Zimbabwe Has No Plans To Turn Over Convicted Ethiopian Dictator (Mugabe protects Mengistu)

And yet you'd be hard pressed to find a mainstream protestant theologian who espouses Levitical law public executions. Not so with the Mahometan faith, whose adherents not only espouse but carry out Quranic punishments in the same manner as Mahomet did back in the dark ages.

Remember that the Heretics (let's call them what they are, if you refuse to be "PC" here ;]) in Congress have used Leviticus and Deuteronomy as the foundation for everything from blue laws to an Constitutional amendment prohibiting the already-illegal practice of gay marriage. And 40 years ago, plenty of "mainstream" (at least by local standards) preachers and churchgoers were all too happy to murder a black man (or boy) who committed what they saw to be sins of fornication.

This contrasts significantly from the Mahometan faith, including its "moderate" adherents. Augustine and Aquinas built their theological examination of war around its deterrence and prevention by deeming its exercise in most cases to be fundamentally unjust. Mahometan thought, by contrasts, tends to treat warfare as a tool among many to be used for a dutied and coerced expansion of its theological and political domains.

Please explain more. The Mahometan thought as you understand it. Also please understand why Heretic governments have by and large abandoned the rigors of "Just War" when funding Central American despots, etc.?

Is that your answer to everything? You respond to every valid criticism of mahometan excesses perpetrated well within the mainstream of mahometan theology by digging up a completely unrelated sin by somebody else who is completely irrelevant to the present conversation, and then treat the original mahometan abuse is if it were magically negated by some sort of equal and opposite wrongdoing elsewhere.

I'm critiquing your logic, not the facts. If is it valid to condemn Ghazali for producing a Qutb 800 years after his death, why shouldn't we damn Linnaeus for giving rise to Verwoerd?

If something mahometan theology teaches is evil, then it is evil.

Fair enough. And if you see no problem with reading 21st century Islamist terrorism backwards into 11th century Mahometan theology, you should have no problem with others condemning a similarly unitary strawman of Western Civilization based on its bitter fruits of the 20th century.

And my point not that we should overlook their faults and biases because non-Muslim scholars of the same era also had faults and biases.

I don't believe you've substantiated that claim yet. The prime example of a contemporary to the late medieval muslims I named - Aquinas - actually defies your allegation. Whereas the muslims I cited espoused jihadi warfare as a fundamental duty, Aquinas' theory of "Just War" seeks to impose strict limitations on the use of warfare.

Rather, my point was that they are held as "great thinkers and intellectual anchors" despite their faults and not because of them.

I don't believe that point has been substantiated either. In the case of the "great thinkers" of islam such as Ghazali, the points I have cited as their faults are also their central doctrines (i.e. Tahafut al-Falasafa and the Book of Counsel for Kings) You seem to be holding medieval Muslim thinkers to a higher standard,

Considering the vast aforementioned differences between medieval western thinkers such as Aquinas and medieval mahometans such as Ghazali and Taymiyya, I don't believe that assessment applies either.

To suggest that "moderate Islam" is rotten at the core because ibn Khaldun held views that are today unpalatable

But that would be a misstatement of my argument. My point is that the medieval views of ibn Khaldun, ibn Taymiyya, al-Ghazali that I consider objectionable (i.e. jihad, literalist Koranic legal constructs) are *not* considered unpalatable by either the "mainstream" or radical Islamic theologians that are alive today. They are regularly embraced and celebrated, and in the occasional instances where they are rejected it is almost always because they were not extreme enough!

I merely meant to illustrate that Khaldun and Ghazali's views on scriptural literalism and the comparative validity of world religions were by and large consistent with political and religious thought in the wider world of Europe, North Africa, and western Asia.

But once again you are incorrect. Take Aquinas and Ghazali as two rough contemporaries of comparable theological influence. In fact Ghazali is sometimes called the "Aquinas of Islam" in assessing his influence. But if you compare their respective theological doctrines the two are almost completely incompatable! Ghazali espoused an ultraliteralist reading of the Koran that vehemently rejected aristotelian logic as a tool of theological discovery, and espoused complete literal submission to islamic revelation in its place. Aquinas by contrast embraced aristotelian logic and used it as his basic tool for understanding scripture and its role in human society. This distinction, of course, is manifested in their vastly different theological doctrines.

A slightly fuller context shows that the topic was being discussed in terms of historical development of Islam vis-a-vis other faiths.

And yet its acceptance of jihad as a good thing remains, which is my point. Even the "mainstream" Khaldun took coercion as an acceptable given of the mahometan faith.

So then, why is it important that certain philosophies claim a 600+ year lineage?

Because people who claim 600+ year lineages also draw beliefs from historical figures in those lineages who wrote 600+ years ago. When those figures espoused pernicious and violent doctrines, as is the case with many muslim thinkers of history, it is often the case that their intellectual descendants do as well.

I'd say OKC was an "enduring impact" wouldn't you?

Actually I'd call it a one time event by a fringe wacko who no longer exists and no longer influences any comparable followup attacks. The participants in OKC were arrested and convicted shortly after the attack, and virtually all of their already miniscule fringe of tangential associates have since dissipated.

The same cannot be said of any jihadi organization in the 1990's or today. OKC was a single event with no related subsequent attacks and today there is very little chance that there will be another related attack in the near future. The WTC was bombed in the 90's too, but its perpetrators kept coming back and trying again until it was finally destroyed. And they also kept blowing up other things. And the risk is extremely high that they will continue to try and blow up other things for the forseeable future.

The Forces Francaises Libres included some soldiers from French African colonial holdings, some of whom happened to also be muslims. Their participation in the FFL had no theological origin to it, and instead stemmed from the fact that the Nazis were running around North Africa seizing the land that these people lived on.

Actually the FFL forces were primarily troops from France's African colonies until the latter stages of the war, during the Hexagon's liberation. And of these troops, Muslims formed a plurality.

The reference to which you responded in the previous tu quoque was to the well documented support of Hitler by Muhammed Amin al Husseini, a leading mahometan cleric in Palestine who participated in the Holocaust for anti-semitic theological reasons.

A more likely explanation is that he gave theological reasons for his anti-Semitic stance against Jewish settlement in Palestine. Still, you've named one, and I've named tens of thousands.

Those theological reasons, of course, are the key distinction here. Muslim members of the FFL were fighting because their homes were under attack, and not for any theological reason.

No they weren't. They were fighting against Fascism and for freedom. There was nary a Nazi in upper French Guinea, western Niger, Chad, Centrafrique, etc.

The fact that they were muslim was purely incidental.

If Moslems heart Nazis as much as you say, the "purely incidental" number of Muslims fighting the Nazis should have been much, much smaller.

Al Husseini, by contrast, assisted in the Holocaust in his capacity as a mahometan cleric and for theological reasons stemming from his religious views. His hatred of the Jews was a direct product of his extremist theology.

Perhaps it was, but he was only one. There were many more Muslim theologians supporting the FFL and fighting the Nazis.

Remember that the Heretics (let's call them what they are, if you refuse to be "PC" here ;]) in Congress have used Leviticus and Deuteronomy as the foundation for everything from blue laws to an Constitutional amendment prohibiting the already-illegal practice of gay marriage.

That's quite a hyperbole (not to mention another tu quoque argument). Yes, some have indeed invoked many clauses of the Bible (not just leviticus) to support their opposition to gay marriage. But last I checked, there wasn't anybody in congress calling for gays or alcoholics to be punished in the manner prescribed by Leviticus. Yet in the mahometan world there are not only clerics who seek punishments prescribed by the Koran and hadith - there are clerics who actually carry out punishments as prescribed by the Koran and hadith.

And 40 years ago, plenty of "mainstream" (at least by local standards) preachers and churchgoers were all too happy to murder a black man (or boy) who committed what they saw to be sins of fornication.

Yet another false analogy. Lynchings are illegal punishments by their very definition. They occur without the sanction of law. Koranic punishments occur all over the world today with the full sanction of shari'a legal systems in mahometan countries. Furthermore, 20th century U.S. racial lynchings do not exceed more than a couple thousand over a period of the last 100 years - a number that also includes many convicted criminals who were lynched by mobs AFTER their conviction under the law. By contrast, tens of thousands of people are subjected to islamic punishments EVERY SINGLE YEAR and tens of millions of people have died at the hands of jihadis since the emergence of Mahomet.

Please explain more. The Mahometan thought as you understand it.

I am referring generally to the mahometan belief that the Dar al-Islam is locked in a perpetual battle with the Dar al-Harb, and must engage in coercive jihad to prevail over the Dar al-Harb. I am also referring generally to all mahometan sects who desire the establishment of some form of universal Caliphate, Mahdist regime, or other Islamic domain over the world. And I am referring specifically to Islamic scholars, be they "mainstream" or radical or shi'a or sunni, ranging across time from such persons as Taymiyya and Ghazali to Mawduddi and Qutb and bin Laden who, despite their differences in sect and period and origin, are alike in their respective espousals of Koranic literalism and the establishment of the aforementioned Islamic domain.

Also please understand why Heretic governments have by and large abandoned the rigors of "Just War" when funding Central American despots, etc.?

First, as a matter of clarification, the term heresy by its definition connotes a deviation from a previous religious orthodoxy, this deviation being achieved by altering or challenging the tenets of that which came before it. Since Mahomet (1) postdated and (2) altered and challenged the religious orthodoxy of the judeo-christian faiths, he is by definition the practitioner of heresy...which makes Mahomet a heritic. Should you wish to characterize the judeo-christian world in a context acceptible to jihadis, the proper term for you to use would be "infidel," as stated in respect to the mahometan faith.

As for Central America (again, for the time being, overlooking your tu quoque), a reasonable argument can be made in many cases that Just War was NOT abandoned. In fact, many of the alleged "despots" the U.S. has backed were in fact topplers of illegitimate communist regimes that openly waged war on the people of the countries they seized and on the Christian religion. In fact some of their U.S. backed successors are seen as "despots" only in the eyes of the communists they defeated and their sympathizers. Salvador Allende comes to mind.

I'm critiquing your logic, not the facts. If is it valid to condemn Ghazali for producing a Qutb 800 years after his death, why shouldn't we damn Linnaeus for giving rise to Verwoerd?

1. Because you misstate my logic. The jihadis of today are not misusing the jihadis of yesterday - they are following directly in their footsteps and repeating the same ideas today that their predecessors espoused in prior centuries.

2. Because people like Qutb, Mawduddi, and bin Laden concur in doctrine with their intellectual fathers of previous century, who also advocated violent jihad. (FTR the Sunni "radical" crowd today tends to prefer Taymiyya rather than Ghazali, who is percieved as too "moderate" for them...which should tell you a lot about just how nutty Taymiyya was).

And if you see no problem with reading 21st century Islamist terrorism backwards into 11th century Mahometan theology, you should have no problem with others condemning a similarly unitary strawman of Western Civilization based on its bitter fruits of the 20th century.

That is yet another false and tu quoque laden analogy. Nazism, communism etc. are rejected fruits of Western Civilization that other aspects of Western Civilization destroyed. In fact, a decent case may be made that communism and nazism were corruptions of Western Civilization - deviations from its intellectual course. And as noted those deviations have been soundly rejected.

This condition contrasts greatly with the mahometan world, which has never confronted or rejected its extremist views of past centuries (one significant muslim tried - Avicenna - but his refutation of the literalists was largely rejected in the islamic world and found its largest following in the west). Instead the 11th century islamic views I have referenced are still within the mainstream of mahometan theology today.

Had the west accepted and embraced Hitler and then continued his ideology for another 1000 years your analogy would be accurate. But it didn't. The west rejected Hitler, and his 1000 year Reich was dead in a decade. Not so with Islam though, where the Mahometan heresy and its jihadi theological doctrines have continued to wreak death and destruction around the world for some 1400 years now.

Whereas the muslims I cited espoused jihadi warfare as a fundamental duty

Then I don't believe you've substantiated your claims, as I'm still waiting on those citations.

In the case of the "great thinkers" of islam such as Ghazali, the points I have cited as their faults are also their central doctrines (i.e. Tahafut al-Falasafa and the Book of Counsel for Kings)

Believe it or not, I just cannot recall the details of Tahafut al-Falasafa. I suppose producing that is your burden. Happy hunting.

Considering the vast aforementioned differences between medieval western thinkers such as Aquinas and medieval mahometans such as Ghazali and Taymiyya, I don't believe that assessment applies either.

Considering the concept of "Just War" (and the noted lack of it in Europe 33 A.D. - Present), you're either overstating Aquinas and Augustine's importance, or you're holding the Mahometans to a higher standard.

My point is that the medieval views of ibn Khaldun, ibn Taymiyya, al-Ghazali that I consider objectionable (i.e. jihad, literalist Koranic legal constructs) are *not* considered unpalatable by either the "mainstream" or radical Islamic theologians that are alive today. They are regularly embraced and celebrated, and in the occasional instances where they are rejected it is almost always because they were not extreme enough!

Well then, producing moderate Muslims who approvingly cite al-Ghazali's most bellicose views is your burden. I'm sure Wafa Sultan or Saliou Mbacké won't make those passages the keystones of their writings.

But if you compare their respective theological doctrines the two are almost completely incompatable! Ghazali espoused an ultraliteralist reading of the Koran that vehemently rejected aristotelian logic as a tool of theological discovery, and espoused complete literal submission to islamic revelation in its place. Aquinas by contrast embraced aristotelian logic and used it as his basic tool for understanding scripture and its role in human society. This distinction, of course, is manifested in their vastly different theological doctrines.

So that's your point? That the theological doctrines of religious thinkers of two faiths are "vastly different"? Hardly groundbreaking and nothing I care to argue against.

And yet its acceptance of jihad as a good thing remains, which is my point. Even the "mainstream" Khaldun took coercion as an acceptable given of the mahometan faith.

Khaldun's Muqqadimah was descriptive -- and Aristotelean. My earlier point was that Khaldun was not ahead of his time. In fact Khaldus was writing as Christian Spaniards were engaged in a bloody Reconquista that they felt was a completely Just War by Augustinian standards.

Actually the FFL forces were primarily troops from France's African colonies until the latter stages of the war, during the Hexagon's liberation. And of these troops, Muslims formed a plurality.

Yet in terms of numbers to the overall war, they were at best a minor player amidst the allies.

A more likely explanation is that he gave theological reasons for his anti-Semitic stance against Jewish settlement in Palestine. Still, you've named one, and I've named tens of thousands.

No you haven't. You've named ten thousand soldiers in a minor ally colonial force on the war's periphery who also happened to be muslims. I've named the highest ranking muslim CLERIC in the holy land at that time.

No they weren't. They were fighting against Fascism and for freedom. There was nary a Nazi in upper French Guinea, western Niger, Chad, Centrafrique, etc.

They were fighting because nazism was expanding onto their turf. And yes, there were plenty of Nazis running around in Africa and many more Nazi allies such as the Italians running around in subsaharan Africa. But again, all of that was in the war's periphery. Though they fought admirably when the fascist crowd moved into their neighborhoods, very few muslims ever landed at Normandy or marched on Berlin.

If Moslems heart Nazis as much as you say, the "purely incidental" number of Muslims fighting the Nazis should have been much, much smaller.

And why would that be? It's human nature to fight an invader who has sights on acquiring the place you live. Hitler, Mussolini, and their allies had sights on the French African colonies, so their residents responded. Meanwhile leading Islamic clerics in the middle east were advising Hitler's regime on how to kill Jews.

Perhaps it was, but he was only one.

No he wasn't. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was the highest ranking Islamic authority in the holy land at the time. Husseini had hundreds of clerics under him who followed his pro-Nazi allegiances. Rashid al-Kaylani, prime minister of Iraq at the outset of WWII, was one of Husseini's followers. When Husseini was in Europe running around with Himmler he made a trip to the Balkans where he organized the 13th Waffen-Schutzstaffel, a division consisting of over 20,000 Muslim Nazis. After the war Husseini continued to have significant influence in the middle east. One of his proteges was Yasser Arafat.

Considering the concept of "Just War" (and the noted lack of it in Europe 33 A.D. - Present), you're either overstating Aquinas and Augustine's importance, or you're holding the Mahometans to a higher standard.

Not at all. Even when Europe has failed to live up to Just War, the fact remains that it exists in the mainstream of its theological doctrines. No comparable doctrine exists in the mainstream or radical circles of mahometan theology - in fact the opposite exists in the form of a doctrine that encourages and celebrates jihad as a duty.

Well then, producing moderate Muslims who approvingly cite al-Ghazali's most bellicose views is your burden

And it is an easy one to meet. Ghazali's most bellicose viewpoint is also his most important text, the Tahafut al-Falasifa. Nary a muslim theologian exists who follows Ghazali but not the Tahafut, because the Tahafut is the core of Ghazali's thought.

Believe it or not, I just cannot recall the details of Tahafut al-Falasafa. I suppose producing that is your burden. Happy hunting.

Actually that's a task that can be fulfilled by your local library. I already have my own copy, and i've given you the title. As I am not obliged to purchase you a copy as well, my burden of citation has been met. So the hunt is all yours.

In fact Khaldus was writing as Christian Spaniards were engaged in a bloody Reconquista that they felt was a completely Just War by Augustinian standards.

And it was. The Moors they were fighting forcefully invaded their territory, stole their lands, and waged war upon their existing sovereigns. Spain's response meets the characteristics of a just war as (1) Its sovereigns - the various kingdoms of Spain - were the preexisting government authorities, (2) its cause was the expulsion of a foreign invader, and (3) its intention was the restoration of lands that had been stolen from it by that invader.

I'm not saying that he should, just that I find it interesting that he doesn't,

If you aren't saying that he should, then why do you keep bringing it up and addressing him as if you believe he should. You have pressured him to renounce the BNP multiple times now.

Had you mentioned it once and let the matter drop, I might be inclined to believe your current claim that it was only a matter of interest. But you did not do that. Instead you kept pressing, which is a sign that you are not being truthful about your current intentions in raising the point.

That's quite a hyperbole (not to mention another tu quoque argument).

You shouldn't mention it. You boasted that I would be "hard pressed to find a mainstream protestant theologian who espouses Levitical law public executions." I was not.

Yet in the mahometan world there are not only clerics who seek punishments prescribed by the Koran and hadith - there are clerics who actually carry out punishments as prescribed by the Koran and hadith.

You're comparing apples and oranges. "Clerics" are not "legislators" and we can thank the separation of church and state that Fred Phelps can only thank God for killing gays and not act on it himself.

Yet another false analogy. Lynchings are illegal punishments by their very definition. They occur without the sanction of law. Koranic punishments occur all over the world today with the full sanction of shari'a legal systems in mahometan countries.

All the more reason to keep church and state separate.

I am referring generally to the mahometan belief that the Dar al-Islam is locked in a perpetual battle with the Dar al-Harb, and must engage in coercive jihad to prevail over the Dar al-Harb. I am also referring generally to all mahometan sects who desire the establishment of some form of universal Caliphate, Mahdist regime, or other Islamic domain over the world. And I am referring specifically to Islamic scholars, be they "mainstream" or radical or shi'a or sunni, ranging across time from such persons as Taymiyya and Ghazali to Mawduddi and Qutb and bin Laden who, despite their differences in sect and period and origin, are alike in their respective espousals of Koranic literalism and the establishment of the aforementioned Islamic domain.

Bin Ladin, who seeks a restored Caliphate, is an Islamic dominionist who wants to return to a mythical time of perfect governance. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, seems to be a millenialist who expects the inevitable return of Christ and the emergence of the Mahdi and who, IMHO, hopes to prepare His coming.

Of course there are plenty of millenialists inside Islam as well as outside. (I remember a recent survey indicating that something like 25% of Americans believe Christ will return this year.) Not all Muslim leaders base their policies on an imminent Second Coming. Consequentially, these are not the ones you hear about in the news.

First, as a matter of clarification, the term heresy by its definition connotes a deviation from a previous religious orthodoxy, this deviation being achieved by altering or challenging the tenets of that which came before it.

I am familiar with the meaning.

Should you wish to characterize the judeo-christian world in a context acceptible to jihadis, the proper term for you to use would be "infidel," as stated in respect to the mahometan faith.

Why would I want to do that? And while we're on the subject of PC here, let's get over the "Judeo-Christian" bit, okay? I fully appreciate the sentiment, but it's a term that gained widespread use (and public acceptability) when Christians stopped constantly persecuting Jews, i.e., in the 20th century. We all know what you mean.

As for Central America (again, for the time being, overlooking your tu quoque), a reasonable argument can be made in many cases that Just War was NOT abandoned.

Will every attempt to contextualize your proclamations on Islam be labeled as tu quoque?

In fact some of their U.S. backed successors are seen as "despots" only in the eyes of the communists they defeated and their sympathizers. Salvador Allende comes to mind.

Chile is (in addition to being outside Central America) probably the worst example to use in an argument about Just War. Unpalatable as he may have been, he was the country's legitimate president. But that's for another time.

1. Because you misstate my logic. The jihadis of today are not misusing the jihadis of yesterday - they are following directly in their footsteps and repeating the same ideas today that their predecessors espoused in prior centuries.

It is a posteriori logic. They cite the influences of their predecessors they find most favorable and you accept their reading as not only the single accepted reading, but the only one that ever existed over 8 centuries. With logic like that, of course you'll be right.

2. Because people like Qutb, Mawduddi, and bin Laden concur in doctrine with their intellectual fathers of previous century, who also advocated violent jihad.

I'm sure their intellectual fathers advocated Ye benefitial Aduantadges of alchemichal Magick as well, but they saw fit to dismiss that. The question should be why did thinkers like Qutb, etc. cleave to some medieval teachings and not others?

In fact, a decent case may be made that communism and nazism were corruptions of Western Civilization - deviations from its intellectual course.

Not as their proponents saw it. Nazism is easy to dismiss because of Hitler's spastic, ranting hatred, but Marxism-Leninism traced a very clear intellectual heritage from Feuerbach, Kant, and Hegel through the Enlightenment as a whole and back to the Greeks.

A decent case can be made that the political theologies of Qutb, bin Ladin, etc. are corruptions of the faith of Islam. I should hope that you don't reject such arguments.

Instead the 11th century islamic views I have referenced are still within the mainstream of mahometan theology today.

That's because you continue to define "mainstream of mahometan theology" as philosophies that follow the most ignoble of these 11th century views.

Yet in terms of numbers to the overall war, they were at best a minor player amidst the allies.

They constituted a plurality in the FFL, which was, need I remind you, a "victor" in the war. Your "Mufti of Jerusalem" operated a single anti-Semite, albeit one who enjoyed the considerable backing of the anti-Semetic German state.

No you haven't. You've named ten thousand soldiers in a minor ally colonial force on the war's periphery who also happened to be muslims. I've named the highest ranking muslim CLERIC in the holy land at that time.

Tens of thousands. I'll attribute that slip to a shaky hand and not shaky ethics.

And how many divisions did the Mufti have?

They were fighting because nazism was expanding onto their turf.

Which was why everyone was fighting. Fighting the expanding Nazi threat. However, there were no Nazis in Côte d'Ivoire.

Though they fought admirably when the fascist crowd moved into their neighborhoods,

Please tell me when Nazi troops were goosestepping through N'Djamena.

very few muslims ever landed at Normandy or marched on Berlin.

No, they came up the Italian peninsula and crossed into France.

Hitler, Mussolini, and their allies had sights on the French African colonies, so their residents responded.

Inasmuch as they had their sites on the whole world, yes.

No he wasn't. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was the highest ranking Islamic authority in the holy land at the time. Husseini had hundreds of clerics under him who followed his pro-Nazi allegiances.

So he was ranked highly among well-organized anti-Semites.

When Husseini was in Europe running around with Himmler he made a trip to the Balkans where he organized the 13th Waffen-Schutzstaffel, a division consisting of over 20,000 Muslim Nazis.

The 20,000 Muslim troops he helped recruit still pale in comparison to the tens of thousands of Muslim troops in the FFL.

Even when Europe has failed to live up to Just War, the fact remains that it exists in the mainstream of its theological doctrines.

One that doesn't seem to be followed too often.

No comparable doctrine exists in the mainstream or radical circles of mahometan theology - in fact the opposite exists in the form of a doctrine that encourages and celebrates jihad as a duty.

Is Just War not a duty for Just People? Many readings of the concept of jihad equate the jihad al-saghir, or military war, with the Just War of St. Augustine. Certainly to even suggest that Pinochet's butchery approaches a Just War is to void the term of all meaning.

As I am not obliged to purchase you a copy as well, my burden of citation has been met. So the hunt is all yours.

Tallyho!

The Moors they were fighting forcefully invaded their territory, stole their lands, and waged war upon their existing sovereigns.

No. The Moors they were fighting were descendants of the Moors who invaded Iberia six centuries prior.

(1) Its sovereigns - the various kingdoms of Spain - were the preexisting government authorities,

A spurious reading of the past. Which of these states continued to exist?

its cause was the expulsion of a foreign invader

A spurious reading again. The "foreign invadeders" were 20th-generation descendants of the Moors who invaded.

its intention was the restoration of lands that had been stolen from it by that invader.

Spurious again. By this logic, it would be Just War to drive the Afrikaners out of South Africa, the Anglos out of Texas and the Jews out of Israel.

If you aren't saying that he should, then why do you keep bringing it up and addressing him as if you believe he should. You have pressured him to renounce the BNP multiple times now.

What pressure have I exerted? I asked him a question and have commented that he refuses to provide an answer.

Instead you kept pressing, which is a sign that you are not being truthful about your current intentions in raising the point.

I am not pressing him. This is a discussion between you and me. If he chooses not to respond, that is his right.

Where is the United Nations to the best of abilities with all of the continuing problems with the country of Zimbabwe?

You boasted that I would be "hard pressed to find a mainstream protestant theologian who espouses Levitical law public executions." I was not.

Then why have you yet to produce one?

You're comparing apples and oranges. "Clerics" are not "legislators"

They are when you're an Ayatollah in Iran.

and we can thank the separation of church and state that Fred Phelps can only thank God for killing gays and not act on it himself.

Is Fred Phelps your example? Strange that you would consider him "mainstream," as per my original request.

Of course there are plenty of millenialists inside Islam as well as outside. (I remember a recent survey indicating that something like 25% of Americans believe Christ will return this year.)

Another tu quoque aside, very few if any of those persons are the president of a country and even fewer have hinted that they intend to obtain nuclear weapons as a means of instigating the millenial event.

Not all Muslim leaders base their policies on an imminent Second Coming. Consequentially, these are not the ones you hear about in the news. Nor did I say they do. My point was that many mahometan leaders base their policies on beliefs in radical theological doctrines surrounding the expansion and unification of the Dar al-Islam. The goal is comparable, though the means and sects diverge. A new Caliphate is bin Laden's means of reaching this goal. A mahdi figure is Ahaminejad's.

I am familiar with the meaning.

If so, then your prior misuse of the term heresy must have been intentional. That, or you did not know a meaning that you thought you knew.

And while we're on the subject of PC here, let's get over the "Judeo-Christian" bit, okay? I fully appreciate the sentiment, but it's a term that gained widespread use (and public acceptability) when Christians stopped constantly persecuting Jews, i.e., in the 20th century

Actually far from it. Christian persecution of Jews was never a unified or monolithic thing. There are explicit references to judeo-christian or hebriac-christian culture from the time of the American founding and discussions pertaining to the 1st amendment. Explicit articulations of the concept appeared in the century or so before the founding. Explicit tntegrations of thought from Judaism into the Christian philosophical tradition date to at least Maimonides, and in its earliest forms a millenium prior to Jewish Roman writers such as Flavius Josephus.

Will every attempt to contextualize your proclamations on Islam be labeled as tu quoque?

No. Only those that respond to a transgression or shortcoming of mahometanism by ignoring the substance of that transgression and shouting about how the west did something terrible too. Since that seems to be your favorite mode of argument, I fear the need to identify your tu quoque statements has yet to be exhausted.

Chile is (in addition to being outside Central America)

I'm perfectly aware of where Chile is. I simply cited it as an example of a horrible regime that was justly ousted by somebody who the left calls a "despot."

probably the worst example to use in an argument about Just War. Unpalatable as he may have been, he was the country's legitimate president.

Doubtful. At the time of the coup, both the Chilean Supreme Court and the Chilean Chamber of Deputies (= House of Representatives) had declared Allende in violation of the Chilean Constitution, thus negating any legitimacy Allende had. He had also violated the terms of an agreement with the Chamber of Deputies that elevated him to the presidential office in 1970 when no majority winner emerged from the election.

They cite the influences of their predecessors they find most favorable and you accept their reading as not only the single accepted reading, but the only one that ever existed over 8 centuries.

Once again you misstate me. They do not merely cite predecessors as inspiration. They repeat the ideas of predecessors, and those ideas are the dangerous part of it all. It's not how somebody else "reads" Taymiyya or Ghazali that is the problem. It is what Taymiyya and Ghazali themselves said. Read Qutb, then go read Taymiyya. Different times, same doctrines.

That's because you continue to define "mainstream of mahometan theology" as philosophies that follow the most ignoble of these 11th century views.

Ghazali was deemed "mainstream" by mahometan theologians long before I was ever around to select him. I merely judge him by the works he wrote that are considered to be his most important, and those works contain ignoble doctrines at their very core. The fact that mahometan theology has chosen him as its equivalent of an Aquinas or Augustine is well beyond my control, but it is a fact nonetheless and one that permits judgement of his doctrines, and with it judgement of those today who endorse him. Besides, if the shoe fits...

No. The Moors they were fighting were descendants of the Moors who invaded Iberia six centuries prior.

The first battle of the Reconquista was at Covadonga in 722. The Moors arrived 11 years, not 6 centuries, prior. The 6 century date marks the period between Covadonga and the fall of Grenada in 1492, the last remnant of the Moorish outposts in Spain.

A spurious reading of the past. Which of these states continued to exist?

Wrong as usual. The surviving sovereign was Pelagius of Asturias. He was the Visagothic Duke of Asturias in northern Spain at the time of the Moorish invasion. He escaped the conquest in 711, launched a rebellion in 718, and defeated the Moors at Covadonga in 722. Pelagius' heirs continued to liberate Iberia and split the northern third of of the peninsula into three kingdoms, Galacia, Portugal, and Leon, in the early 900's. The Asturian line traces through various dynasties from that point through Ferdinand and Isabella.

A spurious reading again. The "foreign invadeders" were 20th-generation descendants of the Moors who invaded.

20 generations in 11 years between the Moorish conquest and Covadonga? Those moors must've done a lot of breeding!

By this logic, it would be Just War to drive the Afrikaners out of South Africa, the Anglos out of Texas and the Jews out of Israel.

Not really. At least portions of all three of those regions were virtually uninhabited at the time that the first modern inhabitants arrived. Your best case is probably South Afrika, which was genuinely colonial in nature, but in the other two it is non-existant.

In the case of Israel the current inhabitants are descendents of prior inhabitants who resided there in antiquity. Much of the so-called Palestinian population, which is largely Jordanian and Egyptian in origin, did not even arrive there until the 19th and 20th centuries.

Texas is a similar case. When Anglos arrived in the 1820's it was virtually uninhabited by anything other than Indians from tribes that are long since gone. The "indigenous" Mexican population numbered only a couple thousand for the entire state, none of whom had any relation to the average Mexican illegal from Chiapas or Yucatan who swims across the Rio Grande today. It consisted mostly of descendents of European Spaniards who settled the region's Indian missions in prior centuries and a handful of minor Spanish noblemen. The only notable permanent settlements in the entire state were a small mission town called San Antonio, a handful of lesser mission villages to its southeast, and a pirate hideout named Campeche on Galveston island. Texas circa 1820 was virtually vacant, and permanent settlements other than San Antonio did not even arrive there until the Americans came.