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.
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.