[CIAFreeAgent]

You appear to be equating murder (the only crime for which one can receive the death penalty in the US) with leaving Islam.

Does this prove Canadians are unable to differentiate criminal activities from non-criminal activities?

(or, perhaps, it proves nothing save that trying to make sweeping generalizations like those above is just idiocy?)

The OP was unclear. Is supporting the death penalty dangerous and sick or only for some crimes? The hatred of people who believe differently is rampant throughout people who believe of all religions.

Read the thread on Wikileaks, people who routinely post here are calling for capital punishment in this case. Are these posters dangerous and sick?

What I think is dangerous and sick is people promoting a state religion and enforcing religious edicts with the power of the state.

That is not something unique to Muslims, there are many fundamentalist Christians, some regular posters on this board, who want the US to be a Christian nation and only support the First Amendment when it applies to religions that they like.

[Brainpole]

There seem to be two lessons to learn here concerning the Muslims killing any Muslim who forsakes the religion: either don't become a Muslim, or if you are a Muslim, don't forsake the religion. Simple enough, now leave those zany Muslims alone.

[GOLAGLULT]

The OP was unclear. Is supporting the death penalty dangerous and sick or only for some crimes? The hatred of people who believe differently is rampant throughout people who believe of all religions.

Read the thread on Wikileaks, people who routinely post here are calling for capital punishment in this case. Are these posters dangerous and sick?

What I think is dangerous and sick is people promoting a state religion and enforcing religious edicts with the power of the state.

That is not something unique to Muslims, there are many fundamentalist Christians, some regular posters on this board, who want the US to be a Christian nation and only support the First Amendment when it applies to religions that they like.

So...even taking your long stretch of "there are many fundamentalist Christians" I'm not seeing a comparison to First Amendment issues and killing someone who leaves the religion.

[alanamosteller]

Just another indictment of Islam , an indication ,like suicide bombers,
of how little many Muslims value human life.
And where is the condemnation by moderate Muslims of extremist brutality.

And yes, we have the leftists defending Islam in their robotic manner,,
even comparing the death penalty for murder with the" crime" of leaving Islam.
If any lefty wants a one way flight to Pakistan or Egypt or Saudi,
I will gladly pay for same.
That includes Hussain Obama.


BTW,,I am against the death penalty.

[mymnarorump]

Unless the majority think you should get the death penalty for leaving Islam, hence the logic flaw.

Not at all. If you know the consequences you eithere take your chances or leave.

[Gcromqgb]

It's a yawn moment in the sense that the OP is involved in the archetypical right wing disinformation about Islam. Islam is as diverse as Christianity and what better to illustrate that than the actual poll upon which the OP is allegedly based.

Either the OP knowingly distorts the poll or the OP stupidly copies some Islamophobic shite from a blog without even consulting the poll. Either is typical of a certain mentality that is reminiscent of earlier such eras and it's that part that gets boring quickly.

As for the numbers themselves -which are actually outside of the scope of the OP- it's clear that secularization in Islam (see Turkey) has been as effective as it has been in Christianity in order to get rid of the antediluvian ideas that exist in all the revelationary religions.

I have to wonder though what the exact question is that was posed. When one compares the part of the poll you linked with this:



we have in Jordan 81% of the population supporting democracy while at the same time 86% that would favour the death penalty for abdicating Islam. That doesn't make much sense, does it ? Either of the questions must have been phrased in a way that the apparent contradiction wasn't such for the interviewee.

Another result that causes frowns about the methodology is the huge disparity between Jordan and Lebanon (86 vs. 6%). That is very strange given the many similarities and proximity between the countries.

Agreed with your assessment above.

But Jordan and Lebanon have nearly no similarities at all, bar being close to one another.

So, with nearly 6 mio inhabitants, Jordan is to nearly 94 % sunni muslim.

Lebanon is 35 % christian, the muslims are split 50/50 in sunni and shiite.
Also, by constitution, the head of state in Lebanon must be a maronite christian and the chief of the armed forces a christian of any denomination bar maronite.

Here´s a link to a Merian set of photos about Beiruts scene.
Picture that in Jordan (where I, revealing my german identity, am confronted with an enthusiast Nazi-salute on nearly every transit by soldiers in the airport).

Beirut: In Partylaune - Merian - - Reiseziele

[TainuibeFaimb]

Oh, no doubt the OP presented an extremely biased view.

But I thought the data itself was interesting and, in some respects, distressing.



I'm not sure there's any inherent contradiction there. If a large enough majority of the population wants the death penalty for abdicating Islam, then that's exactly what a democratic government will enact. In fact, the more democratic the government the more assuredly and quickly it will enact such a law.

I don't think there's anything in democracy that's inherently tolerant of dissent or diversity. In a system in which power comes primarily from having a majority agree with you, it makes a certain amount of sense that the punishment for radically deviating from the cultural/social/religious norm would be particularly harsh.

Democracy does not take advice or even laws from religious institutions.
As the name implies, it is a rule of the people, not the Pope (or Ayatollah or whatever religious creep)
A state that does is a Theocracy or a dictatorship.

[Wdlglivi]

Sorry, no. You're reasoning, in this case is flawed. Democracy does not preclude favoring the DP for someone who leaves Islam.

DP ?
Dual penetration ?
For leaving Islam ?

[tofRobbroolve]

Agreed with your assessment above.

But Jordan and Lebanon have nearly no similarities at all, bar being close to one another.

So, with nearly 6 mio inhabitants, Jordan is to nearly 94 % sunni muslim.

Lebanon is 35 % christian, the muslims are split 50/50 in sunni and shiite.
Also, by constitution, the head of state in Lebanon must be a maronite christian and the chief of the armed forces a christian of any denomination bar maronite.

Here´s a link to a Merian set of photos about Beiruts scene.
Picture that in Jordan (where I, revealing my german identity, am confronted with an enthusiast Nazi-salute on nearly every transit by soldiers in the airport).

Beirut: In Partylaune - Merian - - Reiseziele

Yes, I'm aware of the nature of Lebanese society and its diversity. Before the civil war Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East. But the poll only questioned Muslims. I did apparently misread the Sunni/Shi'ite repartition in Lebanon though. Still, while almost all Sunni's in Jordan say yes to the death penalty for the abdication of Islam, at most 12% of the Sunni's in Lebanon do so. That's still a huge disparity.

Would you say it's precisely Lebanese diversity that precludes the extremism amongst Muslims there ?

[Rwujnezq]

DP ?
Dual penetration ?
For leaving Islam ?

From what I've heard from many Arabs that's not actually too far from normal treatment of prisoners in some Arab nations. Sodomy is almost a matter of course. So you might get your wish

[soSldI4i]

So you're equating an unsupported claim to an actual poll? Hmmmm....

Polls are for idiots.
All one has to do is to phrsae the questions cleverly and bingo, the result is the exact opposite of what people really meant to say.

[ZenDers]

That depends on whether one uses the narrow or the broad definition of the word. The broad one integrates a number of concepts outside of the narrow meaning of voter participation such as basic human rights, gender equality and so on. If one looks at the map here you will notice that there are only a handful of countries in the world that are democratic in the broad sense but nevertheless support the death penalty. None of these are Arabic though.

It doesn't really depend on anything. Democracy is basically rule of the majority. If the majority want to kill someone for leaving Islam then you have a Democratic government that is for doing that very thing. Democracy does not preclude this.

[traiffhetl]

No, I did say that I couldn't see any reference to the detail of the poll (although I may have missed it in my reading). I prefer to know a bit about the poll before taking its findings as gospel, eg how many people were surveyed? Where were they surveyed etc? I'm sure if you polled 1 person in central Kabul and that person agreed with the premise, then you'd have a poll that shows that 100% of people support it ... it's hardly representative though, hence the desire to know more about the qualitative context.

Even assuming the poll was objective in it´s questions, it remains a distortion of facts.

All one has to do is to check the pro´s and contras with respect to the total population of the countries involved in the poll.
With, fi, 5 million Jordanians against 238 Million Indonesians, the picture changes dramatically.

One should also read the small print in the poll sum-ups (based on muslims only)

[voksveta]

Democracy is a rule of majority.
So, aparently it does.

You wouldn´t recognise Democracy if it fell on your head.
Why do you insist on comments about subjects you have no clue abourt ?

[rozalinasi]

You wouldn´t recognise Democracy if it fell on your head.
?

That's because democracy is not a wardrobe; clearly, it fell on your's.

[cQT6nmEc]

That depends on whether one uses the narrow or the broad definition of the word. The broad one integrates a number of concepts outside of the narrow meaning of voter participation such as basic human rights, gender equality and so on. If one looks at the map here you will notice that there are only a handful of countries in the world that are democratic in the broad sense but nevertheless support the death penalty. None of these are Arabic though.

If one's distressed by these results the place to look for an explanation is the vast difference between Jordan and Lebanon which is rather stunning as both countries have a similar history in lawmaking (a mixture of traditions, Islamic and European codes) and are both predominantly Sunni's of the Shafi'i school. There must be some local specific difference in play here. At first I suspected it had to do with the language in which the poll was taken but the link provided by Mandrake makes it clear that the question are put in the local language of the interviewees.

Figuring out the origin of this specific difference would go a long way in explaining why there are still such harsh notions present in parts of the Islamic world I think.

Again, do not compare Jordan and Lebanon.
If Arabs want to have fun, they visit Beirut, but definitely NOT Amman.

To compare the two is like comparing Paris Nightlife to the happenings in a sealed tomb.

[ViktorialHDY]

Yes, I'm aware of the nature of Lebanese society and its diversity. Before the civil war Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East. But the poll only questioned Muslims. I did apparently misread the Sunni/Shi'ite repartition in Lebanon though. Still, while almost all Sunni's in Jordan say yes to the death penalty for the abdication of Islam, at most 12% of the Sunni's in Lebanon do so. That's still a huge disparity.

Would you say it's precisely Lebanese diversity that precludes the extremism amongst Muslims there ?

Most probably yes
What one has to consider is this.

The muslim extremists in Lebanon are not really Lebanese, they are in their vast majority Palestinians who moved north to get away from the Israelis.The other relatively new group came in from the east, from Syria in the attempts of the Assads to take over Lebanon.
Those are the ones containing most extremists.

Before these massive immigrations lebanese muslims were far more secular than those in Turkey at their best times.
The latter you will find mainly in the north, Being turkish remnants or descendants of Kurds, mentally and politically very much influenced by the maronite Christians who used to employ them (when they still were rich)

I was working in Beirut Juli and August 82, during the shelling by the Israelis.
We went to party at night and, going to work in the morning could not find the factory (a huge bakery btw)
It was bombed to rubble.
The same evening, life and parties went on as if nothing had happened.
When the sound of shells came closer, they simply turned up the music.

[Glipseagrilia]

From what I've heard from many Arabs that's not actually too far from normal treatment of prisoners in some Arab nations. Sodomy is almost a matter of course. So you might get your wish

I´m not a muslim, so good luck.
But why attest it to muslims only ?
Already forgotten Abu Ghraib ?
Or US Prison Standards ?

Kinda cheap to point fingers at others with shit on the own hands.

[slarceSelia]

That's because democracy is not a wardrobe; clearly, it fell on your's.

Let me know, pray, if this is supposed to be a joke.

[searkibia]

Democracy does not take advice or even laws from religious institutions.
As the name implies, it is a rule of the people, not the Pope (or Ayatollah or whatever religious creep)
A state that does is a Theocracy or a dictatorship.

Surely democracy does whatever the people want it to do? A truly democratic system would not nullify the decision of the people simply because that decision happens to be in keeping with, or was even inspired by, the will the Pope.

The difference between a democracy and a Theocracy only becomes apparent when the will of the people and the will of the religious leaders conflict. Where their wills coincide, both systems will do precisely the same thing.