Well I think I phrased it a bit poorly, I did not mean you have to believe everything in quran literally, but that you have to believe that quran is the word of god, otherwise you cant be a muslim (that being the literal definition of a muslim).

So I don't think you have to be a fundamentalist to be a muslim, that misunderstanding was due to my poor phrasing. But I still think even if you don't believe everything the quran says literally, if the word of your god says that homosexuality is bad, it will have a negative impact on your behaviour. For the same reason, homophobia is more noticeable in christian communities than in secular ones. What the quran says, even if you dont accept everything literally, will influence you since you still believe its divine.

Thats what I meant. Sorry for that poor phrasing.


But all this comes back to the point, that this way I can still generalize a concept of islam that is not contradictory. It's based on the belief that quran is divine and thus what the quran says is highly influental. Not to be mistaken with fundamentalism.


Ps. Fixed that literally part of the previous post, read it again.

"Yes, I'm a doctor. No I never studied, but words don't have meaning do they? I mean I'm not 'literally' a doctor, but what does that matter?"

Islam is God's word as revealed by Muhammad, if you don't believe it, then you aren't Muslim. Actual Muslims know this and follow the Quran - which is the word of God revealed to Muhammed.

Do not confuse the Quran with the Bible. The Bible is a compilation of works, the New Testament being written long after Jesus's death (Epistles comes to mind as the obvious example, it's just a compilation of letters, there's nothing divine about them). Where as the Quran is literally the word of God. Don't project western tradition onto eastern religion, it is not the same thing.

Compare Einstein writing a paper, and someone writing a bibliography about Einstein after his death.

What I meant there was taking everything in the Qu'ran entirely literally, which you dont have to to be a Muslim


This we can agree on, many religions are certainly oppressive towards people who are homosexual, I do think the religion is partly to blame - but at the same time there are Christians and people of other religions who are not against homosexuality, so even here I believe the person is more important than the religion and it is certainly true that some branches of every religion are more accepting of homosexuality than others. As a side note - being against gay marriage doesnt necessarily make you against homosexuality either.



This is all true, but, in the case in point of Omar Mateen - it is safe to say most Muslim teachings, particularly in Western society would not inspire this act which is why I think in cases like this it is important to give the branch of Islam he is acting from. Would you agree with this?




Another thing, its come through the news today from the nightclub that "Omar Mateen has been in the nightclub at least a dozen times before so it is almost certain that he had other motives for what he did".

I mean, If you have ever read the religious books for the muslim religion they take everything and put it to the extreme of what they do I don't agree what with this guy did by any means it disgusts me how some one can bear to take another persons life regardless of motive, and then take your own life so that you would not have to bare the consequences... Its a sick world we live in.

My prayers go out to all the families of those lost <3

Nothing suppresses those rights if there's gun control. Gun control is just various measures in place to make sure that people who purchase guns are people of decent standing within the community. A background check against a law-abiding citizen will not prevent that person from obtaining a gun. A background check being mandatory for all gun sales will not prevent "good men and women of our country" from buying a gun. What it will do is make it harder for "bad guys" to get guns.

If I used your exact same logic of "No matter how much we restrict x, bad guys will still get x", then it should also stand that we should not restrict the acquisition of drugs, child pornography, or nuclear armaments because "bad guys will still get them". Which is ridiculous. The point of gun control is not to stop all gun violence, that is literally impossible short of eliminating all guns and all knowledge about guns from existence, but to reduce gun violence. And one of the easiest ways to reduce gun violence would be to make it harder for somebody who might commit a crime from acquiring a gun. The United States does not require background checks on purchases made at gun shows, so any recently released violent offender from prison could just walk into a gun show and buy a gun with no questions asked. The United States Congress also has staunch opposition to a measure that would make anybody on the Terrorist Watch List be unable to purchase a gun. Both of these are very obvious situations where it's not a "good man or woman" purchasing a gun, but a "bad guy" purchasing a gun, and yet they still receive vigorous opposition.


OK, let's look at these states. The state with the strictest gun control is California. According to the CDC http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/Firearm.htm in 2014, California was the 8th lowest in per capita gun related deaths, meaning less people per 100,000 people died to guns in California than 42 other states. However, you're probably looking at the total number of gun related deaths, which does put it at the highest number of gun related deaths. However, California is also the most populated state in America. If we also look at these stats, Texas is the second highest for most gun-related deaths in 2014, and they have pretty relaxed gun control laws. Obviously, population of the state has a great effect on the number of gun deaths that will occur, so a per capita ratio is a better reflection of how often gun related deaths actually occur.

And using a per capita measurement, the 5 highest states for gun mortality rates are, in order from highest to lowest: Louisiana, Alaska, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. All of these states have incredibly relaxed gun control laws. Admittedly, the only reason Alaska is up there is because they have a ridiculously high suicide rate, and guns are the preferred way to commit suicide.

In fact, according to the Brady Campaign http://www.bradycampaign.org/sites/d...ads-points.pdf, 7 of the 10 states with the strictest gun control laws are among the 10 states with the lowest gun related death rates. So there's more evidence pointing towards a correlation towards gun control reducing gun related deaths than increasing it.

By the way, Florida has very little in the ways of gun control. In fact, Florida had recently expanded the use of "self-defense" with their Stand Your Ground laws, as was made very clear a couple years ago when Zimmerman shot Martin and cited the Stand Your Ground law to avoid his initial arrest. So your claim that "it [gun control] was probably a contributing factor to the size of the tragedy" doesn't hold much water, unless you believe everybody should be allowed to carry machine guns and sawed off-shotguns, which are the only guns Florida has an outright ban on.


If you haven't noticed, most people who have committed these high profile mass shootings don't survive them. Most of them expect to die already, the knowledge that somebody might shoot back is not the greatest of their concerns.

Second, even police officers could hardly be considered accurate, let alone civilians. As the New York Times reported http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/we...aker.html?_r=0 in 2005, the New York police department fired their guns a total of 472 times, and only hit their target 82 times. That's an accuracy of 17.4%. And if you only include all shots that were made from under 6 feet away, they only had a 43% accuracy.

These are people who are supposed to be trained to respond to high stress environments, so what do you think will happen when an untrained civilian, or a room full of untrained civilians, opens fire on a single target that's firing upon them? What's likely to happen is they're going to miss, and they're going to hit another innocent civilian in the process, possibly making the number of deaths rise. And not everybody is going to know who the actual perpetrator is if everybody draws their gun to fire at them, so who's to say that somebody won't panic and start shooting at other civilians because they don't know if they're trying to kill them? People will panic, and there will almost certainly be extra casualties because of this panic.


tl;dr the easiest way to stop gun crimes is to have less guns, gun control works, people are idiots, people with guns are dangerous idiots, the police might as well have learned to shoot at stormtrooper academy, civilians would make stormtroopers look like crackshots.

Not immediately relevant to the discussion of this thread, but I found this article to be an interesting bit of information for you all to chew on:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/report...222620444.html

There are a lot of angles to consider here, and I don't pretend to know the shooter's motives or even how to fix the problem for the future. As a bisexual man, I can relate to how this man had an inner conflict between family, social obligations, religion, and sexual orientation that led to a bad mental state and thus to horrible actions. I think this proves that lgbt issues are not over with yet, similar to how racial issues are not even close to completely resolved at this point.

I don't want to try to convince you of anything, because I'm not convinced of anything and I'm stupid and basically all of us have no idea what we're talking about. I just think this is important to consider.

Reports said that he called 911, and told them that he was pledging to Allah, and that he understood why people that have done these things before, like the Boston Marathon Bombing, 9/11, Sandy Hook, Columbine, etc. Even though not all of these were done by Islamic Extremists, it is very unsettling.

Thank you for sharing that Larfen, my aunt spoke with me about that this morning, but didn't get to finding an article until now.

Now, I am one for making guns, preferably semi automatics, or just weapons like the AR-15. There is no reason to have guns like those to be held by citizens. Unless they've served in the military and it's theirs, but still, no need really.

When I speak of Gun Control, I don't mean the restriction of weapons all over, just the ability to gain them legally and what kinds of guns are allowed needs to be changed.


I've been away for a bit, so I didn't get to reading everything. So I apologize if any of this has been spoken of already or not part of anything.

@Grohen

In addition to what Oracle said, you also conflated gun laws with other very significant factors like socioeconomic factors and family related instability like divorce and fatherlessness, all of which tend to have a positive correlation with violent crime.

I'm not so sure I would agree with that.

I don't see the rhetoric of western islam being not also at fault here. Let's not forget that in the UK, arguably where the most western islam can be found, over half of the muslim population would want to outlaw homosexuality entirely. And on top of that only 18% percent found homosexuality somewhat acceptable. So in the light of these grim statistics, preaching the harmfulness of western islam feels pretty dishonest. If most of your peers want to outlaw homosexuality, being a troubled closet homosexual yourself, I can't imagine it doing much good for your psyche.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ity-sharia-law

This person was clearly tormented by his homosexuality and his religion not being compatible with one another. Obviously for a sane person that wouldn't cause such acts to occur, but can I say that westernized islam is not also at fault? Not if I'm being honest to myself.
Surely the extremist fundamental wing will inspire more of these acts than the more modern moderate wing, but I wouldn't still regard them even remotely as a force for good.


Yet again, may it be inspired by the extremist wing or not, the cause is clearly an islamic problem in general. Not just the fundamental wing.
So in conclusion, I will hold all of islam somewhat accountable for such acts, not equally, but still relevantly.

Whether or not IS is "regular Muslims", can we stop pretending that the religion itself isn't inherently awful?

Quran (2:244) - "Then fight in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah Heareth and knoweth all things." (Fight in the name of Allah.)

Quran (2:216) - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not." (Fighting is good for you, really. Shut up and do it.)

Quran (4:76) - "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah…" (If you believe, you'll fight.)


Quran (4:104) - "And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain..." (Don't let them retreat. They're worse off than you and you can finish the bastards off. Go get 'em, Champ.)

oh and my favorite:

Quran (47:3-4) - So when you meet those who disbelieve, strike their necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either favor afterwards or ransom them until the war lays down its burdens. That is the command. And if Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them, but to test some of you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah - never will He waste their deeds.


Say what you want about "regular Muslims", but the warmongering ones are the only ones actually following their holy book. The gun control isn't the issue here. Millions of people in this country own guns, and only a tiny minority decide to be cunts with them. And to say that strict gun control would prevent the cunts from getting them is just wrong anyway - if you're not above shooting people, you're probably not above getting an illegal firearm either. The only problem here is that people still believe so strongly in their malignant, evil religions that they honestly believe they're doing the right thing by murdering those who disagree with them, and the "it's not meant literally!" is the biggest bullshit cop-out possible. If you honestly believe "Fighting is prescribed for you" or "Be not weak-hearted in pursuit of the enemy" are meant metaphorically or that you can follow a religion which supports such things without being either horrible or just ignoring most of your own god's commands, then you're just horribly horribly deluded. And in this case, saying he's an extremist is wrong anyway. Killing gay people is mainstream Muslim society. There are ten countries in the world where being gay is punishable by death (Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and the UAE). Guess what? They're all Muslim countries. Killing gays isn't radical Islam, it's just Islam.