about what is going on in Birma, that makes you think you/we can “educate” both Buddhists and Moslems there?
The only thing we can do is to remind or fellow Buddhists about the Teachings of the Buddha, more particularly the five precepts.
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Buddhists reinterpreting islam - good luck 
Seriously: reinterpretation/rewriting of religious rules doesn’t often happen, in no religion. It’s more about abandoning certain rules/teachings than about reinterpretation/rewriting of religious rules.