Quote Originally Posted by cocco
I'm not sure, but I think you've mistaken defending persons who are muslim for defending Islam.
It's very hard to criticise Islam without people defaulting to "wacist". The problem is it's so closely linked to immigration. If you are critical of the religion and would prefer it to not be a part of your culture, it's hard to avoid people taking that as hatred for individual Muslims. You might be a little more rational than that, but 80% of Twitter isn't.

Quote Originally Posted by poop
I'm not defending that, I just don't think that makes a statue of a slave trader worth keeping.
I'm not arguing that. I pointed out that the left are approaching an awkward conflict... that if they are to be morally consistent, they will sooner or later have to tackle the problem of criticising someone who lots of people don't want to hear criticism about. I can assure you Muslims love Mohammed more than the English love Churchill. I suspect it's an issue the left will do their best to avoid. They will be selective about who they go gunning for.

I heard they had been trying to get the statue of Colston (sp?) in Bristol taken down for years by legal means, and weren't getting anywhere.
That's why I said "preferably". I've not got a problem with that statue being pulled down. And they did get somewhere. They got to a point where they had moral justification to pull it down. You can't just make that decision and do it. You've got to lobby through the right channels, and then eventually when all avenues have been explore,d, you take matters into your own hands. You have higher moral ground to stand on if you at least try to do things legally.

Since slavery isn't being practiced in Muslim countries today (afaik) presumably they don't consider him the final word on morality.
Depends how radical a power is. ISIS enslanved people, Boko Haram too. ISIS was the closest thing we've seen to a pure Islamic State in our lives. I appreciate these are the fundamentalists, the ultra-conservatives, but these are the people interpreting religious texts literally. These people believe they are morally justified in enslaving non-Muslims because Mohammed did.

Not that there's a solution to it. It's not like I think we should pull down statues of Mohammed, it's more that I'm observing a moral conflict amongst those who seek to apply today's morals to historical figures.

It's not like he invented it or something
Well no, it's been going on for many millennia, but modern slavery was very much pioneered by the Arabs. They were taking slaves from Africa in the 7th century. So Mohammed came pretty close to inventing modern slavery, if anyone can actually take the "credit" for it.

Do you really think someone would give up being Christian if it turned out Jebus was a slave trader 2000 years ago?
Yes, an awful lot of people would probably lose their faith.

It is strange; their whole sense of morality has suddenly become 100% focussed on racism. Like there's nothing else that matters.
Isn't this a problem to you? Other things do matter, like public health, social stability and economics.