[Pants-of-dog]

The article that you are quoting was written by Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard.

Lars Hedegaard founded the International Free Press Society.

The International Free Press Society has Geert Wilders on its board of advisors. I find it odd that even though the stated purpose of IFPS "is to defend freedom of expression wherever and by whomever it is threatened", they also have an advisor who has called for banning a book.

It also points out that the author of the article you are quoting is biased against Muslims.

[Dystopian Darkness]

Guilty by association. Refute the claim or give up.

[Pants-of-dog]

Guilty by association. Refute the claim or give up.

I do not need to refute a claim because if you read carefully, you will note that the writers never actually claim that Muslims are the cause. They only point out that it is a possibility.

I cannot refute the claim that it is a possibility, but I can point out that the authors themselves do not support the claim that Muslims are the problem.

[Dystopian Darkness]

I cannot empirically prove that Islam causes rape because that would require interviewing and gathering census on all of Sweden's prison population (and also rapists who got away without being prosecuted) and that constitutes an impossibility.

It is however possible to look at the data that shows an increase in immigration and in rape numbers and to conclude that at least Islamic immigration is one of the causes (I never said it was the only one) and if you have read the Quran like me you'd know treating women worse than dogs is not frowned upon

It's curious that you are here defending tolerance, social justice and respect, so presumably you are pro-women's rights and emancipation - Yet you also defend a religion that discriminates openly against the female population

[Pants-of-dog]

I fear that you are making two mistakes: one is confusing correlation with causation. You are assuming that since there are more reported rapes at the same time as the increase in immigration, then the increase in immigration must cause more rapes. But you could use the same logic and say that the increase in rapes led to the increase in immigration, and we know that is not true. So we know that your logic can lead to untrue conclusions.

The second mistake you are making is assume that your particular interpretation of the Quran is the one that most (or many) Muslims believe. While I am certain that some do, I am equally certain that not all of them do.

EDIT: I am not defending Islam. I am attacking a position that I feel is anti-egalitarian: you seem to be arguing that we should treat Muslims with less respect than we treat others because of their religion. It is that position that I am attacking. I would do the same if they were Friends or Scientologists or Jainists.

[Lightman]

See, the Scientology example demonstrates why the "all religions deserve respect" idea is off. I am actively suspicious of Scientologists. They belong to a highly manipulative church that has a recent and clear history of actively infiltrating governments and other organizations. There are several cases in which so-called suppressive persons, I.e. critics of the cult, have been harassed, assaulted, and even murdered bu Scientologists. I don't think that they should face legal restrictions on their worship. But I would actively avoid associating with Scientologists as much as possible. The same goes for any other members of a repressive and murderous cult.

Edit: ignore the murder part, I can't find a reference online and might be misremembering something.

[Pants-of-dog]

What about people like the musician Beck or his wife?

These people simply grew up in Scientologist homes and are otherwise normal (or in their case, enjoyable artists).

We end up having to shelve our notions of the group when we look at these people as individuals. Even knowledge of how the group behaves differently on a statistical level cannot be the main determiner of how we deal with individuals from that group, simply because there are significant numbers of people who do not follow that trend.

[Lightman]

I'm sure that Beck is talented (there are a lot of Scientologists who are talented - Elizabeth Moss is one of my favorite actresses, and she's a Scientologist); that doesn't imply I should want to associate with Beck.

I am not saying that Beck is going to undertake an act of religious violence. I am saying that Scientology is a sufficiently destructive cult with a uniform doctrine (I.e., its destructiveness comes from its central institutional body, not in spite of it) that I would prefer not to associate with Scientologists.

I've met Scientologists who were pleasant people. But you can you tell from talking to them that the cult has fucked with their heads quite a bit.