America is terrible at admitting mistakes and changing course. Thats why I value prohibition.

Freeing Europe was great but not an accomplishment intertwined with religion in my mind. Ending slavery....was that really a great moment? Lots of countries had abolished slavery way earlier. To end slavery, we had to start it in the first place. Then again, we did change course on something (though it took a Civil War....we dont do change easy).

Getting to the moon before those commies was good.

America's greatest accomplishment, of course, is being in the right place (access to both major oceans) at the right time of human history (when a large chunk of Europe desperately needed a fresh start) and taking advantage of it to meteorically rise to the top of world. (Seriously, what were the odds of any new country going from nothing to clear #1 in less than 200 years?)

I hope we dont screw it all up now.

Invention of Gatorade > Invetion of Tang.

Good natured ribbing is one thing.
But you have crossed a line buddy

If you think about it, this issue shows just how secular we are here. Let's take India for comparison.... in India, if you look at what someone is eating, what language they are speaking, or what clothes they wear you can guess what their religion is and be right 99% of the time. In America, watching what the average person eats or how they dress tells you very little about which religion they follow.

Unless they are Amish.

nothing to see here.

Hey Florida invented Gatorade. I'm a loyal guy.

vb---great point.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone here can admit that our human faults and failings sometimes lead us away from what we believe.

I think the crux of lois' point is that when someone is actually following the teachings of Islam, this is actually how they act. It's pretty clear in their holy book that Islamic men are "it", and everyone else isn't worth much - whether its women or every other religion Mohammed classified as being in the "tribe of war".

People have done some pretty terrible things in the name of Christ throughout the years, but that doesn't mean the Bible condones it. Essentially the opposite is true for Islam.

As things stand in my conscience, I remain to be convinced that these statements are not true.

[quote name='mtdesmoines' date='Wednesday, February 18th, 2009, 5:53 PM' post='3027992']
As things stand in my conscience, I remain to be convinced that these statements are not true.
[/quote




Sorry, but your "conscience" is ignoring the actual factual parameters of the teachings themselves. Try reading, and then come on back and you can admit you are wrong and all that. It won't be fun for me, I promise.

wait, I thought he was agreeing with us.

that will not stop LMD from arguing with him.

it's hard to tell considering his expert use of a triple negative. You need a team of lawyers to decipher that swamp of a sentence.

Lois's default programming is set to assume others are disagreeing with him. But he could be right here. I have read that sentence 4 times and I am still not quite sure what he is saying. I did the noble thing and put on Life instead.

Lol. I completely misread what I was replying to, but that being said, strategy is right. Let's get it on ****ers.

I think you are my team of lawyers, so if you can't figure it out, we're screwed.

Well said. I agree. All religions and cultures do bad things because they are all similarly made up of human beings with the same weaknesses. We shouldn't condemn a whole religion or culture base on the bad apples.

Here is the question I have. Am I to believe that the behavior of the man in the OP who murdered his wife by beheading her had nothing to do with his culture or religion? After all a lot of husbands murder there wives for a variety of reasons in this country. Of course, our society for the most part frowns on this and dishes out very stiff penalties for such crimes.

Ok, I will wait and see how the muslim community reacts to this. Lets see how much of the Muslim community frowns on this and how much support the murderer receives from the muslim community.

I just feel uneasy at how some of you see yourself as superior because you choose to see an event such as this in a different context than where it belongs. I think it is irresponsable.

really?



I'm not going to read this whole thread, I just don't have the energy. But I will make this one comment.

Jesus hates religion. Including, but not limited to, Christianity. People do all sorts of things 'in God's name'. But what the Bible says is all that matters.... and the God of the Bible makes it clear that males and females are totally equal.

Alright, I am a little ashamed.

LMD I believe that if all of us were to look deeply into our souls we'd have to admit that we are too. You're just a bit more honest than most about it.

I dont see aproblem here.

And ABC< NBC< MSNBC agree with me or else they would be covering this.

However if pat robertson had set his wife aflame, it would be headlines for months.

I agree because ABC, NBC, MSNBC cover every single murder in the USA

besides if it was an issue no way the liberal bias CNN would've covered it as they have.

Evidently you are not aware of the background info.

i'm getting into this a bit late, but using bob's posts as a starting point, i'd like to say that islam is a very YOUNG religion relative to christianity, judaism, hinduism, buddhism, and most of the other major world religions. all of those (save buddhism, perhaps, unless you count the 20th cen korean monk riots, i guess) have had a profoundly violent, proselytic phase that coincided with a very fundamentalist interpretation of scripture, and i don't think that it's a stretch to say that islam is merely going through its own right now.

without condoning violence, you can put it into its proper comparative historical context--indeed, you should, if you're trying to understand it properly. i mean, thinking of islamic fundamentalism in the middle east today and equating it with islam is more like using the spanish inquisition as a synecdoche for christianity than it is using the contemporary US as christianity's grand historical exemplar.

the christian and jewish bibles talk of slavery, of great wars, of violence, and social situations that we'd find absolutely abhorrent today, and the qu'ran is no different. if you judge a religion by a fundamentalist interpretation of its central scriptures, they all look pretty terrible (except for buddhism, maybe, unless you find riddles and paradoxes abhorrent). you have to allow religious thought to develop and mature within its own tradition, and within a functional society if you want to give it a fair shake, and islam hasn't really had that opportunity, or at least is basically never given one in the west. people that equate islam exclusively with the middle east are kidding themselves--a much more fair view lies half a world away in indonesia, which actually has the world's largest islamic populace, and in the context of other asian countries in the region, indonesia ain't so bad.


all that said, i'll read this story as muslim murder the next time i read a family murder/suicide in appalachia as a christian slaying. as of now, i'm chalking both of them up to batshit crazy people who happen to believe in one god or another.

Seems to me that Christianity's 'violent' phase would be better laid at the feet of politics than fundementalist interpretations of the Bible.
If you are saying that Christianity as an extension of Judaism has to account for the Old Testament, then I would agree.

And Islam was originally sub titled Religion of the Sword for a reason

BTW, how long are we to wait for Islam to 'mature', I would think 1500 years would have mellowed them out a little.

I think you've studied World Relgions a little bit more than I have, but I'm pretty sure this is just wrong.

IIRC, Islam was founded around the year 700 AD, Mohammed used it as a tool help him get followers who would aid him in conquering. As BG said, it was founded as a religion of the sword and has been for over 1300 years.

Christianity has had it's phases where it has used violence, no doubt. But, think about it. If you actually read what Jesus preached, it was all about loving your neighbor and being peaceful and kind. Mohammed and the Koran preached Jihad against non-believers. Christianity's most violent times have come in response to Islamic expansionism (i.e. The Crusades and the Inquisition). I'm not saying that what Christianity did was right, or that either religion is true, but it's definitely some food for thought.

I dunno, I haven't studied it enough, but I have a hard time finding redeeming qualities in the history of Islam or in it's overall practice today.

On the other hand, I can find redeeming qualities with Christianity. At very least, Jesus preached about peace and loving your neighbor and while many Christians are hypocrites, most Christian relgions at least teach these same prinicples.

No religion has a perfect record, but Islam is about the only one that I have a hard time finding redeeming qualities in.

Quick edit to add...

I really don't think that most fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity condone violence in the way that fundamentalist interpretations of Islam do. My understanding is that Christion fundamentalists tend to be very oppressive in the way they treat women and in their puritanical views and such, but I don't know of any that preach the killing of innocent people because they happen to belong to another religion or offer 73 virgins for blowing yourself up.

Two examples...
-Amish - Fundamentalist Christians. Don't believe in using technology. Have very puritanical views on sex, not a great record on giving women freedom. They teach total pacifism.
-Fundamentalist Islamists. Oppress women, teach and preach the violent killing of non-believers. Don't discriminate in who they kill (i.e. children, women) so long as they kill non-believers.

I just don't see how you can compare the two.

Southern, there's a chance he was a total nutbag, and also that he chose to behead her (as the means to kill her) for some sort of cultural reason. The Chinese culture is probably just as favorable toward equality for women as ours is, so I think your connection is a logically weak one.




Your blind devotion to relativism is sickening and you're all over the place in your reasoning. If Christianity and Islam aren't in the same place, why will you think a murder in "appalachia" is a christian slaying (with no other information given)? Feel free to do this next time someone is...wait Brv and Lois, what passage in the new testament tells how to kill someone in a religious or honorable way?

Your connection to the inquisition is also silly, and I know you're so much smarter than that. The organized inquisition (btw we're talking about the middle ages) were by far a method to consolidate power for Catholic monarchies...and the inquisition never involved individual peasants beheading their wives.

Western society (very secular euro nations are struggling mightily as well as "Christian" USA) needs to take a big cultural stand against this crap. Men and women kill their spouses over marital strife all the time....but there's no way to disconnect the fact that this women was killed by beheading from cultural, fundamental islam, at all. This guy's a buddhist or athiest, who knows if he even touches her after they divorce.

This will do nicely.

And to answer your question, none, although there is a nice write up on how to correctly do in a fatted lamb or calf for the lord.

Actually, I had a multiple years of Church history in Catholic school. The Inquisition was actually about attempts my the Church (especially in Spain) to root out Muslim infiltrators who had managed to become priests, bishops, etc. and were working from within to undermine the Catholic Church. Was it done right? Almost certainly not, but that's what it was really about.

lol, i don't think you guys even read my post at all. i'm not saying that christianity is the inquisition. i'm saying that if you're going to equate the contemporary political ****up that is the middle east with islam, you're best off comparing that with a similarly volatile period in christian history, and that neither practice is fair if you want to offer an honest assessment of either religion. i mean, what you guys are generally doing is looking at the good parts of christian history and the more progressive evolutions in christian thought and comparing them to radical fundamentalist islam. apples and oranges, yo--that's not intellectually honest in the least.

it's kind of quaint that all of you didn't mention indonesia at all in your responses, though. remember--that's where our president got some of his early schooling, and he turned out ok, didn't he?


bg-your point about christianity and politics is exactly the one that bob made earlier with respect to islam, and the one i'm building off of in my post. now be fair and extend that same withdrawal of judgment onto islam.

cinci-a lot of your post is a specific sort of reading of christian doctrine, which is fine. you just have to allow that muslims are capable of understanding their religion in similarly different (ha) ways. like, most nonfundamentalist muslims don't understand jihad as a declaration of war, but rather as a call to proselytism, one not altogether different from its christian counterpart, although most nonmuslims in the west have no clue that that's actually true.

like, there are four categories that we're talking about here: fundamentalist christians; fundamentalist muslims; relatively secularized christians; and relatively secularized muslims. you guys are trying to compare the second and the third, and that just ain't right.

ds- your post is a bit more, well, silly. i'm not "blind[ly] commit[ted] to relativism." i'm committed to comparing things that ought to be compared, because that is how you learn shit that is actually true, and not some sort of orwellian rewriting of history. relativism is a TOOL that you use to understand things BETTER and more HONESTLY, and not some sort of ideology to which the (thoughtful, at least) left is committed, as you seem to think. you're also profoundly misunderstanding what i'm doing by bringing up the inquisition--or perhaps you half understand it, i think? you got that equating christianity writ large with the inquisition is stupid (although you seem to think that i found that process useful, which i don't. because i said precisely that.). good. now the second part of that SAME PARAGRAPH says that equating the contemporary middle east with islam is the same sort of intellectual dishonesty.

and as to your little response to SB, LOL if you think that women's rights in china are anywhere close to what they are in the west. i mean, hell, just google "womens rights china" and go from there.

Islam is NOT just a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology with a theological 'cloak'. This cloak serves 2 main purposes(not necessarily by design but in practice).
1) To command believers(theists) from the highest authority - GOD(Allah)
2) In modern times - to take advantage of the protection or privilege afforded religion - as opposed to being defined as a socio-political ideology.

Anyone who talks of moderate Muslims doesn't understand Islam(please be aware that many moderate Muslims don't even see the bigger picture of Islam). Your 'moderate' Muslim may be a friendly cab-driver, a polite shopkeeper, a conscientious doctor, or maybe a superstar sportsman. And he may be a decent, worthy member of society. The problem is not with him, or any one individual(or even a group of violent extremists).

The problem is with Islam:
1) Islam strongly discourages any criticism from within, and outside criticism is not tolerated.

2) Islam has the concept of the 'kufr', who are seen as to either to be defeated, converted, or at best(for the kufr) to be treated as second-class citizens in 'dar-al-Islam'.

3) Whereas Christianity has its Vatican Councils(Catholicism), and Synods(Anglicanism), Islam has no such reforming forum, and the Koran and Mohammed are most venerated.

4) The Koran might be similar to the Bible in that both books have their aggressive nature, but Mohammed is very different to the character of Jesus. Mohammed commanded followers to spread and conquer by terror, taqqiya(deception) and slaughter.

5) Apostasy is punishable by death under Islam, so not many ever denounce or leave it publicly.

This is why Islam continues to grow unchallenged, with the help of politically correct liberal-left in the West of course. Islam is a movement which seeks to bring all under 'dar-al-islam'. The terrorists and the activists do the energetic work in this regard. The 'moderates' simply take part by living some aspects of their life in accordance with Islamic instruction, arguing that Islam is peaceful, etc.

Western liberals need to be aware that Islam is not compatible with Western liberal values(acceptance of homosexuality, leisure, freedom NOT to believe, womens' rights, animal rights, etc). Therefore Western liberals should really challenge Islam to debate and reform in the West, for their sakes as much as Islamophobic 'right-wingers'.

Checky, if you're dealing with this thread and the comments as some sort of moral debate on "which is better" between Christianity and Islam, in terms of practice and its influence on its followers, I really wasn't; I'm just usually of the opinion that there's little comparison between modern Christianity and modern Islam.

"Modern" meaning today's. You say "well Islam isn't as advanced as Christianity is in terms of it's length of existence", but 1. that doesn't make Islamic-inspired violence and oppression OK, 2. you have no evidence of how crusading medieval christianity would be accepted today (if it even could exist).

Was your entire op just to try and knock Christians down a notch, because of the OP on the thread? Dont you think the assertion that Islam can easily inspire violence and oppression is just as true if it were the only religion on earth?

The worst statement you made was the murder in appalachia comparison to THE GUY WHO FOUNDED A TV STATION ABOUT ISLAM AND ISLAMIC CULTURE. If you think some random hick in the mountains of North Carolina the same is this guy, ok, but I"m still waiting for that story where a pastor crucifies his wife.

asohang, what you're describing is a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of islam, and that sort of strain exists in almost all of the world religions, christianity included. historically speaking (and talking about religion outside of history is absurd), moderate strains of religious thought develop exclusively within stable, fairly well-off (economically-speaking) societies after centuries of turmoil, and i fail to see how islam has found such a society in which to undergo some sort of large-scale change as christianity did in the west in just the past 3-400 years. again, even the contemporary proselytization of islam across europe is coming out of the middle east islamic leadership, and no one's disagreeing that that area of the world spawns some pretty reactionary ideology on every front. israel is pretty batshit crazy these days, too, after all.

again, if you want to compare islam to anything we call a stable religion today, look to indonesia and not to the middle east.

if you want to raise the question of whether islamic doctrine lends itself to fundamentalism in a more direct way than its christian counterpart, that's an entirely valid inquiry, BUT, it's one that can only be honestly negotiated through talking to people who are as well versed in the history and scripture of islam as they are in christianity, or in the context of an open debate between scholars of each religion, not some internet yellfest between a bunch of westerners, most of whom couldn't even name the five pillars of islam.



fwiw, if you think that the vatican council functions the same way today as it did at its outset, you're profoundly misinformed. most of the early tasks of the VC were directly intended to use church influence to structure european political society. again, your post strikes me as willing to grant historical context to christianity but not to islam, and that's simply not fair.

i agree with this, obviously. it's what i've been saying, lol. i would, however, suggest that indonesia isn't altogether terrible for finding some part of islamic society with which to compare with the judeo-christian west.



again, i agree. i don't really know why you're misunderstanding what i'm trying to say so badly, because i was quite explicit about the fact that understanding things in historical context doesn't make them "ok," but rather just gives you an honest foundation from which to engage with a tradition on a moral level or whatever you want to do. of course the guy beheading his wife wasn't "ok" in my book. like, duh. but if you're going to look at the OP's article and say "yup, just another case of a crazy ass brownface towelhead living his backwards-ass religion," which is how a lot of the posts in this thread can be translated, then you're simplifying things in a dishonest and counterproductive way. if you want to achieve real change, you have to start from real, fair facts as a foundation, and in the context of religion, that ALWAYS requires looking back to history, looking around at socioeconomic situations today, and understanding the way in which religions are shaped inside and outside political cultures. i'm simply trying to do that w/r/t islam in order to keep things all fair-and-balanced-like, since most of you are willing to do the same with christianity but not islam.



no, my intention was to engage in the often completely futile effort to show people that live in glass houses that they shouldn't throw stones.

i also don't know what you mean by your second sentence here. can you explain that?



that comparison was a statement about the media more than anything else, and could have been made better, i admit. what i'm getting at is that when a crazy fundamentalist christian gets an order from his god to start some kid-rapin compound somewhere in nowhere, USA, it comes out in the media as a "cult" (and not even a "christian cult"), whereas if a similarly crazy fundamentalist muslim kills someone, you won't ever hear the word "cult" in any media analysis anywhere. you do realize that mcveigh thought he was doing god's work in OK city, right?

The difference is that kid-rapin is not actually supported by a literal interpretation of Christianity, whereas beheading an infidel is supported by a literal interpretation of Islam.

The fact is that the core ideologies of the the religions of the world are not identical. Some are more harmful than others. You can dismiss it as fundamentalism, but if the solution to making the religion more peaceful is to follow its tenets less, that tells you something.

Could it be that the very practice of Islam prevents this from happening?





Talk about dishonest. A Muslim who started a television station to show the moderate Islam, beheads his wife. The title the OP gave his post is entirely accurate. Several posters on here criticize his interpretation of Islam and argue that beheading his wife is not exactly the best way to to show Muslims in a moderate light.

You completely ignore all aspects of the case except to say that "of course the guy beheading his wife wasn't 'ok' in my book." You go on to call bigots those who actually deal with the reality of the situation. Then you accuse them of being counterproductive?






This is because the cults are so far from Christian teaching even the most secularist/atheist anti-Christian media know that can't compare the two without losing credibility.

When a church evangelist is caught in a homosexual affair, using drugs ect, it gets heavy play in the media. The media is very eager to place Christianity in a bad a light.

99.9 percent of Christian denominations would condemn the actions of Timothy McVeigh, and if they didn't do so publicly it was because his actions were so far removed from Christian teaching that to acknowledge him at all would be to pay him a dignity he did not deserve. Muslims, however have a history of supporting honer killings of women for a variety of reasons. You don't see the 'moderate 'Muslim community come out and criticize this behavior, just as you don't see them criticizing terrorism.

Where are all these moderate peace loving muslims? They are a quiet bunch. Maybe they are all in indonesia.

Your blind devotion to relativism is sickening and you're all over the place in your reasoning. If Christianity and Islam aren't in the same place, why will you think a murder in "appalachia" is a christian slaying (with no other information given)? Feel free to do this next time someone is...wait Brv and Lois, what passage in the new testament tells how to kill someone in a religious or honorable way?

Your connection to the inquisition is also silly, and I know you're so much smarter than that. The organized inquisition (btw we're talking about the middle ages) were by far a method to consolidate power for Catholic monarchies...and the inquisition never involved individual peasants beheading their wives.

Western society (very secular euro nations are struggling mightily as well as "Christian" USA) needs to take a big cultural stand against this crap. Men and women kill their spouses over marital strife all the time....but there's no way to disconnect the fact that this women was killed by beheading from cultural, fundamental islam, at all. This guy's a buddhist or athiest, who knows if he even touches her after they divorce.
[/quote]

Probably more relevant than the inquisition would be the Salem Witch Trials. Now you can't really say that they were about consolidating power. More like a whole community gone around the bend.
You might also take a closer look at the history of the middle ages - in particular English history. There was a great number of people burned at the stake, beheaded etc for not following the state religion. Christianity definitely has a history of violence toward either non- believers or different believers depending on which religion the monarch at the time happened to believe in.
We still had a great number of bombings etc in the last century in Ireland that were based on Christian religious differences. So sorry kiddo, Christians have a great deal in their past that isn't very pretty. That's not to say that Islam is getting a free pass from me. Until moderate Muslims start crying out with indignation at these killings instead of remaining silent and thereby tacitly approving them then they need to realize that they aren't going to get much sympathy about any media bias from me.

My understanding is that this was his third wife and the previous two marriages ended in divorce with a lot of domestic violence and there was also a lot of domestic violence in this marriage as well before the murder.

My reaction as I've stated before is to view this first as a case of domestic violence. If he doesn't grab a scimitar but instead strangles her I doubt this makes news at all outside of the local area but tie in a Muslim with the way the murder happened and of course it becomes more interesting to the media.

And as I've stated before honor killings which this may or may not be are not an Islamic thing but are probably equally common among all ethnic and religious groups in the Indian Sub-Continent that includes Pakistan.

I seriously doubt that; we'd have to see some data. There's an article cited on the wikipedia honor killing page reporting 10,000 honor killings per year in pakistan. I can't find corresponding data from India but the reports I am seeing are mostly from northern India... I can not find reports of any widespread honor killing in southern indian states (the mostly hindu ones).

Christs teaching itself has nothing to do with violence. This is the difference that is key that for some reason people want to just gloss over. It's stupid, really, I don't get it at all. One calls for violence, one does not. How simple is that? Really, truthfully, how simple is that? Where are the christian honor killings happening? Where is Christ telling me to kill everyone who doesn't bow to him? There are times in this thread where it feels like I am taking crazy pills, these people want you dead, don't you get it? Dead. Dead. 100% based on religous belief. 100% Quit glossing over what this is and wake up. Sometimes it's perfectly okay to judge.

So, the question is, what do we do about it? Politically,defend your soil, other than that, nothing. People are free to believe as they will in this country, I don't care what it is, until it harms another in a palpable way. Not,"Oh, that makes me feel bad" I mean actual harm, and then the law can run it's course. In this country, we accept your backwards beliefs, end of story.

Now, I wonder if they would afford you the same opportunity?

No? They would kill you? Wow.

Well, then, there is the difference. All this, "Well, Islam doesn't teach, blah, blah, blah," Kneegrow please. I've read it with my own eyes. I know what it teaches, and sure, like anything else with parts that one doesn't like, you can throw out parts and pretend the parts don't exist but the truth is someone can come around and say,"Wait, where is the rest?" and you have no real answer, except to say,"Well, I don't like those parts, so I pretend they never existed."

I just don't get when it became so hard for smart people to deal in reality.

BTW, Nimue, this was not aimed at you, well, the first part was with your ridiculous claim that christ perpetrated atrocities based on his teachings.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmVhY...zc2NDNhZmZjMzU=

Some more Steyn

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1784/

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1800/128/

Come on Lois,

If they just get to know us they will like us. We just need to stop falling down to their level and shooting back. All we need to do is show them we are serious about wanting to live in peace, maybe give them a place at the table, help them by building mosques in DC, SHOW THEM that we can be reasonable.

This will stop all the violence, because it's about appeasement, and understanding the REASONS why they behead their wives and daughters.

After all, 1300 years ago a group who claimed to be Chrisitan killed some people too


This message has been brought to you by moral relativism and the Neville Chamberlain school for advanced diplomatic theory.

Pretty much a perfect example of how badly people get things. Take away the underlying motive to split from England, the larger birthrate of Irish Catholics, which was going to result in larger voting blocks, and historic wrongs by England, and yes, it was totally about Protestants vs Catholics.

But they would probably have just played soccer againt each other.

Same with most of the Middle Ages, take away the political power grabs by the Catholic hierarcy, nation states trying to isolate enemy states, and the massive amounts of money involved, and yes, the Middle Ages was about Christians wanting to force people to their religion.


In other words, the 'catch phrases' you are using are lazy history, based on an agenda, not on facts

From the Koran:

Verse 48:29 - "Muhammad is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Verse 66:9 - "Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal sternly with them. Hell shall be their home, evil their fate."




Peaceful

Lovely, isn't it?

abraham, anyone? isaac? hai?




oic, so now the argument is guilty until proven innocent. how wonderfully democratic.



honestly, you're making me feel as though i'm not typing in english, as you're disagreeing with all sorts of things that i've never said or intended to say. a few apparently necessary clarifications:

1. i never called anyone a bigot. i'd recommend interpreting the statement you're misreading to mean "most people in the west are pretty much clueless about anything related to islam," because that is pretty clearly what i mean when you don't take the thing completely out of context. the bigotry doesn't enter into things until you get to the stage where you're willfully ignoring or dishonestly discrediting contrary positions and evidence in order to serve ideological ends. like the country with the world's largest muslim population, for instance.

2. you don't have exclusive rights to reality with regard to the present discussion, especially if you didn't even know about islamic democraphics.

3. counterproductivity, ugh. what i meant by that, and again, i don't think that this was at all unclear, was that when you oversimplify reality in order to sustain an ideological fiction--namely, that religion exists outside of place, time, and context--it's entirely counterproductive of any real life goal, unless, of course, your goal is merely to rid the world of muslims. not that that's realistic.





lool, yes, most of them are in indonesia, which is the only strongly islamic non-middle east state, as i've said about 10 times by now.

look, it's very, very basic statistical practice to isolate variables in order to understand shit. if you want to isolate the variable that leads to widespread religious violence, you look at all the places that have that violence and figure out what they have in common. a lot of them are islamic, yes, but what they ALL have in common is that they exist in regions with long histories of severe political unrest and/or relative poverty. i mean, hell, that same sort of stuff can be found in the more violent areas of our own country, the former USSR, 20th century yugoslavia, and ireland notwithstanding. moreover, the relative stability of the LARGEST islamic population in the world serves as a pretty solid counterexample to your ideological thesis. i mean, you can ignore indonesia all you want, but it renders your argument somewhat silly.

That's quite a stretch. In that story god asked Abraham to sacrifice his son (by some interpretations because he was upset that human sacrifices were going on). He stopped Abraham at the last minute and didn't let him kill his son. You think that story teaches violence?




You're making a logical mistake. The statement that Islam causes violence is not the same as the statement all violence is caused by Islam.

I said previously:
Islam is NOT just a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology with a theological 'cloak'. This cloak serves 2 main purposes(not necessarily by design but in practice).
1) To command believers(theists) from the highest authority - GOD(Allah)
2) In modern times - to take advantage of the protection or privilege afforded religion - as opposed to being defined as a socio-political ideology.

checky, your arguments are fine in a completely theoretical debate. I'm not really denying Christianity's violent past, just making the point that aggressive Islam is here and now in Europe, where we have to deal with it everyday. The fact that it may be one strain or another is irrelevant. Islam is led by its violent strain, because 'moderates' do not oppose it strongly, if at all.

checky, I can tell you that lois, vbnautilus and zealous seem to be aware of the situation. Listen to them. You probably see this thread as an intellectual debate - I am trying to warn fellow Westerners(whether liberals or whatever) of the aggressive march of Islam. I'm not interested in theological debate. Despite studying islam for the past couple of years, I wouldn't say one needs to become a theological scholar to object to a violent aggressive ideology taking hold on OUR society, whatever its roots.

Please accept this one truth. Militant Islam does NOT respect you, even if you are prepared to respect it.

the story is about the extent of faith, is it not? and the things one does for god when he might ask?



this is only a valid point if you assume that islam is causing violence in some essential way. i don't buy that assumption--i am trying to make the argument, which keeps seeming to be whiffed upon, that socioeconomic situations have more to do with violence than religion does, regardless of the faith we're talking about. i'm unclear as to why when i say it, no one pays attention, but when bob does, y'all are fine with it. i mean, it doesn't really matter who says it--the point is what it is, and it pokes a sizeable hole in the "logical" chain that being muslim makes you blow shit up.

logically speaking, if islam is essentially violent, then the most populous islamic nation on earth should be extremely violent. it's not.



briefly, i'm entirely aware of the "situation" in europe today. i have plenty of relatives in europe, and i spent about a month there this past summer. most of the discussions i had in london with my uncle concerned the role of islam in europe today. he, just like me, is of the opinion that the problem isn't islam as such but rather that the people coming to europe in droves from the middle east are coming from a socioeconomic context that renders them unable to assimilate easily into contemporary culture. most of these immigrants are coming from the middle east. i hate to keep harping on the indonesia thing here as a counterexample to everything, but everyone keeps ignoring it, and i'm finding that progressively more ridiculous.

again, you're talking about militant islam. not islam as such. that is a completely valid distinction. 4-500 years ago, which would even out the time for maturation-difference i was talking about before, christian sects were warring pretty goot themselves.

as to your post directly, i simply don't think that your numbered assumptions are valid in any way. the first one can be applied to any monotheistic religion out there, as the abraham story in genesis shows pretty well, imo, and it's thus not helpful in distinguishing islam from other religions. i mean, over half the world believes that if their god tells them to do something, that they'd better do it, no matter what it is. hell, george bush said god told him to go into iraq, lol.

the second could conceivably be valid, but it reads more like a conspiracy theorist's ramblings than a cogent argument as you've formulated it. "muslims SAY they're practicing religion, but what they're REALLY doing is plotting to take over the world, muahahaha." virtually every christian church in the west "takes advantage of the protection and privilege afforded religion," too. are you really arguing that suicide bombers expect to get away with what they do because of those protections? or just that they're using those protections to make evil plots against the good christian folks?

as to the point that islam is led by its violent strains--that's only true in the middle east, which is no more the center of islam than the good ol' american heartland is the center of christianity.

just googling will lead to plenty of articles like this: http://www.speroforum.com/a/17922/Indonesi...e-suicide-bombs

(cliff's notes--indonesian muslims like their government as it is and don't like blowing shit up)


also, fwiw, i don't see this as merely an "intellectual debate" (fwiw, this common criticism of "leftist" positions, on this forum and elsewhere, is quite juvenile. believe it or not, liberals actually believe what they believe for a reason). to be quite blunt about it, people who talk shit about islam are fueling the fires of those within the tradition that are prone to violence, and shitting on the faces of those within the tradition that don't condone violence. this practice is ENTIRELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE toward achieving peace because it disempowers those within islam that would exert influence over the more violent strains of it, and further justifies the reactionary violence that some are practicing in the middle east and europe within their own circles.

aside from that:
red scares, black face, and other forms of dishonest lampooning of the proverbial Other--these are the things that render our ideal of democracy entirely farcical, and arguing as i have been in this thread is undergone solely in defense of that ideal. history has taught us over and over that the disenfranchised among us, as their condition worsens, become progressively more frustrated, furious, and then violent. telling them that their god is an inferior one simply ain't going to help, kiddo.


and if you guys want to keep ignoring indonesia, try malaysia. that works, too.

Yes there are christian animals, and jewish animals, and buddhist animals,

But only muslim scripture justifies being an animal.

Well that interpretation is a matter of debate; but even if I grant you that interpretation it is far from a call to violence. I haven't heard of any christian terrorist cells blowing people up and claiming the story of Abraham and Isaac justified it.



Poverty-related violence is of a completely different kind, and generally does not involve blowing oneself up in a crowded mall in order to achieve access to virgins. But that issue is largely orthogonal to the one we are discussing, which is the contribution that religion makes to violence. Some religions actually do a good job of reducing violence, which is probably what their function should be. Islam doesn't.



Are you sure? The Council on Foreign Relations considers Indonesia to be a terrorist haven. The recent series of bombings in Bali were not perpetrated by members of the local hindu population. The Jemaah Islamiyah group based in Indonesia has killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people. They have bombed both an embassy and a Marriott hotel in Jakarta with suicide bombers over the last few years.

The country has vast networks of religious-based terrorist groups: the Islamic Defenders Front, the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, the Laskar Jihad, etc., etc..

So simple. Thank you, well said.

fwiw, after about 6 years of religious studies training, i've yet to come across an interpretation of genesis 12 that would suggest that abraham ought to have done otherwise at god's command, nor have i encountered any evidence to suggest that one ought to disobey a similar order within virtually any mainstream christian tradition. i suppose that you could conceivably read it otherwise--or, indeed, however you'd like--but i know of literally no self-described christians who would have given the burning bush the finger were they in that spot.




do you really think that the endgame of suicide bombings in israel or wherever is 72 virgins or however many it is? but ok, fine, orthogonal, etc, etc. my point is that if you want to justify violent action with scripture and tradition, you can do so in literally any tradition. the korean monk riots in the late 20th century were justified within their buddhist context. st. augustine of hippo made his philosophical-theological career negotiating "ok violence" and "not ok violence" within christianity. tribes in africa practice things like forced female circumcision for religious reasons. israel lobs rockets and bombs at arabs to defend the holy land. bush is cool with going after iraq because his god told him to git er done. some areas in india still pressure widows to practice sati.

not coincidentally, all of the above examples come out of areas ridden with economic and/or political strife. but sure, all of the people perpetrating those acts believe in some god or another(s), so it's obviously the fault of buddhism, christianity, tribal religion, judaism, evangelical christianity, and hinduism.

the bolded assumes complete control of a religion over its practitioners, and is patently absurd. i mean, name one religion in the world that hasn't ever split off into sects over doctrinal debates.



this is still anecdotal at best. i linked an article above that showed that the vast majority of muslims in indonesia outright condemn violence as a means of achieving religious or political ends. i mean, we live in a country with crazy people in it, too, a number of whom have, in the name of their (less arabic) god, gone wild with the statutory rape and incest, murdered their own wives and children, bombed government buildings, and lynched and hung minorities, among other atrocities.
we call them republicans. hi, balloon guy!
the indonesian government is shown in your very link to condemn both al-qaeda and (in more vague terms) these other groups you're mentioning. this government is relatively secular, but its figures are muslims. muslims. condemning. violence.

here's a good little exercise for someone with more energy than me: see if you can wander around the web and find some data concerning the average standard of living for a suicide bomber as compared to the rest of their society. i'm guessing you won't find many rich kids that blew themselves up.


some nice books for reading about religion, violence, ignorance, and tolerance:

the ambivalence of the sacred by r. scott appleby
murder in amsterdam by ian buruma
on violence by hannah arendt
a new religious america by diana eck
under the banner of heaven by jon krakauer