Posted on 10/29/2001 4:28:05 PM PST by Utah Girl
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:49:29 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
With 1.2 billion followers, Islam is the world
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
From here:
"First, the Christian nations of Europe were definitely not the aggressors. As we have seen in earlier chapters, the Moslems had been aggressors against the Christians since the seventh century. Their attacks on Christian countries were still going on in the eleventh century. In 1071 the Turks had attacked and virtually annihilated the Byzantine army at Manzikert. It was this defeat that led the Byzantine Emperor to appeal to the Pope for aid against the Moslems. The Christian countries of Europe were clearly justified in defending themselves against Moslem attacks and also in going on the offensive in order to prevent future attacks. At no point did the Crusaders attack the Moslem homeland, Arabia, but only those originally Christian territories that the Moslems had conquered."
Sounds a lot like today, no?
True, Hitler left Catholicism as a teenager, and became involved in cults in Vienna on which he based his religion of Naziism.
Similarly, Stalin left an Orthodox seminary and became a communist after his brother was executed for trying to assasinate someone.
That's the good news.
The bad news is Torquemada was a good Catholic, and the Brits who allowed a couple million Irish Catholics die of starvation in the 1840's were goo Christians. (place your famous massacre here the list is long).
We are fighting not Islam, but a cult within Islam. The rich set up schools to teach "religion" to kids in some countries, but they are actually teaching hatred of non Islam and narrow thinking. Very similar to the way the Nazis educated their youth, or the Communists trained the young Pioneers....
This broad doesn't know what in the hell she is talking about. Within several hundred years of the founding of Islam, Moslems were among the most advanced people in the world - including in science.
I'm currently reading a book on the Crusades and, if anyone wants names I'll go back and look but within the first half millenium a Moslem had accurately calculated the distance from the earth to the moon and another had stated that if the atom could be split, it would create enough energy to totally destroy Baghdad.
Mr. Politically Correct, besides spouting platitudes, why don't you cite some leading Muslim sources saying the same thing you are? May be even condemning the illustrious Osama? Or is that to much to ask?
One source you might not want to quote is the late (great?) Ayatollah Khomeni. He is quoted saying:
Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of (other) countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.
But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world...Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. those (who say this ) are witless. Islam says Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all? Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by (the unbelievers)? Islam says: Kill them (the non-Muslims), put them to the sword and scatter (their armies). Does this mean sitting back until (non-Muslims) overcome us?
Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender to the enemy? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except by the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other (Qur'anic) psalms and Hadith (sayings of the prophet) urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim?
I agree with Utah Girl's statement:
Islam is at a crossroads right now. They need to decide to weed out the Osama bin Laden's in their midst.
Islam does have a respectable tradition of justice and the pursuit of peace, but it also has a very violent tradition that goes back to the very founding of Islam. These two traditions are constantly in competition, to deny the later (like you and this article do) is naive. Articles like this have a place in my view....in the Arab papers...reminding them of a noble tradition, but where mostly these days they are filled with anti-American sentiment.
That is why they were tripping over each other as they danced in the streets..
Propaganda can end up backfiring,Bush and friends better be careful,cause the Muslims want the USA as an Islamic Nation....
Exactly. Whay are not the troops of 40 muslim mations not charging into Kandahar right now? Because they are not serious. They want to dissociate themselves from terrorism, but they don't want to get serious about DOING anything about it. THEN they complain because only PART of their house stinks.
The term “jihad” originally referred to the struggle required to be a devoted Muslim, but today it is more commonly used to denote a holy war waged for Allah. Why the shift?
The first major Muslim thinker to make jihad—meaning holy war—a central tenet of the faith was [a] Pakistani thinker, Mawdudi [in the late1800’s] and now Osama bin Laden has put jihad at the center of his campaign. That is a very new development in the Muslim world, to focus narrowly on jihad as holy war, and the media also reinforced this. Jihad is the struggle or effort that is pursued on all fronts—intellectual, spiritual, social, moral as well as political.
Armstrong, true form, gets things backwards. Mawdudi reinvented a pillar of Islam that goes back to the early days of the prophet. Jihad (conquest) was instrumental in the spread of the new faith (to say other wise smacks at a whole boat load of history). It was only with the influence of Western ideas of morality that Mawdudi's interpretation started to gain adherents...whether it is that strong...well read some Arabic newspapers or watch al-Jazirah and you decide which trend in the most influencial today.
How can we convert Muslims if we hate them?Very true. I am a Muslim who won't be converted, but you suggest that communication is necessary, and I agree.
This is exactly the "Can't we all just get along?" school of American thought that defies reason and logic. You cannot judge Islam through Post-Reformation Christian Ecumenical Spectacles. Islam and Christianity are beyond the apple and orange scenario. We can't all get along. Islam wants you dead, or converted. "Moderate" (a better word would be "Practical") Islam wants you barely tolerated, but paying tribute and having no rights to life, liberty, and property,nevermind happiness.
And the first of them would be Muhammed himself. He killed many people, including innocent women, includeing a whole tribe of Jews from Medina. He led men on raids to loot pillage and rape. In other words, he was a warlord.
But you wont hear this truth from Karen Armstrong. She is an apologist for Islam, and she is quite biased. The claim that Jerusalem suffered no repression under Caliphate Rule is simply FALSE. You only need read the Edict of Omar to refute it. But there were terrible pogroms in 1014 across the Islamic empire.
Karen Armstrong is simply not telling the truth. She is an anti-Westernized Muslim who happened to be born here. A review of here Muhammed biography shows how biased and poor her scholarship is:
Let's then begin with Karen Armstrong. Her biography is a good example of the phenomenological approach, in that she interprets the facts' of Muhammad's life much as a Muslim would. From the very first page one can see that she is speaking from a definite position, and that it is not as an European. If I had not read her name on the cover, I could have thought this was simply another Muslim biography, as she had little good to say about the West, characterizing its entire history as that of hatred towards Islam (Armstrong 1992:35,42). It was difficult to take her biography seriously, as throughout the book she made numerous simplistic generalizations concerning the West, Islam and Christianity.
Whether her reading of Islamic history has been coloured or whether she refuses to believe the western reports she has read I am not sure. What seems clear is that she is greatly angered by her western European past, and this bias permeates much of her biographical interpretation of Muhammad's life.
A list of superlatives is saved for the man himself. Muhammad, according to Armstrong was good-looking, with a whole-hearted character and luminous expression (p.78); he was gentle to women (p.79), [ MY Comment: This was a man with 9 wives who killed a whole family and then took the young daughter for his concubine, ie, a sex slave; this Muhammed sold hundreds of women into slavery; as fro adultery, unlike Jesus, he was gung ho for the traditional stoning penalty] and wise (p.82); he was a spiritual genius (p.98) with "enhanced knowledge" (p.159); he loved children, was pious (p.230), was lenient, kind, loved animals (p.231), helped with the household chores (p.239), and had a mission much more difficult than that of Jesus, which succeeded (pp.250-251). All of these examples she gleaned from source material compiled hundreds of years after the fact, yet she repeats them as if she knew the man himself.
It was obvious to me that Armstrong used the many classical Muslim sources without questioning their veracity. Very little was ever said concerning the authenticity of the sources. When she broached the subject she contended that they were not a "whitewash," but gave a "compelling and realistic portrait...telling their story as honestly and truthfully as they could" (Armstrong 1992:47). What bad Hadiths there were, she maintains, the later compilers "ruthlessly discarded," so that the editing was objective (Armstrong 1992:48). I am certain that there are few orientalist scholars who would agree with such assertions.
... review continues but ends with ... Karen Armstrong has compromised her credibility as a historian.
Bottom Line - Give her a GAG alert.
You will find many pro-Turks here. Read the articles and comments at these two threads:
Much of the current PC crap about Islam being a peaceful religion is just that, crap. Throughout its history, it has nearly always been spread by conquest. Violence against "infidels" is supported by its sacred texts as quoted on FR many times. That is NOT TRUE of Christianity.
You may cite your Torquemedas all you want, and one more can always be dug up to cite, but their actions have always been evil perversions of Christian scripture. Christ was not a military figure, converting others by the sword. Muhammed was.
Bush has to say what he has to say about Islam being a religion of love and peace. He is trying to avoid a general war with numerous Islamic countries. I understand what he is doing. But it still doesn't pay to be naive about Islam.
Huh? My atheist brother in law was baptized. My agnostic brother in law was baptized. Their mother will be glad to know that SOMEONE thinks they're still Catholic. :(
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