Posted on 12/01/2006 3:48:21 AM PST by Northern Alliance
It pissed me off yesterday when ABC radio news said that the purpose of Benedict's visit was to "mend fences," as if the Pope had done something to legitimately offend Islamo-psychoes.
The only offense Benedict has committed against them is the same one any non-Muslim is committing... existing.
They want us all dead. How hard is that to comprehend?
A truth most people refuse to contemplate..
That headline should be: Rationality and the Problem of Islam.
We really should dispense with all the philosophy foreplay and sophistry Tariq Ramadan pushes and deal with these irrational animals already.
Looks like the Pope is moving the chess pieces around by visiting the head of 300 million Orthodox church
Very thought provoking. Thanks for posting.
Thought this would interest you
Glad you enjoyed it. The American Thinker is a site worth monitoring.
One of the things that is conveniently overlooked by the Islamists among us is that just prior to the Muslim invasion of Spain, Isidore of Sevilla had written the Etymologies, a vast 20-volume compendium of "all human knowledge" at the time (7th century). All of the West was struggling from the barbarian invasions, which destroyed Classical culture, and people like Isidore were instrumental in seeking to recover the lost knowledge. He collected and recopied classical sources, although by that time, after the barbarian invasions, there was a more limited supply of classical works in the West. The work, however, was important even into the Rennaissance, and preserved many classical writings that were completely lost by that time.
The first Muslim rulers (after the 8th century invasions of Spain) were not Arabs, but were recently converted people from Baghdad and Persia, areas which had a long pre-Islamic tradition of learning, science and art. Many of these areas also had some of the lost classical originals, and brought them into the Spanish research world. However, as Islam consolidated, particularly with the influence of the writings of its ignorant Arab founder and leaders, who then attacked the other Muslims in Spain and replaced them, it gradually stifled learning. Rechristianized parts of Spain, such as Toledo, resumed scholarship with things such as the famous "School of Translators" of the Christian king Alfonso X, where Christian, Jewish and Arab linguists were set to work translating works ranging from Scripture to Aristotle. Alfonso's Siete Partidas, one of the first modern codes of law, was influenced by his Classical research.
The fundamental dynamic of Islam is anti-knowledge, anti-scientific; it was only in its early phase, before it had fully consolidated, that science and art were even permitted, and as it became more established, it crushed them wherever it found them and to this day is a dead hand on any society it enters.
Jesus loves you.
mohamet wants you dead.
L
Actually Maimonides and his family had to flee from idyllic Spain when he was still relatively young. They first went to Morocco, and eventually to Egypt, so I would guess that Maimonides didn't do much of his writing in Spain.
ML/NJ
The Pope represents more to Islam than just existing.
Historically speaking the Catholic Church, is the only institute willing and able to take on the scourge of Islam not only ideologically and in past times by force.
I think Iraq / Afghanistan is proving grounds that radical Islam is not going to be destroyed by sheer force, especially by a weak willed minimalist type of warfare the west is currently waging.
Christian faith and religion in the end will play a much bigger role in Islam defeat than many people realize. IMHO
Actually, if you believe in and follow biblical prophecy, the only way the anti-Christians will be defeated is via the return of Jesus Christ himself. We Christians are really powerless until then. There's only one thing that can sustain us until then (our belief), cause it will appear that we are losing until that time. I guess that's why it's called 'faith'. You have to have it to endure what's coming.
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Christian faith and religion in the end will play a much bigger role in Islam defeat than many people realize. IMHO
The world has become much smaller since then. The non-Islamic world will not allow the Islamic threat to attackk them forever.
Israel will not allow Iran to get the bomb to threaten their existence. Hindu India, Russia, China, the Phillipines and Thailand are not going to allow their countries to be torn from them by Islamic separtists. Even spineless Western Europe is not going to give up their countries to Islam.
Islam must reform in order to survive in the modern world. Sharia law couldn't even survive in Afghanistan and was defeated within 3 months. Years later, the Taliban is still fighting, but not winning against only 33,000 foreign troops and a weak Afghan government.
We in America must recognize that Islam must adapt or this war is going to get far, far bloodier. It won't be tens of thousands of mostly insurgent dead Muslims, it's going to be tens of millions of dead civilian Muslims and dozens of smoking rubble, where there were cities.
From the beginning, the "antiwar" people haven't recognized that Bush was not a warmonger, he was trying his best to prevent a civilazational war with its millions of deaths. The "antiwar" folks are actually doing everything they can to bring about millions of deaths along with the Islamic terrorists.
To be or not to be, that is the question for Muslim peoples.
These two forces found their level in Ashariism, which acknowledged the utility of reasoning, but only the Quran, the Hadith, the Sunnah, and the customs of the entire Ummah were sources of legislation. At that point, any custom widely adopted by the Ummah could be viewed as correct, because Allah would not allow the entire Ummah to be deceived -- that's how headcovering became customary for all Muslim women. Originally, only Mohammed's wives were required to cover their heads, but Muslim invaders soon encountered Byzantine women who wore headcoverings as a status symbol. Women in Muslim garrison towns wanted to look good for the dhimmis, the fashion spread, and a Quranic justification was found for it.
By the fourteenth century, the Sunni declared the gates of ijtihad to be closed and that all past legal decisions were sufficient for modern and future use. This locked many Muslims into the fourteenth-century's juridical interpretation of seventh-century tribal custom. Reforming this aspect of the culture from the inside will be a task equal to, or greater than, such movements as the Protestant Reformation. But it may be the best hope for Islamic civilization.
Tariq Ramadan is well aware of these problems within Islamic philosophy, as evidenced by his vocal appeals to reopen the "doors of ijtihad" to allow for new interpretations of Islam to escape the irrationalism of the principal ancient schools of belief. But instead of acknowledging those problems and ignoring the insurmountable philosophical obstacles posed by his own Islamic tradition, Ramadan shamelessly attempts to claim for Islamic traditions a commonality with the fruits of Western rationality.
Basically he's saying "Gee look, I know we are crazy, but isn't everyone" It's much simpler to compare Islam to the harmless crazy aunt in the attic that everyone can relate to. When in reality they have a irrational psychopathic cannibal in the basement.
Given Western cultures nearly complete rejection of absolutes, there seem to be little hope the confluence of irrational Islam and rational Western thought will not simply continue to erode rational thought to the point of no return.
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