Is This an Unrealistic COEXIST Sign?

Islamic violence is certainly a threat on a regional scale, where it’s mixed with politics. That causes lots of smaller wars, but it’s not a global threat and not one that’s directed against any particular religion. Radical Muslims have no issues with killing other Muslims either.

In Western society, Islam is more of a cultural issue. A tiny number of extremists aside, the problem is that large numbers refuse to culturally integrate and instead build a parallel society. Which wouldn’t be much of an issue at all if it weren’t so backwards, like their – sometimes violent – suppression of  young women who do take up western customs. Their relatively high unemployment rate also leads to some problems with drugs and general criminal activity. The “sharia law” stuff is really nonsense that completely detracts from the underlying problems

In the West it’s Christianity that’s the real threat to society. They don’t have to resort to violence. Christianity can use its sheer numbers and massive political powes to force the people they hate into submission by passing laws against them and creating a hostile culture

Btw, the Pacifism thing is a reference specifically to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Whoever that wrote thinks pacifist (whoever that is) favor the Palestinians over Israel. But of course that’s greatly simplifying the situation

More than pro-Christian this little thing is virulently anti-Muslim. Also saying that gays are “intolerant” of religions that by the admission of the makers of this sign have supressed them is like saying that the Mayans were “intolerant” of the Spanish Conquistadores who made it their business to enslave, conquor and forcibly convert them (to Christianity, incidentally). It’s not intolerance, it’s self-defense.

As for the anti-Muslim message I again find myself irritated by the ridiculous over-generalization of Islam by people who likely have little to no clue about the different schools of Islam and probably don’t even know that there are actually different kinds of Islam just as there are different kinds of Christianity.

It’s especially irritating because extremist Islam is most certainly a problem (though a vastly overblown problem that causes most of its damage through our overreactions) but by pretending it’s just one thing the message is delegitimized. This notion that Islam is somehow fundamentally different and totally unable to modernize is absurd. I’ve been to Turkey, where a self-identified Muslim girl nochalantly drank tea in the hotel lobby (she was the receptionist) in fully modern clothing (no scarf, of course) in the middle of Ramadan while explaining that she believes in God but didn’t really go for the whole fasting thing. Certainly she was ignoring vast swaths of the Koran while identifying as a believer…just like the crushing majority of American Jews. Judaism is no less brutal in its texts, yet most Jews (other than the über-crazy Orthodox) get by ignoring most of it. Islam hasn’t evolved that far in that a larger proportion of its people follow more strict interpretations, but there’s no reason to suppose they can’t and it certainly doesn’t help when you tell Muslims that Islam MUST mean death to the infidel. The Taliban are already saying that, they don’t need corroboration from our side.

I could not agree more with you, Hemant.

Oh you DON’T agree with this Islamophobic poster. Thank f*** for that.

Glad to see everyone in the comments so far has agreed that this poster is profoundly dodgy. There are too many racist pr**ks on the internet.

“I had no idea Pacifists hated Jews and loved Muslims. I had no idea Pacifism was even a religion. News to me” 

This is a thinly veiled jab at anyone who supports a balanced peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. That whole sentence is set up to victimize Jews by recounting the holocaust, then blaming pacifist (or those that support “peace”) for “supporting” the evil muslims by not wanting to destroy them apparently. Remember, as much as christians dislike non-christians they really hate the idea that Palestinians might treated as equals to Israelis.

This is just a nutjob poster.  That’s a subtly different set of interpretations of the symbols.  The “e” with the integrated male/female symbols is supposed to mean equality of sexes that I’ve seen.  Other versions have “e” with a tiny “=mc^2” in it to represent science.  It’s the first  that says the e means gay rights.  While I understand why the poster creator would think that, it just says they didn’t go to any effort to seek out existing interpretations before making up their own.

Christians do seem to conveniently forget that people of their faith have massacred jews often, and over the span of millennia.  It wasn’t until the Nazi Holocaust did they start to rethink their prejudice against Jews in meaningful numbers.  They killed accused Wiccans in Europe into the 18th century, easily.  The witch trials at Salem, MA was just a tiny taste of what went on in Europe.  They burned heretics at the stake.  Then there were the inquisitions.

Moar like tell it to the people who are threatened by dominionists.

That’s why I prefer this sticker:  http://www.fictionstickers.com/

Yes, that poster is blatantly anti-Islamic. But I’m not going to sit here and defend the peaceful Muslims from the hateful Christians. Or vice versa. I’m of the school of thought that moderate/liberal religious followers give safe harbor to fundamental whack job religious followers. They are all deluded. They are just different degrees of delusion.

I don’t want to coexist with religion. I want it to go away. I want its adherents to wake up and realize they don’t need it, would be better off without it, and are missing out on a lot of wonderful things in this world by burning effort, time, money, and brain cells on religion. 

Intentional or not, that was a wonderful example of what sophomore philosophy students can come up with.

I especially loved how it admits to there being a “magnitude of meanings” within the concept, then spends the rest of the time arguing against just a few, as if that was now the whole (A Straw Man basically). But the best part was how it argues to replace “tolerance” with the concept of “neutrality” which other than being contrary to all evidence does not exist, would in the meaning of this article, mean that all people would then hold the same beliefs. So it argued for the removal or tolerating our differences, by removing those differences altogether. What a load of garbage.

Also RE: The last statement: Why do the Christians think the original sticker is “directed against” them? I mean, isn’t the whole point of the sticker that everyone should COEXIST? It’s not directed “against” anyone!

“Why do the Christians think the original sticker is “directed against” them?”

Because here in the US if they are NOT getting a handjob from society, they think they are being raped.

Not to contradict your argument, but nobody killed Wiccans before the 1950’s, since there weren’t any before then. There were accused witches, but Wiccans and historical witches are two different animals, despite the fantasies of modern-day Wiccans.

I have always thought that for most good people, being kind and disinclination to do mass harm will in outweigh a dusty text. Perhaps I am naive.

Unfortunately there is a catch to this: You can compare Islam with Christianity to some extent – and the similarities are vast – but it’s not all the same. A big and dangerous difference beteween the two religions is is the way the bible and the Qur’an respectively are seen by the devout people. While not every Christian believes in the Bible being the excact word of God, Muslims generally do. Not doing so actualle makes them apostates. I think this is a great obstacle on the way towards Enlightenment. And I’m not sure if the Islamic world will ever able to reach something like Anlightenment.

Neutrality about homosexuality generally results in condoning discrimination and bullying. It might sound nice in theory, but in practice it means standing by and doing nothing while people get hurt.

There is a school district in Minnesota that has a so-called “neutrality policy”. It prohibits teachers from discussing homosexuality in class, which is also means that they can’t meaningfully address the bullying of LGTB students. That has let to a very hostile climate and to several suicides in recent years.

Sure, if you’re not a position of authority over other people, standing by usually doesn’t result in direct harm. Such when a teacher or boss witnesses bullying and doesn’t intervene. But standing up against such things still has a positive effect on society.

I traveled to Uganda last year as a student to work at some of the wildlife parks. I was invited back to some villages, and I saw both ‘rich’ houses made of concrete and poor houses made of mud, metal scraps and so on. The local school was a communal building that was in terrible condition even though they worked hard to keep it up. We were able to gift them with books, school supplies and chemistry sets, but it never felt like enough.

But what really, really got me was the local church or mosque buildings. They all had glass windows, nice benches, holy books and instruments. Some were even made of stone while children outside their walls went hungry, for food and education. 

Those religions didn’t give a fart about the community, and every gift came with religious strings.

I wouldn’t call the Sunni/Shiite division a “reformation”. That schism happened just after Mohammed’s death, so it’s not like their was a unified Islam for hundreds of years before philosophical differences tore them apart. Their division was more of a war of succession than a matter of religion, though their beliefs have divereged since.

If I were to compare anything to a “Reformation” I would say that the crucial (and tragic) moment came when the philosophical currents changed from one where progress and knowledge were exhalted as godly values to one where knowledge became a threat (right around our Dark Ages) to faith. Previous to that time the Islamic world was a haven of philosophers and scientists while the Christian world was a backwater of fundamentalism and persecution. Then the Christian world had its Enlightenment (which is to say we started the long slog of subverting the grip of religion) while Islam plunged into its Dark Ages, from which in many places it has yet to emerge.

The poster is silly, as is the idea of co-existing itself. 

As for the argument with the faiths…. One cannot pick and choose beliefs within a faith that cites back to a historic text. There is no such thing as extreme Islam or moderate Islam, only extreme or moderate Muslims. Same with Christianity or any other long-standing religion. The threat comes from people not realizing that. If you choose to align yourself with the faith, you align yourself with the followers of it at all levels, not just your chosen one. If you don’t want to be lumped together, you need to create a new religion. 

Hrm. I’m not a fan of that design, but I can see why you like it.

Personally, I prefer this one:

http://www.cafepress.com/+sticker_bumper,388400973

That’s not really an accurate portrayal of the historical forces involved, the characterisation of the Christian & Muslim worlds is more than imprecise, and the timeline’s a bit off. Though I agree that the Sunni/Shiite split is not really analogous to the Reformation–except in that it created a bunch of different denominations, some tied more to oral tradition than others.

Most of the comments have already given a pretty good summary of why this is garbage and why pretty much every religion on that list has a history of going at each other.  (I do think that the original does have a tiny valid point which is buried in its general stupidity- at this point in time, of the religions on the list, Islam is by far the one creating the most trouble for members of other religions or people who are not religious. But one should be clear that that’s very much not the historical trend.) 

But there’s really a more fundamental issue: If for almost any of these religions, if an interpretation is correct, then they really should be going at each other. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all consider the belief in multiple deities to be one of the worst things possible. Many forms of Christianity consider belief in Jesus as the son of God to be necessary to salvation. Frankly, the pair of the religions which seem to theologically be most compatible on the list are Islam and Judaism. But in practice those are the two which in the last sixty years have been the most at each others throats.  If people actually believe what they claim they believe in then they should be at each others throats. I suppose that for sake of general peace and stability of humanity, I should be happy that so many people are really that confuzzled about what they actually believe that they can repeatedly state beliefs which necessarily imply conflict and violence and then not act on them. 

A hypothetical person has an X that they believe tells him/her to do things, and a part of their belief in X is an afterlife where everything is so much better than this. To get there they have to do everything that X tells them to which includes incredibly violent acts of evil.

Replace X with Barney The Purple Dinosaur.

Now replace X with (insert deity’s name here).

Do you really want people like this in our society driving our buses, taking care of our children, making decisions about national defense, roaming our streets armed with guns, etc.

X is an invention of the human mind with no basis in fact/science/reality beyond what any particular person prefers to believe. What if a person’s preference changes to something evil?

Do you see how this could be a problem?

Religious people have no moral responsibility whatsoever.

That’s why they can say they value life one moment, and then call for the death of people who don’t accept their imaginary friend the next.

Religions are fundamentally death cults that portray life as a miserable thing to be endured, and after you die you will get sky pie in the sky pie kingdom, and sit next to the pie god.

It does not surprise me at all that religious people don’t care about conservation, saving endangered species, preserving the natural world, or really doing anything constructive/positive. In their eyes all is filth and evil if it doesn’t come from a book that a bunch of uneducated sand jockeys who thought the world was flat wrote over 2000 years ago.

I have never liked that sticker, it just supports ignoring problems instead of addressing and fixing them. This post inspired me to a non Christian propaganda version.

http://truth-saves.com/images/cant-coexist.jpg

“Cross Symbol/Christianity is who the sticker is directed against but poses no threat to the others.”

This is exactly the kind of attitude that prevents people from coexisting with each other:  the idea that any one group is flawless and that no amount of discrimination from that group against the others should be considered wrong.

“Not a threat”, my ass.

I agree most of what you posted.

However…. =)

I often get the remark when debating with people about the “Islamic World” that Islam is younger than Christianity by hundreds of years, and that they are currently in their dark ages (or Reformation). I agree. I also agree that it took us hundreds of years to fight ourselves out of those horrific bloody periods in our history.

What I do not agree with, however, is that Islam has to make the same mistakes that we have made. The reason is: We’ve done it; it’s been cataloged and recorded. All they have to do is pick up the books recounting all the hundreds of years of tyranny and mistakes which we made to avoid them.

That’s how you learn: you build up on the knowledge and mistakes made by others in the past. It isn’t as if they are starting from zero (where our culture started from when it all first began), so they don’t really have an excuse. They have vast points of reference on what to avoid, how to build secular societies and democracies, and why science matters and religion doesn’t.

They have books, they have access to the same libraries which we use, and they aren’t reading it – or at least not absorbing it. Saying that they have to start from scratch is like saying that everyone who goes to Medical School has to start from zero instead of reading up on all the gathered knowledge we have acquired through the mistakes and successes of other people in the past.

So, it’s not an argument which I buy and it isn’t an excuse.

Mainstream Judaism (especially Reform Jews) is easily the most agreeable of the Abrahamic faiths. I agree that they are the easiest to live with.

Let’s face it. We won’t get rid of religion any time soon. So we have to find some way to coexist. The more liberal sects of each faith belief in stupid things, but compared to their fundamentalist cousins, it’s possible to live with them without causing too much trouble

Patently absurd. They apply the “no true Scotsman” fallacy to Christians, but extend the violence of some Muslims to the entire religion. Either Christianity and Islam are both threats, or only extremists among Christians and Muslims are threats. But not Islam is a threat and Christianity is not. Same with pacifists, some pacifists support Palestine over Israel, therefore all pacifists support Islam over Judaism? That does not follow. GLBT are, as you said, often Christian, only some of them are actively hostile to religion, certainly not the whole equal rights movement. It’s typicall bumper sticker propaganda from the right (and make no mistake, it’s not just Christian, it’s a very right wing political kind of Christian) – bad logic, bad sense of humor, completely nonsensical on the face of it to anyone who gets what they’re saying, utterly insignificant to most people who don’t even hear the dog whistles in it, and seen as completely brilliant by those who agree with it.

 Are you fucking serious? We do NOT have to find some way to coexist. Damnit, my rights are what must survive, not the beliefs in fairy tale bullshit that those of faith have. NO, it is NOT possible to live with that buillshit without causing trouble. Apparently you are completely unaware of the shit stew we live in that is a DIRECT result of religion and a general tolerance for it. Pardon me, but your idea here is fucking idiotic. Lets all cooperate with bullshit ideas so we can get along. Where the fuck are your critical thinking skills? Do you enjoy the role of surrender monkey? Get this straight in your mind, ALL bullshit beliefs are DANGEROUS. Every capitulation you make to bullshit beliefs is a surrender of your rights to a life free of oppression. I’d wish you good luck but your kind are as dangerous to my life as those believers who which to oppress me. Fuck you.

Wow, what a jerk.