What is the solution to all this conflict? What is the way to the modern world?

[Pygoscelis]

There's a difference between murder and enforcement of the best way of life.

I suppose that is a matter of perspective and opinion. Murder after all is culpable homocide. Killing isn't always culpable (blameworthy) and when it is and when it isn't is up to us as society (or you would say God) to decide.

It comes down to "which judgement is the best to apply universally and without making it a hotchpotch of confusion"
and when we think about it, when we deeply consider the facts surrounding us and self-evident to everyone in the universe, we come to the conclusion that the one who makes the planets orbit and the sun to appear and the rain to fall and the thunder to strike, who created the laws for humans to develo, reproduce, sustain, and even the laws for bacteria to attack and decompose, to whom we get resurrected and judged in complete truth, is the best to submit to.

I don't see a need to "submit" to anybody. Not blindly anyway. I follow most laws because they make sense to me based on my sense of justice and empathy and social contract, and where they seem immoral to me, I will and do break them without flinching. As for God, the creator and sustainer of the universe etc, being the greatest to submit to, I suppose I would have to believe in such a being to agree with that. Since I don't, when you tell me God demands something, I see that as you saying a human demands something and puts that demand in the form of God demanding it. It is quite different when you see it that way.

We (mankind) are nearing the end of our term on planet earth and we still cannot explain whose fault adam's disobedience was without some confusion, some blame god, some blame iblis, some say iblis was only doing god's bidding, others lay the blame squarely on adam, others say he was meant to do it and so on, and i have never seen anyone with the ability to explain it without hitting a flaw in their reasoning, and no one has been able to explain it without getting stuck at a question that comes like a hardball.

I can explain it just fine with no contradiction.... It is fiction. lol Sorry. Yes, that was a bit of a cheeky answer. I do appreciate your explanation. God, if there is one, may be well beyond human understanding and may work in ways we could never comprehend. I was just wondering if Islam had a standard doctrinal answer to the question. I don't think Christianity or Judaism do either.

 

[Abz2000]

dude you're chatting on and on as you have in the past despite previous answers you've received and been unable to argue against. Not everybody has a sense of justice, living in a society or living in a ahip requies a just chain of command with the wisest, strongest (in terms of ability to enforce) most knowledgeable and just being at the top, the human race is an interconnected society. what you've earlier admitted to as being anarchy doesn't work.

i have proved that God exists, the kuffar have spent over a decade blaming God for the crimes they themselves have comitted, and have been using Muslims as hostages and sacrificial lambs/scapegoats, the kuffar are stuck in a false matrix, the kuffar cannot defend their position, you'll either repent or you'll deeply regret your rejection of God's authority soon anyway - but hey we wouldn't be having this conversation in such a format if you didn't believe that God exists, the intellect tells me that.

 

[Pygoscelis]

you'll either repent or you'll deeply regret your rejection of God's authority soon anyway - but hey we wouldn't be having this conversation in such a format if you didn't believe that God exists, the intellect tells me that.

So you think me a liar. How quaint. You think I know your "Truth" to be real and that I will and should be punished for not obeying what you tell yourself I know I must. At least you keep this punishment to the afterlife, and by Allah, and don't seek to carry it out yourself. Do you think this only of myself, or do you think this of all atheists? Do you think this of all non-muslims? If you do, I'm afraid that may lead you to a sort of zealotry.

This sort of zealotry, be it religious or nationalist or otherwise, can lead to the problem stated in my initial post above. People figure that their "truth" is so obvious that everybody must know it and that anybody who says they believe otherwise is lying, and they see themselves as the instruments of their God's will. If we decide that people are lying and disobedient and evil, we enable ourselves to withdraw empathy from them. "Evil" is what we call people we want to feel good about hating. This allows the phenomenon of righteous "justice", which is really righteous hatred, which absent the foregoing would be a contradiction in terms.

Some of these people take it further, and see themselves as instruments of their God's will, and seek to carry out the "punishment" of the infidel, kafir, or whatever they call those people who don't believe what they do. Some of them take it pretty far. And some of them don't restrict it to non-believers, and get equally upset at those who claim to be in the same belief system but are not "true" believers. They "pretend" to have the wrong interpretation or the wrong prophet or the wrong this or that, and "willfully" stand against the "one true" God. In some cases this can even be over some doctrinal issues outsiders would find shockingly trivial (Christians have killed other Christians and branded them infidels for some very trivial reasons). You said that Muslims don't kill other Muslims, which is of course true, but "Muslims" have and do kill other "Muslims", just as "Christians" have and do kill other "Christians".

Atheists often fall into the same problem. Some of you may have experienced this from them if you have gone to anti-religious boards where people are hostile to religion (and often especially to Muslims). When you tell them you wear hajib for modesty, they may tell you that you are lying and that it is actually always suppression of women. When you tell them you believe in Allah, they may even tell you that you really don't, and just go along with it because your culture tells you to. You were born amongst Muslims, so you are one, etc. Decades ago I myself fell into this trap. I thought that nobody could ACTUALLY believe in Gods or spirits or other supernatural beings, because they were just so obviously made up. I judged believers as people going along with it just to get along with their culture, like children who pretend to believe in Santa Claus so the presents don't stop coming. That was my genuine take on it back then. Pretty insulting to be told you are lying or deluded, isn't it? It is no different when believers do the same to atheists and other believers with different beliefs, only these believers take it that one step further and attach it to an ultimate authority figure (God), and the above issues flow from there.

Thankfully for us all, and getting back to the OP, most Muslims (and most Christians and most patriots) today don't operate in such a way. Most are able to see even those who don't believe as they do as genuine and able to extend empathy to them. Most are able to control the "us vs them" that is natural to humanity (and other species on earth). When I wrote above that it is not in human nature to cooperate as a species, I did not mean that we are all totally incapable of it. I think most of us can get there, with a bit of an internal struggle (a "jihad" if you will) but unfortunately a few latch onto tribal conflict, and it only takes a few that are violent to spoil the lot.

 

[M.I.A.]

The Quran states that Muslims, Jews and Christians are people of the book.

The devision comes from the behaviour of those people representing at the time.

Claiming something does not give credibility to the claim... To be fair I'm not sure what does.

But we are all cogs in a machine.

The machine exists, even athiests admit..

With rudimentary understanding that gravity effects us..

And yet explanation has taken thousands of years.. Not through only one person either.

It's a universal truth and yet only scratches the very surface of understanding.. Or the depth and intricacies of the machine.

How would anyone have a correct concept of God?

Never mind that it was a time of writing on bone and leather.


You could as what any of this has to do with God?

And it would be way over my head to explain, if it were as simple as a man in a red costume and a fluffy hat..

Things would be way easier.

But at least athiests would have to stop arguing.

 

[LearnIslam]

Abz2000
don't say that you were not warned, and it would have been better had you repented and submitted to God in Islam

Don't speak in vain. The Arabs have hijacked the word of the Creator, and now you are threatening people online. This quote is what everyone needs to see - its the language of the bad leadership in the Muslim world, and why it is filled with murderers and people who oppress. Do you think you are working for the Creator in doing such threats? You, nor the Arabs, nor the Jews are special. The Romans hijacked the word of the Creator, as have the Arabs.

Presently, let me ask you what is the place of discussion, discourse and opinion in the perfect Islamic nation?

The problem Abz2000 is that everyone who follows Islam, or at least the leadership, sound very much like you. They are certain they have the truth, they ask others to repent, and threaten others with grave consequences. What truth have you seen?

You were born and you were told, you believed, you had faith, which is good, but then you believe you are better than others. Guess what? They have faith too, just not yours. Are you going to kill them now?

 

[LearnIslam]

And I can get started on 'kafirs' but I'll let that be. When you look at someone and see them not as a fellow human with emotions and experiences like your own, but something inferior, you turn to a conviction that you can do anything above them.

Abz2000, my advice is as an ally. But if the Islamic world continues with this train of thought, you will be feared and despised everywhere in the world. The Creator gave his message to the Arabs, and they turned it into this threatening scheme of submit or die until they developed factions amongst themselves and are killing each other. Is a kafir's hunger less or more than a Muslim's? Is a kafir's happiness less or more than a Muslim's? You clearly don't know the message of the Creator, just like the oppressive leadership in the M.East.

If those in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations truly knew the compassion of Allah (the Creator), His mercy, and lived a life in humility to realize it, they would have immediately offered refuge to the Syrians. But no, they won't because they are a different type of Muslim!

Abz2000, when you step outside next morning, feel in your heart that you are seeing humans, not Muslims and kafirs.

 

[M.I.A.]

And I can get started on 'kafirs' but I'll let that be. When you look at someone and see them not as a fellow human with emotions and experiences like your own, but something inferior, you turn to a conviction that you can do anything above them.

Abz2000, my advice is as an ally. But if the Islamic world continues with this train of thought, you will be feared and despised everywhere in the world. The Creator gave his message to the Arabs, and they turned it into this threatening scheme of submit or die until they developed factions amongst themselves and are killing each other. Is a kafir's hunger less or more than a Muslim's? Is a kafir's happiness less or more than a Muslim's? You clearly don't know the message of the Creator, just like the oppressive leadership in the M.East.

If those in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations truly knew the compassion of Allah (the Creator), His mercy, and lived a life in humility to realize it, they would have immediately offered refuge to the Syrians. But no, they won't because they are a different type of Muslim!

Abz2000, when you step outside next morning, feel in your heart that you are seeing humans, not Muslims and kafirs.

it takes all sorts of people to make the world turn. seriously, allah swt raises and lowers as he wills.


...probably.


i remember a hadith that goes something along the lines of whoever opens the doors to begging allah swt will open the doors to poverty for them.


...that is the mindset.


although i have heard anecdotal stories of angels appearing as beggers to men who had been granted things in the world.


i dont know what the correct answer is or who keeps score.

 

[ardianto]

Okay, lets we back on topic.

So my point of discussion in this thread : Is there more than one idea of what an ideal Islamic nation should be like? Does that nation have a freedom of expression? Of information? Which Islamic nation would be the best example to emulate for the modern world - one that lives by Islamic habits and at the same time can keep up with times?

Muslims as people consist of people from various race, ethnic, culture, and also various way of thinking. Of course it can cause different view about ideal Islamic nation. Hizbut Tahrir believe that Muslims should live in single state with single government that called khilafah. Ikhwanul Muslimin propose idea of brotherhood which Muslims live in various countries, but they cooperate each other.

And about freedom of expression, freedom of information, it's depend on the regime that rule this Islamic state. If the background of the regime is moderate Muslims, of course people have enough freedom to express their thought and getting information. If the background of regime is ultra-conservative, of course there are many restriction in freedom of expression.

 

[MuslimInshallah]

Assalaamu alaikum,

Personally, I believe that the problem in the so-called Islamic world is a lack of Islam. I don't mean this in the superficial sense that people need to have longer beards, or spend more time in empty prayer. I mean it in the inner sense. The sense that is talked about in the Qur'an. A Muslim, in the original sense of the word, is someone who struggles to do what is Pleasing to God. In order to do this, you need to reach out and try to understand God's Will. You have to have a heart and mind that want to understand. And such a heart empathizes, feels compassion, urges the person to goodness. And such a mind seeks ways to do what his or her heart urges.

But it seems to me that the word "Muslim" has, too often, become just another label, another way for people to divide themselves and give themselves an excuse to believe themselves superior. And God's Guidance is used as a tool for the unscrupulous to justify their wickedness.

When I look at too many people who define themselves as Muslim, I am saddened. God Calls towards kindness and justice and self-restraint. But all too often, this is not what I see. I see heartlessness and injustice and using scripture to justify excesses. And this is not at all Islam (the state of being in harmony with God's Will).

And this is why I feel that the problems that one sees in the "Islamic" world are a result of a lack of Islam.


May God, the Bringer of Judgement, Help us to remember that we are all accountable, before Him, for what we do.

 

[M.I.A.]

I have to say I do not agree.

Sometimes the hardest thing to say, never mind even do..

I do not want this.. For anyone.

At odds between submission and struggle.

Is that Islam? Enjoining good and forbidding evil I have no idea.

I hate talking.

Each to his own path I guess.


Ya-seen.

Anyway in the end, Allah swt knows best.

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

Assalaamualaikum,
Personally, I believe that the problem in the so-called Islamic world is a lack ofIslam. A Muslim, in the original sense of the word, is someone who struggles todo what is Pleasing to God.

The problem is(it seems to me) that every Mulsim that is cutting off some innocent personshead or blowing up an ancient monument belie3ves that they are ‘pleasing God’and they can quote verses of the Koran that support them. It seems to me that VERY few Muslims objectivelystudy Islam, they simply accept what they are taught and believe what they wantto believe. I am sure you are a goodperson and I am sure you believe, want to believe, that Islam is a religion ofpeace (towards all mankind) but is that because that is what you havediscovered through objective questioning study or because that’s what you havebeen taught and that’s what you want to believe.

 

[M.I.A.]

It's a bit narrow minded to think that the country you belong to has no skeletons in the closet.

Past and present.

I'm sure most if not all people on the forum can feel the same way.

The difference is that we live in a period of instability for the middle East.

The west may have moved on from hangings and imperialism but the term "developing countries" still exists.

I guess its nieve to think that progress is ever handing out flowers and putting up peace signs.

 

[Muhammad]

Greetings,

It's all very well making assumptions about Islam and Muslims but once we begin looking at facts, not assumptions, it will put things in perspective.

Below is a response to different posts.

I just felt, even before an unified Islamic nation, the existing Islamic nations should get along. I can't understand why all this discord exists in the M.East and Islamic world.

Islamic nations should certainly get along. But discord and corruption exists everywhere - the Middle East is neither the only place in the world with problems, nor are its problems exclusively from within those countries.

What the OP in the other thread outlined was important in one way - what is the Muslim world's contribution to science and technology in the modern world? How many scientists, engineers does it produce?

There are different ways to measure success; it isn't a crude head count of scientists and engineers. But Islam does not discourage anyone from science and technology. Centuries before the European Renaissance there were Muslim explorers, scientists, philosophers and physicians. During most of its history, Islamic civilization has been witness to a veritable celebration of knowledge. Every traditional Islamic city possessed public and private libraries and some cities like Cordoba and Baghdad boasted of libraries with over 400,000 books. The scholar has always been held in the highest esteem in Islamic society. The Islamic university system predates renowned schools such as The University of Oxford and Cambridge by more than three centuries.

Have a look at the following link, a website which contains more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles regarding the Golden Age of Muslim civilisation and contributions of Muslims to every field of intellectual discovery:
http://www.muslimheritage.com/

If you are looking for modern contributions, let's take a look at some of the scientific breakthroughs made by Muslims in 2014:
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[TD]Scientists co-led by the Egyptian geneticist Dr. Sherif El-Khamisy at the Center of Genomics (CG), Zewail City of Science and Technology (ZC) in Egypt, identified the first defect in a genetic pathway for individuals who suffer impaired neural function.[/TD]
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[TD]A team of researchers led by the Iranian computational biologist, medical geneticist and evolutionary geneticist Pardis Sabeti trained doctors from the Muslim countries Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone to use a sequencing and diagnostic technology to improve tracking Ebola virus's mutations.[/TD]
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[TD]Dr. Teepu Siddique, a Pakistani neurologist succeeded with his team in discovering one of the causes of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).[/TD]
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[TD]The Moroccan geneticist Dr. Ismahane Elouafi was named among the 20 Most Influential Women in Science in the Islamic World under the Shapers category, and the CEO-Middle East Magazine has listed her among the World’s 100 Most Powerful Arabophone Women in the Science category.[/TD]
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[TD]A Kashmiri molecular neurotherapist and stem cells professor has successfully discovered a brain cancer treatment. He achieved this via prompting stem cells to kill brain cancer.[/TD]
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[TD]Scientists in the Muslim country of Bashkortostan are developing a technology to make monoclonal antibodies specific to fight the Ebola virus.[/TD]
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[TD]The Muslim country of Bashkortostan succeeded in obtaining a license from the Swiss pharmaceutical company, Novartis, to start producing a cure for one of the types of Leukemia.[/TD]
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[TD]An Iranian mathematician became the first ever female winner of the celebrated Fields Medal. In a landmark hailed as "long overdue", Prof Maryam Mirzakhani was recognized for her work on complex geometry.[/TD]
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[TD]The Moroccan engineering scientist Rachid Yazami became a co-winner of 2014 Draper Prize by the US's National Academy of Engineering for pioneering and leading the groundwork for today’s lithium ion battery.[/TD]
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[TD]According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), four Muslim countries were ranked in the top 20 destinations allover the world for international students.[/TD]
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[TD]The European space probes Rosetta and Philae didn't only have Egyptian names to commemorate the Egyptian Civilization’s contributions to humanity, but four Egyptian scientists have also worked in this historic space mission.[/TD]
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From what I have read Islam is totally focussed on pleasing God so that God will provide a luxurious after-life. If your primary purpose in life is to prepare for death you are never going have a prosperous comfortable life. And making those Muslim administrators more Muslim might get some reward in heaven but will not make the country more prosperous, safer, more comfortable, better managed, better organised, more opportune.

Worship in Islam is a very broad concept; it isn't confined to the walls of a Mosque. Day-to-day tasks like earning a living, spending on one's family and gaining an education can all be actions pleasing to God when they are done with the right intention. Islam speaks at length on social welfare, spending on the poor, orphans, relatives, helping those in debt and so on.

When people become conscious of God and obedient to Him, this has a huge impact in the manner in which people interact with the law. A society that has members that are God-conscious will naturally be more law-abiding and more distant from crime. This is because a godless society is more prone to crime if its people believe they can escape being caught and charged for crime.

So we can see that adhering to Islam will certainly make a country 'prosperous, safer, more comfortable, better managed, better organised, more opportune.'

It will be difficult, probably impossible, for you to accept but Islam as a system of Governance doesn't work in the 21st century. In fact it wouldn't work in any century for the past 1000 years.

It seems you are not familiar with the hundreds of years during which societies flourished under Islamic Governance. Many non-Muslim historians and chroniclers attest to the way in which Muslims treated non-believing subjects of the Islamic empires.

The fact that Islam promotes practices that were practiced centuries ago does not necessarily mean that such practices are wrong or are no longer viable. In fact, in all societies one will find medieval practices, whether it be related to trade, like the use of currency, or penal code, like the concept of imprisonment, and so on.

In reality, such methods of argumentation are indicative of a fallacious method of debating; namely the use of the Argumentum ad Novitatem (appeal to novelty) argument.This is essentially when someone prematurely claims that an idea or proposal is correct or superior, exclusively because it is new and modern, and hence anything that is old is considered to be no longer viable. Investigation may prove these claims to be true for particular cases, but it is a fallacy to prematurely conclude this only from the general claim that all novelty is good. Although there may be correlations between novelty and positive traits in certain cases, like technology for example, we cannot make that an absolute reality for all matters in life, especially when dealing with values and traditions.

As Muslims we believe that certain laws and practices are more appropriate, not because they are older, but because they originate from the Divine and hence are the best for humanity whether we realise it or not.

Some Muslims believe that Islam is a religion and others beleive it is a system of governance

Islam is a comprehensive way of life, covering all aspects of life.

The problem is(it seems to me) that every Mulsim that is cutting off some innocent personshead or blowing up an ancient monument belie3ves that they are ‘pleasing God’and they can quote verses of the Koran that support them.

It's easy to blame religious ideology for the crimes we see in the world, but this actually ignores the real causative factors behind such problems. Increasing research is emerging to show that religious ideology is not an underlying driver of violence, rather a host of other factors play a far more significant role such as political grievances, state violence and a climate of alienation and suspicion. A shift occurring in the mindset of individuals is not due to any change in religious ideology but because of a transformed political environment, according to the admission of individuals themselves.

Part of the problem is also the unfortunate reality that when a Muslim commits a crime, their faith is highlighted and they are classed as terrorists. But when others commit similar or worse crimes, other explanations are sought and the news is somehow not as sensational. In North Carolina, US, on the 10[SUP]th[/SUP] of February 2015, three young Muslim students were shot by their white, atheist neighbour, Craig Stephen Hicks, in the head. This event struggled to even make it to the headlines. Dr Sarandev Bhambra, 25, was attacked with a machete by Zack Davies at a Tesco in Mold, Flintshire, in January. By his own admission Davies was a man that harboured a real hatred for non-whites. He had a history of violence and always carried a knife. After the guilty verdict was delivered in June, Dr Bhambra's brother, Dr Tarlochan Singh Bhambra, said he was "in no doubt" the case would have been reported as an "act of terror" had the "racial disposition of this case been reversed".

With round the clock propaganda against Muslims, and disproportionate, negative coverage aired by the likes of Fox News, whose “experts” lie to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria, or even British journalists such as Cathy Newmam, who also lied to perhaps move up the lucrative Islamophobia-industry, the media machine is complicit in the deaths of these Muslims, by creating an atmosphere where Muslims and Islam are perpetually architected as the enemy. Media outlets like Fox News, the Spectator, Daily Fail and other right-wing/neocon papers are complicit in the deaths of Nahid Almanea, who was beaten and stabbed to death in Britain; they are complicit in the death of Mohammed Saleem, an old man returning from prayers who was also stabbed to death; they are complicit in the tearing off of hijabs and niqabs from heads of Muslim women in the streets of Europe; they are complicit in fostering the hatred which is requisite in creating the primordial atmosphere of Nazi Germany. As long as this complicity continues, there will be more fatal attacks against Muslims.

It seems to me that VERY few Muslims objectivelystudy Islam, they simply accept what they are taught and believe what they wantto believe.

And an even fewer number, it seems, of non-Muslims who study Islam; they simply accept what they are taught and want to believe.

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

It seems you are not familiar with the hundreds of years during which societies flourished under Islamic Governance.

I am aware that at some time in the past (100yrs of years past) that Islamic communities did contribute towards a progressive society. I don't know why that was and why it regressed so that now we have a situation whereby EVERY Muslim country (without oil) is a failure?

 

[ardianto]

I am aware that at some time in the past (100yrs of years past) that Islamic communities did contribute towards a progressive society. I don't know why that was and why it regressed so that now we have a situation whereby EVERY Muslim country (without oil) is a failure?

Not every Muslim majority country is failed.

I live in Indonesia, a Muslim majority country. Indeed, in some matters like economy and technology Indonesia is still behind Europe, but actually it has good progress in last two decades. And it's happen after Indonesian people began to more religious. Mostly of people behind this progress are religious Muslims. If you visit Indonesia then you can easily find Muslim women with headscarves who hold important position in labs, research centers, financial institutions, etc.

Johnny, I think you overly generalize Muslims. You make image of global Muslims only based on few Muslims you have seen in your place.

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

Not every Muslim majority country is failed. Johnny, I think you overly generalize Muslims. You make image of global Muslims only based on few Muslims you have seen in your place.

It was a while back but I used to work in Indonesia and many other countries, in fact I was in Indonesia earlier this year. There are degrees / levels of failure and it may be that Indonesia is not the 'most' failed state but by any measure it is a failure. In my first hand experience, one feature that exists in all Muslim countries (including Indonesia) is corruption. Now you will say that is cultural and has nothing to do with Islam and someone else will say that Islam decrees the way an Islamic country is governed and that includes it's cultural values.

That brings me back to the reason I came onto this site - I want people any people including Muslims who come to live in my country to leave their cultural values, including religious cultural values behind them and adopt our cultural values because our cultural values bring success and yours brings failure. That's not simply my opinion it's a fact.

 

[sister herb]

So you basicly want that people - including Muslims - come to your country and reject their religion (as Islam is not only the religion, its a way of life and its a value of life). Then they will become as typical non-religious but very secular like the most of Europeans are at these days.

But why all this? Believing the God doesn´t make people losers. And in many times when immigrants come to countries like yours (or mine) don´t see "your cultural values" so positive that they really would like to follow them. Maybe they see and understand the real failures and emptiness what Europeans feel, maybe they can understand much better the unhappiness what "Europen values" brings to the people´s life.

Claiming that your cultural values bring success and all others brings failure is a typical way of the arrogant colonial culture to see the other world.

 

[sister herb]

JohnnyEnglish, your opinions remind me this image:

 

[ardianto]

It was a while back but I used to work in Indonesia and many other countries, in fact I was in Indonesia earlier this year. There are degrees / levels of failure and it may be that Indonesia is not the 'most' failed state but by any measure it is a failure. In my first hand experience, one feature that exists in all Muslim countries (including Indonesia) is corruption. Now you will say that is cultural and has nothing to do with Islam and someone else will say that Islam decrees the way an Islamic country is governed and that includes it's cultural values.

That brings me back to the reason I came onto this site - I want people any people including Muslims who come to live in my country to leave their cultural values, including religious cultural values behind them and adopt our cultural values because our cultural values bring success and yours brings failure. That's not simply my opinion it's a fact.

Few of corruptors in Indonesia are Christians. But Indonesian people do not blame Christianity for this because they know, like in other religions, including Islam, corruption is prohibited in Christianity too. If a Christian commits corruption, it's because he leave Christianity value. If a Muslim commits corruption, it's because he leave Islamic values. If every religious person holds religious values, then corruption would not exist.

Does culture encourage corruption?. My culture encourages people to be honest, and if someone honest, then he would not commit corruption. Cultures in other Muslim majority countries also encourage people to be honest too. Corruption is not caused by religion or culture, but caused by greed that can be happen to anyone from any religion, any culture. Yes, corruption habit is still strong in Indonesia. But in the last two decades govt began intense fight corruption. Many corruptors have been arrested. Religious leaders also heavily remind people to not commit corruption.

Okay, Johnny, I will show you two photos.

The photos above were not taken in India or China, but taken di Indonesia. Those Indians and Chinese still hold their cultural values and religious values, although they live in Indonesia. But Indonesia people, including Muslims do not mind with it. It's because we have principle "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika" which means "Unity in Diversity". Unity does not mean everyone must be same, but unity means respect each other difference.

Does Western values better than Islamic values and my culture values?. In some matters, yes. That's why my Islamic teacher ever told me to learn discipline and good working ethic from Western people. Many Muslims are 'open' for good values from anywhere, as long as not contradictive with Islamic values.

Like I have said in my previous post, Muslims in Indonesia make good progress in science and technology, although currently still behind non-Muslims in the West. And let me honest, one factor that motivate them was feeling of left-behind by non-Muslims. But should Muslims from Asia turn into Westerner to make progress?. No!. We take a lesson from Japanese who are very advanced but still live in their own values.

"Iptek and Imtaq". This is the principle of Muslims in my place to build progress. Build progress in "Ilmu Pengetahuan (science) and TEKnologi (technology", but still strongly hold "IMan (faith) and TAQwa (God-fearing)".

Can Muslims build good progress in science, technology, education, economy, but still hold Islamic values?.In Shaa Allah (God willing) we can. And this is what we want to reach although we know it's not easy.

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

So you basicly want that people - including Muslims - come to your country and reject their religion

No, I don't ask that anyone should reject their religious beliefs unless those religious beliefs contravene the laws of my country or promote cultural values that are at odds with the cultural values of my country e.g. failure to integrate.

Claiming that your cultural values bring success and all others brings failure is a typical way of the arrogant colonial culture to see the other world.

It may be arrogant but it's true.