Okay, So It’s Impossible…
…though I’ve tried my best. You just can’t get away from this stupid Muslim cartoon thing. Well, here’s Christopher Hitchens, notable atheist, and it’s not hard to guess where he comes down on the issue. Of course, he’s exactly right on almost every point…but…
I must say, the whole thing is growing more tiresome by the minute. Yes, freedom of speech means freedom to offend. Yes, we’ve apparently done pretty good at offending and being offended, so we’re all pretty free right now.
Um…so…anyone getting tired of celebrating the right to offend? How about getting this fired up about, oh, let’s just say, something unimportant like the genocide that’s ongoing in Darfur?…
Sigh…well, maybe the Super Bowl will move this off the front pages…if so, the NFL will have done us all a great, great service. Paging Janet Jackson (talk about offensive!)…
Well:
Being a blonde, Polish female from a low economic class (redneck if we were southern) family who also happens to be Roman Catholic, I have to say, I agree with you whole-heartedly. I’ve dealt with insulting sh!t for most of my life, and though I would never threaten the life/well-being of someone who’s insulted me, I do have to say that I’m quite disgusted at the whole “there but for the grace of God go I” notion of the ignoramuses who’ve been defending the assininity of the Danish cartoonists.
For pete’s sake: anyone who’s ever been to a museum of any merit knows that you don’t depict Mohammed. What the hell were they thinking?
I hate to be one of those folks who say, “A pox on both their houses,” but, well, a pox on both their houses. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you go out of your way to offend just to prove how free you are, but there’s a whole lot of nitwits out there who have to get it through their thick, violent skulls that the whole world doesn’t live by their rules, and if a cartoonist in Scandinavia ticks them off, they don’t have the right to start burning down buildings.
Overall, I’m more upset by the building burners than the cartoonists, but dang, five minutes of common sense would be so nice in this dispute.
Well, I think it bears keeping in mind what started all this. A Danish author of children’s books had publicly lamented that she could not find an illustrator willing to depict Mohammed for her. So, the newspaper in question decided to test whether fear really was making it impossible for that sort of speech to occur, and the call for cartoons went out.
The results ratified the concerns of the children’s book author; Islamists are frequently barbarians. When that “Piss Christ” objet d’art was in the news, the Xians didn’t threaten to kill anyone, much less torch a building.
Is there any news on the long, agonizing genocide-that-dare-not-speak-its-name in Darfur?
Clint: apparently we are saving our hand-wringing and outrage until they make a movie about Darfur and said movie is nominated for an Academy Award. At least that’s what happened, sort of, with Rwanda. Although I did hear that Koffi is thinking very seriously about possibly convening a meeting to discuss the likely merits of thinking about looking into some of the reports of possible violence that some say is happening in Darfur.
I did find this report, however, which counters some of my cynicism:
http://smh.com.au/news/world/thousands-flee-as-un-plans-move-on-darfur/2006/02/05/1139074110076.html
Clint, it’s muslims killing Christians. The media and Hollyweird are perfectly content to let that go on as long as possible.
The sooner the Christians die, the sooner moral relativism takes their place.
Ahh, Mussolini, I just thought of you when I was reading about an African Christian group called the LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army. They’re a Christian group that slaughters Africans in Uganda, and their actions include the kidnapping and forced conscription of some 20,000 children in the last 20-odd years. It’s a good thing that the media and Hollywood are so intently working to get people mad about this, since they’re killing Muslims as well as other Christians. Especially since they’ve been reported near Darfur, now, and have killed some Guatemalan U.N. peacekeepers nearby.
Then I was thinking about your claim that all Muslims should be converted to another religion, even Buddhism, which is why I’m sure you’d be glad to see Al Qaeda members signing up for membership in Aum Shinrikyo, the Buddhist/Hindu sect that orchestrated the Sarin gas attacks in Tokyo, right? So long as they’re not Muslims, everything will be okay, right?
I just don’t get why you don’t consider the possibility that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, or that people see things differently. Jerry Falwell gets a lot more press than most moderate Christian leaders, as does Pat Robertson. Do you think that the majority of Christian Americans advocate the assasination of Hugo Chavez, or that they think that God dispenses strokes to punish Israeli politicians for threatening to divide the Holy Land? Or are all Christians represented by the Eastern Orothodox Christians who killed 38,000 Muslim civilians in Bosnia?
Isn’t it significant that Civil Wars were fought in countries like Algeria precisely because many Muslims there did not agree with the ideas of the ISF, the local Islamic extremist sect? Or that major Imams and Ayatollahs from Egypt, Spain, Russia, Lebanon, the UK, America, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, and the 57-country Organization of the Islamic Conference have issued fatwas against violent jihad and attacks on civilians?
I think that your idea of moral relativism as some sort of creeping spectre of civil instability is especially weak. After all, if the crime of Islamic terrorists is simply that they deliberately targeted civilians, shouldn’t you condemn the United States for their actions during World War II? When we were deliberately demolishing and firebombing Tokyo every night, were we assuming that every citizen was a soldier? Or were we assuming that by being as violent as possible, we would reduce the people’s will to resist and try to force their capitulation? Moral relativism isn’t about making it okay to do some things that shouldn’t be okay, it’s about recognizing the fact that that’s the way people work and trying to make things more just. Unless you do want to condemn America in World War II for firebombing Tokyo? Or Dresden? It seems to me that you’re just pretending that there is no relativism in your view of the world (or willfully ignoring that relativism), and then accusing people of being evil moral relativists when they don’t offer hard and fast ideas of morality, as though morality were so simple. Look at the centuries of Christian theological wrangling around the issues just war and pacifism.
Weak?
There’s a difference Owen, between Christian extremists and Muslim “extremists.”
In Christianity, the commands in the gospel to peace, meekness and forgiveness are replete. Further, the messenger that delivered them (Jesus) lived by them and was the model of what he preached.
In Islam, the commands in the Koran to kill, slay, slaughter, and wage jihad are replete. However, they also mix with commands to respect and in some cases, to honor other peoples (if not women). The messenger that delivered them (Muhammed) lived by the sword, deceit, murder, dishonor and disrespect.
In both cases, we have the iconical messengers of religion presenting an example for their followers to imitate.
Which religion, do you think, not only encourages, but provides an example for murder and conquest? Which religion would more easily attract and support a consensus for murder?
There may be extremists in all walks of life, but Islam attracts more of them through the message of Dar al Harb and the command to jihad in them.
On the matter of Dresden, it was an atrocity. Several things we did in WW2 and especially some of the things we did at the behest of FDR leading up to WW2 were reprehensible.
Does that seem like I’m one-sided Owen? Attempting to excuse the muslims for 1400 years of murder just because we bombed someone once or a group of Christians in some backwater country are using Islamic tactics themselves is silly and is moral relativism at its worst.
You want to hold America responsible for its atrocities of the past? Go dig up the bodies and pee all over them if that makes you happy.
The atrocities happening here and now we are responsible for. Using the excuse of past atrocities to allow current ones to continue show a mind that has no sympathy with humanity as a whole. A lot of innocent people die with that kind of attitude.
You’re right, you’ll have to excuse me. I just hate America and Christianity so much. That’s why I took a pledge to subtly undermine them with calculated attacks of moral relativism when I became a member of the S.A.G.
And as far as what Christians profess and what they do, I suppose you’re right: Christ is definitely an example of a leader who lived by example. How many Christians are following that example? I don’t see a lot of turning the other cheek in what you propose to do in response to these threats.
Christianity aside, should we then be against Judaism? On the other thread you looked at the (admittedly) stretched quote from Revelations in my post, but had little to say about the Old Testament rules. Certainly in the Jewish tradition God commands the violent conquest of peoples. Look at Joshua 4:21: “They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” And that’s just the first of 31 conquests ordained by God that end with the slaughter of every citizen, man woman and child. All that just in the book of Joshua. And David doesn’t exactly come along as a big peacnik. So is Judaism, with its violent patriarchs and violent scriptures an inherently flawed religion? Should all Jews be converted now, too? Furthermore, didn’t you argue that the Muslims only got their hands on the Holy Land after they stole it from the Jews? What exactly were those wars that Joshua was fighting? Not to mention the fact that that directly goes against your claim that you can only address the atrocities that are happening right now. I mean, if you want to start giving land back to people it was taken from unjustly, you can move back to Europe and give Manhattan to the Native Americans. Or could it be that you’re taking a relative view of the stiuation, where you can use the claim that Muslims stole the holy land by violence, so they have less claim to it, but you don’t apply the same logic to claim that Americans have less claim to their own land?
My point is not that America having done bad things in the past excuses what other people do to us. My point is that issues are a lot more complicated than you make them seem. You’re painting all Islamics as though they see the Koran as specifically authorizing the murder of infidels, but most Muslims read the Koran and its injunctions on murder in precisely the same way modern Jews do, because they’re getting it from the same place. Hence the interpretation that anyone who unjustly takes a life (and the taking of noncombatant lives or the lives of women and children except in self-defense is seen as universally unjust) “kills all of humanity” while anyone who saves a life that could have justly been taken “saves all of humanity.” Furthermore, your idea of their apparent contempt for all non-Muslims isn’t very much in line with the part of Islamic doctrine that, like Catholic doctrine, suggests that any good person, believer or nonbeliever (or even heretic) can possibly be saved as a good person, if they were in a true and meaningful search for belief and justice. And again, during those 1400 years of murder and thievery, they were busy inventing modern medicine and lot of modern science, and they also did a lot to preserve the writings of Greeks and Romans, which was convenient for us when we wanted to use them centuries later to revive the concept of Democracy based on the Athenian example. But again, could it be that your perspective on that time is just relative to your position, and that you’re unwilling to allow that a lot of the things that happened in those centuries had a lot more to do with the early stages of civilization that they represent (or was there a lot of Christian utopias where Jews were welcomed and respected and forgiveness was the order of the day in Europe?) than with the fact that they were Muslims? I mean, feel free to make a valid argument about the peaceful, enlightened Europe of the 9th century, I’m all ears…
And this has nothing, in my mind, to do with justifying anything any Muslim extremists do, so don’t try and turn it into that. I’m talking about you painting an entire religion as violent and unreasonable and your unwillingness to understand the situation as more complicated than you make it sound. I’ll be the first to admit that no one should be bombing schools or shopping malls. But so would a lot of prominent Muslims all over the world.
You must have had the jewish discussion with someone else. I’ve never said anything about who owned the Holy Lands at whatever time… you’re mixing me with someone else.
Defend Judaism? Sure! They grew up! The Old Testament gives them direct commands to cleanse the holy land of gentiles and to destroy temples and places of worship not of judaism. Do you see them doing this now? Even the most extreme only go as far as to promote complete separation.
Let’s compare. You said: “I’ll be the first to admit that no one should be bombing schools or shopping malls. But so would a lot of prominent Muslims all over the world.”
What’s “a lot” of muslims? Care to offer a percentage? Or would even ten “prominent” muslims count as a lot? I’ll just cut right to the meat of this bit here – I can’t find even one prominent muslim who believes in Islam who is decrying jihad against the kaffir. I’m sure you read MEMRI.
You quoted muslim “tolerance” and some kumbaya coexistence that only occured during a brief (90+ year) time span of the 1400 year reign of blood. I’m aware of the Abassid Caliphate. Would that all of Islam was of that calibre. Yet what we see is that particular time period was the exception rather than the rule.
Yes, I refuse to accord Islam the aroma of peace. It just doesn’t exist.
On one hand, you engage me on current terms and say you aren’t bringing up the past wrongdoings of any particular people to excuse Islam, yet you seem to fall right into doing just that in defense of them. Note your last paragraph of your 8:41pm reply. Just to quote a section: “I mean, feel free to make a valid argument about the peaceful, enlightened Europe of the 9th century, I’m all ears…”
I fail to see what that has to do with the current situation unless you are attempting to denigrate the christians to uphold the muslims. That’s not going to work.
Your SAG comment was good.
The comment was entirely relavent because you claim that you’re judging Muslims on the here and now, yet you consistently refer to their “1400 year reign of blood.” It’s a great way to attack them, except for the fact that pretty much every religion has enjoyed a 1400 year reign of blood, by that standard. You act as though you’ve got the “gotcha” argument by attempting to make me stick to present events, but you’re not sticking to them yourself.
Moreover, I referenced the imams and ayatollahs of dozens of countries declaring fatwas against anti-civilian violence, and many of them arguing that the imperative to convert forcefully isn’t in keeping with Islam either. And if by “Kumbaya” you are talking about the reading of Exodus that I mentioned, that’s a historically maintained reading that many Muslims observe. Unless you mean the mention of their development of a lot of technology and science, which I would say hardly requires a period of perfectly peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. But neither does that destroy the credibility of their culture. We value Aristotle, even though he lived during a time of Greek conquest. The difference is that while you claim that Muslims were all barbarous thieves and murderers, their society was building off of Aristotle while Europe seemed to be trying desperately to forget him (and still living in a society every bit as violent as Middle Eastern society was at the time, if not more).
My point is that it’s a bogus argument to claim that Muslims are bad because of their “1400 year reign of blood” and then to also claim that the past acts of other cultures are inadmissible. It’s a ridiculous double standard. And again, I maintain, that it doesn’t excuse the actions of present people, you are right. But so long as you want to bring up that 1400 year reign, then I feel compelled to bring up parallels from other societies that are contemporary. Otherwise you are judging Islam by your idea of the last 14 centuries of their existence, while you are turning a blind eye to the history of all other cultures. Moreover, you say that Muslims are bound to be violent because of their scriptures (even though I’ve provided examples, and can link them again if you’d like, of prominent scholars and clerics who read them in a way other than you and Bin Laden do), but when provided with the violence of Jewish scripture, you say that they’ve “grown up.” Is that something that’s only available to Jewish people? Or is it possible that of the world’s many millions of Muslims, only the vast minority are terrorists, or even sympathetic to terrorists?
You say that ten prominent Muslims isn’t enough to mean anything, but if the Pope and nine cardinals were to take a stand on something, wouldn’t that be significant in terms of Catholicism as a whole? Or 10 Anglican bishops? Or the heads of 10 Lutheran seminaries? And I assure you, I have quotes from far more than ten people. Who is more likely to reflect the actual nature of Islam, Bin Laden (an engineer with no formal religious training) or the heads of mosques and seminaries? Isn’t it possible that Bin Laden’s view of Islam represents a bad understanding, just as the LRA in Uganda represents a bad reading of Christianity? Or as Aum Shinrikyo represents a bad reading of Buddhism? Introducing those things is not meant to suggest that because some Christians or Buddhists have misread the message, Muslims get a free pass. The point is precisely to suggest that all religions are open to being read wrong, and that the occurence of such a reading does not condemn the entire religion, especially if the reading is performed by the minority. There are “Christian” extremist groups now doing crazy things like trying to purposely create the omens of Revelations and bring about the Apoclypse. And some of those groups feel that Israel should return to cleansing the holy land of all gentiles. There are also “Christians” who shoot people at abortion clinics. Do those things make Christianity an evil religion? No, it just means that there are some crazy people out there who completely missed the point. All religions are susceptible to that. But you are characterizing Islam by its minority and their reading of scripture, then using this idea of a 1400 year reign of blood to create an understanding of the whole religion that I think is fundamentally flawed.
(Also, glad you liked it. Stupid SAG)
(Sorry, I’m double posting, but something occurred to me).
These riots are actually a prime example. Although the riots are terrible, all of the press is on Damascus and Beirut. And reasonably so. But the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims didn’t take to the streets in violence because most of them don’t condone that violence. Even in Syria, the nations supreme religious leader denounced the violence and said “We feel sorrow that these people who were driven by passion reached the stage where they have undermined our dialogue with the Norwegian and Danes.” In Afghanistan, on the other hand, the only demonstrations actually took place inoutside of town, involving some 800 villagers. The fact that none of Kabul’s 2 million Muslims were involved is significant. In Pakistan, there were almost no protests. Even in Iran it was surprisingly calm. Doesn’t that suggest the possibility that that sort of violence is contingent on other factors besides simply being Muslim?
On the other hand, this..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060129/wl_mideast_afp/denmarkislamsyriabahrainunreligion_060129160121
…is stupid. Although I have to smirk at the resolution to protect Muhammed alongside the American resolution to protect the symbols of Christianity…
And so is a lot of this. Hmm.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Prophet-Drawings-Developments.html
No no no… I’m not saying current muslims are bad because of 1400 years of bloody conquest. Neither are current Christians bad because Christians killed Christians in the Inquisitions.
I’m saying that the religion itself has demonstrated a propensity to violence, as attested to by 1400 years of bloodshed against every neighbor they’ve had. Thus, current muslims have precedent and the Muhammedan example to draw on that fuels the violence we see.
Whereas, despite whatever dark times could be pulled up, Christianity has had 2000 years of precedent and Jesus’ example of mostly peace.
I’m looking at the here and now, while using the examples we see from the past as teachers of today’s believers – whichever side they’re on. You don’t want to see children blown up in a mall attack – neither do I – and the pertinent question is: which religion is pre-disposed by teaching and example to produce a suicide mall-bomber? The Lutherans or the muslims?
Islam needs a total Abrogation of Muhammed – much like the Soviet Union did with Stalin. Perhaps through purging Muhammed and his murder could Islam return to something of the Abassid Caliphate. I would love to see Islam do such.
Considering the veneration of this murderer, how likely do you think this is? In particular, you mentioned some imams who decried what was going on. I read several excerpts from the BBC article and the imams were calling for an end to “misdirected” riots in Islamic countries… and the unspoken qualifier: against islamic property. None of them decried the violence done in non-Islamic countries. The only muslim (and he’s secular) that seemed genuine was Naser Khader.
?
Ok sorry about the question mark I just really thought there might be something more than typing in my name and posting.
So let me get this straight….Mussolini thinks that Islam is a violent religion or at the very least that it is a religion predisposed and vulnerable to being read and understood in such a manner that is violent while other religions such as Christianity or Buddhism are less likely to be followed as such. Mussolini argues his point on the basis that the last 14 centuries of the religion have been wrought with blood and violence and are continuing to this day. His solution is that all Muslims should be forced to convert to a new religion that is more peace-like.
When confronted with the historically violent nature of those who claim to be Christians, Mussolini claims that the violence is irrelevant because it doesn’t justify the Islamic doctrine of violence. To be more plain he says that Islam is violent and that’s why Muslims are violent, but Christians are violent due to a false interpretation or understanding of what is Christ like. Jesus was peaceful, Mohammed was not, according to Mussolini. Additionally, Jews were once violent sure, but they grew out of it.
(clears throat and rolls eyes)
Please try and hear this before either one of you responds. This might sound harsh, but it is important. Mussolini, you have never read the Koran, and you know very little about their religion or its founder. Mussolini, you have never read the Hebrew scriptures, and you know very little about their religion or its founder. Mussolini, you have never read the Christian scriptures, and you know very little about the religion or its founder. These things are said to try and be nice because the alternative is that you have read them and couldn’t understand them, or you have read them and are ignoring them.
We are going to ignore the actions of Christians and Muslims for a moment and talk about the scriptures of the Christian and Islamic traditions. This is because, as I’m sure we can agree, the actions of persons claiming to be part of the tradition are often silly and dumb, and have little to do with the religion itself. It is only the claim the Islam is a religion that leads people violence that has a chance of justifying the eradication of said faith. (but we may find later that even if it were you still can’t do that)
The faith of Islam says that anyone who comes to the faith of Islam did so because Allah changed their heart, not because of any deliberation or choice on their part. Yes, and in Christianity Paul says the same thing in Romans. What does this mean? Well, to put it plainly, one can not force converts in either religion and to do so is silly and dumb, probably the actions of someone who knows little about the religion…..I could have sworn I read something about either luthrans or muslims and one being worse, ah well forget it once again probably said by someone who knows little about Christian Theology.
Oh, there’s so much more but the post is getting so long. Let me ask a favor…when you respond…could you try not to throw out the entire argument at one time, and maybe find the main point. Anyway, there was something that I really really wanted to address. The comment about Jews “growing out of it.” I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that it was a joke and that you didn’t address the issue. If that comment was serious it was one of the most insulting things I’ve heard. \
For Christians and Jews, real ones not people who claim to be but wouldn’t know Jesus if they were calling him a muslim extremist sympathizer for speaking out against the war, the reason the Hebrew people did those things is because GOD TOLD THEM TO, not because they were some nation of toddlers throwing a tantrum. You talk as if this religion stuff is a game, but what happens if Christ really was who He said he was? What happens if there is a God and one tradition’s right and the other is wrong. They can’t both be right; their doctrines are mutually exclusive. What happens if maybe world peace, human liberty, and socio-economic status ultimatley don’t matter? Maybe Hegel was an idiot, Maybe it is false and blasphemous to say that “America is the hope of all mankind, it is a light unto the darkness, but the darkness shall not overcome it.”
Your comments that Islam is a religion with strong and inherent violent tendancies is ignorant. Your comment that “Jews grew out of it” is insulting. Moreover, any comment that eludes to an eradication of the Islamic faith by force, and offers any religion, especially Christianity, as an alternative demonstrates a lack of understanding of what it is to be part of any religion and a complete unfamiliarity with the person of Jesus Christ.
Thank you.
Okay, so I’m ignorant, insulting, un-christian and apparently bigoted. Nice collage of ad hominem attacks.
Apparently I’ve never read anything nor understand anything, so why bother responding?
Everyone: Shawn has demonstrated how much of an idiot I am and has won the whole argument by himself with his wit and character attacks.
Since he plainly stated that Jews haven’t changed from their roots of “go and kill all the inhabitants of the land, the men, the women and the children” then I must be missing the Jewish equivalent of over 4,100 murderous Islamic attacks since 9/11. I’m obviously too stupid to see there’s just as many Israeli suicide bombers as Islamic. I’m obviously too stupid to see all the historical texts showing the Jews have been on a 1400 year rampage of murder and conquest. I’m opbviously too stupid to see that almost every war in the world at present isn’t sided on one end by muslims, but rather Jews.
And let’s not forget those Lutherans burning cars in france or the christians beheading little christian girls in Indonesia. Lets not forget the evil bad baptists who torch churches in Egypt or the vile pentecostals who shot the catholic priest in Turkey last night and yelled “allahu akbar!”
Yeah, I’m such an ignorant bigot.
Someone needs some help.
Look, if I wanted to insult you I’d just call you a douche bag. I’m not going to take the equivalent of a 2 page paper for the sole purpose of insulting you.
You ignored every argument I made because your feelings got hurt. For writing in such a manner that was argressive and perhaps interpreted as hostile, I appologize, sincerely, and would like to repeat the argument in a detached and clear format because the argument was not ad hominem.
1. Your claim is that the religion of Islam is violent.
2. You can make that claim either because Muslims are violent or because the religion itself teaches violence.
3. You want to say that Christianity is not violent as Judaism is not violent
4. Some Christians and Jews are violent
5. Your case must then be that Islam teaches violence in the texts not that Muslims are violent
6. There are violent passages of Hebrew and Christian scripture
7. If you want to say Islam is violent then you have to say Christianity and Judaism are at least a little violent.
Hypothetical:
8. It is always better for one to be in a religion that is less violent.
9. Christianity and Judaism are at least a little violent
10. Buddhism teaches to respect all life all the time.
11. It is better to be a Buddhist that a Jew or Christian
Statements:
Jews killed in the Bible because God told them to. If one was to say that they “grew out of it” it would be an implication that they were wrong and ought not to have done so. This is an unaccaptable statement for a Jew or a Christian because it implies not a mistake on the part of Jews but on the part of God.
Mohammed for Muslims is not a God in the same way Christ is for Christians. For Muslims Mohammed was allow to make mistakes in his day to day life and in advice he gave not pertaining directly to divine revelation. Mohammed, for Muslims, is to be reverred as about as good as anyone can get, but not perfect…still human.
As far as what SOME people teach… It is not a valid argument to say that some muslim teachers advocate violence as support for the religion of Islam being violent because some of the most prominent Christian theologians such as Augustine, Luther, and Aquinas wrote about the acceptability of Christians as soldiers, an addmittedly violent profession…especially when they wrote about it. While this wasn’t a justification of killing women and children explicitly, an argument can be made from Augustine that such action is justified in service of one’s King. Regardless, any justification must then move Christianity into the category of “a little violent” after which we must deal with the hypothetical argument listed above, and we don’t want to say that.
This is not the end all to the debate, but you really need to deal with the argument above because it poses problems to your claim about Islam. Please don’t come back with statistics about Muslims being violent because we have already made a distinction between what a religion teaches and what the people who claim to be members do.
To insist on bring up the violence of Muslims and ignore the teachings of Islam is an argument which suffers from two fallacies of Defective Induction: non causa pro causa, and converse accident; also two fallacies of Relevance: ad populum; and ad hominem circumstancial (Islam as an independent entity being associated with persons claiming to be Muslims). Additionally if I tried really hard I could make a case for ignoratio elenchi as well.
“You ignored every argument I made because your feelings got hurt.” Nope. My “feelings” weren’t hurt. I became annoyed when you indicated I wanted all muslims to become christians. There’s more to that than I’m writing here, but my aim is brevity. I claimed I would like to see muslims convert to Buddhism. I get a rash when people put words in my mouth then claim I’m ignorant. What’s the point in debating with such a person?
Points 1-6 are correct. Point 7 is partially correct. Jesus never preached violence. At the end of his life on the occasion of violence, his command was “put up your sword.”
8 is fine, 9 is not for the reason I pointed out for 7. 10 and 11 are fine. And that fits with me saying I’d like to see 1.3 billion muslims convert to Buddhism.
“Grew out of it” is a brief, if quaint, way of saying that they satisfied, to the best of their ability, the command to cleanse the holy land. That they didn’t speaks to their failure in their own faith. That they did not abuse the command to engage in centuries of warfare with anyone they pleased speaks to them understanding their religion in a mature light.
Muhammed may not be “god” in Islamic view, but “Allah is one and Muhammed is his prophet.” The prophet was the mouthpiece of Allah. To disbelieve Muhammed is to call Allah a liar. Muhammed may not be a deity, but he carries the weight of Allah’s literal word.
Christianity can be violent, so why not say it? My point was that as individual christians, our exemplar is Jesus, who might as well have embodied all that Buddhism preaches. However, christianity has commands to respect rulers and obey. Which means there will be a time for war and being a soldier. Jesus never did say to slay unbelievers as Muhammed did.
You don’t really need me to quote the Koran’s commands to kill unbelievers, do you? Islam regards itself as the perfect religion. Where it diverges from all other religions in that aspect is that Islam repeatedly claims unbelievers are unclean, base, sub-human. In the recent words of a devout muslim, “kaffir are less than dogs.” Yet in Judaism and Christianity, the “gentile” provides a challenge for demonstrating the mercy of God and is not an object of scorn.
Judaism and Christianity offer the “gentile” a choice: accept almighty God.
In Islam, there is a set method of approaching the kaffir in Dar al Harb. 1: Convert to Islam. 2: serve as a slave in humiliation paying the jizyah. 3: failing 1 or 2, be slain as an infidel.
All of your points were answered.
(smiles in satisfaction)
Thank you, I am not convinced by your argument, but I think I follow it a lot better and am optomistic about enaging with it.
You mentioned Dar al Harb, those regions that are not controlled by a Muslim political system as oppossed to Dar al Islam, those regions that are controlled by a Muslim political system. Dar al Harb means territory of war/chaos while Dar al Islam means region of peace. Islam is a religion that cares very little about what one believes as opposed to what one does. It is very possible, in Islamic belief, for a person to not believe in Allah and still be in paradise when they die. It is the belief that when people are all doing the will of Allah there will be natural peace (Augustine’s City of God) and when they are not there will be a natural condition of conflict (Augustine’s City of Man).
Mussolini I am not typing this to explain it to you but anyone who might be following the thread. I would argue with you that if we are to understand the basic beliefs of Islam that conversion shouldn’t be a requirement for these people in the Dar al Harb only to follow the laws of Islam and be a good person. This doesn’t effect your argument though because your argument stems from one major premise:
Islam as a religion that either teaches or is predisposed to being read and taught in a manner that promotes violence.
My first reaction is to offer examples from Christian and Jewish history, but I myself asked them to be excluded so to do so would be inappropriate. I would then like to once again appeal to the fact that there is at least a little bit of a predispensation for Christianity and Judaism to justify violence, but then again you already agreed to that (with important reservations) and said that maybe it would be better if everyone was Buddhist.
I’m not trying to put words into your mouth, and I’m not being a wise guy. If those are your claims then I think it is a valid and appropriate argument, but it has certain implication that I could never accept. These implications are my words not yours, but I think they must follow from your argument.
1. All people should be pacifists (perhaps you would say the world doesn’t let them, but all things being equal non-violence is better than violence)
2. A persons religious or spiritual beliefs are secondary to their conduct in the world and society. (what is more important is how a person interacts with the world not what religion they belong to)
I understand the danger and difficulty with number one as a universal concept and rule, but I would like to agree with it in the “all things being equal category”. I think that number two has to follow from your argument because your argument doesn’t address the possibility of Islam being right in an eschateological sence. Or any religion for that matter. Now don’t get me wrong that is a perfectly valid position to take, but I want to ask if that is the position you are taking.
What opinion do you hold about the importance of a persons religious beliefs as weighed against their obligation to be a productiove member of society?
I have a few other questions, myself:
1) You claim that to disbelieve Muhammed is to call Allah a liar. Doesn’t that seem like you’re once again stretching the definition of “prophet?” In the Islamic view, Moses was punished by God and not allowed into the Holy Land. David is considered a prophet, but certainly his actions aren’t above reproach; sending Bathsheeba’s husband to war in order to have her to himself is hardly a respectable action. But at the time he was considered God’s chosen man on earth. I think that you’re still resting on the idea that a prophet must somehow be infallible, while in the Jewish and Islamic tradition that is hardly the case. Muhammed may have the “literal word” of God, but that does not make his behavior God-like or perfect. That’s part of the reason that, in the Christian tradition, Jesus is such a big deal: he’s not an imperfect prophet, he is God.
2) Do you think that most Jews would agree that they were denied the Holy Land because they had a lack of faith? Or that that is the reason they currently don’t hold it all? And how do you reconcile that idea with taking a “more mature” view of the commandment by God to reconquer the Holy Land by force? The commandment to do so is clear, as is the commandment, in Islam, to convert Dar al Harb to Dar al Islam. By suggesting that the Jewish interpretation of that commandment, which is less literal, is more mature, aren’t you yourself espousing religious and moral relativism?
3) Your understanding of Dar al Harb and Dar al Islam seems based on conversion, but I have to echo Shawn: that’s not the case. A country consisting entirely of Muslims that does not run according to Shari’a is considered Dar al Harb, while a country that runs entirely according to Shari’a but has no Muslims is considered Dar al Islam. Like Judaism, it’s a religion codified by behavior. While the issue of theocracy is a sticky one, the separation of church and state is something that American society itself is still wrestling with, and it seems silly to cast Islam as a religion entirely based on forced conversion (although the Tayamani revivalists like Bin Laden see it that way), as opposed to behavior. Even the suggestion that, in the “end times,” the “People of the Book” who don’t convert to Islam will be condemned is no more violent than the Christian suggestion that Jews will be sent to hell for not believing in Christ as messiah.
4) On the subject of that, it seems bizarre to compare Christianity and Buddhism as religions of peace but to continue to uphold the “Just War” doctrine influenced by the Augustinian reading of Romans. For one thing, if Christianity is as peaceful as Buddhism, then Christians shouldn’t be advocating any fighting with anyone, and they shouldn’t even be killing animals. For another thing, it seems hard to reconcile the acknowledged Agnosticism of the Buddha, as well as his theories of reincarnation and polytheism. But that’s just nitpicking. The real problem is that while the message of Buddhism is entirely based on acts and codification of behavior, the message of Christianity is that acts do not matter (except in the Catholic tradition) and that faith is the deciding factor. That’s the real message of Christianity. In fact, the only connection I can see between the two religions is the one thing you seem willing to throw out in practice if it’s inconvenient, which is pacifism.
Shawn, excellent deductions on where I was going.
I do, indeed, see our responsibilities as humans to be obligated to society as a whole, rather than to an individual belief system (religion). This is why I said better that all muslims became Buddhists.
I do not necessarily imply that the world would be better off without any kind of religion. I believe that religion of all stripes, at various times, have elevated man into a realm beyond that of animal.
Just to divert our attention for a moment, I believe you are skirting around the edges of what Owen was saying. When I bring up violence in islam, invariably I am informed that christianity had violent periods as well. This disturbs me as a human being with a rational mind. I understand it, though, in a broader sense of absolutes. However, since I am appealing to peace as attainable by humans, then allow me to focus my argument on the less absolute side – the human side rather than the divine. Islam spans some 1400+ years. Apart from some extremely brief periods of peace in the Abbasid Caliphate (despite all the killing of Christians and Jews that went on by Rashid, this is termed islam’s Golden Age), almost all of the 1400 years of Islam is soaked in blood. Contrast with 2000 years of Christianity where almost the entirety of the 2000 years is one of peace.
In raw terms, 95% of islam’s tenure is murderous, while 5% of christianity’s is murderous. Yet we’re told that islam is thus not any worse than christianity. As a rational human, I find that an unacceptable equation. The percentages are used to illustrate the disaprity in murder/peace ratios and the irrational conclusion derived from them and are not exact.
While we live with our fellow man, we have a moral duty to safeguard our neighbor’s well-being. Society fails if we allow societal depredations to occur.
This doesn not make me a complete pacifist, either, though. I fully believe in the obligation of man to exert judgement and retribution against those that seek to destroy society. War is just for just purposes.
In consideration of the fact that Islam has consistently demonstrated anti-social behavior and its inability to co-exist with other governmental systems and religions, I find it weighing upon me as a human to denounce the “religion” as a cult and seek its removal. In consideration that Judaism and Christianity have exhibited extended periods of peace punctuated by short periods of violence, then I find it incumbent on me to be watchful of the two.
In the matter of the divine, I have more radical views.
Okay, Mussolini, I’d like to refer you to my questions above again, and then add this further question:
What about the history of Christianity drives you to argue that “almost the entirety of the 2000 years is one of peace?”
Sure, Owen.
“What about the history of Christianity drives you to argue that “almost the entirety of the 2000 years is one of peace?”
Other than isolated incidents, christianity’s 1.4 billion members are at peace. In thier 2,000 year history, very few periods of bloodshed can be brought forward as example.
The Spanish Inquisitions, according to the original documents released by the Vatican, killed less than 6,000 christians – not unbelievers – for heresy over a 500 year span.
The wars that united Europe were bloody, messy, and some fought in the name of religion. I argue against their value as individual chips but rather the struggle for unification benefitted mankind in hindsight to a degree generally unrecognized today. Failing European unification, Islam would have rolled over Europe like a 15-muslim gang-rape of a little girl. As it stood, the battle at Tours shows just how close we came to losing Europe.
Christianity has spread through missionaries, generally. Those have all been peaceful. Where we have failed to convert, we have allowed the populace to live in peace, in almost every case (we’re not counting the Spaniards here in this sentence).
Where christian conquest by sword can be pointed out, the effort was short-lived and not carried out by the christian community as a whole, nor with justification by exemplar.
Take India, for instance. Christian missionaries to India have tried to establish christianity there. Some success has been measured. None of it by the sword. Compare to islam’s centuries of murder against hindus of all stripes. Same for China and Buddhists. Christians massacred no Buddhists, yet Islam takes special delight in eradicating them wherever they meet. Peace versus violence.
I cannot claim that christianity or judaism have exhibited uninterrupted peace. But both religions have demonstrated over the majority of their tenure on this planet as being interested in peaceful expansion.
How many tens of millions of hindus have christians slaughtered over the last 500 years? None. How many have the muslims slaughtered in total for all of that same 500 years? Tens of millions, according to Indian accounts – and the killing goes on.
Come to think of it… I can’t bring to mind anything in the last 500 years of christianity, except for Cortez, where christianity was used as a weapon.
The answers to your other questions will follow in a couple hours. =)
- Muhammed. Yes, I do not want to give the impression that the prophet was Allah, but rather that his duty as the messenger was to deliver Allah’s word. So Muhammed’s word in the Quran is ostensibly Allah’s. Note here. While he may have been only a believer, his words in the Quran – via his role as messenger – are Allah’s. While under Allah’s protection as his messenger, Muhammed was shielded from all evil – wouldn’t a rational person equate that with an invulnerability to fallibility while proclaiming the word of Allah? If so, then his words are Allah’s.
Muslims themselves consider Muhammed’s words divine. He is looked at in the fashion of the perfect “tool” of Allah, while still being a man.
- Jews. The Jews themselves admit they lacked the faith to obey all of Jehovah’s commands. It’s written from one end of the Torah to the other. Your comment on religious relativism is interesting and I’ll have to think about that (although I already have the answer). As to the “maturing” point… the jews know they failed to accomplish all that Jehovah directed them to do. They also know they have been judged and punished for it. Admitting their failure, they now live in peace, or try, using methods to make their place in the world that do not upset civil welfare of any particular peoples. While Jehovah might not have wanted them to “mature,” they have accepted their failure and are using peaceful means to co-exist with everyone else. Call it something other than “maturing” if it doesn’t fit – and in my more radical absolutist view of religion, they did not, in fact, mature. But in a social, secular sense, they did.
I had time to answer a couple. I’ll get the other two later.
- Dar al Harb. “Muslims believe that Islam is the perfection of religion for man for all time. They call it ad deen al kamal, the perfect religion. People, in their eyes, who have not yet submitted to the will of Allah, are in a state of pre-Islamic chaos, a state known to them as Jahiliyyah. To Muslims, all Muslims, the whole world is classified in two parts: that part of the world which has submitted, and is therefore in the Islamic state, known as Dar al Islam, and that part of the world which has yet to submit, and is therefore in a pre-Islamic, chaotic, jahiliyyic state, known as Dar al Harb, or the House of War! The House of War is the part of the world which has yet to be taken over, and must at some point be taken over in the future.” This, courtesy of Mark Alexander.
As far as jihad and how it agrees with what I said about Dar al Harb there is this from a muslim student of some unnamed sheik:
“”Our wise teacher explained it to us like this. First we must invite them to Islam. Even if they declare war against us, we should invite them to Islam by calling a one-day truce for them to think over our invitation. If after one day they embrace Islam, we should accept them as Muslim brothers and sisters and war has been averted.
“If they do not embrace Islam, we should invite them to pay the jizya tax and become dhimmis or to make a peace treaty with the Muslims, and we should again call a one-day truce for them to think over our proposal. If after one day they decide to pay the jizya tax and become dhimmis or to make a peace treaty with the Muslims, we should accept their decision, and again war has been averted.
“However, if they do not embrace Islam and do not decide to become non-Muslims who are not enemies of Islam but decide to make war against the Muslims, then, under such circumstances, we are allowed to wage war against them, as long as we observe all the other rules of Jihad, such as treating prisoners fairly and not attacking civilians. And Islam teaches that genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and terrorism are always haram (forbidden).”
Sounds good on the surface, they wage war against Dar al Harb (if war sounds good) from a “gentlemanly” perspective.
Yet we find also that in islam, there are no such things as “civilians” in Dar al Harb. From here. This is why there is no outcry from 1.3 billion angry “moderate” muslims over the continued murder of infidels – whether they be men, women, OR children.
Do not mistake me – I am not arguing that your presentation of Dar al is incorrect. Islam knows it is supposed to be not just dominant, but the only true religion and that they must spread Islam until there is no other religion. Of late, the element that sees jihad (beyond the personal struggle) as an obligation to advance Islam in Dar al Harb has surpassed “a few” or even “some.” Interview after interview after interview shows that a devout muslim cannot condemn violent jihad against infidels.
I believe this is due to the exemplar of Islam.
I’m not sure we’ll see much eye-to-eye on your question #4. That might have to be an area where we acknowledge our disagreement. Jesus may have exemplified peace and mercy and forgiveness, but he also commanded us to serve our leaders and obey them. I have heard many preachers say that working for a boss, or serving your country’s leaders in war should be approached from that standpoint that you are obeying God and giving the effort you would as if God had commanded you. Further, and in the vein of your final statements, obeying your leader is an action. The salvation from christianity derives from faith. I see no conflict of peaceful christians obeying the commands of Jesus to serve those appointed to lead.
But the people you’re quoting are clearly extremists, and the point of my argument is that they don’t represent the majority. From Sheik Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric who has led guerilla attacks against the Israeli military:
“Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers the attack on innocent human beings a grave sin,” said. “Even in times of war, Muslims are not allowed to kill anybody save the one who is engaged in face-to-face confrontation with them.”
“Killing hundreds of helpless civilians,” he added, “is a heinous crime in Islam.”
From the Grand Imam of Al Azar in Egypt:
“Killing innocent civilians is a horrific, hideous act that no religion can approve,”
“Bombing embassies or destroying non-military installations like the World Trade Center is no jihad,” Qadri said, and “those who launched the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks not only killed thousands of innocent people in the United States but also put the lives of millions of Muslims across the world at risk.”
-Tahir ul Qadri, Pakistani cleric
“Civilians, such as the German tourists, should not be killed, or kept as hostages. Jews, not in conflict with Muslims, must not be killed either. Anyone who commits these crimes is punishable by Islamic Sharia and have committed the sin of killing a soul which God has prohibited to kill and of spreading corruption on earth,” said Dr. Al Qaradawi. (prominent member of Muslim Brotherhood)
“Attacking innocent people is not courageous, it is stupid and will be punished on the day of judgement. … It’s not courageous to attack innocent children, women and civilians. It is courageous to protect freedom, it is courageous to defend oneself and not to attack.” -Shaykh Muhammed Sayyid al-Tantawi, imam of al-Azhar mosque in Cairo
“Firstly: the recent developments in the United States including hijacking planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood, constitute a form of injustice that cannot be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts. Secondly: any Muslim who is aware of the teachings of his religion and who adheres to the directives of the Holy Qur’an and the sunnah (the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad) will never involve himself in such acts, because they will invoke the anger of God Almighty and lead to harm and corruption on earth.” -from the chief mufti of Saudi Arabia
“Any attack on innocent people is unlawful and contrary to shari’a (Islamic law). … Muslims must safeguard the lives, honor and property of Christians and Jews. Attacking them contradicts shari’a.” -Shaykh Muhammad bin ‘Abdallah al-Sabil, member of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, Saudi Arab
I can keep going, there’s lots more. As for the history of Christianity, a few choice events (and I tried to restrict myself to events in which Christianity was an immediate, not proximate cause, especially since the once generally-accepted doctrine of Divine Right suggests the belief that Christianity was complicit in most state actions for approximately 1500 years):
-4th Century: -A bishop incites an anti-semitic mob to burn a synagogue. When the Emperor attempts to have it rebuilt, St. Ambrose convinces him that it shouldn’t be done, because Jews are inferior.
-Ephraim the Syrian and St John Chrysostam write polemics against Jews suggesting they are murderers and justifying violent persecution. Ephraim goes so far as to say that Satan literally dwells among and motivates Jews.
-Emperor Constantus, sone of Constantine, orders all practicing non-Christians eradicated.
-1209-29: Catholic church starts Albingensian Crusade, 20 year campaign of violence against Gnostic Christians (in the middle of the 9 regular crusades, and before the four centuries of Crusades in central Europe and the Baltic states)
-15th century: The Spanish declarethat all Muslims and Jews must convert or be exiled. Shortly afterward, between four and eight thousand converts are burned alive after being accused of secretly practicing their original faiths.
-16th century: Martin Luther, in a tract entitled On Jews and their Lies declares that the homes and synagogues of Jews should be burnt and they should be punished with forced labor.
-1572: 70,000 Heugenots are killed by Catholics in a single day during the St. Bartholomew’s massacre.
-17th century: Orthodox Christians in Poland carry out systematic killing of Catholicsand Jews. 3 million Catholics and 500,000 Jews are killed.
-30 Years’ war fought between Catholics and Protestants in Europe
-18th Century: “Paxton Boys,” a Scotch-Irish militia systematically eliminates the Conestoga Indians
-1995: Bosnian Christians massacre 8,000 Bosniak boys and men
Those are just events connected more or less directly to Christianity within its history, and it is by no means an exhaustive list. It is worth observing that Hitler cited scriptural authority (much the same that Augustine and Luther would cite) to persuade Christians in Germany that the Jews were suitable scapegoats. The ability of Christian societies to perform acts of violence and justify them within the framework of their religion is impossible to overlook, and it seems equally hard to justify your claim that it has basically been peaceful for the last 2000 years. It’s surprising, in fact, that they found time for all ofthese things in the midst of the various centuries of warfare that were more explicitly political.
Nice list of imams saying something that sounds right… I’ve read many of those quotes – as they came out, too. What an imam doesn’t say is as important as what he does say. No innocents – except in jihad. Even the term innocents, as used in denouncements carries a double-meaning. Sure an innocent is forbidden from being slain. Yet no mention is made of the fact that nearly all of Islam considers itself at war with the West and still fighting the Crusades – which makes all of us combatants and not innocents. Talking out of one side of the mouth while winking is called taqiyyah. Say what the westerners want to hear to put them off guard.
Owen, I recognize some of those events and you’re quoting the exagerrated end of the casualty figures.
The French Huegenot Wars were sectarian strife centered in France, the nation of bloodthirsty Gauls and Celts and Franks. What about the other billion christians in the world that didn’t take part?
Poland of the 17th century had all of an estimated 500,000 Jews – so your figures are saying the Poles wiped Judaism off the face of the map – something Hitler couldn’t do with multiple 24/7/52 death camps.
I’m not sure why I’m bothering here. Martin Luther says something and that’s counted for genocide.
The 15th century Spaniards? Come on! Just ignore the centuries leading up to what they did to gain back their country? That’s not only pathetic, but a cheap shot. Of you, I expected better than that one.
And then again with the Bosnian Christians. Nice one-sided view of the events there. The Serbian “cleansing” was a justified reaction to recent decades of muslim murders of Serbian christians (not counting all the other centuries since the fall of Byzantium). Christians aren’t allowed to fight back? Just die meekly to the “religion” of “peace?”
In fact, your illustration paints exactly that picture – appease, equivocate, and give up. The only course of action is to whine and die as the “peaceful” muslims march over christians, and if any of them even think about striking back, well then, they’re even more vile than Islam.
Great. So, you must be right. You calmly counted off just the surface of the iceberg. Christianity is so bloodthirsty, they just don’t have time for anything else. You’re right. That catholic priest that just got shot the other day to a rampaging muslim in Turkey? Yeah, he was eating muslim babies.
All the riots? The faults of christians and … dare I imply you mean it- Jews. To top it off, Hitler and Christianity go hand in hand! Oh, sure. Seigfu**ingheil.
What else are you implying here? Except total equivocation.
You debated well earlier, but this last… We’re not going to agree, Owen.
How is that any different than the quotes you provided? All of the quotes above were taken specifically from imams and muftis denouncing Bin Laden and the September 11th attacks. They weren’t vague, general quotes, they were specifically renunciations of that particular instance of violence against civilians. Some of them were even from known terrorist groups who advocated bombings on military targets (one of them was involved in the Lebanese bombing of the Marine barracks) but could not find civilian bombings permissible.
As for your response to the events I listed, you seem to be caught up in the idea that I either have to prove that Christianity is violent and horrible and that Islam is perfect and peaceful or the converse. I don’t see it that way at all. You have advanced the claim not only that Christianity is inherently peaceful, but also that its practitioners have been largely peaceful for the last two thousand years. (Correct me if I’m wrong here). You have also asserted that Islam is inherently violent, and also that its practitioners have been inherently violent. I don’t need to prove every aspect of those statements wrong to make the point I want to make. I simply want to suggest two things:
1) There are many Muslims, both clerics and daily practitioners, who do not see Islam as a religion of violence
2) Whatever the tenets of Christianity are in the ideal, in practice it has been a religion that has incited a great deal of violence in the past. And, (sub-point A): Christian society in general has not been largely peaceful for the last two thousand years.
Look at the way you respond: “Martin Luther says something and that’s counted for genocide.” But Luther’s comments are important because his theological ideas are the foundation of about half the Protestant denominations in the world today. If the pope gets up in the pulpit and advocates the disenfrachisement and virtual enslavement of an entire religious group, isn’t that more significant than if some guy on the street says it? Furthermore, he didn’t just “say” it, he published a whole book about it and offered it as a piece of serious theology. At the inauguration of the Lutheran religion he was advocating the subjugation of a whole group of people and the use of forced labor.
And it doesn’t matter what the Spanish had to do to gain back their country (one could also observe that since the Spanish weren’t the natives of the Iberian peninsula, that they had fought to gain back their country in the same way the Muslims had recently fought to gain back the Holy Land after the Crusades), they certainly weren’t fighting the Jews to get it back. And the number 4,000, the bottom end estimate, was the number of Jews burned alive. And it’s not a “cheap shot,” because they were supposed to be a profoundly Christian country and they were giving in to the pressure from all over Europe to regard Jews as second class citizens and force conversion. (One could also point to the violent, forced conversion of many native peoples in the New World under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella).
Also, it’s a bizarre mischaracterization to call the Huegenot wars the product of bloodthirsty Celts and Gauls. For one thing, the Celts and Gauls in France had already been largely eliminated or converted to Christianity by Christian invaders in the previous millennium. For another, it was ordered by Charles IX, (or the V), the Holy Roman Emperor and successor to the same Ferdinand and Isabella who had apparently been justified in fighting their way back against the Moors in Spain. He wasn’t just some French King, he was Emperor of most of Europe. And it wasn’t “sectarian conflict in France,” it was part of Charles’ larger campaign to stem the flow of Protestantism (that’s what the Huegenots were). Catherine de Medici convinced him it was a good idea to prevent Protestant uprisings in France while he was busy trying to eradicate Protestantism in the Netherlands.
As to the deaths of Jews in Poland, you’re right. I’ll be the first to admit that I simply searched around for interesting bits of Christian history, and only looked at one source for this one. At the time, reported deaths were in the 2-3 million range (according to the Weinryb history), but the official number killed in the Khelmnytskyi Uprising in the Jewish Encylcopedia was closer to 500,000. According to polishjews.org, the number represented 20-25% of the population, so perhaps something closer to 125,000. Even those number is in dispute, but the census figure of around 500,000 which is used to put the numbers in dispute comes from the period of the First Partition of the Commonwealth, after the Khelmnytskyi uprising, the Swedish Deluge, and a number of very devastating Cossack-led pogroms within the Commonwealth.
That said, would it matter if the numbers were far smaller? When 100,000 Jews are killed, and not one million, does it cease to be a big deal? if only 500 people, or 100 people had died in the WTC attacks, would that not be a big deal anymore? Or is it the principle of a group of people interpreting their religion in such a way as to justify violent attacks on civilians? Because that principle is certainly at play in the European history of Christianity. Do a quick “Deus lo volt” google search and see if it’s not.
Moreover, you’re accusing me of justifying the current actions of Muslims based on the past actions of Christians (which I’m not), but you yourself are justifying all manner of actions of Christians based on the past actions of Muslims. This is a point we can’t seem to settle. Aside from any issue I might take with your proposed plans for dealing with members of the Muslim world, I am first and foremost taking issue with your claims that those actions are justified by the very nature of Islam, which you say is violent. Your understanding of that violence is always buttressed by their past actions, so it’s once again “okay” to do those things.
Look at how you treat it as “okay” for the Spanish to burn innocent people alive because the Moors had fought a war of conquest in Spain and taken their land. Well the Spanish were, in turn, occupiers. It had belonged to Celts and Iberians (those dangerous barbarians you mentioned in the context of France) and was taken during the Punic wars by Rome, a conquering state. (That’s why Spanish is a Romance language). Spain was under Visigothic rule when the Moors invaded, just as much of Europe was under Gothic or Visigothic rule when Charlemagne and others established the Holy Roman Empire and spread Christianity. What’s the difference? Well, during the Moorish occupation, Jews and Catholics were free to practice their religion and the Roman Catholic church retained its holdings, and some Jews even held prominent government positions. When the Christians returned, Muslims were granted some religious freedom and Jews were forced to convert or be exiled.
As far as the Hitler thing, the point is not that Christianity is the next to Nazism, but that it was easily employed by people who wanted to put it to evil ends. That’s because that’s the way religion is. People feel strongly about it and it is generated by a limited number of texts that can often seem fairly ambiguous. Christianity is not a violent religion, but a few choice verses create a lot of difficulty for people in terms of justifying or condemning certain actions. Certainly Christian society has had a violent history, one of both conquest and defence but not entirely of either. You’re painting it that way but it just doesn’t play. You’re acting as though no Christian society has ever been an aggressor. In the Crusades which were apparently so justified, were Europeans happily returning the Holy Land to Jews after “liberating” it from Muslim rule? No, they slaughtered a great many Jews. Is that surprising? Of course not, they were persecuting them in Europe, why wouldn’t they be persecuting them in the Middle East?
You’re treating Christianity like some religion that’s only engaged in violence when its hands were tied and it could do nothing else, but I just don’t think history bears that out. And if you took every number I quoted in the last post and dropped a zero off the end, or two or three, it still wouldn’t change the fact that the intent to be both violent and hateful was there, both in Christianity and out. I don’t think that Christians were, by nature of their religion, so violent that they had nothing else to do. That’s exactly the sort of conclusion I’m arguing against making about any religion. I’m saying that if you go back through the 1400 year history of any society, you will find a great deal of violence, and without a doubt you will find some people who have found ways to bend religion in the service of violent worldviews. Look at your Buddhist example: has the spread of Buddhism, a religion that you acknowledged to be the most peaceful, ended war in all areas where it’s taken root? Or have people found ways to make exceptions? Buddhism does not have a “state obedience” clause like Christianity does, so it provides no excuse. Yet professed Buddhists have been violent. It’s not an indictment of Buddhism, it’s simply the way that those people were. Claiming to be members of a certain religion does not make people the perfect adherents of that religion, and being the perfect adherent of a religion does not make someone a member of a homogenous group. It simply means that they are adhering perfectly to the religion as they have chosen to understand it.
Meanwhile, after all of your disgusted response to the “ad hominem attacks” of Shawn and I, you have managed to respond to my post in precisely the same manner that Shawn responded to yours: you acted angry and disappointed, called me stupid, and suggested I had no idea of the facts while providing little or no evidence in return. to return the favor of diagnosing poor rhetorical moves, your persistent appeals to pathos, especially the example of children being beheaded or the man who shot the Catholic priest are rarely involved in a structured argument, so they constitute just that, empty appeals to pathos. Christians have burned baptist churches, bombed abortion clinics, lynched people, and bombed federal buildings. Every time you defend Christianity, I don’t supply the shooting of John Lennon as the end all and be all pathetic appeal that will tip my argument. Do me a favor and stop doing the equivalent because it proves nothing and it’s just irritating.
One more point, to make sure I’ve addressed at least the lion’s share of your responses. I do not advocate complete and total equivocation. What I advocate is understanding a situation and the people involved before making decisions. Mischaracterization of Jews was what enabled their persecution for centuries in Europe. Does that make the Jewish people a holy group who can do no wrong? Of course not, like all ethno-religious groups, the Jewish people certainly contained people who were not good. But were they the thieving, conspiring comrades of Satan that Augustine and Luther made them out to be? Of course not. And it has taken us centuries to come to the point of admitting that.
I think that you are characterizing all Muslims by the actions of a minority that is not in step with the majority. But the more that characterization takes hold in society and the more people are driven to act on it, the more moderate Muslims will feel angry and mistreated. And I think that many of them have every right. And when Americans stand up and advocated conversion or war, it shouldn’t be surprising that more moderate Muslims will feel compelled to fight Americans. The majority of incensed moderate Muslims are angry about political grievances, and you are, in effect saying “Those don’t matter, it’s just your inferior religion that makes you so violent.” How can that possibly be a good way to approach a dispute?
We’re not going to agree.
But I’ll end it by saying you’re right; I’m off to hop a plane to go “understand” the murderers better.
-said Dr. Al Qaradawi. (prominent member of Muslim Brotherhood) Hmmm, I looked him up…
In a February 3, 2006 Friday sermon, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi spoke about the cartoon outrage: “The nation must rage in anger. It is told that Imam Al-Shafi’ said: ‘Whoever was angered and did not rage is a jackass.’ We are not a nation of jackasses.”
From the Grand Imam of Al Azar in Egypt:
“Killing innocent civilians is a horrific, hideous act that no religion can approve,”
when viewed in this light:
“Dr Saad al-Faqih, who heads the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform, told the BBC that the Grand Mufti would have been ordered to say these words by the government.”
I should mention, too, that Tantawi and Al-Sabil are both appointed by their governments as mouthpieces.
Only the Pashtun cleric griping about Osama seems valid, and I have to wonder if there is jealousy involved considering the heavy Pastun influence of the Taliban and its leaders decision to support and harbor Osama. Smells like political nose-tweaking to me.
Gosh, that sort of totally obliterates all those examples…
But what do I know? That was just the tip of a vast iceberg of “moderate” “outrage” in islam over murder, as I was assured by Owen.
Again, a few points.
1) You’ve ignored the entirety of my argument relating to Christianity in your response. It seems to me that that was the most important part (and about 90% of the post).
2) Have you “obliterated” my claims in the same way that you obliterated my claim about the St. Bartholomew’s massacre? Although “barbarians” make an interesting scapegoat, it’s questionable at best to blame them for the actions of Catholics in the late 16th century. But let’s turn to your arguments against the Muslim case:
It’s worth noting that al-Faqih was named by the Treasury Department as a financier of Al Qaeda and his assets have been frozen, and that he is the head of an anti-Saudi organization who claims that those charges are slurs by the government. Do you expect him to respond positively to the positions of the members of a government that he is plotting to overthrow? Furthermore, your “Mouthpiece of the government” argument and your argument that everything is simply said to lead westerners on seems to be based circular logic: they are liars because they tell lies. Their words are lies because they are liars. Look at the quote you have about the “rage” of Qaradhawi: does he say “We must kill?” No; in fact, he had this to say:
“The sabotage done by some Muslims in some [Arab] capitals in response to the offensive cartoons is unacceptable and should be denounced,”
As for the Al Qaradawi, it would have been much better for your argument to grab the various arguments he’s made that the Palestinian suicide bombers are not breaking Shari’a. Unfortunately, that would open it up to my argument, because his claim has nothing to do with Jihad and everything to do with ideas of political and social strife. Hence his claim that the attacks on Sept 11th were unjustified and unsanctioned by Islam, but his support of the bombings in Palestine. For him, it’s not a religious argument.
Another quote: “The enmity that is between us and the Jews is for the sake of land only, not for the sake of the religion.”
And another: “Then all of the affairs are shared between us since we are the sons of a single land, our destination is the same and our Ummah is one. I say about them, ‘Our Christian brothers’ and some people reject this from me and say how can I say that they are our Christian brothers? [Allaah says] “Verily the Believers are but a single brotherhood”. Yes, we are believers and they are believers from another angle”)
It’s also worth pointing out that there are Islamic scholars who dispute the veracity of the term jihad as applied to any struggle between Muslims and non-Muslims. There is definitely a distinction between jihad and Hirabah. This is Qaradawi on the Bali bombings:
“It is even an act of spreading mischief in the land or Hirabah in juristic terms: a crime in Islam for which a severe punishment is specified without discrimination to race, color, nationality or religion of the culprit.”
But aside from any of the people I mentioned earlier, you asked about more than the tip of the iceberg? Hang on to your sarcasm, I wasn’t lying, I can keep going (and brace yourself, it gets a lot more kumbayaa) There was a good op-ed from a Muslim in the WSJ two months ago:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007743.
In fact, there’s a lot of good material online about this, and a search for hirabah does a lot to turn up the views of more moderate Muslims. Consider this reading from the IRFI website (www.irfi.org):
“The majority of Muslim scholars have always welcomed the diversity inherent in the unity or tawhid of the universe, including its different races and religions, in accordance with the clear teachings throughout the Qur’an. They speak of the dar al ijaba, the land of those who have accepted Islam, in contrast to dar al da’wa, the land of those who still need to be educated about Islam; or dar al taqwa, the land of those who stand in loving awe of Allah, in contrast to dar al ahd, the land of those with whom one has treaties of friendship and cooperation.”
That’s the site of an organization of Muslims, by the way, so it’s not some “kumbaya” reading by Westerners. Here’s a quote from Imam Tammi Adi, who has also said that the American fight against Al Qaeda is justified by the Koran.
“Islam is about the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, about fairness and respect for all people regardless of their religion, about fairness despite anger, about having no compulsion in religion, about defending those who are persecuted because of their religion, about protecting all temples and religious freedom. Quran and Hadith are full of such principles. Our fanatics have been violating all these holy principles for many years. Our fanatics have started a war of words and bullets against Christians, Jews and everybody who disagrees with them. Our fanatics have twisted the Quran to justify a Crusade. Our fanatics are the enemies of Islam. Let’s condemn them clearly and distance ourselves from them.There are problems in American foreign policy. But they did not cause terrorism. The terrorists do not care about the Muslims, Palestinians, Afghans or Iraqis. They killed hundreds of them in the towers and in the embassies. It is wrong to mention terrorism and foreign policy in one breath. It’s like saying, “You Americans deserve it because of your foreign policy.” I believe we should condemn terrorism without referring to foreign policy.”
Here’s this bit from a paper by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, leader of the Minaret freedom institute:
“…it is my intention to assert that it is the moral duty of Muslims to not merely condemn the attacks on noncombatant Americans (including hundreds of Muslims) that took place on September 11, 2001, but to engage in a positive effort to identify the planners and material supporters of the attacks, to confront them with the fact that their actions have violated the sharia`ah in a most egregious manner”
Against your idea of forced conversion, the Koran itself, 10:99, 10:108:
“If it had been thy Lord’s Will, they would all have believed, all who are on earth! Will you then compel mankind, against their will, to believe”
“Say: O people! indeed there has come to you the truth from your Lord, therefore whoever goes aright, he goes aright only for the good of his own soul, and whoever goes astray, he goes astray only to the detriment of it, and I am not a custodian over you.”
As always, I’ve got plenty more, but this has gotten long. And feel free to address my response to your analysis of the Christianity issue. I’m still waiting for you to prove so categorically that Christian society has been mostly peaceful for the past 2,000 years. I look forward to your obliteration.
Owen, despite the fact that we talk about the Christian issue and this page has dropped off 97% of the publics attention to page 2, you still claim I don’t address 90% (or whatever) of your christian claims.
Is it that I don’t agree with you that means I’m “ignoring” your claims?
And to what end? Your obsession with christianity borders on the absurd when the topic is Islamic violence.
Yes, I know. I brought up christianity as a contrasting example of peace in the form of the exemplars. But now you feel you need to turn this into a christianity is violent issue along with claims that nearly all of Islam is obviously peaceful.
You don’t like me bringing up the Turkish priest shooting (irritating) because it’s a single incident. But that was exactly my point. The violence cannot be strictly pigeon-holed to one particular area, incited by a lone muslim cleric. This islamic violence is worldwide.
People are dying to islam right now, yet not a single person has died in the same time period to rampaging christians pissed off over the NYT reprinting Dung Mary while muslims riot.
Yet you still insist on equivocating islam to christianity, even though I have demonstrated the exemplars match both of the religions current actions. You’re getting nowhere with that particular equivocation.
Looking at any geographical area of the world, you could claim that nearly all wars fought there were over religion. Man uses whatever is necessary or convenient to make war, whether the excuse supports the war or not. Focusing on Europe and the Balkans will show anyone war after war where christian religion was used as an excuse. Some were valid some were not. All were bloody.
Taking the Islamic religion the exact same thing can be said. Which is your point, but you attempt to excuse it by blaming christianity in an indirect way. Still, let’s look at the subject, briefly.
Compare the regions inhabited by christians now to the area inhabited by islam. Christians = peace and a modern, secular, tolerant society. Islam = just the opposite.
The point: Christianity “grew up” to use words Shawn hates. Islam has not. Islam is still murdering.
WHY?
The exemplars.
Christianity’s exemplar never supported killing, slaying, ambushing, child murder, genocide, terrorism. Islam’s exemplar does.
That’s why they’re still killing. That’s why the killing is not local, but worldwide. That’s why the tiny sliver of clerics are pissing in the wind when they call for peace in the (Arabic!) lands touched by violence.
And that’s why I’ll never agree with you.
No, you’re completely missing the point of my argument. Look at what you say above:
“Looking at any geographical area of the world, you could claim that nearly all wars fought there were over religion. Man uses whatever is necessary or convenient to make war, whether the excuse supports the war or not. Focusing on Europe and the Balkans will show anyone war after war where christian religion was used as an excuse. Some were valid some were not. All were bloody.”
That’s what I’m saying. But I don’t know why you think that I’m saying that Christian violence excuses the actions of Muslims. I’ll say it again:
Christian violence does not excuse the violence of Muslims.
Jewish violence does not excuse the violence of Muslims.
If Christians have been violent, it is not okay for Muslims to be violent.
If Jews have been violent, it is not okay for Muslims to be violent.
Past indications of violence are not a free pass for people to be violent.
Can I make that any more clear? I persisted in my argument that Christianity has been violent because you persisted in your argument that it hasn’t, that it has been a religion of peace for 2,000 years and used that as an indictment of Muslim culture. I continued to elaborate when I offered a more detailed argument and you simply ignored that more detailed argument and set up a weak argument against the clerical examples I provided. Then, when you rebutted against that, you completely ignored the next round of examples that I provided. Why? That’s a great question! As far as I can tell, it’s because it’s much easier to go on maligning millions of people in absentia when you don’t pay attention to any of the realities of their situation.
There are so many more differences between the lives of people in the Middle East and the lives of people in the West than the fact that Muslims are there. But you have siezed upon that one factor as the cause of every difference in our societies, and that is ignorant. Don’t you think that people are more complicated than that? Even within differences caused by religion, don’t you think that a variety of factors play into the way that that religion is received? What you’ve done is the equivalent of comparing crime rates in the inner city to the suburbs and saying to yourself “Wow, there’s a lot more crime. Let’s see what the common denominators are here…ahh, black people. So black people must be more violent, because in these predominately black neighborhoods, there is more violent crime!” And no, I’m not raising the charge of racism again, it’s just a fair analogy.
And the reason that I don’t like you bringing up the Turkish priest shooting is not that it’s irritating, I said it was an irritating appeal to pathos. You know, that’s another poor method of argument that people employ when they don’t have a strong argument, like the ad hominems that you so loathe from Shawn and I. In the absence of quality facts, you stretch instances to get people to react with their emotions, as opposed to making a logical appeal.
The lowest estimate of the number of Muslims in North America is 1.8 million; even if the smallest possible number is correct, how many of them are out living up to the apparent promise of their religion and bombings malls while beheading little children? How many violent riots were staged by American Muslims? How many children are beheaded each week by American Muslims? Or Canadian Muslims? Or English Muslims? Could it be possible that there are a lot of huge, important differences between the experience of living in the Middle East and the experience of living in America?
I can keep citing quotes from Muslims who read the Koran (and it seems pretty clear from the quotes above that your theory of violent conversion is in direct contradiction of scripture) to say that Islam is in fact a religion of peace, and you can keep ignoring them, but it won’t make you right. The fact that violence occurs in Islamic society is not any more an indictment of the religion iteslf than the fact that violence occurs in Christian society.
“The fact that violence occurs in Islamic society is not any more an indictment of the religion iteslf than the fact that violence occurs in Christian society.”
Why, then, do converts to Islam in many countries immediately turn to violence where (culturally) before they had been non-violent?
Boredom?
Or due to exemplar?
You claim I keep ignoring your point, but when I discuss it and clarify, you ignore mine! You keep ignoring that I’m not using the past per se to claim a particular religion is violent or peaceful, but rather that each religion has a history that exemplifies in total the influence of the exemplar.
So when I talk about violent history being more or less for a particular religion, you ignore that I’m tying it to a cause, rather than just raw historical fact.
Who is ignoring whom here?
The largest increases in islamic conversion here in the US occur in the prison population – where our most violent are housed. Is it any wonder that Islam has great success in prison? Even the left in America agrees with me: here.
I’m not ignoring you – I just can’t seem to get through. That’s why I keep saying we’re not going to agree.
Okay, but your citation from Schumer is questionable; he’s not advocating the removal of Islamic clerics from the prison system,he’s talking the problem of having Wahabbi extremists as opposed to moderates, who have been banned. Isn’t that once again a case of addressing the problem that extremism appeals to people who are predisposed towards criminality or who feel that they are in dire straits?
As to your argument about the exemplar, I am trying to address that, and I’m sorry if I’m apparently not explicit enough. Here’s is the chain of argument.
1) Christianity has, in the person of Christ, a more peaceful exemplar than Judaism (in the person of such prophets as David or Joshua, and given the commandment to take the holy land by force) or Islam.
2) You claim that Christianity has had a largely peaceful history for the last 2,000 years, due to its exemplar, Christ.
3) I claim that that is, in fact, erroneous, that the 2,000 year history of Christianity is actually quite violent, and that a litany of atrocities were committed by Christians in the name of their faith. Thus, the history of Christianity does not, in fact, “exemplify in total the influence of its exemplar”
4) This is not because Christianity is inherently violent or peaceful, or because Christ is a violent or peaceful exemplar, just as the violence or peace that arises in Muslim history is not because Muhammed was a violent or peaceful exemplar. The example of this is the many Muslims who live in various western cultures that are not, in fact, the violent murderers and thieves you seem to claim them to be. It is, I argue, because society is a lot more complicated than that, and reducing everything down to a single simple cause is a terribly myopic way to understand the situation.
5) My argument is meant to be buttressed further by the example of any Muslims who do not read Muhammed as an advocate of violent conversion and the subversion of the masses. The historical record, as well, bears this claim (at least as well as it bears the claim that Christianity is a religion of peace). For instance, your claims about the Abbasid Caliphate being a brief, “90+ year” time of peace are questionable because the Abbasid Caliphate dates from the 8th century to the 13th (notably, throughout the entirety of the Crusades in the Holy Land). Similarly, historical records suggest that after being expelled from most European countries (including Spain, which had fought so valiently against the Moorish invaders in your account), many Jews settled in Muslim territory because of its more peaceful, pluralistic society. Even in occupied Spain there is a very real record of peaceful integration of the three societies, as there was in the early Ottoman culture.
Does that get to your idea of the exemplar? You are again, above, relying on the false claim that Christianity has projected a record of relative peace through the ages, not by providing evidence that refutes my own, but simply by stating it again. You have said that Leftists support your view, but in fact you provided a citation from Schumer’s website in which he claims, as I do, that Wahabbism is not exemplary of Islam and poses a danger to people’s view of the religion,while teaching a flawed, intolerant reading of scripture. Look at this quote, straight from the article you linked to:
“Non-Wahhabi prisoners are put in immediate harm’s way and prisoners are exposed to a brand of hateful speech that is likely to inspire them to intolerance and potentially violent acts once their prison terms end. I urge you to dismiss all imams hired under Mr. Umar’s supervision and to reconstitute the Muslim leadership inside New York State’s prisons to ensure that it reflects a more moderate brand of Islam that represents the diversity of belief within the Sunni, Shia and Sufi sects that make up the Muslim community,” Schumer’s letter continued.”
It continues with this…
“Mr. Agha Jafri, spokesman for the Universal Mission of Muslims in America, based in NYC said the following: “We tried 10 times to get into the Fishkill Prison, the Mt. McGregor Prison, and the Ottisville Prison and we were completely black balled and cut out by this very guy Umar. We have 15 chaplains available around NY State at any time to preach to Muslim prisoners. I can give you 15 names right now of chaplains who are ready to enter the prison system today. If we had Shi’a preachers inside the prisons, they would preach a type of Islam that is against persecution of any individual and promotes interfaith dialogue between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. A Shia chaplain would first and foremost preach Islam and the direct interpretation of the Koran which teaches peace and understanding between people and the importance of eliminating hate speech against any person in your own religion and in other religions.
So Schumer is in favor of moderate Islam because he sees it as a religion of peace and is advocating that attempts be made to stem the influence of Wahabbism, which advocates hate and violence. How is it that that is in line with what you are saying? You continually post links as though they’re going to undo my argument, but they don’t. The Schumer thing underlines that rift in the Muslim community between moderates and extremists. The Qaradawi quote you provided was from a speech where he went on to condemn violence over those cartoons. You submit the history of Christianty as though it’s going to prove you right but it doesn’t, and when I provide examples as to why not, you try and disprove them. When that proof doesn’t work, you simply say that’s not the point.
Let me put this in simple terms that will (I hope), hit all of your points, so I don’t look like I’m missing them.
1) Many Muslims see Islam as a religion of tolerance and peace
2) The fact that their history contains violence does not refute this, just as the violent history of Christian society does not refute the claim that it is a religion of peace. You see Christianity as having a peaceful history and offer that as support of your argument. I absolutely challenege both that claim and the argument it supports.
3) Religious texts are open to wide interpretation, a fact that not only divides people, but which is actively exploited by people. No religion is homogenous. You see Islam as a united religion of hatred, and I absolutely challenge that claim, and have offered evidence.
To me, this ties up the connection between exemplars and histories nicely, but if it’s still not clear, by all means, let me know.
I see you’re trying to address it, but you keep having to reach back 500 years to prove christianity’s violence.
I don’t have to reach back 500 years in Islam. I don’t have to reach back 250 years, nor 50 nor 10. I can reach back 500 minutes and call up Islamic extremism involving masses of people spanning numerous races and cultures.
And the difference is (in similarity), christians grew to imitate their exemplar. Islam has also.
The Abassid Caliphate is noted for being the golden age of Islam as a period of total peace and harmony. The historical record indicates it was not anything but violence. When I say 90+ years, I refer to just two of the caliphates, not all of them. Both of them killed christians and Jews, also.
The Jews, at times, rightly chose to risk murder in paying the jizyah over the rampant anti-semitism that swept Europe periodically.
The fact that there are huge populations of Jews in European lands today and but remnants in muslim lands speaks very differently of what you think muslim “tolerance” is.
Further, as the modern age has bloomed and spread information through the wonders of the printing press and other sources of media, the message of each individual religion in this world has gone from secretive to commonly available. If every christian does not have a bible at this point in time, considering the availability and cost, it’s a matter of circumstance or choice. In this, all religions have unfettered access to not only the written word their religion ties to, but also broad access to those who teach it.
Judaism and christianity have thus become not only more exposed at an individual level to their exemplar, but also the teaching from an aggregate of sources. This has brought a maturing peace.
In Islam I would argue the same, except that the spread of Qurans and teaching have only fostered the violent example that Muhammed gave.
Again, I stress that this comes down to the exemplars and text of each religion and is demonstrated by their total histories.
“You see Islam as a united religion of hatred, and I absolutely challenge that claim, and have offered evidence.” Current events (of the last ten years) do not support you.
Do you read MEMRI? Newsmax? National Review? American Enterprise? Have you read the excerpts from the multinational Islamic conference from 2000? Have you read anything where Islamic scholars have met to discuss Israel and issued “consensus” statements? Only one word encapsulates their consistent proclamations: hate.
You see Islam as peace; I say you’re blind.
Okay, I’m done. I’ve pushed this really far, and I have to admit you’ve at least been patient in not giving up. You’re right, we’re absolutely not going to agree, because we don’t trust each other’s evidence at all (that’s not an accusation, it’s mutual), so we’ve come to a point where it’s hard to argue.
You write out your debate fairly well and logically, I just disagree entirely, and because of the above problem with sources, we’re not going to get anywhere with each other and no one else is involved in the debate. Thanks for being willing to debate, and showing me the respect I showed you (again, I mean that seriously. I was hard on you, so I deserved to have you be hard on me).
I appreciate the discussion, and although I won’t concede my point, I’m willing to admit that I’ve dragged this out past being useful to either of us (although I did get a lot of use out of parts of it). It’s been an interesting debate.
Yes, it has been an interesting debate.
Even without agreeing, you’ve made me think, and that’s always a good thing. Where are we in society if we can’t exchange ideas?
I’m sure we’ll dance again, probably more gingerly, in future posts.
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