Originally Posted by
cowmeat
Well I think I phrased it a bit poorly, I did not mean you have to believe everything in quran literally, but that you have to believe that quran is the word of god, otherwise you cant be a muslim (that being the literal definition of a muslim).
What I meant there was taking everything in the Qu'ran entirely literally, which you dont have to to be a Muslim
So I don't think you have to be a fundamentalist to be a muslim, that misunderstanding was due to my poor phrasing. But I still think even if you don't believe everything the quran says literally, if the word of your god says that homosexuality is bad, it will have a negative impact on your behaviour. For the same reason, homophobia is more noticeable in christian communities than in secular ones. What the quran says, even if you dont accept everything literally, will influence you since you still believe its divine.
Thats what I meant. Sorry for that poor phrasing.
This we can agree on, many religions are certainly oppressive towards people who are homosexual, I do think the religion is partly to blame - but at the same time there are Christians and people of other religions who are not against homosexuality, so even here I believe the person is more important than the religion and it is certainly true that some branches of every religion are more accepting of homosexuality than others. As a side note - being against gay marriage doesnt necessarily make you against homosexuality either.
But all this comes back to the point, that this way I can still generalize a concept of islam that is not contradictory. It's based on the belief that quran is divine and thus what the quran says is highly influental. Not to be mistaken with fundamentalism.
Ps. Fixed that literally part of the previous post, read it again.
This is all true, but, in the case in point of Omar Mateen - it is safe to say most Muslim teachings, particularly in Western society would not inspire this act which is why I think in cases like this it is important to give the branch of Islam he is acting from. Would you agree with this?
Another thing, its come through the news today from the nightclub that "Omar Mateen has been in the nightclub at least a dozen times before so it is almost certain that he had other motives for what he did".