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.
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...