Instigator / Pro
0
1500
rating
25
debates
42.0%
won
Topic
#3518

Islam does not condone terrorism

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Winner
0
1

After 1 vote and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Ehyeh
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
One day
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
1
1487
rating
31
debates
35.48%
won
Description

I believe that Islam takes no part in terrorism

-->
@rayhan16

What happened to your Jesus debate with oromagi? i cant see it anymore.

-->
@oromagi

I defined both terrorism and self defence and they have no correlation. Terrorism is unlawful acts of violence to terrorise people. And self defence is in simple terms fighting back from an attack. Which means that self defence is not unlawful which means it is not terrorism. There are many cases of self defence such as ww1 ams ww2 but no one calls that terrorism. An innocent being is one that hasn't committed anything wrong. Wrong means against the law.

-->
@oromagi

Thank you for giving us your thoughts. I agree with everything you said. Even on the parts where you said I made my arguments much weaker.

PRO begins with a big claim here- speaking on behalf of a whole religion as if 1.8 billion people all have a monolithic opinion on one subject and PRO can speak on behalf of those masses.

PRO offers a definition of ISLAM that does little to help his case- ISLAM is a religion like any other. If we agree that much terrorism has been committed in the name of many religions then ISLAM is more implicated than exculpated by PRO's definition here.

PRO argues that famous Muslim terrorist groups like ISIS are not Muslim because the Quran forbids it but fails to connect this claim to thesis. We need a major premise here that shows that the moment you do something forbidden by the Quran you are no longer Muslim. We are left with PRO claiming that groups like ISIS fail to meet PRO's personal definition of ISLAM so while they are still Muslims officially, they don't represent Islam very well to PRO's mind: a long distance from thesis. PRO is again submitting passages in the Quran as authoritative but this voter has not read the Quran and assumes that old book is just as full of contradiction as similar old books like the Iliad or the Bible. I certainly can't see how a 1400 year old book can give any authoritative info on how a group of people do something now.

PRO argues that some TERRORISM is committed by non-Muslims. But this is total non-sequitur.

Some adultery is committed by non-Americans but that does not suggest that Americans therefore do not condone adultery.

CON is smart to start with a definition of TERRORISM

CON shows that some Muslims use the Quran to justify some acts of TERRORISM and are still recognized as Muslims so PRO's first argument is quickly disproved with the same amount of authority as it was presented.

I think CON makes a mistake to engage much deeper in the Quran and its definition of Holy War. Have we established that the Quran is authoritative in this question? Have we decided that meeting the definition of Holy War wipes out any stain of terrorism? I think not and by engaging CON seems to be buying in on some of PRO's presumptions.

PRO argues that no self-defense is TERRORISM because no self-defense is unlawful " Is self defense unlawful in government law or Sharia law?" I don't know about Sharia law but self-defense is a very narrow standard in US law. Many claim self-defense but far fewer succeed under law. We do not learn PRO's standards for self-defense.

PRO attacks CONs examples with arguments from purity- no true Muslim can be an extremist but as far as I can tell, disagreed with or not, Bin Laden and Qutb are still considered Muslims posthumously. If PRO is the final authority on apostasy he has not declared as much

CON counters that self-defense, like TERRORISM is subject to interpretation. CON correctly calls PRO on his "no true Scotsmen" approach

I think CON loses some ground by calling the Quran timeless, which concedes that books relevance to modern context and worse, stating that its words can be cited without regard to context ( a silly argument that never applies to any written words). The honest application of context is always relevant to any attempt to achieve understanding

I don't agree with CON's claim that PRO's "no self-defense is TERRORISM" is a straw man but CON is right that the question is subjective...and also undefined by either side. CON correctly argues that innocence (one essential standard for self-defense) is undefined. CON's rapid-fire demands for more citation is pretty weak in the final round, knowing no response can come. Still, CON is not wrong

Neither side discussed BURDEN of PROOF so by default that burden falls on PRO's shoulders. Ultimately, PRO's argument suffers from making a gigantic claim that would be very difficult to prove in long books, much less 10K characters. PRO really needed to define terms narrowly and narrow the scope of his claim to have any hope of winning this kind of debate. For example, it would be much easier to argue that x is not consistent with the Quran or not consistent with the teachings of x scholar, etc. PRO is essentially presenting his opinion as representative of all ISLAM when we all know that ISLAM cover the whole range of human experience like all international religions. Likewise, PRO's argument of no true Muslim would believe x in response to examples of contemporary terrorists must fail. PRO has not established such authority and nor should PRO merely count on the Quran's presumed authority

CON effectively engaged (he did drop the very weak "non-Muslims also do terrorism" argument) PRO on the essential questions, who defines self-defense and therefore holy war? Who defines innocence? If Muslims can be terrorists, doesn't that mean that some of Islam must condone that terrorisms. PRO wants us to trust his interpretation of the Quran as the final authority but aren't given any reason to trust the Quran as inerrant or PRO's particular interpretation

-->
@whiteflame

It is ok if you dont, don't stress about it

-->
@rayhan16

I'll try, but given that it has less than 24 hours left, I can't promise anything.

-->
@whiteflame
@oromagi

could you vote for this please

-->
@3RU7AL

could you vote for this please?

-->
@Ehyeh

https://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=qtl

Just go to this website and then you can see. scroll down and read it all

-->
@rayhan16

You can say its changed, but if I google the word qatala and its descendants they are still considered interlinked in Arabic, if they weren't it would be changed to no longer be related, but it isn't. Give me ANY source saying qatala or its derivatives cant be used as a substitute for fighting to the death.

-->
@Ehyeh

There are so much other examples, but it is just the people saying it, not the way it is written in the book. People's language changes all the time however the book stays the same. Many people don't use the word O anymore yet it is written in the Quran. This is an example of language changing. Even modern Arabic is different to the Arabic of those times. A specific thing that is special about the Quran is it has never been changed. So linguistics and wording will always be there, doesn't adapt to people's language

-->
@rayhan16

People can say they're tired instead of bored and its obvious its just sometimes a nice way of saying they're disinterested in continuing speaking to you. I'm unsure if the word cute existed 400 years ago, but if its descended from a word like beautiful it has something in common with it even today.

-->
@Ehyeh

It is clearly double standards here. According to your logic, the word 'tired' doesn't necessarily meaning 'boring' but it can be used that way. No it can't, because the word tired has no correlation to boring but some people (in my country anyway) use tired as a word for boring. Your logic just depends on who uses this word. 500 years ago, the word cute will not mean sexually attractive, but now people have used it in this way

-->
@rayhan16

Using saari would of been a much better word to use, if you don't want to suggest killing. So unless that's demonstrated that the word didn't exist back then, its unlikely for you to look much better than I in the debate.

-->
@rayhan16

"The word fight does not necessarily mean to kill. "
Just like the word cute doesn't necessarily mean sexually attractive, but it can definitely be used that way.

-->
@Ehyeh

The word fight does not necessarily mean to kill. You have to look at it like this way. Jihad means to struggle or strive. There is lesser and greater Jihad. Lesser Jihad is struggling and striving as a community. This does not mean killing as a community. This means protecting your faith as a community by using self defence. Even when it says to 'kill all non-believers' it is simply not true. It just means those who violate the treaties, those who do not keep peace and aggregate violence, use violence against them, another thing in self defence

-->
@rayhan16

But that's not what I was arguing about. The word for fight in Arabic is derived from the word to kill in that language, which means its linguistically related. In English fight isn't related to the word kill in the same sense it is in Arabic. I'm not sure why you don't understand that. If I google words descended from beautiful it will bring up words such as "cute" or "pretty." if the word fairy, is descended from beautiful, it means that when the word fairy was invented people viewed fairies as beautiful beings. A word doesn't directly mean its roots, just like cute doesn't mean the same as hot, but they generally have similar uses and suggestions.

-->
@Ehyeh

A word doesn't have to mean its roots. The word vowel's roots is 'vocalis' and this means 'to sound' or 'voice
https://www.dictionary.com/e/vowels/

Does this mean the word vowel means 'to sound'? Of course not

The wrestle bit and saari bit has no correlation because its a synonym. Doesn't actively mean that word.

-->
@rayhan16

You didn't explain qatala and its roots away, all you said was the fact that saari couldn't be used instead because the word didn't exist at the time. You failed to provide a source for that. Based on the wording, it becomes about interpretation as the word clearly isn't clear cut, if anything it leans in the side of violence. If you can prove sarri didn't exist back then as a word, offer me the link in the comments and ill verify it, then the scales are tipped in your favour.

-->
@Ehyeh

I feel like I did refute it. I proved that every single quote that 'supports' terrorism doesn't actually and is all out of context and not understood.

-->
@rayhan16

People wont vote on it if they agree with me, as its a dodgy look. Overall the debate was rather inconclusive. I didn't prove Islam supports terrorism, and you couldn't refute it in the end either. Based on the debate title though I should of won, since you failed to prove your statement, which is what matters more. The burden of proof was on you.

Could someone please vote on this

-->
@Ehyeh

Best of luck too, don't go too hard on me, I am a beginner

-->
@RationalMadman
@rayhan16

Best of luck, sir! RationalMadman made an excellent point about the ambiguity of the description you provided. I want to be clear that I will only make comments on Quranic scripture. If you believe the hadiths are valid in this discussion, I may make use of teachings from them as well.

-->
@rayhan16

Okay

-->
@Novice_II

The Jesus argument, I set a 12 hour timer by mistake so I could not submit it in time, so I did a full forfeit. As for the other one, voting has not even started yet

-->
@RationalMadman

That is the literal meaning yes. But the meaning of Muslim is to submit. Islam is not taken by its literal meaning in my original debate topic, it means a religion

-->
@rayhan16

No. Islam means submission to Allah, not Muslim.

-->
@rayhan16

I have debated you twice and beaten you twice. Third time? That's so boring. Also your suggestion is irrelevant because I have not stated an opinion. Only facts. It is my opinion, however, that we ought to listen to facts. Maybe you disagree with that and in that case, we can run that debate

-->
@RationalMadman

Muslim means submission to Allah. Islam is a religion which yes you submit to the one who created you, but it is a religion like Christianity and Judaism. Why when you say 'Christianity does not promote terrorism', no one will question that, but only when it is Islam, the literal meaning gets questions. Islam is a religion, based on faith, books etc. That is the meaning of Islam, a religion. Take that of what you will, and if 'I will lose' then debate. But if you don't want to, then don't try to overcomplicate it. Just leave it if you don't want to

-->
@rayhan16

I will absolutely not accept the debate as it is currently worded with no definition of the scope of Islam in the description, this can be used against me in bad ways later with the current wording if I am Con.

-->
@rayhan16

'Islam' means submission to allah, through force if needed.

so if you mean the literal meaning of Islam, you will lose, I am unsure what you mean though.

-->
@RationalMadman

It is Islam, the religion. The religion as a whole

-->
@Novice_II

If you say it is a fact, then debate me. If you don't want to debate, then I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself

-->
@rayhan16

Its more of a fact then my opinion.

-->
@Novice_II

That is your opinion, but it isn't the truth unless you prove it

> "Islam does not condone terrorism"
It obviously does, however, I will let someone else have this debate.

the problem is that to be con on this topic, we need to define what Islam is as in is it the history and scripture or is it the mordern day average muslim