Posted on 12/03/2015 11:45:01 PM PST by walford
I am not a Christian nor a Jew, and thus do not have a dog in this fight between them and Muslims on a theological level. From the perspective of an outsider, I offer my views on Islam in its current form and how non-believers should respond to its spread into our homelands:
Those who worship the God of Abraham [Jews, Christians and Muslims] have this history in common: Theological Exclusivism [my God is the only God and my religion is the only valid religion].
Jews do not proselytize and are not obligated to spread their faith. Christians and Muslims are -- and both have histories that involve conversion-by-the-sword on a widespread, systematic basis.
The essential difference is that Christendom abandoned this method of spreading the Good Word centuries ago, while the Islamic World has an unbroken record of wholesale slaughter on a regular basis that continues to the present.
Why?
My interpretation, based upon history and theology, is that Christianity underwent a Reformation, which affected the Western World socially and politically as well as theologically. No longer did political leaders hold power by Divine Right. No longer were Christians permitted to kill in the name of God or conquer and plunder the non-believer.
This development into Theological Pluralism [there are many paths to God] benefited Christians as well as people they subsequently encountered.
Islam has not undergone such a Reformation and hence remains socially, politically and theologically in an infantile stage. As such, unreformed Islam is incompatible with Western civilization; at its core, Mohammedanism is not willing to live in peace with those of other faiths. Hence, in practice, Islam is unchanged at being first and foremost a violent, expansionist political ideology.
The majority of Muslims do not perpetrate atrocities, but the fact is, mass-murder for religious reasons is almost entirely perpetrated by those who hold that Allah is the only God and Muhammad is His Messenger.
If Muslims want to be welcomed and not be subject to justifiable suspicion, it is incumbent upon them to marginalize, and then eliminate the perpetrators of terror within their ranks. Making excuses and claiming victimhood isn't going to cut it.
The Pre-Islamic Middle East had a long and admirable history of being a natural hub for commerce, technology, science, hospitality and the exchange of ideas. If the Islamic World were resolved to live in peace with non-believers and pursue being once again the natural hub it once was, there is a future for them and us all.
Until and unless such a Reformation takes place within the Islamic World, it is up to non-Muslims to at the very least contain its spread from outside its traditional places of origin.
As we have seen repeatedly, it is suicide to invite into our homelands those who do not believe in assimilation and consider themselves entitled to impose their way of life upon others by force, sparing no quarter to women and children.
If the West, in its fashionable self-loathing, continues to surrender to a culture that is backward in every way, civilization itself is at peril.
This did not occur due to the Reformation and indeed occurred centuries later
The net result of the reformation was that countries became either stridently lutheran or calvinist or anglican or catholic and persecuted other Christians -- the only exceptions to this in post-Reformation Europe were:
the stopping of persecution of other Christians happened:
I think we’re getting a little too bogged down in arguments as to what Christianity was like centuries ago.
I offered that example as a means to consider whether Islam can be reformed or not, because the other religion that holds that “my God is the only God and my religion is the only valid religion” found a way to stop conquering and slaughtering non-believers.
You can dispute that history, but what is far more important is how we can deal with Islam today, because what is being done now [inviting them in and trying to adjust to them rather than expecting them to assimilate] is not working.
Those of you who are entertaining the idea of replacing Islam with your religion as a solution are not being realistic.
If it turns out that Islam cannot be reformed — and certainly Islamic scriptures, history as well as current fanaticism may indicate this — then I fall back upon containment within traditional Islamic homelands and not allowing Muslims to settle in our nations.
What has served to contain Islamic expansion prior to the 20th Century is the economic and technological deterioration that inevitably accompanies totalitarianism. But the West is unwittingly providing the means to overcome this and that has to stop.
If Islam refuses to live in peace with non-believers, let them stew in their own juices.
Since I took none of those positions and you have ignored my posts I’ll take it that my points remain uncontested.
You and others are saying that Islam is fundamentally wrong and cannot be reformed, so what, then? Is the only option to kill all Muslims or convert them to Christianity?
As an outsider, my observation is that the Muslims are much more committed to that approach toward non-believers.
So seriously and realistically, what is your solution to how we deal with Muslims in our homelands?
First of all. All three religions do not worship the same god of abraham. Mohammed is the Johnny come lately. When he founded his religion in the 7th century he was familiar with christian and Jewish scriptures. It’s as if he picked and chose the elements that fit his purposes. He took some of the Jewish heros of faith as part of his story but the attributes of the god he worships in no way share any commonality with the god of old testament which is shared by jews and christians.
You assume that I have a solution just because I made the case that Islam cannot be reformed? If Christians want to convert them I’ll leave that to them but it’s not my place to recommend it. I don’t think that would work anyway.
In our homeland Islam should be declared a cult and banned. Since you pointed out that muslims can’t be contained in their homelands in this day and age (and I assume you weren’t recommending that we revert to the technologies and economies of the Middle Ages to keep them away since that’s the only way that would work) we’re going to have to kill them. Here and there.
I don’t think we would have to kill all of them but we should make it absolutely clear that we will if that’s what it takes.
I’m going to entertain these digressions away from the main subject, because it speaks to the larger issue — the social and political one.
2. “It’s a really poor starting point for discussion when the author conflates choices by political and military leaders with religious theology and teaching.”
Slaughter the unbeliever who will not convert is going to win against a willingness to live in peace with many Gods and religion every time.
Those who hold that practitioners of every other religion on the planet are kneeling before false idols are going to be tempted to believe that such people are by definition damned anyway, so killing, raping and plundering such Infidels is nothing compared to what awaits them in the afterlife. The mere existence of such people are an abomination that must not be tolerated by the truly faithful.
Christianity has gone past this. Islam has not — and may not ever.
Hate the sin, not the sinner. Islam though all too often appears to be little more than an ongoing criminal organization with the sacrament of violence and a totalitarian approach to others.
“In our homeland Islam should be declared a cult and banned.”
The majority of Muslims are peaceful and those who are not should be eliminated with extreme prejudice. This is why I totally disagree with calls for further gun restrictions in response to Islamic terrorism.
There should be far more armed, law-abiding citizens in this country so attempts at mass-murder will be cut short. Terrorists, as well as criminals and crazies, should come to understand that the United States is not a friendly place for those who would perpetrate mayhem on our people. They should know that the little old lady or man in a wheelchair may not be as helpless as they appear because they might be packing heat.
Contrary to what the esteemed Marie Harf has said, we can indeed kill our way to safety and security against terrorism.
Also, the much maligned Crusades, though poorly executed and not disciplined, they were defensive wars.
“The Reformation was about bringing Christianity back to what the reformers believed were fundamental practices”
And that is interesting because the “original practices” or classical Christianity was utterly destroyed by Mohammad and his Disciples during their 100 year (628-728 AD) rampage on classical western civilization, which they came close to utterly erasing from history.
Islam did not exist in the 1st Century, but in the 7th.
**ABROGATION** is the key Islamic theological concept you must learn to understand why Islamic texts have led to so much violence and probably always will, despite having many peaceful passages.
Abrogation has Islamic scholars consistently view the peaceful, chronologically earlier passages as being overruled by the very violent, later passages.
“So, at first aggressive fighting was forbidden; it later became permissible (2:190) and subsequently obligatory (9:5).[57] This “verse of the sword” abrogated, canceled, and replaced 124 verses that called for tolerance, compassion, and peace.”
http://www.meforum.org/1754/peace-or-jihad-abrogation-in-islam
I think people forget that the Christian faith took over the Roman Empire without the sword, only the blood of the Martyrs. There was no Christian warlord or army which vanquished the Ceasers, only men and women of faith proclaiming their faith into the face of death and drawing people to Jesus as they lay dying. For over 300 years, no Christian drew weapon or blood, and they were all pacifists.
The First Crusade was very well executed and very disciplined. The next few, not so much.
islam is based on earthly triumphalism -- that it conquers and keeps territory. This can be neutralized by destroying Mecca and Medina.
The Islamic world was shocked when they were consistently defeated by the Christian world and also by the defeats Hindu India inflicted on Moslem Pakistan
Islam as a philosophy cannot be remade, it can only be destroyed
That is not possible either -- this is an expansionist philosophy and one which can gain people to it who are of European/American origins as well as of Hindu, Buddhist etc. origins
the only way to contain it is to destroy it. Your point is like saying "contain communism in Soviet Russia"
I talk about the philosophy, not the followers -- the only option is to destroy Islam, the philosophy.
Your view of Christian theology is so totally divorced from reality that I’m going to bow out of the discussion as being useless
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