Wilders hates Islam, not Muslims?

Anyway, what do you make of the claim that someone can hate a religion or an ideology without hating the people who hold that religion or ideology?

It is probably meant in the same strand as conservative Christians who say to their gay brothers and sisters, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

One can hate a religion (e.g. Islam) or an ideology (e.g. communism) without hating individual muslims or communists. Freedom of speech is certainly more about protecting a film assaulting a religion or ideology than it is about protecting porn videos(not that there's anything wrong with that). The film in question should be released and given a wide showing, in the West and elsewhere.

I have been saying for a while that we should provoke the crazies as often as possible and give them small arms to kill each other with when they show up to express their outrage over whatever insult has them so worked up. I'm a bit tongue in cheek about this, but only a bit.

As for showing the film, that would really depend on how it is done. (Of course as a matter of free speech, I would absolutely oppose banning it unless it was advocating for violence or active discrimination against Muslims.) If it is accurate, then yes, I would support it being shown. I think that it is good for a religion to be confronted on its short comings in a way which is based on fact and requires an explanation or at least a re-examination of previously existing assumptions. If it really is a hatchet job - a series of immature "you're an evil doody head" ideas, then this guy might as well let it be.

I think if he were to offer some outrageous quote from the Koran, then offer a quote saying the opposite (the koran is spectacularly inconsistent) and then demonstrate how in the real world, the harsher quote is what is being preached and is winning out, this would seem perfectly reasonable to me. Just as an example.

As for hating a religion but not hating the followers of a religion, I think this is entirely possible. There are a couple of religions which I view as utterly ridiculous, if not evil. However, I would not automatically presume that people who follow that religion are either ridiculous or evil. Good people have believed all sorts of asinine things over the millenia. More over, with respect to the situation in the Netherlands, I think it is not only possible, but quite responsible to despise the effect which radicalized and unassimilated Muslims in the country has had without hating the people.

Really, I think that one of the answers to having radicalized Islamists in the middle of a modern society is to ensure that the laws, schools, police, government, media etc is as hostile as possible to any sign of radicalization as possible. This means demonizing honor killings and their perpetrators, publicizing and disrupting hate speech in mosques, print, street corners, etc and even making films like the one Ali Harsi was involved in which challenge mideavil Islamic practices. We would not sit by idly while Christians resurrected practices associated with the Spanish Inquisition. We ought not to sit back and watch Islamists try and do the same simply because their religion is not our own. If this film puts pressure on the radicals in the Netherlands, good. If radicals around the world go crazy, riot and kill each other while the world watches, so much the better.

After being in NYC on 9/11, going to a funeral for a friend who was murdered in the WTC, or spoken to a NYPD friend who has been seriously hurt from being hit with falling plane debris, I'm in the same boat with Doug. And the more I find out about Islam, the less I think it's a religion; it's a sick death cult.

At the same time though, that view has made me less inclined to care about Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan, or any of these sick crazy people.Want to embrace nonsense-Vaya con your Arabic rock god Allah, and stay out of America. There are flights leaving LAX and JFK every
day for your beloved homeland; get one. Anyone who transacts any business knows-you do not do business with crazy people, and group psychosis is still pyschosis. If these people hold these insane belief close to their hearts, trying to get "Iraqis yearning to breath free" on the backs of American sodliers is a fool's errand. Bring everyone home,with the guns pointed out the door as they go. And harden America. And drill.

As all have noted above, if you get to know one or two people in an otherwise despised group, you may like them despite their group identity (e.g., my own dad with alcoholism).

But while it may be a Biblical injunction to "love the sinner, hate the sin," the principle is almost never extended group-wide in real life. Let's get real. Most people who are anti-gay don't just hate buggery -- they hate the people marching in parades in Greenwich Village and the Castro, too. (Even if they would say they personally like the two guys who live down the street from them.)

As far as the film, if freedom of speech means anything, it has to be released. How is it any different than the Pentagon Papers?

Wilders (along with Rita Verdonk, another breakaway from the Liberal VVD (Republican economics, pro-gay marriage and abortion) is essentially the only Dutch politician who is interested in people like the former Muslim Pentecostals Dreher met. The remaining Dutch Christians (and there are a lot, concentrated in certain areas of the country) tend to be more interested in protecting their rights than in helping fellow Christians in need. The so-called Christian Union (now in government) could care less about the problems these converts are having- evangelicals aren't exactly welcome or common in the Dutch Christian universe. That being said, what Americans don't understand is that, for all the Dutch "liberal" tradition, there is no tradition of free speech in Holland. I've never met a Dutch Christian (admittedly all of various branches of the Reformed church) who doesn't say a variation of, well, Wilders should have more sense than to say things like that. You know what Muslims are like! If the Dutch ever wake up to defend themselves from Islamization, the Dutch Christians won't have any part in it. They are too involved in themselves.
(FYI I am a Leiden graduate and a close watcher of the Dutch Christian scene).

Bring everyone home,with the guns pointed out the door as they go. And harden America. And drill.

Lawrence Auster, http://www.amnation.com/vfr/, for years has been developing an idea of Separation.

Virtually total separation between Muslim and Western worlds and containment of Islam in its existing domain:

1. Stop all Muslim immigration to the USA/West
2. Remove all Muslims being illegally here, all Muslim students, etc
3. Pay Muslim citizens to leave
4. Suspend and/or reduce all business/cultural/tourism/sports dealings with Darb-Al-Islam.
5. Remove citizenship from all naturalized Muslim citizens who profess Koran primacy over Constitution (it means they lied to acquire US citizenship).
6. Put all Islamic institution under heavy FBI monitoring
7. PROTECT OUR BORDERS

There is no such thing as Islam apart from the lives and practices of Muslims.

Let me try.

There is no such thing as Christianity apart from lives of Christians.

There is no such thing as Communism apart from lives fo commies.

There is no such thing as ancient Greek religion apart from lives of ancient Greeks... oooops, they all dead!
So there is no ancient Greek religion(s), right?

How about giving a little thought to you blog comments?

Perhaps there is no such thing as ancient Greek religion. There is the study of ancient Greek religion. There is quite a lot of information about what ancient Greek religion was. However, there is no such thing as the religion itself. I'm pretty sure you know what the commenter above means.

Actually, you're entirely correct. There is not, now, anywhere on Earth, anything called "Ancient Greek Religion". It's dead and gone, claims of reconstructionists notwithstanding.

Unless you believe that Christianity, Islam, Communism, and Ancient Greek Religion exist in some etheric realm of Platonic forms, utterly independent of the human beings who believe and practice these things, then I stand by my assertion. There is no "Islam" floating around in thoughtspace to be the object of hate. There are people, human beings, who do and have done atrocious things to other people, and if there is actual hate to be directed anywhere, it must be directed at them. Otherwise, "hate" is cheapened to mean something more akin to "strongly disapprove of".

Eric W -- it seems as if you're ignoring the issue of agency. People are agents, abstract ideologies are not.

"Can one hate deception without hating those trapped or fooled by it? I think so."

What about the deciever? Is s/he not responsible? Is the person who does the decieving just someone carried along by this nebulous thing called "deception"?

What about this sentence: "I hate terrorism, but I don't hate terrorists." Sensible and thoughtful or rhetorical nonsense?

Rod,is good old Allah the same as the Christian God? I'd like your call on this.

respects,tonymixan

Rod,is good old Allah the same as the Christian God? I'd like your call on this. respects,tonymixan

I'll jump in, tonymixan. Allah has no son, and the Muslim prophet of Allah, Jesus Christ, did not die by crucifixion.

The Christian God has a Son, who Himself is God; His name is Jesus Christ, and He suffered, was crucified and died, was buried, and rose from the dead.

rebeccat... It's obviously true that just because someone doesn't feel loved, doesn't mean the love isn't there. But likewise, many Christians use "love the sinner but hate the sin" as an excuse to be judgemental and self righteous. Many Christians seem obsessed with the sexual morals of those with less social power than themselves, for example- whereas Jesus told us to take the beam out of our own eyes, etc.

And if you're referring to my sharing how I felt when my mother said "I love you but don't like me"... the honest truth is that she didn't love me. She let my father physically abuse me throughout my childhood (serious, dangerous abuse) and justified this because I was, in her eyes, a terrible child.

I don't know about the hating the ideology and not the person deal.

I know a person, not particularly religious as near as I can tell (no church, etc. which I agree is not the best barometer) but who unequivocally said she would never vote for a Mormon after reading John Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven" (essentially due to polygamy and the inherent ugliness polygamy entails, what with underage girls and all). She said anyone who is part of that kind of religion she could never support because you tacitly condone the behavior.

I don't necessarily agree with her, but at the same time what spurred that comment was one of my own that said I would never vote for Mike Huckabee on essentially similar reasons.

Funny thing was neither she nor I were either Huckabee or Romney folks.

The movie needs to be shown. Moslems need to have their heads repeatedly smashed into the brick wall of liberty until they either accept or leave. I am speaking metaphorically of course, but if we keep dithering and wringing our hands the time for metaphors will have passed.

Can you hate Evangelicals without hating Christians? - Daniel

Do you mean:

"Can you hate present-day Protestant Evangelical Christians [persons] without hating other Christians [persons]?" (what you seem to be saying)

or

"Can you hate present-day Evangelical Protestantism [ideology] without hating Christians [persons] (whether they are Evangelical Protestants or not)?"

I don't know, Daniel; can one hate snarky liberalism without hating individual snarky liberals? I think one can.

I just love the fact that "hatred"--in this case by evangelicals--can, these days, mean nothing more than "lack of approval." Now, if you're talking Fred Phelps and that traveling moonpie circus, hatred is correct. But some of the most vocal anti-Phelps folks are fundamentalist Christians, so I doubt that's who you were referring to.

On moral/cultural issues, I do not hate those who disagree with me, and I don't know anyone in my circle of evangelical friends who does. Having said that, I will never submit to the normalization of what I consider to be abberant behavior. If that makes me a hater, so be it.

Larry, the whole point is that I don't hate *people.* I get angry with people. I get exasperated, frustrated, irritated, etc., just like anyone, with people. But I don't hate people, if by "hate" I mean "wish them to spend eternity in Hell" which is a useful definition from my grade school days (as explained by a wise teacher to a tearful little boy who didn't understand how he was supposed to love everyone as the religion book said--surely it didn't include GIRLS?).

But even that little boy got the difference between hatred and dislike or irritation. Hatred in the sense of enmity means that one quite literally sees the other as the enemy, the inimicus, the opposite of a friend or ally; one towards whom one has nothing but opposition, ill-will, etc.

So for a Christian, hatred can't ever be applied to another human being, who is created in the image and likeness of God and therefore innately capable of good. In fact, hatred of another human is diabolical in the sense of being a property of the devil, who alone truly finds humankind hateful.

Now, can I find ideas worthy of hatred? Yes; but few of them really are. Many are misguided or wrongheaded from my perspective, but humility and charity requires me to recognize that so might my ideas be from the perspective of another.

The only thing which it is proper to hate is evil itself--to hate, as in to choose to have nothing to do with it. This is where that much maligned phrase "Love the sinner, hate the sin" comes from: it means that we may never love what is evil, but must love our erring fellow men regardless of the evil they commit or condone. We have a positive obligation to insist on the truth, and to reject the evil, but that doesn't translate into an obligation to reject the person, which we must not do.

In practical terms, what does this mean?

Well, for one it means I have to clarify your example, Larry; snarky liberalism is ideology, just as rabid conservatism is; the rejection of either set of ideas shouldn't be compared to racism, and in fact I think that those who endured the civil rights struggle would be offended by so facile a comparison.

For another, it means that I have to clarify my original comment; I don't hate snarky liberalism. I do, however, find some points within a liberal philosophy to be a positive promotion of evil, as in the abortion debate, for example; there is, to me, no way to respond to so great an evil except to hate it, and to work to bring it to an end.

Similarly, in rabid conservatism few things are actually hateful, but promotion of the idea that methods of torture should be kept on the table for our agents to use if it seems necessary is a hateful notion, one that should be resisted at all costs.

And so, to return to Rod's individual point: is it more honest to say we hate Islam, or Muslims, or both, or neither?

Muslims, as individual people, can't be hated according to my philosophy. I don't see Islam itself as evil, though there are elements within it that may lead to the practice of such evils as oppression and terrorism. I condemn the oppression and the terrorism; these ought to be hated. If I had been alive when Islam first arose I might have hated it as a heresy; but after so many centuries to condemn it as such is to judge the children for the sins of their long-ago ancestors, which is unjust, and which would be rather selective of me considering the various Christian heresies which have arisen in the intervening years, and which are never considered worthy of hatred.

If we must hate anything, let it be only that which is evil. Certainly it ought not to be our fellow humans.

Yes, very well said, Erin.

Larry: It's OK to hate me. Your contempt does not grieve me so much.

Oh, honestly, Larry, this kind of thing is so juvenile, and unworthy of you. Why must you assume that people who disagree with you are out to personally denigrate or insult you, Larry Parker?

About whether the god worshiped by Muslims is the same as the god worshiped by Christians and Jews, I don't believe so, though obviously there is a historical development there.

I hate Islam. There are a lot of Muslims who continue with their faith for family reasons, or intellectual laziness, or cowardice, and I don't hate them. There are some Muslims who try to make their religion more compatible with human decencies, and I don't hate them, however wrongheaded I think they are. However, yes, I hate Muslims who have thought through their religion and fully accepted the teachings of the Koran and the Sunna. The Dar-al-Harb has to learn to understand less and hate more.

"But while it may be a Biblical injunction to "love the sinner, hate the sin," the principle is almost never extended group-wide in real life. Let's get real. Most people who are anti-gay don't just hate buggery -- they hate the people marching in parades in Greenwich Village and the Castro, too. (Even if they would say they personally like the two guys who live down the street from them.)"

Mr. Parker,

Interesting point, though I would say "...they hate THAT people march in parades..."

Three things come to mind:

1) Any individual, of whom it is always wicked to hate.
2) Any sin of any individual, of which it is always wicked to endorse.
3) Any group defined by a mutual endorsment of a given sin, which falls somewhere between 1 & 2 above.

Obviously, the "group" of #3 considers the object of its endorsement to be a good, but that's not germain to a consideration of what its oppenents find as wother of contempt.

Personally, I find group generalizations benign until one doesn't allow the INDIVIDUAL to be defined as an individual and not by the group.

I can hate Gay Pride parades if I think they promote evil behavior (which I do), but I am not at liberty to hate any person.

Or, as Chesterton put it...

"So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn’t. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man “damned”: but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable."

I heard something interesting on Sunday. There was a group of young people in our church that helped a man move. This man was not a member of the church, nor a Christian, and was somehow met by a church member. He was a transvestite.

The person coordinating the move said to the young people, "This man has a lot of peculiar things you may have to move, like a lot of women's clothing. You are not to say anything about that, and you are not to joke about it. Treat him as you would any human being created in the image of God. And we are there to show kindness to him, not to proselytize."

So they helped this man move his belongings into a new home. They treated him respectfully. And after it was over, the man turned to a wall and started weeping. He confided to one of the church members that this was the first time in his life that he had experienced such love and kindness.

I don't know what happened after that to this man. I do know that it is possible to hate a sin (i.e. transvestitism, and yes I do call that a sin), but love the sinner.

That's a beautiful story, Tulip, and a lesson to us all.

Prudence, I would say. You have every right to produce and show a film insulting Islam. But should you? Should you disrespect an entire population's deeply and emotionally held beliefs? It's just not the decent thing to do.

And from a more pragmatic stance, it is not a good idea to yell, "FIRE, FIRE!" In an overcrowded dark building. Someone will get hurt. It's also not a good idea to insult Islam, because last time someone did that lots of people got hurt - including an elderly Italian nun. This doesn't make the violent protesters innocent of wrongdoing, nor the governments who stoked the violence further.

But still, prudence.

"But wouldn't you (and Erin) admit it's the equivalent of Philippe Petit walking the tightrope 1,300 feet in the air between the late, lamented Twin Towers to really achieve the balance Scripture calls for?"

I think this question is directed at me and is in regard to hating the sin but not the sinner, so I'll respond accordingly...

I don't know who Pilippe Petit is (was?). In any event, life is hard, rationaly life can be harder still. Yet, some distinctions should be easy.

Death is an evil.
My grandmother is dead.
I hate death, but love my grandmother.

Sin is evil.
My son is a sinner (as are we all).
I hate sin, but love my son.
I'm a sinner too.
I still hate sin, but love myself (though I'm not really all that impressed with myself; let's not confuse the two).

Perhaps those who can't seperate sin from sinner are simply projecting that lack of distinction on those who can. That's probably why the whole idea of sin is so wicked to them.

"But I don't think Scripture says, "Hate sin, love sinners." It says, "Hate THE sin, love THE sinner."

And that makes an enormous difference."

Actually, I don't think the phrase appears in Scripture at all, though I certainly could have missed it. What translation? Book/Chapter/Verse?

I always thought that the phrase came from Gandhi, but was simply seen as in accordance with Scripture.

Actually, it is possible that we should hate anything at all, even sin, but that's another discussion altogether.

In any event, if I hate THE sin, but love THE sinner on two or more occasions, does it not then become hate sin/love sinners?

I mean, I do see a grammatical difference in the two phrases, but I don't see an ontological difference, enormous or otherwise.

Hating Islam has long been a European tradition both from insecurity and the historical crusades. What we are seeing today has happened in the past. However, the interesting thing is that these incidents are clearly bringing out the historical hyprocacy of the European nations out in the front in their claim that they are founded on liberty and equality. The liberty and equality only applies if you are of the same religion, colour or culture. Europeans have historically been less tolerant of differences. Spanish Muslims, Italian Muslims and many more wer expelled and or forcibly converted during the inquisition. Nevertheless the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian Muslims and Bulgar Muslims have survived - ironically the Albanian Muslims descend from the one of the oldest European tribes; whereas the Hungarian, Bulgars and Slavic moved into Europe from North and Central Asia. In my opinion Muslims have been more tolerant of differences. Today you will still find indeginous Christian minorities in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq. However, this cannot be said of the Muslim population that once existed in present day Portugual, Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Sicily. Look at the venom of the Serbian nationalist against the Albanians. Would this be the same if the Albanians were Orthodox Christians like the Macedonians!! Facts speak for themselves.

well im a muslim and im not terrorists.. u think islam is a bullshit religion ?? it is not .. u shud read about it .. just becuse we dont drink & eat pork it doesnt mean that we are terrorists.. everything that got wrote in quraan is true .. why we shuldnt drink and eat pork its becuz not healthy .. well dont judge muslims.. i belive in God and i belive in all the relgions cus they all meantiond in the quraan so stop saying bad things about our religion ,, we never talked bad about ur religion cus we love jesus and we belive in what happend million years ago ..
peace
shaima