Islam is a religion of peace. (I am against)

Vote report: joeyscarpa101 // Mod Action: Removed
Votes: 6 points to Pro for arguments, sources, and conduct
RFD:

While I agree with the negative position "That Islam is not a religion of peace", the affirmative did a better job of structuring their arguments and providing sources.
Sharia Law was the best argument that the negative made (and if he had gotten further into the situation in Europe, he would have had the affirmative hard pressed to respond. Actions do speak louder than words).
The affirmative quoted the Quran which is the official teachings of Islam and provided fairly balanced interpretations without cherrypicking too much.
I would have liked to see a definition of the whole term "religion of peace". If either side had defined it, the debate could have taken a much different turn.
Excellent debate!

Reasons for removal: (1) conduct is not explained. In order to award conduct one side must have forfeited one or more rounds or were excessively rude. The voter must give examples of excessive rudeness, which they do not do; (2) sources are insufficient. To award sources you must compare the quality of sources between the two debaters and evaluate why one side had higher quality sources; (3) finally the argument point is insufficient. The voter does not survey the main arguments, analyze those arguments to determine who won each, or weigh the main arguments to determine a winner. In order to cast a sufficient ballot, the voter should do all three of these things.

I fully admit this was a very close debate. It was while giving the debate an extra read through that I identified the conduct issue as separate from arguments.

@RM

Why do you complain almost every time someone votes against you?

- if -

You need to learn how the fuck to reason. 100 points can be countered by 1 if the logic is correct and displayed well in words.

Thank you for your polite and gracious feedback.

Just to clarify: pros entire first round - probably at least 12,000 characters was dedicated to Koran and Hadith quotes. Aside from a handful of quotes - which I covered - I never at any point in my RFD, in any way, said that he used one verse that’s non violent to win. He used multiple quotes and examples to demonstrate this:

“Pro offers multiple reasonable Koran verses here to support the idea that the Koran teaches peace.”

Brainpower is required to vote. When you say that he can use one verse that's non-violent to win, you're a complete and utter hypocrite to not apply the same to Con under your own flawed BoP outlook.

If I take cons side on this point, then the religious teachings of the Koran are mostly irrelevant. While con attempted to justify this by saying the Koran can be interpreted multiple ways, he didn’t show it (as covered above).

If I take pros side then pros side could use the no true Scotsman fallacy throughout.

My judgement here is that if pros interpretation is not mainstream, or not sufficiently followed, it cannot be considered what “Islam” is, however it is up to con now to justify this. This is difficult to judge as the meaning was partially contested and not fully resolved as far as I can see.

IE: Islam is mostly defined by the teachings, but also it must consider the people who claim to follow it.

So.

2.) Islamic wars.

Con says that Islam started out as a brutal war like religion. Pro points out that wars for the purposes of defence and securing long term peace are okay (con agrees). Pro points out that the initial wars for Islam were defensive - and uses cons own source to show this.

Con asserts that Islam is a religion of war, but other than this initial claim, I see little other justification or detail here. Without specifics of the wars, how am I to judge whether they were violent aggressive wars.

The rest is very similar, outside of the Koran’s teachings, con primarily spent his time telling me how violent Islam is, but doing very little to actually justify it over the initial relatively simple claims.

As a result, arguments to pro.

Conduct was tied up to the last round. There were several references that I felt were close to the line. IMO cons final round crossed a line into being a rant with little in the way of advocacy. It was spiteful and angry for no useful or relevant reason, and outright disrespectful.

434 I agree with con that the Koran advocates wife beating, and that’s horrible - however in the context of this debate I don’t feel that is sufficient to proove that Islam is not a religion of peace - as I am interpreting that to be more concerning wider scale war and violence as has been discussed.

I side with pro on 168-174. The verse doesn’t clearly refer to violence and con doesn’t do enough to convince me of how this should be read how he claims.

There are several other examples of where con states the Koran provides justification for stoning for adultery, circumcision: I do not feel this matches the overarching definition of violence as I understand I from this debate, or a reasonable interpretation of it.

As a result of this, I feel that pro has shown that the Koran is on balance appears to advocate a non-aggressive (but not pacifist) approach. Con didn’t attack the Koran well enough to reject this.

So at this point the best I can say is that the Koran can be read to advocate “peace” of a form - or at least non-aggression.

2.) Who defines Islam.

So, one major contention. Is that con argues that the followers define what Islam is, and use the Koran to validate their position. Pro points out that Islam is based upon the teachings of the Koran.

Pro points out that if the teachings are peaceful then anyone who is not peaceful should not be considered a real Muslim. Pro even throws a challenge to con that even one non-peaceful verse would be enough to refute this.

I am challenged to resolve this dilemma, at this point:

Some background points:

A.) Burden of proof.

This is shared BoP. BoP is required for anyone who is arguing for a side that goes against the default position. The default position here imo is undecided.

I’m open to BoP arguments - but you have to convince me where the default position is, and that your opponents contention away from the default position and yours is not.

As a result, I will treat the BoP as shared here.

B.) definitions. Con didn’t offer any specific definitions of Islam, nor did he appear to object to the definition that pro offered covers the religion itself - rather than individuals that follow it.

C.) con also didn’t define what he means by Islam is a religion of Peace, I feel pros explanation is close to what I had in mind that “To prove this claim to be true, [pro has] to show that the religious doctrines of Islam promote peace rather than violence.”

Arguments:

The arguments presented clearly fall down into to broad categories here:

That the Koran teaches war and violence, and that followers of islam are violent.

1.) Koran verses:

Pro offers multiple reasonable Koran verses here to support the idea that the Koran teaches peace.

490 was contested, pro argued it was about political maneuvering, but when reviewing the wording presented before and after in 489/491 this doesn’t appear to be supported and pro points this out.

"What earlier votes? You are the first vote."

WisdomofAges, stvitus, and Alec. The ones you've received notifications about, we discussed, and you complained about their removal ("moderation and vote reports are poor."). But in case you are serious rather than pretending to be this deluded to make Muslims look bad, challenge me to a debate.

And the moderation and vote reports are poor.

"If you think the religion itself is not peaceful, next time have a debate excluding the religion."

No, I think the religion is peaceful which is why I said that the doctrines of the religion are peaceful. I clearly explained in my debate so and you failed to factor that in your RFD that Con did not respond to the long list of peaceful verses and hadiths like 2:256 and 8:61. I clearly gave an argument why the behaviour of the adherents does not matter. Here it is: " To prove this claim to be true, I have to show that the religious doctrines of Islam promote peace rather than violence. The proposition is not “Some Muslims are terrorists” nor “Some Muslims are evil” and so an appeal by either of us to individual cases will not suffice. I can grant that there are cases where certain Muslims misinterpret, disobey and go against the doctrines of their religions to commit acts of violence and hate. In this case, the religion and its doctrines would be peaceful despite the violent behaviour of certain individuals who falsely claim to be adhering to those doctrines." and I even repeated it elsewhere numerous times. You completely ignored this argument in your RFD. That argument refutes all of Con's case.

" then prove so by quoting your disagreements with the earlier votes."

What earlier votes? You are the first vote.

"for proving how many atrocities against humanity Islam caused in addition to being a comic book farce."

You clearly have a bias against Islam, dude.

Yeah, I do not think this site is it. This is descending into DDO with stupid RFDs like "I did not buy your argument", poor votes like Ragnar's and Bifolkal's and implicit bias against theism and Islam in particular.

"I already explained that the debate was about the doctrines of the religion not the behavior..."

If you think the religion itself is not peaceful, next time have a debate excluding the religion.

...

If your problem is the content of the vote as opposed it not not favoring you, then prove so by quoting your disagreements with the earlier votes. For starters, you are fine with winning for proving how many atrocities against humanity Islam caused in addition to being a comic book farce. I did not read such into your case, but that person whom you did not accuse of not reading the debate clearly found you won on those grounds.

>That Rat did not respond to things the way you wanted him do, to you means no response was made at all.

I did not say that either. I am saying that he objectively did not respond to the long list of peaceful verses and hadiths I gave.

>Why Islam would be treated to exist was addressed in the third paragraph of my vote.

No clue what this means. I already explained that the debate was about the doctrines of the religion not the behavior of Muslims and you failed to engage with my argument for it. "I did not buy it" is useless to me. It's not an actual objection to my argument; just a rejection.

> Attempts to move the goalpost to a wholly different resolution (one not of the religion of the Muslims), and the back and forth such

I did not move the goalposts, I was the first to provide any formal cited definition of peace or Islam.

>Your problem seems to not the content of the vote, but that it doesn't favor you.

No, I have problems with the content of your vote.

That Rat did not respond to things the way you wanted him do, to you means no response was made at all. I have proven this to be false, but still you insist on complaining.

Why Islam would be treated to exist was addressed in the third paragraph of my vote. Attempts to move the goalpost to a wholly different resolution (one not of the religion of the Muslims), and the back and forth such, are not something I cared to write at length about; and to expect such would be counter to "I did not ask you to repeat every single paragraph in th debate."

...

Your problem seems to not the content of the vote, but that it doesn't favor you. If this is false, you can easily prove so by quoting your disagreements with the earlier votes (hint: you made none). For example, when a vote in your favor read "ISLAM has a proven record of ATROCITIES against humanity....try doing the same with the Hare Krishna....not going to happen...the Koran is another Glorified Comic Book farce."

You have misunderstood my point.

Let's take an example, 4:90. I used that as a verse in my opening argument and Con failed to respond to my argument that 4:90 is a peaceful verse that supports the resolution. Rather Con made a quick mention of the verse when quoting 4:89, a verse he used to support his own case. In other words, Con did not respond to my argument but used the verse before it to make his own argument.

Another example is that Con used my analogy with the nazis (an analogy I made in the peace not pacifism section) to make his own (false) analogy of how some Muslim regimes behave like Nazis.

>Once more, that you want the debate to be judged with Islam not as a religion, is an argument inside the debate which I simply did not buy.

I made an argument for it that Con did not address. I really dont care what you buy. You are supposed to judge the debate based on the performance of the debaters and the objections that they made to each other's argument. You have to point out why the argument does not work and which of Con's objections that made my argument ineffective. You have completly failed to do so and "I dont buy your argument" is such a poor response. By that logic, I can go to a debate and just repeat "I did not buy their argument" for one side that was clearly the winner.

You have still failed toanswer the fact that Con did not revut any of the large list of hadiths and verses I gave to affirm the resolution in the opening round.

Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. For starters, you don't even know what a rebuttal is, as exemplified with "it was Con who used them to make his case after I mentioned them." When you make something part of your case, and the person rebuts it (even if they put greater importance on it), that is the literal definition of a rebuttal. For example, when you pulled a quote from one of Rat's sources which weakened it, that was not you making the original point but you rebutting it.

Once more, that you want the debate to be judged with Islam not as a religion, is an argument inside the debate which I simply did not buy. That you want something and don't always get it, is a normal part of life.

>If you wanted the debate to be about a hypothetical non-practiced religion, that limitation should have been agreed upon by you and your opponent prior to the start of the debate.

I did not say that nobody practiced Islam. I said that we will evaluate what the religion itself teaches rather than what some believers may allegedly do in the name of yhe religion. I gave an argument for that distinction.

>That you introduced each of these is easily proven with a simple CTRL+F,

You just contradicted yourself. First you said "the very definition of the word peace, Nazis, 4:90, peace and pacifism" were Con's points in rebuttal to my case of verses and hadiths that support the resolution; now you are saying that these were actually my points. Both claims are false. None of these were part of my case in affirming the resolution. I did bring up the peace / pacifism point but that was not part of my positive case for the resolution. That was in rebuttal to anticipated verses of violence and to clarify rather than argue on some verses. The other points were absolutely not central to my case and it was Con who used them to make his case after I mentioned them. For example, it was Con who first talked or mentioned 4:90 not as a rebuttal but as support for his positive case against the resolution; I mentioned it but Con did not *rebut it* rather he used the verse before it to support his own positive case.. I am talking about my actual case in the opening round like the comprehensive list of verses and hadiths that Con did not bother responding to.

Ragnar, you did not read the full debate before voting.

I got to say, I did not expect your R2 prediction to hold so strongly: "If I then would prove that Sharia law regimes and the followers of Islam are non-peaceful, he either agrees with me and says it's 'good and justified non-peace like fighting Nazis' or will flip it a third way and say 'neither the followers nor the written word are the real Islam, real Islam is something else that you can't touch or attack or call non-peaceful."

"I made a clear distinction between muslims and Islam several times." To repeat myself: Your case was dependent upon Islam not existing as a practiced religion. I did not buy this argument. In fact your own definition (unless you think Muslims are fictional) of it implies it does exist: "the religious faith of Muslims." If you wanted the debate to be about a hypothetical non-practiced religion, that limitation should have been agreed upon by you and your opponent prior to the start of the debate.

"The first 3 were part of Con's positive case" ... That you introduced each of these is easily proven with a simple CTRL+F, disproving your own claim "Con had no rebuttal to any of my points." I really should not know the content of your debate better than you.

Your evidence someone did not read the debate is them making dozens of references to it, to include penalizing conduct for BS in the final round... Compared to votes that you stated no disagreement with, this becomes a very fine example of pure absurdity.

Thanks for the vote and feedback.

>You want the debate on "the religious faith of Muslims" to be judged ignoring the existence of actual Muslims.

I made a clear distinction between muslims and Islam several times. Yes, the existence of bad muslims is not enough to negate the resolution. I thought I made that clear in my case many times.

>the very definition of the word peace, Nazis, 4:90, peace and pacifism

The first 3 were part of Con's positive case; not part of his rebuttal to my case. That last one was not even Con's point at all. That was my point. Did you even read the full debate?

I highly doubt Ragnar read the debate, I think his vote should be removed.

Do you have any idea how nonsensical you are being? You want the debate on "the religious faith of Muslims" to be judged ignoring the existence of actual Muslims. Your opponent's final paragraph one round is discussing BoP, and you begin the next round complaining about how he did not address BoP. You're even going so far as to insult your own case, claiming that you catching a weak piece of his evidence did not happen because a vote made mention of it.

"Con had no rebuttal to any of my points" ... As seen in my vote (unless you think you did not introduce any of these to the debate), the very definition of the word peace, Nazis, 4:90, peace and pacifism, etc.

Given that you are disagreeing with easily verifiable facts of your own debate, I see little point in engaging with you further on this.

I did not ask you to repeat every single paragraph in th debate. I asked you to factor in my case which went uncontested. Con had no rebuttal to any of my points and you did not feel the need to mention that; that's clearly absurd to not evaluate my case when voting on my debate.

>then my vote certainly did not include the words "Moe caught a pretty damning line in one of Rat's sources" or references to you both bringing up the historical evidence of the Nazis, etc.

Neither of those were used (even by Con) as arguments against the resolution. One of them was even an analogy.

>Your case was dependent upon Islam not existing as a practiced religion. I did not buy this argument.

I did not even make such an argument. Where did I say that Islam is not a practiced religion?

>. In fact your own definition (unless you think Muslims are fictional) of it implies it does exist: "the religious faith of Muslims."

Sure the entity in question of being peaceful was Islam (the religious faith and its doctrines) not muslims (the people who practice the faith.

I think the above misunderstandings are enough to show that your vote is poor. I hope one of the mods notices this and deletes your vote.

It is not my job to repeat every single paragraph from the debate.

I do congratulate you on the very nice strawperson while complaining about a strawperson. If the only piece of Rat's evidence mentioned was the 4:34, then my vote certainly did not include the words "Moe caught a pretty damning line in one of Rat's sources" or references to you both bringing up the historical evidence of the Nazis, etc.

Your case was dependent upon Islam not existing as a practiced religion. I did not buy this argument. In fact your own definition (unless you think Muslims are fictional) of it implies it does exist: "the religious faith of Muslims." If you wanted the debate to be about a hypothetical non-practiced religion, that limitation should have been agreed upon by you and your opponent prior to the start of the debate.

You have completely failed to take into account that I made a substantial case from the sources of Islam i defence of the resolution that Con did not even engage. The reason you voted for Con namely "It goes back to points such as "like ISIS or justify war with Israel" (which Rat really should have expanded upon more directly. Same with the single mention of the Ottoman Empire). If Sharia law countries (experts at obeying the Koran) are secretly "false Muslims," then true Islam exists no more than true communism, making the resolution false." completely misunderstands the resolution. I have pointed out multiple times that the resolution is talking about the teachings of the religion of Islam, not the adherents.

This is the only acknowledgement of any evidence brought by Con "What 4:34's opinion of women, was certainly not peaceful (meet mere arrogance with violence...)." and I gave a rebuttal to that that Con ignored.

You clearly did not engage my argument and completely strawmanned me on occasion. I thought you would be a competent evaluattor but apprantely not.

So naive you are, and even when a victim of the guy himself. He is telling me somethign with that post. It is why I haven't voted on your debate vs him yet.

Yeah, he said he feels like this debate could use a vote.

Yeah you ask magicaintreal LOL

This could use a vote.

Vote reported: WisdomofAges
Mod: Removed
RFD (full 7 points to pro): ISLAM has a proven record of ATROCITIES against humanity....try doing the same with the Hare Krishna....not going to happen...the Koran is another
Glorified Comic Book farce used as a TOOL for assimilation and VIOLENCE towards all that do not accept its idiocy on how to think and exist...
The instigator points out the flaws within this fabricated "GOD" spun from the JEW Moses playbook.....absurd....that anyone falls for this garbage...
so childish and petty....what one would expect from another wandering tribal lunatic in the Middle East desert meets GOD hoax...
Reason for removal: The voter fails to survey the main arguments, conduct, grammar, and appears to vote for the wrong side.

I'll be voting on this. Right now I will say plainly that I doubt any point other than arguments is warranted.

Vote Report: stvitus
Mod decision: Removed
RFD: Full 7 points to pro (see below)
Reason for mod decision: There is a lot wrong with this vote. Frist and foremost the grammar point is insufficiently explained. To award s/g one the debate arguments must be so bad that the readability is compromised. Second the conduct point is insufficiently explained. Third the arguments are insufficent. The voter fails to survey the main arguments by ignoring some of the key points while adding things that were not said in the debate.

Moeology is the clear winner here, and I look forward to hearing his perspective in future debates. Pro [RationalMadman] confused the debate by stubbornly insisting to refer to Con as Pro (but nonetheless did not succeed in tricking me into voting for him rather than Moeology); ignored the historical context of the verses he cited; cynically and antagonistically anticipated Con’s responses; focused on extremist terrorist groups and political conflict rather than the Qur’an as read by practicing Muslims around the world, including Con; commenced his argument by making unsubstantiated claims about Islam (NO sources); disregarded Con’s final distinctions in Round 1; misconstrued (possibly intentionally) Con’s reference to World War II; entered debate with a blatant prejudice against adherents of any faith, making an “appeal to authority” to pop philosopher Christopher Hitchens without establishing the truth value of “Hitchen’s razor,” among other fallacies pointed out by Con; entered debate with preconceptions not grounded in the religious texts of the faith and a total absence of knowledge about the body of texts which are relevant to Islamic practice and law and the different roles of each text; made several unsubstantiated generalizations, such as “Sharia Law is Fascism in every sense,” despite his obvious equation of Sharia law with outlier cases which are often disputed on the basis of differing Hadith; made broad historical claims without any sources whatsoever; failed to engage with Con’s arguments; held all practicing Muslims responsible for the crimes of a few tyrannical regimes and extremist individuals; etc. I could go on, but RationalMadman's tack here was all overwrought rhetoric with zero substance. Con was more prepared, more articulate, showed greater integrity in both engaging with Pro’s arguments and citing sources, and did not resort to rhetoric, polemics, or controversy in an attempt to “win.” As English is Con’s second language, his command of it i

Please vote mod this votebomber ty

Bump

I feel like this could use a vote.

Vote reported: Alec
Mod decision: Removed
RFD:

This is not a grudge vote.
Con didn't fulfill his BoP that well. Pro stated that Islam was peaceful. He provided some Quran quotes and rebuttaled some common counterexamples that he thought at the time Con would provide. There were many other uncited Quran verses that Con could have used that he did not directly use.
Sources:
For religious debates, I think citing the religious texts (the bible, the Quran, etc) are pretty reliable sources and more reliable then people's interpretation of them. People have biases on the bible and the bible does not have much bias on it's self. Pro cited a religious text and Con did not directly cite a religious text(in this case, the Quran).

Reason: The voter fails to highlight the main arguments of the debate and analyze them. Further he needs to go more in depth with source point

I directly fucking cited the Qur'an at several points.

>The Quran orders the death penalty for speaking out against Allah.

Not sure that I agree.

You cited the Qur'an. But you did not cite the Qur'an as a source that negates the resolution. The only two times you tried to do so, those attempts were refuted.

You didn't directly cite the Quran. You merely posted someone else's opinion. It would be like me just posting a YouTube link as my sole argument. It's not me doing the arguing. It would be someone else. I still think Pro won the debate from better arguments. The thing is, if I voted for you, I don't think Pro would be complaining about it being rigged. I voted to the best of my ability.

In the future check if my opponent is lying before you lie too. I used the Quran so much that it's actually my primary source used for over 50% of citations if you read them.

Slanted votes?
Who would ever start such a thing?

Aren't the lynchers motivated by what the Quran tells them to do? The Quran orders the death penalty for speaking out against Allah.

Correct, Alec. The people who lynched him are not very peaceful. Good thing the resolution of this debate is "Islam is a religion of peace" not "Some Muslims are not peaceful".

Since you all three are enabling abusive gang-votes against me that slant the rules in favour of targetted anti-voting I'd at least ask you three to have a better work ethic as voters than as judges of voting in that you vote on this debate especially if you think I have won it. The reason is that there are three guaranteed votes that will slant absolutely anything I said to justify conduct and any source I used to justify source-vote and then will simply refuse to focus on the remainder of arguments and cherry-pick one by me they feel was somewhat defeated by the other side and do the reverse for Pro. These users are MagicAintReal, bifolkal and debatevoter (Alec seems unrelated but does something similar).

Please vote.

There was this guy who spoke out against Islam on Facebook and he got killed for it by Pakistan(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/11/pakistan-man-sentenced-to-death-for-blasphemy-on-facebook). This sounds pretty violent to me. Killing someone over a religious disagreement.

RM and Moe, as of now the best place to hold this argument would be inside the debate.