Muhammad's ball, or: what Islam has done to the French National Team

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Skybird

many Muslims indeed may reject parts of the Quran, or refuse it alltogether. But then they must ask themselves why they still insist of being labelled "muslim". Muslim is no independent cultural identity, nor is it an ethnicity. They claim to be muslim just because they have been born to a Muslim father? That makes no sense, that is mixing relgious ideology with ethnicity. Their skin colour and ethnciity is completely unaffected from whether they are muslim or christian or atheist or whatever.

It's nothing to do with ethnicity. I am an atheist yet I still recognise in myself the heavy influence of a Christian upbringing, particularly when it comes to ethics but also culturally. If I were in a foreign culture and someone asked me my religion, I would probably answer "Christian" for it defines/identifies me better than any other religious category; indeed in many ways the term suits me better than the term "atheist" since atheists are often assumed by theists to be either amoral or angry/bitter theists.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Many muslims-that-are-no-muslims may indeed support the Western understanding of terms like freedom, human rights, coexistence. But if they do so, they must check themselves for whether they are supporting quranic ideas and a thinking tradition that is opposing the former mentioned Western concepts - or not. If they support the Quranic view of things, then they cannot claim to support the western view of things at the same time, those constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of ours, because the Western culture and the Quran are incompatible and their concepts are antagonistic to each other, to put it mildly. If these people however indeed support the Western view, and reject the quranic dogma and thinking of things, then they are no longer Muslim. If then they are willing to integrate in our home countries, if they choose to come here, then I have little porblem with them. Actually, some of such people have been friends for me.

Islam is hardly unique in that regard. Why do you focus so much energy into attacking that one religion?