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Ed Dawkins on Allahu Akhbar

Judging by later tweets, he says he was not, as you would assume, comparing the Winchester bells with the Muslim call to prayer (which he acknowledges can be beautiful) but with the shouts of suicide bombers.

Err...ok. Pretty clumsy comparison there Mr Dawkins, and really not helping. 'Bells sound better than something really terrible." What an insight.
 
Whenever Dawkins talks about things the Hitch specialised in it comes across as hopelessly and embarrassingly out of his depth. This is the issue with people who are highly educated in a particular field (science in his case), their egotism leads them to believe they must be highly knowledgable in whatever else catches their attention.
 
Worm said:
Judging by later tweets, he says he was not, as you would assume, comparing the Winchester bells with the Muslim call to prayer (which he acknowledges can be beautiful) but with the shouts of suicide bombers.

Err...ok. Pretty clumsy comparison there Mr Dawkins, and really not helping. 'Bells sound better than something really terrible." What an insight.
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Both religions these days have calls to prayer. One the muzzein, the other church bells. One of the two religions also commonly has a call to die violently.
 
I like to call it Idea Contagion Syndrome (ICS, pronounced "icks").

Someone has a few good ideas, for which they get praised. This leads them to believe al their ideas are good, by the principle of contagion (it must be good, I thought of it, and look at those other awesome ideas I had!).

Unfortunately, I believe reality is more like that old saw: "A genius doesn't have better ideas than anyone else, just a lot more ideas".

ETA: Case in point example of the principal: This post :D
 
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Hellbound said:
I like to call it Idea Contagion Syndrome (ICS, pronounced "icks").

Someone has a few good ideas, for which they get praised. This leads them to believe al their ideas are good, by the principal of contagion (it must be good, I thought of it, and look at those other awesome ideas I had!).

Unfortunately, I believe reality is more like that old saw: "A genius doesn't have better ideas than anyone else, just a lot more ideas".

ETA: Case in point example of the principal: This post :D
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Nail on the head.

In addition Dawkins doesn't strike me as a man with the most diverse of tastes. I can visualise his reaction when his radio gets stuck on a station specialising in Hip Hop, for example. "But it's just people shouting vulgarities Glenda!"
 
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Here's the Dawkins quote:

Richard Dawkins via Twitter said:
Listening to the lovely bells of Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing?
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Meh. I don't feel that strongly about the quite either way. Sort of an odd comparison, and not expressed very well.

I'm more of a fan of his science popularization than his work on atheism, as many other appear. But I don't see any big deal with this particular quote.
 
theprestige said:
One of the two religions also commonly has a call to die violently.
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... in western minds. Yelling "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) is the Arabic equivalent of yelling "God almighty!" or "Jesus Christ!". You might as well saying "Insh'allah" is a common term for denoting when and where a suicide bombing will occur, because I can guarantee you Arabic-speaking terrorists use it that way constantly.
 
theprestige said:
Thanks, but I'm pretty sure we already knew that the Muslim call to violent death takes the form of invoking the name of their god. I'm sure I did, anyway.
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It is literally one of the most generic interjections in the Arab language. Muslim terrorists employing common phrases used by all muslims does not make those phrases "calls to death" or terrorist language. How do you even justify any other conclusion?
 
TubbaBlubba said:
It is literally one of the most generic interjections in the Arab language. Muslim terrorists employing common phrases used by all muslims does not make those phrases "calls to death" or terrorist language. How do you even justify any other conclusion?
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If I was in a busy, western city recognised as a muslim terrorist target and heard the phrase "Allahu Akbar" being shouted loudly and stridently I'd assume the immediate area was under attack from extremists. I'd probably be correct.

Same city but hearing the strident and loud shout of "Jesus Christ" I'd assume someone was outraged and having an argument with some one else. On hearing "God Almighty" I'd think the same. I might consider that some proselytizing religious nut-job was heading my way as a secondary reason.
 
It's a call to death when it's uttered during a murder. I already knew it means other things in other contexts.

Anyway, Islamic terrorists don't need you white knighting their jargon.
 
theprestige said:
It's a call to death when it's uttered during a murder. I already knew it means other things in other contexts.

Anyway, Islamic terrorists don't need you white knighting their jargon.
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I'll assume you are not responding to me.
 
theprestige said:
It's a call to death when it's uttered during a murder. I already knew it means other things in other contexts.
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Anything uttered during a murder is a call to death pretty much by definition.

Anyway, Islamic terrorists don't need you white knighting their jargon.
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Nor do ordinary muslims need your guilt by association. Obsessing over a common phrase because it is also used by bad people is alienating to ordinary people, plain and simple.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Anything uttered during a murder is a call to death pretty much by definition.
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When you put it that way, my previous remarks start to make a lot more sense. Why didn't you just say so to begin with?

Nor do ordinary muslims need your guilt by association. Obsessing over a common phrase because it is also used by bad people is alienating to ordinary people, plain and simple.
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The religion has a catchphrase that is quite reasonably associated with extremist murder factions of that religion. That it's also a general-purpose catchphrase in the religion doesn't change this fact.

People running around murdering in the name of their god, and you're concerned that me remarking on their religious catchphrase is alienating to their co-religionists? I would hope that the entire existence of Islamic terrorists is extremely alienating to ordinary Muslims. I bet it's not, though.
 
theprestige said:
The religion has a catchphrase that is quite reasonably associated with extremist murder factions of that religion...
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... if those tiny extremist murder factions are literally all you know about. If not, it's a selective reading on its usage.

People running around murdering in the name of their god, and you're concerned that me remarking on their religious catchphrase is alienating to their co-religionists? I would hope that the entire existence of Islamic terrorists is extremely alienating to ordinary Muslims. I bet it's not, though.
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I don't think they see them as their "co-religionists", nor do I see what the problem of feeling alienated by extremist groups is, as opposed to alienation from a wealthy Western country. Let me explain to you some basics on Islamic extremist ideology: Most major extremist groups (e.g. ISIS, Al-Qaeda) justify their actions by appeal to Sayyeed Qutb's concept of Jahiliyya (Ignorance) as explained in his magnum opus "Milestones" - easily the single most influential text on Islamic extremism. Briefly, Qutb's idea, developed during his bitter imprisonment in the 50's and 60's, was that there were hardly any Muslims any more, they were "ignorant" of Islam, much like those before Muhammad. Therefore, a vanguard of ultra-Salafi Muslims would be justified in waging jihad on them, in order to restore Islam and bring about Qutb's utopian Sharia state.

If this sounds familiar, yes, it is pretty much an unabashed ripoff of Lenin's Vanguard Theory. Qutb received some education in the West; he was a pretty weird guy in many regards and felt extremely alienated by it, setting the stage for his development as a hyper-radical. Much of "Milestones" that deals with the theory of statesmanship reads like it was cribbed from his class notes on Enlightenment Thinkers 101, mixed up with a healthy dose of Marx, Lenin and Carl Schmitt, unified and flattened out by Qutb's appeal to his peculiarly conceived utopian Sharia state and Salafi lifestyle as the answer to any complexities.

So before you go around handing out guilt by association to Muslims, perhaps consider where the foundational motivations of Islamic extremist groups come from. Hint: Not much of it is from traditional Islamic texts.
 
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