Comments by "Sandy Tatham" (@sandytatham3592) on "Lex Fridman"
channel.
-
14
-
@mifflinfinity : Muslims as people are great. They are full of humanity and kindness, and most of them are FAR BETTER than Islam. Most have never read the Qur'an (believed to be the literal word of Allah), Hadiths (the traditions of Muhammed), The Sira (biography of Muhammed), or Tafsirs (explanations). However, there are Muslims who are very devout, who follow all of the fundamentals of the ideology, and who are thus very knowledgeable about the obligations and the aim of Islam, which is to subjugate the whole world to Allah. If they live in places where Islam is in power, they can act on their obligations.
Muslims in the west are, thankfully, not in power and around one quarter of them leave Islam once they investigate the ideology that they've been born into. Islam is primarily a political-legal ideology which encompasses every aspect of life, including that of the lives of Unbelievers (infidels, kaffirs). Why do you think that today there are still many Islamic countries which have the death penalty for Muslims who dare to leave Islam?
13
-
12
-
6
-
5
-
5
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
@islammohamed7375 : I don't believe my comments were disingenuous because in Islam it is permitted (halal) to strike a disobedient wife, to marry a child, to marry more than one wife, etc. In the West we have laws that prohibit violence against any person, including between marriage partners. Of course it still happens, but there is due process of law to save the victims against any repetition. We also have laws against pedophilia, multiple wives, and underage marriages. I have seen women in Syria and Egypt who were regularly beaten by their husbands, and I've seen child brides in Yemen, and they had no way to be rescued.
I agree with you on the tragedy of the increase in single parenthood. I am a huge advocate for one man and one woman raising children together. But there is a minority of people who do it differently, for example two women or two men raising children, and many of these can also work out fine. Just because Islam "teaches you how to navigate" through difficulties, it doesn't mean that Muslim-majority cultures manage to achieve anything better. Research has shown that Muslim countries are the worst places for female rights and for life as a female.
3
-
3
-
@hoodietay2083 : I have heaps of Muslim friends!!! And I criticise Islam all the time with them. My problem with smooth-talking Imams like Omar Suleiman is that they don't discuss the controversial dimensions of Islam. For example, the terrible rights for women and girls (child marriage, multiple wives, no consent for sex in marriage, wife-beating, guardianship, inequality in divorce, to name a few things). They also don't say much about the perpetual "jihad in the way of Allah" that occurs on a daily basis in some part of the world, and the creeping #sharia in the West.
Around 15 years ago I was invited by some Muslim friends in Morocco to become a Muslim. I said I must first study Islam before I can accept it. And what I found shocked me. And that was before the wave of fundamentalist Salafism had swept through the Middle East and North Africa, and women had begun to cover totally in black, and girls were rarely seen. Since then, we've had the Arab Spring and now conditions are either more authoritarian or unstable in those countries.
My heart will not give up on fighting for all females and children to have the rights that we follow in the west, ie. those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This includes the child's right to have genital autonomy. All boys born into islam have their penis mutilated in the name of Islam. That's child #abuse. I don't care what a grown man does to his body, and what 'covenants' he makes with his god, but a child cannot give informed consent. Without having any say over it, he loses around one third of the sensitivity and natural functioning of his penis. It's barbaric.
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@Remyyalta : As an Unbeliever living in the Middle East, I take notice of what ALL Muslims SAY and DO. I am not able to assess whether leaders like Osama bin Laden or Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi had the last word on Islam, nor can I say that the spiritual Sufis have it right. None of this is my business as a kaffir, an infidel. I just notice what Muslims say and do, and even that can change very quickly. Politics in the Middle East is impossible to separate from religious ideology. Islam is a complete way of life (a deen), with laws for Muslims and laws for how the Unbelievers are to be treated. It's not just a personal religion, like Christianity is. Islamic countries have Constitutions which say that the Qur'an and the traditions of Muhammed (the Sunnah) are what guide their governments.
You are right that a huge number of Muslims have never studied their scriptures. They are happy to believe what they've been told, and Islam has a very mesmerising quality, especially in the five daily prayer format and the soft words of their sheikhs. Islamic fundamentalism is also attractive to those young men who don't see themselves getting married easily (polygamy ensures that there is a shortage of females), and if they are killed in the act of jihad against the Infidels it is believed they are able to intercede in Heaven for up to 70 relatives [Sunan Abi Dawud 2522], which is of great value. These young men are also very useful to their powerful and corrupt leaders as jihadi warriors.
But maybe Islam has always been like that? It only gained a significant following after Muhammed received the 'revelations' about jihad, war booty and sex slaves. For his first 13 years of relatively peaceful preaching, he attracted a very small number of around 175 followers. Then during his ten years in Yathrib (Mecca) he grew very quickly in power and stature, and raids on caravans and villages began. Quite soon after his death, Islamic militaries had invaded and conquered the largest area of the known world at that time.
2
-
@knightkiller329362 : I have had hours of discussions with Muslim scholars and sheikhs, with Muslims who are fundamentalists or Sufi spiritualists, and also with unschooled Muslims who simply love what they know about Islam. I've also had long discussions with Muslims who have begun to doubt what they've been told about Islam, and with Muslims who have left Islam but can't come out in public because they would be put in prison or even killed by their family or community. I'm someone they can trust to talk to.
I've spent weeks and months in Muslim majority countries including Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir India, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Turkey and Jordan. I think it's very important to debate religion in the 21st century. That's why I try to reply to as many comments as possible, and I make myself free when someone asks to debate me in person or online through other means. Peace and love to you too...🙏
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@rasheed9705 : Christianity teaches separation of church and state, so if Christian nations are practising slavery it is a human error. And it goes against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that most nations with Christian values have agreed to uphold. Islam, on the other hand, does enshrine slavery. Muhammed bought and sold slaves, he had sex with his slave girls, and today there are many Muslim majority countries, eg. Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria & Sudan, where black people are owned as chattel slaves by Arabs & Muslims. I recommend the recent video by Dr Charles Jacobs "Arabs and Muslims Have Black Slaves".
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Please look at the wider perspective. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 by the Allied Powers, the Arab occupants of the Middle East Ottoman land were given self-rule over 99% of that land. These countries today are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The #indigenous Jewish people were given the chance to reconstitute their ancestral home of Palestine, which is LESS than 1% of the Ottoman land. And they share it with 21% Arabs who have #equal rights with Jews.
In 1948 the surrounding Arab countries attacked Israel intending to massacre all of the Jews, but they were defeated. They then refused to grant citizenship to the displaced Arabs from Palestine, and a UN organisation was specifically set up to hold these displaced Arabs as *perpetual refugees*, which has not been done anywhere else in the world. They are being held as geopolitical weapons against the Jews. Thankfully, with the Abraham Accords, the cold peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, and various other back-channel agreements, it is all changing. If the Arabs of Palestine could be given citizenship of an Arab League country, then Israel may be able to give them long-term residence visas in Israel so they can have equal rights, access to education, health, employment, etc., but not national voting rights. If they continue to be hostile towards the Jewish state of Israel, as citizens of another country they could also be deported.
Wars have consequences, especially when you are on the side of the party which started the war and was then defeated, like the Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent wars that the Arab countries started against Israel, and lost. The Palestinian Arabs do not want peace with Israel. They want ALL of Palestine for themselves. They tell you this very clearly. A greater number of Jews were exiled or expelled from their generational homes in the Arab countries than Arabs from historic Palestine, but today those Jews have been resettled on they are getting on with their lives. Why, out of all the MILLIONS of displaced peoples over the last 100 years, is it only the so-called Palestinians that still get so much support, publicity and funding?
1
-
1
-
1
-
1