Interesting article I thought.
Interesting piece. Thanks for posting.
I almost forgot that you were useless.
Not difficult to maintain stats like that when you execute anyone who isn't a Muslim.
The only true point in this article, is the fact that religion and government do not mix.
They do similar things in Hindu India. Several states have anti-conversion laws. Wherever it's done, it's wrong.
Why didn't you post the whole article? You skipped the most interesting parts. Buchanan presents here some important problems. Like that we ALSO do kill in the name of our REAL beliefs. (Unless our REAL beliefs prohibit us from doing so as it is in the case of quakers or pacifists). Maybe one should define the real belief as something for which we are willing to die or kill?
OK, let me post the whole article from the Chronicles Magazine:
"And he said unto them, Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.
"And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."
This was the punishment the Lord commanded and Moses ordered for the Jews who had fallen down and worshiped the golden calf while he was on Sinai being given the Law, the First Commandment of which read: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me."
The severity of the punishments Jews and Christians have imposed upon apostates comes to mind as one reads that Abdul Rahman, 41, is on trial in Kabul for having converted, 16 years ago, to Christianity.
Rahman was caught as he sought custody of two teenage daughters raised by their grandparents. He was found to be in possession of a Bible.
Confessing to being a Christian convert, Rahman has refused to recant and reconvert to Islam, preferring to die a Christian.
Under Sharia, strict Islamic law, a Muslim who rejects Islam is to be put to death. Rahman’s prosecutor, Abdul Wisi, declared: "He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one. We are Muslims, and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty."
Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada, who conducted the one-day hearing, explained: "We are not against any particular religion. But in Afghanistan this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam."
Post-Taliban Afghanistan remains 99 percent Muslim. The Christians are numbered in the hundreds at most, and most remain secret Christians.
If Rahman is put to death, he would be a martyr. And if there is a way we Americans can spare this Christian, we should find it.
But the story of Abdul Rahman raises anew this question: Are not free elections in the Islamic world, where the masses are urged to vote, almost certain to empower the faith of those masses, militant Islam?
Two thousand years ago, Christians in Jerusalem, from Christ Himself to St. Stephen, were declared apostates to Judaism and suffered the fate that Rahman faces. For 300 years, Romans executed untold thousands of Christians, among them Sts. Peter and Paul.
When papal Catholicism became the faith of Europe, apostates and heretics were burned at the stake. In the Protestant England of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Catholics, such as Thomas More, Cardinal Pole and priests like Edmund Campion, were martyred.
None of this is to endorse killing in the name of God, but to suggest that killing in the name of God, and, in our own time, in the name of the State, the race, the ideology—be it Nazism, communism or Maoism, or even democracy—has been the way of mankind.
Heretics during the Spanish Inquisition were forced to make an auto da fe, a confession of faith, not only because Spain and Catholicism were one, but because heretics imperiled the faith that led to eternal life. By undermining that faith, apostates and heretics were risking the souls and salvation of the Spanish people. They were diverting men from paradise. Whoever threatened the faith in that time of belief would be like, in our time, the pimp who corrupts a young girl with narcotics to put her into prostitution.
Devout Muslims believe that apostates to Islam, the greatest gift they have, should get the same treatment patriotic Americans in 1950 thought should be meted out to Soviet spies and communist traitors.
To devout Muslims, Islam is worth dying for, and killing for. This is a belief that the secularist mind, which regards religion as anything from an addiction of the feeble-minded to a substitute for valium, cannot fathom. But that is a deficiency of modernity. For we all have, or have had, causes for which we, too, would kill.
Lenin executed more people in his first year than the Spanish Inquisition did in 300 years, said Solzhenitzyn. Mao’s body lies in a crystal sarcophagus in Tiananmen Square, though he killed many times more Chinese than the Western and Japanese imperialists put together.
The Christian West partook of two of the greatest mass slaughters of human history, World Wars I and II, featuring poison gas and the carpet bombing and atomic bombing of cities to advance the cause of democracy—that same democracy Islamic peoples now use to advance the cause of Islam and Islamism.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Pat is a lunatic.
The obvious alternative is for Condi's people to negotiate that he be "kicked out" of Afghanistan. If he is no longer in that "Muslim" country, then it isn't against their laws for him to be a Christian.
Many immigrants came to the USA, Canada, etc to escape religious persecution. My Amish-Mennonite anscestors ran all over Europe fleeing persecution because they refused to take sides and fight in the many wars of their time.
Martyrdom is standing and getting killed on principle. We conservatives know all about it in the political sense. Is is compromising principle for our anscestors, or for this Afghan to flee rather than become a martyr?
“But the story of Abdul Rahman raises anew this question: Are not free elections in the Islamic world, where the masses are urged to vote, almost certain to empower the faith of those masses, militant Islam?”
****He forgets that the elections are not free in the Muslim world of extremism. After we went into Afghanistan, they conducted the first free elections in their history. It was the same for Iraq. The court sentencing is done not by vote but by militant framework. He is a long way off track in the article.
“None of this is to endorse killing in the name of God, but to suggest that killing in the name of God, and, in our own time, in the name of the State, the race, the ideology—be it Nazism, communism or Maoism, or even democracy—has been the way of mankind.”
**** An so, this means what? Is he saying that we should be more understanding of their sentence of death for him being a convert. I think not. Just because killing in the name of a religion is the way of mankind doesn’t mean that we have to accept it.
“Devout Muslims believe that apostates to Islam, the greatest gift they have, should get the same treatment patriotic Americans in 1950 thought should be meted out to Soviet spies and communist traitors. To devout Muslims, Islam is worth dying for, and killing for. This is a belief that the secularist mind, which regards religion as anything from an addiction of the feeble-minded to a substitute for valium, cannot fathom. But that is a deficiency of modernity. For we all have, or have had, causes for which we, too, would kill.”
******What he doesn’t know and realize is that the Radical Muslims have worldwide designs to convert all into Islam. They provoke, murder, blame, and create provocation that will give them the excuse to riot, command Jihad, whatever to change the laws, cause the outside world to say, “ oh poor people, they are just trying to get rights, out of poverty, equal standing, etc….”, which is not true. They are trying to control and change laws in their favor.
Now for the truth. The Islamic cult is like a cancer. It is evil and is driven by a harsh doctrine called the Koran. The Koran is designed to first provide the hook by misleading its followers and converts into believing it's a religion of peace. Once the hook has been taken they know who to turn into a recruiter, suicide bomber, or whatever they need. The Imams use force, threats, and coercion to keep their flock in line.
The Imams are very well organized and on a larger scale will infiltrate a community, town, state and country very skillfully. They identify the weak or conflictive areas of the civilization, social structures and wherever they can provoke a conflict. They then focus on those areas. Once enough control and power has been established or followers have been brainwashed, they are in a position to follow the Koran and present to the infected civilization they have invaded, the three choices. These are either to convert, subjugate, pay money or experience a Jihad. The reasons are usually made up or provoked themselves to give excuses for their violence.
There are many of the Muslims that are sleeper cells, individuals that are brainwashed and actually believe the crap in the Koran, and will turn in a minute. They are either pushed by email, letters from home, paid, or just by themselves reflect back on the crap they were fed as a child.....
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=realimpact/memri/memri_10-30-02_01.rm
http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?
This is the reality and politically incorrect truth about Islam.