Islam is Not a Violent Religion

Let me begin by defining Islam and framing our resolution, which seems to have eluded PRO. Google's dictionary defines it as "the religion of the Muslims, a monotheistic faith regarded as revealed through Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah. " Islam is the religion--it does not refer to its adherents. Once again, PRO's incendiary, fact-free attempt to strawman my arguments by claiming that I'm white-washing all Muslims is absurd, and doesn't relate in the slightest to the resolution. He is doing nothing more than changing the goalposts of this debate, and I urge our judges to bear this in mind when they consider dolling out conduct points. I have never characterized Islam as violent because of the behavior of a "select few. " As I said last round, and as PRO again misunderstands, even if ISIS did not exist, the doctrines of Islam would, and they would be ipso facto by virtue of what they are, not by virtue of what people believe them to be. First, the distinction between what constitutes "fairly sizeable" and "vast majority" is somewhat subjective--though the Pew poll I provided from last round lays waste to PRO's claim that a "vast majority" are peaceful. With that said, though, this is utterly irrelevant, because we are not debating about Muslims, but about Islam--a point which PRO fails to understand. He goes on to question whether the Pew poll was fair because statistics *can* be skewed. This is not even close to a valid argument, and unless he can show a flaw in the methodology of the poll--which he hasn't--the point extends forward. You cannot discredit an argument or a poll by claiming, "Well, that poll could be biased. " The onus is on you to prove that it is biased, as is the purpose of debate. But, once more, this is irrelevant to what our resolution actually is--and that seems to be the theme of PRO's remarks. He then goes on to claim that religious extremism is "how other religions behave in relation to others. " But this isn't true at all. It's possible to hold in mind that there are elements of all religions which are inherently violent. For instance, Christianity is also a violent religion because the Old Testament encourages believers to stone people to death for working on the Sabbath-irrespective of whether or not extremists groups behaved in this way, or whether the media reported on this, the *doctrine* of Christianity would remain the same, as would the doctrine of Islam. We determine whether religions are violent--once more--not based on the behavior of their adherents, but by the text of the Holy Book. People can and will disregard key elements of their doctrine, but that doesn't make the doctrine any less violent. PRO never attempts to engage this, or to address the quotes I offered from the Quran which actively encourage violence toward non-believers. PRO claims, "Even if its teachings are violent, we see that most Muslims are not so violent and war-mongering. " You will note that PRO continues to side-step the quotations I offered from the Quran, and has just conceded the debate by admitting that the teachings of Islam are inherently violent. He claims that religion involves "both the doctrine and actions of its followers," but this does not originate from a dictionary--he is making up definitions ex post facto to rationalize his case. The definition of religion, according to Google's dictionay, is "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. " This says nothing of the actions of its followers, nor are they relevant to what is in the Quran. You will also note that I never made a concession about non-violence with respect to the doctrines of Islam--but rather noted that the Westernied variation of the faith does not generally condone beheading people. This is well and good, but this does not change Islam OR the religion; it simply means that self-proclaimed adherents to Islam are cherry-picking which elements of their faith they'd like to follow. Again, that doesn't bear at all on the doctrine or our resolution, in spite PROs deceptive attempt to redefine a word for which the dictionary definition is already abundantly clear. He goes on to misunderstand why I accused him of committing a strawman fallacy--in the process strawmanning me once more! I never once said that religious groups define an entire religion, and it was PRO's insistence that I did, or that this insight originates from the media, that was a strawman argument. I based my arguments on the text of the Quran--the doctrine of the religion itself--not on what any particular person believes or claims to believe, and to assert otherwise is disingenuous and factually wrong. PRO has done nothing to address "fundamental flaws" in my arguments--he only wants to address what he sees as flaws in arguments that I never made, but he thinks I made, and his attempt to change the goalposts to religious groups or other religious texts obviates our resolution. He goes on to provide a definition of religion which doesn't serve the meaning he thinks it does. The first definition refers to no religion in particular, but only to devotion to a God--in other words, adherence to a religious text and the God it depicts. The second definition refers to committiment or observance to that faith, or the act of following the religious. This definition do not even remotely include "the people and the holy members of the religion," and it is dishonest for PRO to claim that they do. You've see now three definitions of religion from us both, and none of them say what PRO thinks they do. He then goes on to drop my rebuttals to the lines of the Quran he mentiond, and only claims that Muslims won't take these lines as a call to violence. I don't want to belabor the point, but this is once again irrelevant to the resolution. PRO then claims to care about context--but then continues to change the goalposts and disregard the context in which it was writte (e. g. , the fact that Mohammad tried to encourage his people to loot merchant caravans, and that the text justifies this). He cares not for the context of the text or he wouldn't have dropped my entire case. The Pew Poll is, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant to this debate, as I've stressed. Firstly, the link was broken--but I accessed the study by clicking Enter a second time, which CON can do as well. He then claims that because there are numbers upwards of 70% against violence, that this vindicates Islam. It doesn't for two reasons: one, we're not debating whether the *followers* of Islam are violent, for the upteenth time. Two, why isn't it 100%, but only 72% and 74%? How about the statistic I provided last round of a third of these Muslims agreeing with the violence? That is only because they are *following the doctrines of their religion. * Never once did I provide a false statistic: the numbers are there, and both PRO and our audience can verify them. He asks why I would bring this up if I only thought we were debating the doctine--that was because I wanted to draw a key contrast between followers who adhere strictly to the violent doctrine of Islam and followers who do not. ConclusionThe entirety of PRO's argment is full of distortions, strawman arguments, and changing-the-goalpost fallacies. Never once did I base my argument on what the followers of Islam believe or don't believe, nor did I cite false statistics. Pew is a reputable organization, and anyone can access the study, entitled "Muslim Publics Share Concerns about Extremist Groups: Much Diminished Support for Suicide Bombing. " The point here, though, is that PRO provided two definitions of religion and I provided one, along with a definition of Islam. Not one of them concerned what the followers of Islam believe--but only the doctrines of the faith itself. PRO completely fails to engage my entire case and drops my rebuttals to the quotes he provides, only attempting to mitigate instead of rebut.