Of course not!
Posted on 10/11/2001 10:52:36 AM PDT by Chuckmorse
Is Islam Violent?
As Americans we are steeped in republican values such as limited government, individual rights, and a separation of church and state.
We traditionally view our neighbor with a live and let live attitude and, while we may not always approve, more often than not we tolerate our differences.
This is why, with all our imperfections, and God knows we have many, we somehow hold together as the most genuinely diverse society ever known to man.
As a result, we seem to have this almost myopic view of the rest of the world.
We assume that all faiths, political as well as religious, are like ours, which tends to involve a personal relationship with a God whom we look to as the creator of our natural sovereign rights.
We have trouble imagining a nation under the direct rule of clerics, or commissars, who interpret the will of God, or science, and use the muscular force of the state to carry out their interpretations.
Our nation was born after a bloody revolution against a tyrannical British monarch, King George III.
This experience imbued our founding generation with a respect for the sovereign rights of nations.
America has often championed the cause of independence from Latin America in the nineteenth century to Europe during the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and Kuwait.
We instinctively loathed European colonialism with its attempt to physically dominate the world.
Likewise, we as a people rejected the maniacal new world order visions of both Nazism and Communism.
While we’ve certainly had our share of imperialists operating in the inner reaches of our government and amongst a small segment of our most wealthy establishment, the American people have been notoriously opposed to world dominating schemes.
It has never been an element of our religious or political faith.
Our idea of utopia has always been to live in peace, under our proverbial fig tree, and leave our neighbor alone to peruse the same.
Jefferson expressed this best when he noted in the Declaration of Independence that the truths we hold to be self-evident are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The vast majority of Muslims who have settled in America have, thank God, adopted the same peaceful American faith that most of the rest of us have regardless of individual means of worshiping God or not worshiping as the case may be.
The same cannot be said of the nations of the world which are presently dominated by religious Muslims.
The religious Muslim movement, like Nazism and left-wing Communism before it, has seized the reigns of power in several sovereign states.
Like the Nazi’s and Communists, they are using that power to spread terror across the planet.
The citizens of these Islamic states chafe under the same type of brutal authoritarianism and one party religious dictatorship as Europeans suffered under Nazism or that Chinese, Cubans or North Koreans suffer under the brutal jackboot of left-wing Communism.
The mobs coursing through the streets of Islamic cities chanting anti-American slogans are the same as the Nazi brown shirts looting Jewish businesses during Kristalnacht or Communists burning and looting American inner cities during the summer of love.
Even though we may be loath to admit it, religious Islam clearly does contain seeds of violence of a type similar to that of its Nazi and Communist counterparts.
Like their counterparts, Islam advocates war, or Jihad, as a means of conquering the non-Islamic world.
Moderate Muslims have westernized the meaning of Jihad to mean peaceful personal struggle and this is a genuinely progressive development.
Like the Nazis and Communists, however, the religious Muslims believe that world peace and happiness will be obtained under what they maintain is the only true faith.
Like the Nazis and Communists, they believe that anything is permissible in the pursuit of this glorious goal including total subjugation of peoples and mass murder.
Chuck Morse Is the author of “Why I’m a Right-Wing Extremist” www.chuckmorse.com
I refer to the former. This borrowing is far more widespread than most Christians realize (or than you imply). Most of the "colorful" and popular customs of the churches spring from these sources, notably pretty much all the customs associated with holidays. This is especially true of Catholic and Orthodox pracice. Protestants, having severely limited the popular imports in favor of a stripped-down religion, have fewer "pagan" imports.
Depending on your point of view, this borrowing can be considered as either a sanctification of the pagan practices, or as a pollution or contamination of the purity of Christianity. This is very definitely a matter of opinion. The origin of the customs is not.
So find a pre-PC encyclopedia and look under Christmas, Easter, etc. I recommmend the (1911?) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Did I not make it plain that I'm implying no such thing?
I am merely pointing out that if a person insists that Islam is illegitimate because it incorporates elements with roots in paganism, then an intellectually honest person is required to apply the same standard to Christianity. I'm not implying that I apply this standard to either religion.
To those who say these terrorists are just a fringe element and that Islam as a whole is peaceful and not responsible for the behavior and positions of the fringe:
What exactly was the last time Lutheran extremists bombed a building?
When did you last hear about that infamous fringe Methodist group hijacking a plane?
How about those fanatic Buddhist madmen taking control of an impoverished country?
And those Catholic thugs cooking up chemical weapons to wipe out their rivals?
And of course we have all heard those stories about Presbyterian sleepers infiltrating a country, intending to live quietly until it's time to commit their terrorist acts ...
IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?
I'll give it a shot.
This is a great illustration of the power of the English language.
The slight shading of meaning and the implicit message in the choice of word.
"Comparing" assumes no prior judgement about the items being compared; they can have more similarities than differences or vice-versa.
"Contrasting" is a comparison between things assumed or known to be different.
One of the constant characteristics of Islam is "might makes right" (that is the clear message in "by the sword").
Assuming that notion to be defensible then yes, taking over Saudi Arabia makes total sense.
Of course not!
If you really believe this, you must live in a parallel universe.
Newly created Muslim world? Quite a trick, since the "Golden Age" of Islam is considered the latter half of the 8th Century, and the first Crusade was not launched until 1096...
Forcibly convert or kill them? That's a Muslim/Arab concept.
Kill them? of course! The raping thieving Mass Murderers were cutting a swath through the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Lots of Booty? LOL.
Even Grade school children know this is probably the primary motivation for the Jihad which has lasted almost uninterrupted for 1300 years.
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