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Which books have challenged you?
I'm currently reading 'The End of Faith' by Sam Harris. What surprised me is that although I can read about the Christian faith and wholeheartedly agree with its crimes, when I read about Islam I start to squirm. i was a fundamentalist Christian before becoming being an atheist and so had already known a lot of christian history and current practices and was only too familiar with its physical cruelty in the past and emotional cruelty in the present. However, even though I know something about the Islamic beliefs, because of my liberal views - particularly since there is a lot of distrust and alarm over Muslim people since 9/11 - I find myself doing the same thing i did over my christian faith and that is to minimise/make allowances for their extreme views. By extreme I mean what is written in their scriptures and adhered to, to the letter of their law. I realise moderates have toned down their faith in some cases but going back to Islam as it is written it is fundamental at its core.
I know that in Islam, as in Christianity, individuals are mostly decent people. Yet in both situations its the religion that dictates attitudes and behaviours that leave me cold.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by abdelrahman elfeky on
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reading about islam is something and living in an islamic community is something else . anyway i'm in egypt here there's no application of islamic law to these moment the civil law is valid i just can't imagine people in 2012 believe in punishments such as stoning and slaughtering next to the marginalization of women and their rights and the criminalization of sex and alcohol ,and certainly freedom of thought and belief such as what happened in the incidents of the assassination of egyptian authors . after the revolution, the islamic movement went up and the election result is not good, but until this moment, egypt is considered a liberal civil
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and about books now i read to richard dawkins "the god delusion" it somehow a challenge maybe because of the language and scientific terminology and some parts are hard to understand
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Permalink Reply by Pat on
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yeh it would be very difficult to live under those circumstances and I don't agree with Islamic law at all. It is restrictive and totally disregards womens rights. All religion is orientated towards men and that's one reason it's turned me off completely.
I also tried reading Dawkins book but found it difficult as it was so technical but I may try again one day. I still have't finished reading Harris's book! -
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i didn't read to sam harris before but i've seen a few lectures to him and really liked the guy ..
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Permalink Reply by BTB (John) on
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The God Delusion was the most life changing book I ever read.
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