"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“A friend of mine, an Egyptian lawyer and a nominal Muslim, told me he was asked to give a lecture to an American audience on religious tolerance in the Muslim world. “I told them there was none,” he chuckled. “
Saudi Arabia - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death. Bibles are illegal. Churches are illegal. Easter celebrations are illegal. It is punishable by death for a non-mulsim to enter the “holy” muslim cities of Medina and Mecca.
Yemen - Bans proselytizing by non-Muslims and forbids conversions. The Government does not allow the building of new non-Muslim places of worship.
Kuwait - Registration and licensing of religious groups. Members of religions not sanctioned in the Koran may not build places of worship. Prohibits organized religious education for religions other than Islam.
Egypt - Islam is the official state religion and primary source of legislation. Accordingly, religious practices that conflict with Islamic law are prohibited. Muslims may face legal problems if they convert to another faith (up to and including death). Requires non-Muslims to obtain what is now a presidential decree to build a place of worship.
Algeria - The law prohibits public assembly for purposes of practicing a faith other than Islam. Non-Islamic proselytizing is illegal, and the Government restricts the importation of non-Islamic literature for distribution. The country has passed the “Regulation of Religious Practice” law, which stipulates a punishment of two to five years’ imprisonment and heavy fines for anyone convicted of urging a Muslim to change his religion.
Syria - The constitution requires the president to be a Muslim and specifies that Islamic jurisprudence is a principal source of legislation. Sharing your Christian faith is discouraged as “posing a threat to the relations among religious groups” and carries a penalty of up to life in prison. A Christian is not allowed to proselytize – ever. Churches who want to hold an extra service must get a government permit. Sermons are routinely monitored, as is church fundraising.
Jordan - Has the death penalty for any Muslim selling land to a Jew.
Sudan - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death.
Pakistan - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death. Bans proselytizing by non-Muslims. Christians regularly put in prison for charges of blasphemy. Islam is the state religion, and in a court of law the testimony of a Christian carries less weight than that of a Muslim. Section 295(c) of the Penal Code calls for a death sentence for anyone who defiles the name of the Prophet Muhammad and requires the testimony of four Muslims for a conviction. This fosters an environment in which Muslims can feel free to use intimidation and violence against religious minorities for personal gain. Also, if any criminal Muslim rape with any Christian female and then take plea that she has accepted Islam and marry with him. Such person is not culpable under Pakistani criminal law
Qatar - Islamic instruction is compulsory in public schools. The government regulates the publication, importation, and distribution of non-Islamic religious literature. The government continues to prohibit proselytizing of Muslims by non-Muslims.
Malaysia - Under Malaysian law, any convert to Christianity must apply to a shariah (Muslim law) court to legally renounce Islam. Many Christians prefer to remain silent converts rather than take their battle to the shariah courts, where apostasy or conversion out of Islam is punishable by whipping, fines, imprisonment and—in the most extreme application—death. In a country where Muslims account for more than half of the population, conversion from Islam is punished with a 5-year prison sentence and a $3,000 fine. A Malaysian Muslim who marries a non-Muslim and who converts the non-Muslim to Islam is rewarded with an apartment, a car, a one-time payment of $2,700, and a monthly stipend of $270.
The Maldives - In the island paradise visited by tens of thousands of tourists each year, Christianity is simply not tolerated. While local Christians – said to number around 300 out of a total population of 300,000 – do get together to worship, they do so at the risk of imprisonment or worse if discovered by the Muslim authorities. Bibles are banned, and tourists can be arrested for trying to bring them into the country.
England - Bradford, Yorkshire, UK. Pop. 300,000 - 20% Islamic. Local police required to tell community elders the location of girls who run away to escape arranged marriages. Bars and liquor stores in the Lumb Lane / Manningham Lane area of the city ‘requested’ to close on Fridays. Schools, colleges, and health clinics have to have separate areas for women, with a copy of the Koran available. Public critcism of Islam or it’s adherents, such as letters to the local paper, emails to friends, speeches etc, can and has led to criminal charges ‘Using words intentionally and wilfully to cause fear, hate, or distress. Christmas decorations not to be put up, as this may make the Moslems feel ‘culturally overshadowed’. Shops ‘requested’ not to display easter eggs for the same reason. The term ‘requested’ means not legally enforceable but local police warn that they cannot intervene if your premises get ‘damaged’ somehow. Local councillors and MPs have encouraged all this for the past 15 years. Bradford Northwest MP Ann Cryer regularly appears with long sleeves and her head covered. She once stated that women in Islam are properly liberated and that Islam is an example to us all.
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There isn't a different "true religion" for every country, and only an atheist would consider religion a local mythology serving utilitarian purposes. All that matters is what G-d says. If G-d commands something, it is mandatory. If He forbids it, it is forbidden--regardless of any nation's heritage.
I've long bemoaned Jews who demand a relativism of chr*stianity that Judaism itself forbids. Now chr*stians are getting to practice the same hypocrisy vis a vis islam.
No wonder the leftists always say the “Constitution” doesn’t say “God or Christian”
Because we were founded based on the Declaration of Independence and it is pretty clear that God was all over it.
“
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“
They wouldn’t have revolted if not that God told them to do so and helped.
The U.S.A. has been a Christian nation throughout its history and is today, and its preceding English colonies were also--every one of them: A tolerant Christian nation, but a Christian nation nevertheless.
Anyone with a brain and an open mind--the information is available to all--knows this and is also familiar with the horrors and evil resulting from religious misguidedness, intolerance, and perversion in the past:
Okay: Religious wars. Torture chambers in the name of religion. Persecution of infidels. Et al.
and existing in the world even today:
Okay: Religious wars. Torture chambers in the name of religion. Persecution of infidels. Stoning of adulterers. Slavery sanctioned by religion. Mass murder and suicide in the name of religion. Apostasy as a capital crime. Et al.
If my understanding of the history is correct, the Knights Templar, upon returning to Europe from the Middle East, only to be destroyed as an order by corrupt so-called "Christian" representatives of a corrupt "Christian" church in collusion with the corrupt and evil King Philip IV of France, to have their wealth confiscated, to be persecuted ruthlessly on trumpted up charges of heresy, to be driven underground, and to have many of their order tortured and burned to death (one Templar "witness" was presented at one of the trials with his feet burned off under torture and the ashes in a sack on his abdomen--the sort of thing attributable to religious perversion and intolerance), and driven underground, concluded that the Muslims, with whom they had been at war for more than two centuries, were more merciful than the corrupt so-called "Christians" of Europe, and they championed religious tolerance from their underground operations, possibly as Free Masons.
All of that said and understood, it should be recognized that the U.S.A. is a Christian nation.
The United States has lead the way and set the example for the people of the world in justice and tolerance.
It was the American Civil Rights Revolution that proscribed racism and racial intolerance throughout the world.
The entire American Experiment has lead the way throughout the world for liberty, justice, democracy, and universal human rights.
The time has come for the U.S. to lead the way in acknowledging the Greek concept of nemesis: that any good thing, taken sufficiently to its extreme, becomes a bad thing, viz. the nemesis of the good thing, often its opposite.
Tolerance is no exception.
Some nations, notably in Western Europe, have taken tolerance to such an extreme that they have become incapable of protecting the very liberties, tolerance, justice, democracy, and human rights that they so rightly cherish. Tolerance has become its nemesis.
It is past time for a more profound understanding of tolerance--and its nemesis.
It's time for the United States to lead the way again.