2. If a particular religious belief is dangerous to United States citizens, then it makes sense to use that religious belief as justification for preventing or controlling their entry into the United States.
3. People can make up whatever they want and call it a religion. In fact that is how many (all?) religions have been formed.
4. From 1, 2, and 3 it follows that it can in fact make sense to use a person's religious belief as justification for preventing or controlling their entry into the United States.
5. The Qu'ran can be legitimately interpreted to mean that Muslims should kill United States citizens: http://www.bloggersbase.com/politics-and-opinions/3-islam/
6. From 5, the Muslim religion is dangerous to United States citizens.
7. From 6 and 2 it follows that it makes sense for Muslim beliefs to be used as justification for preventing or controlling entry into the United States.
That being said, I still think the security guard was in the wrong. Clearly, our protagonist was not a problem, and the guard should have been able to discover that without stomping all over his rights. What's so hard about innocent until proven guilty? It ensures justice, even if the person turns out to be guilty.
This is controversial, because there are many Muslims who do not have ill intent toward United States citizens. I have good friends who are Muslim. Unfortunately, they have been raised with a religion that is potentially dangerous. Such is the problem with indoctrinating kids. I dropped the religion I was brought up with (Christianity) when I finally realized that it wasn't true and therefore shouldn't believe it. Perhaps Muslims need to do the same.
Most religions are innocuous enough that you can just let people believe what they want, and no harm done. But when leaving them to practice their religion might lead to them killing you, it's a little different.
2. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question (see point 4).
3. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question. (see point 4)
4. I'm willing to cede this and the previous 3 with regard to the parent. The question then becomes, do you believe in religious freedom enough to take the risk, or would you rather remove this threat and lose the religious freedom? The hypocrisy of subverting the constitution in order to protect the constitution is untenable. If you are truly concerned about this, it seems you should be explicitly campaigning for an amendment to the constitution to more strictly define the "acceptable" religions. If you're too ashamed to explicitly get behind that, it shouldn't be hidden by unwritten policies of arbitrary harassment of certain religions.
5. I'm embarrassed someone on Hacker News would except that video as "legitimate interpretation". The fundamental factual errors about the Qur'an and Islam would be comical if it wasn't juxtaposed by the sadness of meeting someone that actually believed that without independent research. (Nearly?) every factual statement made to support the opinions presented is factually incorrect:
(a) "The Qur'an is not full of symbolism or vague analogies-- implicitly stating that the New/Old Testament are "full" of symbolism and vague analogies and not meant to be taken literally- a self-serving, unsupportable implication.
(b) It is mostly direct commands-- false, by far, by any interpretation of "mostly"
(c) The Qur'an contains contradictory statements-- he seems to be confused about abrogated verses- actually, any statements of early Islam that were abrogated later were removed from the Qur'aan before its final compilation as a book.
(d) The Qur'an ITSELF provides a way to know what to with the "contradictions"-- ??? this simply does not exist
(e) "It's explained in the Qur'aan.... "-- Again, this does not exist. It's simply a bald-faced fabrication.
(f) The peaceful tolerant passages were "written" earlier in Muhammad's career-- again, false. The earlier passages did not deal with either peace or war, they dealt mostly with self-rectification. The later verses, after the establishment of a monolithic Islamic community with communal dealings with the outside world, added to that verses with guidance regarding both peace and war.
(g) "those passages have been abrogated..."-- see point c- if that were so, they would have been removed entirely during compilation
(h) "There is no picking and choosing" -- finally an accurate statement
That brings me to 2:54, and I'm too bored to continue answering nonsense that any 10 year old Muslim sunday schooler could have responded to.
6. See 5.
7. See 6 and 4.
Yeah, I just pulled a http://xkcd.com/386/ But you know what, it was cathartic after reading some of the embarrassing comments on this piece. I just picked the most ridiculous one and went to town.
I think that the way the Qu'ran words it, you could legitimately interpret it the way that that blog post did, and I think that you can legitimately interpret it to be peaceful. (Not that that makes the Qu'ran legitimate. I hate that religious books aren't perfectly unambiguous.)
Based on this I think that we should judge the individual, not the religion.
However, based on statistics, it has been members of this religion that perform terrorist attacks, so profiling makes sense. I just don't think it needs to be done in the manner described in this story, especially for U.S. citizens.
In my ideal society, we wouldn't even have airline security for U.S. citizens, regardless of religion. This means that every once in a while, a terrorist would slip through the cracks. But such is the price of freedom. Perhaps even the good guys on the plane would be armed and take out the bad guy before he could cause harm.
(b) Now addressing interpretation, you cannot legitimately interpret the Qur'aan either the way that video words it, nor "to be peaceful". Rather, as appropriate to its claim of being a complete life-guide, it will necessarily contain the laws, morals, and motivations of both war and peace.
(c) "Religious books aren't perfectly unambiguous"-- have you done an exhaustive survey of all "religious books" to be able to make such a bold, broad statement? It seems likely you're relying on very limited information regarding a few religious books and abstracting, without any possible justification, to all religious books. This seems likely to be more based on personal dogma than rational thought.
Freedom of religion is at the heart of the founding principles of the United States of America — I can't think of anything more central to the identity of this country. If you're going to speak against freedom of religion, then it would be a very short stretch to call that position "anti-American" — and any national defense policy considered with that pretext is already severely undermined.
Are they acting on it?
Do you have suicide bombers killing people in other countries in the name of Christianity? You pointed to one, single, crazy group that may or may not even be affiliated with religion.
It's funny how all the intelligent people here seem to play dumb when it comes to understanding why US customs agents may want question someone that could be a potential threat to the US.
If it were middle-age white guys that were killing people, I would hope custom agents would profile them as well. It's the intelligent thing to do.
"Freedom of religion is at the heart of the founding principles of the United States of America "
I find it hilarious that the lefties in the US are so against religion..unless it's Islam. I think it's probably because they are both on the side against the Unites States.
Would you like some more?
http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/hate.htm
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map (Click on any state)
Look at any of these groups and you'd be very, very hard-pressed to find one without an ideological claim to a Christian identity. These groups pose a very real threat, which is why the FBI tracks and monitors them. However, the existence of right-wing Christian hate groups does not indict all practitioners of Christianity world-wide.
As for the rest of your post, you've simply attempted to rebut a series of arguments that nobody actually made — I believe they call these "straw man" fallacies. E.g.: I never mentioned "profiling" — the issues are religious persecution and outright harassment by government officials, in a blatantly unconstitutional fashion.
>"Lefties are against religion." "Lefties are against the United States."
Really? Seriously? Why don't you read my posts again — this time carefully, and try once more.
When you say freedom of religion, you don't mean complete freedom. What if my religion states that I shouldn't pay taxes? Obviously this religion would not be tolerated.
That's why we have laws which define the boundaries and interactions between the freedoms of society's members. It's not useful or practical to define freedom in any other context (i.e., that in nature, outside of society), because there would be no conflicts in that case. Freedom can only really be discussed in terms of social relations.
But these are issues that U.S. courts have had quite a lot to say about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_the_Unit...
And the situation with Islam today certainly has historical precedents:
Anti-Catholicism was widespread in the 1920s; anti-Catholics, including the Ku Klux Klan, believed that Catholicism was incompatible with democracy and that parochial schools encouraged separatism and kept Catholics from becoming loyal Americans. The Catholics responded to such prejudices by repeatedly asserting their rights as American citizens and by arguing that they, not the nativists (anti-Catholics), were true patriots since they believed in the right to freedom of religion.
I agree, it was unreasonable of the security guard to do that. However, if the Muslim religion is violent when taken seriously, it can be valid to question whether someone is a believer in that violence.
What I should have done is left to question whether the Muslim religion is violent when taken seriously, because I'm not sure about that.
Do you agree with the if-then clause in my argument?