Posted on 03/12/2006 5:57:00 AM PST by aynrandfreak
This week's Voldemort Award goes to the New York Times for their account of a curious case of road rage in North Carolina:
"The man charged with nine counts of attempted murder for driving a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday told the police that he deliberately rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle so he could 'run over things and keep going.' "
The driver in question was Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.
Whoa, don't jump to conclusions. The Times certainly didn't. As the report continued:
"According to statements taken by the police, Mr. Taheri-azar, 22, an Iranian-born graduate of the university, felt that the United States government had been 'killing his people across the sea' and that his actions reflected 'an eye for an eye.'"
"His people"? And who exactly would that be? Taheri-azar is admirably upfront about his actions. As he told police, he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world."
And yet the M-word appears nowhere in the Times report. Whether intentionally or not, they seem to be channeling the great Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali, who died a millennium ago but whose first rule on the conduct of dhimmis -- non-Muslims in Muslim society -- seem to have been taken on board by the Western media:
The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Sure. It does in many Christian and Jewish sects, too. Ask some Jews for Jesus how they are treated by other Jews. Or perhaps I should point out that my mother was unable to take communion in the Catholic Church because I wasn't raised Catholic or that my great grandparents were burried in seperate cemetaries despite being married for over 50 years because one was Catholic and the other was Protestant. Sure, apostasy has a price in almost any religion. Yes, I realize that militant Muslims will murder apostates in the Islamic world. There was a time when militant Christians murdered each other over apostasy, too. We got over it. Muslims could, too.
In a place like Iran the "moderates" don't dare oppose the theocracy.
Some have, and have died for their trouble. It's rarely easy to oppose militant fanatics, whether they are mullahs, bishops, Communist party officials, or brownshirts. There is nothing unique about the Muslim situation here. It's simply distince in this particular slice of history because Europe and Christianity got over it already.
Here they work beside us while the militants snap up more recruits. Who are you...Grover Norquist? Get real. The "moderates" won't do a thing to oppose the radicals.
Nor will many Christians, Jews, or others. We have papers shivering in their boots over publishing some cartoons because they are afraid of death threats. Sure, people should be brave and oppose the fanatics but lets not sweep innocent Muslims in with the fanatics unless we want to become what we are fighting. As far as being reasonable goes, a certain level of profiling and being vigilant is one thing. If a black friend and I stand outside in a white neighborhood at 2AM, the police will ask us what we are doing because we fit the profile of a drug deal or other illegal activity. That's fine. But the sort of "kill 'em all" attitude that's all too common here on Free Republic is more akin to shooting any black person you find in a white neighborhood, guilty or innocent, because it fits the profile of criminal activity. That's not warranted.
I don't hate Arabs or Persians, etc., but their so-called religion draws followers toward extremism, and their sixth century barbarity deserves no place in the 21st century.
While I agree that there is no room for sixth century barbarity in the 21st Century, Christianity, Judaism, Shinto, and recently even Hinduism have been used to fuel extremism and violence, too. I think that's more a function of fanaticism and demagoguery than any particular religion, since almost any religion I can name has had fanatics at one point or another -- there are even militant atheist fanatics and atheism doesn't come with any particular theology or morality.
Just curious, but we are always informed by the media how devout our Muslims are, that they without fail pray five times a day. Question, what are these prayers about? Is there any similarity to Christian prayers? Do Muslims pray intercessory prayers? Do they believe that Allah will respond to an intercessory prayer?
You seem to really be defending Islam . Making quite a lot of excuses as well, with sort of a "but yea, they do it to , the Jews and Christians " attitude. I'm getting a bad feeling about you my friend .
Absolutely. But only if they get in the way, not because we are targetting them specifically simply because they are Muslims.
From their point of view they have an advantage; there are no innocent Infidels.
That's what makes them evil. It's always harder to be good than it is to be evil. I have no desire to become just a different flavor of fanatic blindly killing infidels of a different sort.
Do you believe that all white people who don't actively fight racism are, by their silence, accountable for any racism that occurs? Do you really want to go down the road of claiming that silence is equivalent to guilt as a general principle?
Many militant Muslims interpet it to say so. Other's disagree. That's part of the point. What the Quran says, like what the Bible says, is up to the interpretation of the reader.
I've been reading a book called, The Just War on Terrorism. It'a by the same socialist, pacifist who wrote Just and Unjust
Wars, so I was extremely interested in his explanation of why the war on terror is just. He explains that Islam is not just a religion, but a "polity", as well as an army. The fact that Islam is a political community, a military community and a religious community, make the Bush administration statement that we are not at war with, the religion of Islam false.You can't separate the religion from the politics.
I'm defending innocent Muslims. I tend to think that conviction requires guilt and that individuals are guilty, not groups, and that guilt by association is a very dangerous thing. I'm funny that way. It's also why I oppose affirmative action, reparations, and courts telling men that they have to pay child support for children that are not biologically theirs just because any man will do for punishment.
Making quite a lot of excuses as well, with sort of a "but yea, they do it to , the Jews and Christians " attitude.
What I'm saying is that Jews and Christians did do the same sort of thing in the sixth century that Muslims are doing now. Jews and Christians managed to get over it and move on, despite having passages in their holy books that advocate quite a few rules and types of behavior that the followers of neither religion follow or advocate any longer.
The violent passages calling for the stoning of homosexuals, mediums, and obnoxious sons are still in the Old Testament and there are plenty of incidents of Jews being punished for blasphemy or straying from God in the Old Testament yet there are Reformed Jews who eat pork, work on Saturdays, and even have gay and lesbian rabbis. If Judaism has rules prohibiting these things, then how can there be Jews who do these things? Answer that and you'll answser the question of how Islam can (and does, for quite a few adherents today) demand all sorts of behavior that the followers ignore. The path for Islam to get out of the sixth century is to interpret the Quran the way many Jews and Christians interpret the Bible. And, no, that won't make the militant Muslims any happier than gay rabbis or ministers make Orthodox Jews or Fundamentalists Christians. That's not the point. The point is that such a transformation is possible, regardless of what the holy book in question quite clearly says. If Muslims choose to stick with the sixth century, then things will go badly for them. But I see plenty of evidence that there are Muslims who can and have moved beyond the sixth century.
I'm getting a bad feeling about you my friend .
Probably nowhere near as bad of the feeling I get from the "kill 'em all and let God sort them out" Freepers who hate all Muslims. But, hey, I can't control your feelings and you can't control mine.
Certainly have you? I find no problem or inconsistencies with God dealing out punishment for Jews or gentiles. Those sins that carried the death penalty from God then still carry the same penalty from God today they are just being delayed till Christ who has been given sole Judgeship by God to carry them out does so on those who have not accepted His pardon.
Christians are not under the Old Testament covenant. We are under the New Testament Age of Grace . We follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and they haven't changed.
Muslims are still following the teachings of Mohamed those that where written in the Koran some of which were posted earlier you seem to want to ignore and they haven't changed either.
Christians were up to when dealing with Jews, American Indians, and even Orthodox Christians and heretics like the Cathars. It wasn't a Muslim who coined the phrase, "Kill them all and God will know his own."
Those that practice the evil you say where not Christians because they do not follow the teachings of Christ in the Bible.
Those Muslims that follow and worship Mohamed's teachings including those that where posted are the true Muslims.
That's what defines the true followers of a religion or sect.
Those Muslims who do not practice the teachings of Mohamed and the Koran are not Muslims and should not associate with, support or worship Mohamed or study and follow his teachings.
Christians can't pick and choose what teachings of Christ to follow and call themself a Christian and neither can a Muslim pick and chose from the teachings of Mohamed and call himself a Muslim.
Roll your history books back a few centuries
What is wrong with you? Why would you use what some power mad people who call themselves Christians but were clearly not following the teachings of Christ in the bible, therfore not Christians, I say again why use their barbaric acts that they done centuries ago that no one can change ,to justify or excuse what these present day butchers that follow Mohamed and his teachings which are still in the Koran in the present and are doing them as we speak.
That makes no sense and is pathetic.
If you want to argue that following a false religion, alone, is sufficient for persecution of otherwise innocent people,
Where do I in my posts advocate the persecution of innocent people or any people for that matter? That is a false insinuation.
I respect people's rights to worship who or what they please, which is much, much more than the followers of Islam do.
If they would do so there would be an improvement in peace in the world that would stun the imagination.
then I would not only wonder what you think of people who follow other religions that you think are false
No need to wonder as I said I respect their right to worship who ever or what ever they chose.
but wonder how you are any different than the mullahs who want to kill all the infidels because, well, they're infidels.
Now we get to the heart of the matter.
The difference between me, the religion of true Christianity,and most of the followers of the other more popular beliefs is light years in terms of compassion, tolerance and respect for human life than where Islam is concerned.
Christ does not force nor teach any of His followers to use force to cause anyone to follow Him neither do I.
I do not enslave, beat, torture,tax, practice honor killings, strap explosives to my children so they can kill other children, teach my children to hate others who do not believe what they believe, mistreat women, cut peoples heads off, their hands,noses or ears nor force the entire world to accept my religion or be a slave or dead.
No other religions that I know of off hand teach these things in their writings and if they do I don't see them practicing ever time I check the news.
Islam does. If you can't see that then you are blind and if enough people can't see it we are all doomed.
As far as being an innocent follower of Islam is concerned, anyone who reads the Koran follows the teachings of and worships Mohamed, supports those that do financially, provides shelter,food, weapons, political support,provides cover for them, cheers when they kill, and teaches their children to hate others and claims to be one is not innocent.
You do what you want that is your right.
I will not trust them, I will not excuse them, I will not believe them and I will not turn my back on them, because their leader Mohamed, his teachings and their past and present actions since they came into being make that impossible.
That is my right and as I see it just good plain common sense.
Hey, thanks for enlightening this dhimmi dummy or dummy dhimmi?, I don't know, it's so complicated.
It is ludicrous on its face to suggest that there is any other culture in the world that poses anywhere near the same threat to their neighbors.
I understand that you're trying to say that all cultures and beliefs are morally equivalent. It's a nice thing to believe, it just doesn't happen to be useful or even true.
Aside from the occasional knuckledragger, nobody outside of Islam is actually calling for the mass extermination of another culture based merely on belief. To bother with this is to completely miss the point.
What most of us are concerned with are the barbarians at the gate. For them, things are in fact fairly simple. They wish to kill us and we don't wish to die. We don't need to go around hunting for "peaceful" barbarians to slaughter... they are throwing themselves upon our defenses as fast as they can run. So be it. When they stop attacking, they'll stop being killed.
That really is all there is to it.
I am ashamed of many things done by Christianity throughout the centuries. I don't defend the terrible things that Christians have done to Jews and other religions, some of which were completely or effectively wiped out by the Christians acting in the name of their faith. Do you see any substantial numbers of Christians defending these actions? No! Most importantly, you do not see any substantial numbers of Christians defending continued actions of this genre by miniscule numbers of Christians towards other religions. In every cultural group you will see a percentage of ethnocentric extremists. When a small group of Christians gets "out of control" in their behavior towards other religions or people with in their religion, the hierarchy of the church and/or the government of the state in which they operate reins them in. This is because Christianity, and most other religions have developed as civilisation has progressed. Islam has not developed. Islam has gone in the other direction. The problem with Islam is that the percentage of extremists is high along with a high percentage of clerics who propagate this behavior. And the states within which they operate facilitate the murderous behavior. The remaining "silent muslims" are giving support to those who murder in their name by allowing such clerics to teach, by allowing these "radicals" to act as their voice, by giving these "radicals" shelter in their mosques and by supporting these "radicals" financially. The House of Saud is a prime example. Here you have a grossly wealthy monarchy that is capable of effectively stopping the promotion of extremism if they so desire. Yet they are promoting extremism through their religious schools. They cannot hide behind the excuse that they are afraid of the extremists. The extremists are firmly entrenched in the House of Saud to the point where the extremists call many of the shots. This extremist influence is exerted to a certain extent throughout the fragmented groups of muslims, including those in the US. Can you imagine the shock in the world it the same percentage of Christian clerics went to the pulpit every week and instructed their congregations to kill members of other religions? And I am referring to today, not 50, 100 or 900 years ago. That was a different time and there were different standards prevailing. No other major religion allows their clerics to preach murder.
All of Germany had to pay the price for the sins of the Nazis. Certainly there were many Germans who did not side with the Nazis but they allowed the Nazis to use the German state to wreck havoc on the world. This is just as muslims are allowing the dominant element, extremism, to use the religion to attempt to erradicate all other religions. And they sit with their hands covering their eyes, ears and mouthes??? If the percentage of extremists is so small as some claim, why do they allow this to happen?
My neighbor is an Arab muslim and I certainly don't think he would go on a rampage murdering Christians or Jew. But at the same time, he sends money to "muslim charities" that are in reality terrorist groups. He attends a mosque that accepts any muslim, regardless of the hatred they espouse. And he is strangely silent when there is a terrorist attack anywhere in the world.
Islam has to "clean house" or civilised peoples will to it for them.
Similarly, there are people who call themselves Muslims who are not violent fanatics and just want to live a peaceful and happy life with their families. I know such Muslims. Maybe they are practicing Islam totally wrong, but they consider themselves Muslims and it's not my place to tell them they aren't. Many Christians and Jews also consider significant hunks of the Bible optional. And there are also plenty of passages in most religious texts that can be interpreted in a variety of ways, both literally and metaphorically, as a snapshot of a time in history or as a principle still at work in the modern world, and so fort.
Islam does have a history of sects that operate more on revelation than strict adherence ot the text. There are moderate Muslims. Maybe they are bad Muslims, but the point is that Islam does not inherently make one bad, any more than learning about Christianity inherently makes one good. Even if the Bible is a roadmap to being good and the Koran is a roadmap to being bad, many of the people looking at either map can wind up in either place. As such, I think attacking Islam isn't the answer. Attacking militant Islam is. And I simply don't find attacking innocent Muslims to be a good thing.
As for my points about Christian history, they were simply this. You can't simply look at a laundry list of attrocities by people who call themselves Muslims to claim that Islam is bad. History is also full of examples of people who call themselves Christians doing horrible things. Yes, you could make an argument that Islam encourages bad behavior while Christianity discourages it, but my point there is that most people have a sense of good and evil (what I think was represented by the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden) that transcends their religion. That's why there are good Muslims, Hindus, and so forth and bad Christians and Jews. Ultimately, the individual not only has to make a choice about which faith to believe in but also whether to be good or evil as an independent variable.
Not at all. Let's look at the analogy from a different angle. How many Jews who eat pork are not circumcised? How many Christians women who think adultery is wrong support divorce, even though Jesus clearly and distinctly says that a woman who divorces is an adulteress? People pick and choose what they want to follow. And that's not even going into the people I've met who use purposeful ignorance to skirt the rules (e.g., not asking what's in the food so they can pretend it doesn't contain forbidden ingredients -- I've seen Jews and Hindus do that). Jihad is more integral to Islam than not eating pork. It is a central tenant.
That ignores the question of what, exactly, "jihad" is to a particular Muslim and whether particular Muslims treat it as a central tenant of their own personal faith.
Muslims are bad people. I do not trust any of them.
I know Muslims who aren't bad people. The line between good people and bad people does not map neatly to any religious, racial, or ethnic lines. You can find good and bad in any group.
You may (or may not) find this article and this article on stereotyping interesting. No, they don't condemn it all and actually explain why it's useful. But pay particular attention to the sections in the Derbyshire article under the headings "Item: People ascribe a stereotype to everybody in the subject group." and "Item: Stereotypes blind us to individual characteristics." That's where I have a problem with what you are saying. You are doing what Derbyshire says reasonable people don't do.
Only ludicrous if you limit your perspective to our very small slice of human history. Militant Shinto drove the Japanese Imperial expansion before and during WW2 that resulted in, among other things, the Rape of Nanking. Christianity was used do justify anti-Jewish pogroms for centuries. And if you move beyond religion, I would argue that Communism wins the prize for the most threatening culture, beating out Fascism by quite a margin. What other culture resulted in the death of 100 million people in the 20th Century? Is militant Islam currently dangerous? Yes. Has militant Islam always been as dangerous as it is now or the most dangerous culture on the planet? Of course not.
I understand that you're trying to say that all cultures and beliefs are morally equivalent. It's a nice thing to believe, it just doesn't happen to be useful or even true.
Not at all. What's important is to understand why Christians go good or bad and why Muslims go good or bad. Muslims have not always been as bad as they are now and during some periods of history, they might have been worse. What makes Muslims go good or bad? You aren't going to answer that if you assume all Muslims must be bad or Islam must produce bad Muslims, any more than you are going to understand what makes Christians go good or bad based on the assumption that all Christians are good or that Christianity must produce good Christians.
Aside from the occasional knuckledragger, nobody outside of Islam is actually calling for the mass extermination of another culture based merely on belief. To bother with this is to completely miss the point.
And my point is that there are plenty of people inside of Islam who are not calling for the mass extermination of another culture based merely on belief. Yes, 40% of British Muslims may want Sharia law in the UK. But that means that 60% of British Muslims don't. They don't want to exterminate the UK or Chrisitians. Don't pretent that those other Muslims don't exist. They most certainly do.
What most of us are concerned with are the barbarians at the gate.
I understand that and even sympathize with it to some degree. But that's no excuse not to at least try to distinguish the barbarians from those who aren't barbarians and have no interest in your gates.
For them, things are in fact fairly simple. They wish to kill us and we don't wish to die.
Who are "they"? All Muslims? If not, then your job is to distinguish between the good Muslims and the bad Muslims rather than simply wanting to kill them all and let God sort them out. If the militant Muslims are trying to kill you and you accidentally kill some innocent Muslims (e.g., while bombing an Iranian nuclear plant), that's fine. But some of the statements I see tossed around here to border on "calling for the extermination based merely on belief" -- a professed faith in Islam, rather than any particular threat. If it's wrong for Muslims and knuckledraggers to think that way, then it's wrong for conservatives to think that way even if we are afraid of barbarians at the gate.
We don't need to go around hunting for "peaceful" barbarians to slaughter... they are throwing themselves upon our defenses as fast as they can run. So be it. When they stop attacking, they'll stop being killed.
I have no problem killing those who try to kill you and understand that some innocent Muslims may be killed while getting at the cowardly evil militant Muslims who hide among them. That's not my problem. My problem is with statements, which you'll find close to this reply, that all Muslims are bad and can't be trusted. Not true.
I didn't say that.
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