Sam Harris on Islam's Contribution to Humanity

[cronus]

Sam Harris on Islam's Contribution to Humanity

[pErvinalia]

tl;dw

Summary?

[cronus]

tl;dw

Summary?

They are full of shit. WYSIWYG.

[pErvinalia]

That's about as sophisticated as most of his arguments.

[cronus]

That's about as sophisticated as most of his arguments.

Could still be right....

[Feck]

Persians did some cool stuff no doubt and once Islam had captured slaves that could read there was a golden age of translation but when you read this or that was invented by a muslim please fact check, most of the claimed discoveries or firsts are about as truthful as the story of the flying donkey.

[Tyrannical]

Video went straight to the film credits lol

[PsychoSerenity]

tl;dw

Summary?

Straw man based on massive generalisations of different cultures.

Nobody is saying that in general Arabic/Muslim culture is equally as good/progressively important as western culture (and if they are then he should be specifically answering people who do that, rather than "the left/liberals" in general, - by pointing out the problems with cultural relativism and excessive generalisation). Instead he just generalises the different cultures to say ours is better than theirs. For what purpose is he saying this?

[Sean Hayden]

Read The Moral Landscape, still peeved at that.

[DRSB]

It's politically incorrect to say that some militant aspects are totally inherent to Islam, but it is a fact, nonetheless, unfortunately. I know Sam Harris likes Dervish dances.

[pErvinalia]

Anyone have access beyond the paywall to the article he references?

[Brian Peacock]

Reproduced in full for the purposes of comment and analysis.

The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians
Nicholas Kristof. May 11, 2026.

It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.

Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on “all civilized leaders” to “speak up.”

And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.

There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s “standard operating procedures” and “a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.” A report out last month, from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel, concludes that Israel employs “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”

What does this standard operating procedure look like? Sami al-Sai, 46, a freelance journalist, says that as he was being taken to a prison cell after his detention in 2024, a group of guards threw him to the ground.

“They were all hitting me, and one stepped on my head and neck,” he said. “Someone pulled my pants down. They pulled down my boxers.” And then one of the guards pulled out a rubber baton used to beat prisoners.

“They were trying to force it into my rectum, and I was bracing myself to prevent it, but I couldn’t,” he said, speaking with increasing anxiety. “It was so painful.” The guards were laughing at him, he said. “Then I heard someone say, ‘Give me the carrots,’” he recalled, adding that they then used a carrot. “It was extremely painful,” he said. “I was praying for death.”

Al-Sai was blindfolded, he said, and heard someone say in Hebrew, which he understands, “Don’t take photos.” That suggested to him that someone had pulled out a camera. One of the guards was a woman who, he said, grabbed him by the penis and testicles and joked, “These are mine,” and then squeezed until he screamed from pain.

The guards left him handcuffed on the ground, and he smelled cigarette smoke. “I realized it was their smoking break,” he said.

After he was dumped into his cell, he concluded that the spot where he had been raped had been used before, for he found other people’s vomit, blood and broken teeth crushed into his skin.

Al-Sai said that he had been asked to become an informant for Israeli intelligence, and he believes that the purpose of his arrest and imprisonment under the administrative detention system was to pressure him to agree. Because he prided himself on his journalistic professionalism, he said, he refused.

I’ve had a career covering war, genocide and atrocities, including rape, sometimes in places where the scale of sexual violence is far greater than anything committed by either Hamas militants or Israeli guards or settlers. In the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia a few years ago, 100,000 women may have been raped. Mass rape is now unfolding in Sudan.

Yet our American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit.

I became interested in reporting on sexual assaults against Palestinian prisoners after Issa Amro, a nonviolent activist sometimes called the Palestinian Gandhi, told me when I previously visited that he had been sexually assaulted by Israeli soldiers and that he believed this was common but underreported because of shame.

By one count, Israel has detained 20,000 people in the West Bank alone since the Oct. 7 attacks, and more than 9,000 Palestinians were still being held as of this month. Many have not been charged but were detained on ill-defined security grounds, and since 2023, most have been denied visits from the Red Cross and lawyers.

“Israeli forces systematically employ rape and sexual torture to humiliate Palestinian female detainees,” the Euro-Med report said. It cited a 42-year-old woman who said she had been shackled naked to a metal table as Israeli soldiers forcibly had sex with her over two days while other soldiers filmed the attacks. Afterward, she said, she was shown photos of her being raped and told they would be published if she did not cooperate with Israeli intelligence.

It’s impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are. My reporting for this article is based on conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces. I also spoke to family members, investigators, officials and others.

I found these victims by asking around among lawyers, human rights groups, aid workers and ordinary Palestinians themselves. In many cases it was possible to corroborate the victims’ stories in part by talking to witnesses or, more commonly, to those whom the victims had confided in, such as family members, lawyers and social workers; in other cases it was not possible, perhaps because shame left people reluctant to acknowledge abuse even to loved ones.

Save the Children commissioned a survey last year of children ages 12 to 17 who had been in Israeli detention; more than half reported witnessing or experiencing sexual violence. Save the Children said that the true figure was probably higher because stigma left some unwilling to acknowledge what had happened to them.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a respected American organization, surveyed 59 Palestinian journalists who had been released by Israeli authorities after the Oct. 7 attacks. Three percent said they had been raped, and 29 percent said they had endured other forms of sexual violence.

The Israeli government rejects suggestions that it sexually abuses Palestinians, just as Hamas denied raping Israeli women. Israel welcomed a United Nations report documenting sexual assaults against Israeli women by Palestinians but rejected the report’s call to investigate Israeli assaults against Palestinians. Netanyahu has denounced “baseless accusations of sexual violence” made against Israel.

Israel’s Ministry of National Security declined to comment for this article. The prison service “categorically rejects the allegations” of sexual abuse, said a spokesman who declined to be named, adding that complaints are “examined by the competent authorities.” The spokesman declined to say whether any prison staff member had ever been fired or prosecuted for sexual assaults.

The Palestinians I interviewed recounted various kinds of abuse beyond rape. Many reported that they often had their genitals yanked or were beaten on the testicles. Hand-held metal detectors were used to probe between men’s naked legs and then smashed into their private parts; some men had to have their testicles amputated by doctors after beatings, according to the Euro-Med monitor.

One reason these abuses don’t receive more attention is threats by Israeli authorities, who periodically warn prisoners on release to keep quiet, according to Palestinians who have been freed. Another reason, Palestinian survivors told me, is that Arab society discourages discussing the topic for fear of hurting the morale of prisoners’ families and undermining the Palestinian narrative of defiant and heroic detainees.

Conservative social norms also inhibit discussion: Two victims told me that a prisoner who acknowledges being raped would harm the ability of his sisters and daughters to find husbands.

One farmer initially agreed to let me use his name in this article. Released early this year after months in administrative detention — with no charges filed — he related what he said happened one day last year: A half-dozen guards immobilized him by holding his arms and legs while pulling down his pants and underwear and inserting a metal baton into his anus. The rapists were laughing and cheering, he said.

Several hours later, he said, he fainted and was taken to the prison clinic. After he woke up, he said, he was raped once more, again with the metal baton.

“I was bleeding,” he recalled. “I broke down completely. I was crying.”

After being returned to his cell, he said, he asked a guard for pen and paper to write a complaint about the assaults. The request was denied. And that evening, a group of guards came to the cell.

“Who is the one who wants to file a complaint?” one guard jeered, he said, and another guard pointed him out. “The beating started immediately,” he recalled. And then they raped him with the baton for a third time that day, he said.

He recalled one saying, “Now you have even more to put in your complaint.”

A few days after I interviewed him, the farmer called to say that he didn’t want his name used after all. He had just been visited by Shin Bet and warned not to cause trouble, and he also feared that his family would react badly to the attention.

“Rampant sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is a thing; it’s been normalized,” said Sari Bashi, an Israeli American human rights lawyer who is the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. “I don’t see evidence that it has been ordered. But there’s persistent evidence that the authorities know it’s happening and are not stopping it.”

Another Israeli lawyer, Ben Marmarelli, told me that based on the experiences of the Palestinian detainees he has represented, rape of Palestinian prisoners with objects “is going on across the board.”

[L'Emmerdeur]

Ah, but a form of justice is served when the Israeli legal system has a say. Never mind pesky video evidence. In fact, even if you're the top prosecutor you'll be in trouble if you release that evidence to the press.

'Israeli military drops charges against soldiers accused of sexual, physical abuse of Palestinian detainee'

Israel's military on Thursday said it was dropping charges against five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee in an incident partially caught on camera.

The decision closed a case that has bitterly divided the country since the soldiers were arrested in 2024 at the notorious Sde Teiman military prison, prompting anger from members of the far-right government and hard-line ultranationalists who violently overran the prison in protest.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Thursday's announcement, while human rights groups accused the military of whitewashing one of the gravest instances of abuse in the country's network of wartime prisons.

Sde Teiman was set up after Oct. 7, 2023, to hold Palestinians rounded up in Gaza during Israel's war against the Hamas militant group. The secretive facility quickly gained notoriety as employees and Palestinians freed from detention described scenes of abuse and torture.

Those allegations gained steam after Israeli news broadcast a leaked video that appeared to show soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner.

* * *

'Israeli Army Chief Discharges Ex-top Prosecutor Amid Leak Investigation'

Israel's military chief has dismissed the army's former top military prosecutor over allegations she was involved in leaking footage showing soldiers abusing a detainee and obstructing the ensuing investigation, the military said Tuesday.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir decided to remove former Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi from service "without further delay" because of the ongoing criminal investigation against her, according to the military. The army said Zamir was also considering demoting her pending the outcome of the case.

[pErvinalia]

Harris stated that Hamas celebrates rape while Israel prosecutes it. Israel does, except when it's against Palestinians.

[Brian Peacock]

Harris decides who gets rights, and you don't if you're Muslim.