Posted on 11/10/2001 1:02:41 PM PST by ouroboros
When five militant Muslims bent on murder pulled up to a Christian church in Pakistan, the first man to die was a Muslim.
He was a Muslim police officer assigned to guard the church, and he stood his ground against five gunmen and died in a vain attempt to protect the Christians inside.
And when the 16 victims were buried, their funeral was attended by thousands of Muslims who joined the Christian survivors in their grief and in their denunciation of the murderers.
There are people who, for their own selfish purposes, are trying to convince Americans that Islam wants to go to war with Christianity. That is a load of slop. The oldest Christian communities in the world today are in Islamic countries. Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all Middle Eastern religions, and all three have existed together for centuries.
I’ve pointed out before that the deputy prime minister of Iraq is a Christian and that there is a Christian church in Michigan built with a million-dollar donation from Saddam Hussein, who is Muslim. Most of the Palestinians in the Bethlehem area are Christians, and the oldest Christian church building is there. It has, by the way, been shot up badly by the Israelis.
There are Christians all over the Middle East, just as there are Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. The troubles we see there today all started with the Zionist colonization of Palestine, which involved Great Britain’s betrayal of its Arab allies in World War I. An excellent book on this topic is "A Peace to End All Peace" by David Fromkin. But these troubles are about secular matters, not religion.
Hamas opposes Israeli occupation of Palestine, not Judaism. Ditto for Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. The fact that extremists on both sides call each other names should not be mistaken as religious positions.
Islam considers Jesus as a holy prophet of God, and the Virgin Mary is much revered. By contrast, the Jewish Talmud, a collection of rabbinic writings, describes Jesus in very harsh and insulting terms and shows clear hostility to Christianity. The book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion" by Israel Shahak, the late Israeli human-rights advocate, can shed more light on this subject.
Religions are by definition exclusivist views of the world, which is a sound reason for keeping politics and religion separate. Ecumenicalism can carry you no further than simply respecting other people’s right to have different opinions and beliefs than you do. Classical Judaism and Islam both prefer a religious state - as, indeed, at one time did Christianity. The idea of church and state separation is uniquely American in the modern world, though it evolved from the British experience. Many Muslims and Jews today also favor keeping them separate.
A final point to keep in mind is that if you are going to judge religions, you should judge them as they are now understood and practiced, not as they were in the Middle Ages. One can always find quotations from all major religions that, out of context, seem harsh and brutal to modern sensibilities.
But the conflict we are now engaged in is not religious in any sense of that word. There is no Islamic plot to take over the world. The grievances are all about secular matters - U.S. and Israeli policies that have often victimized Arabs in particular and Muslims in general.
Muslims and Christians are both taught to treat others as they would be treated. Unfortunately, not all political leaders are willing to practice that.
"In a matter of hours, ten Indonesian churches were destroyed as angry mobs yelled "Indonesia is Islam, Indonesia is Islam...."
It can be chronicled, starting in September of 1996 of riots and then the slaughter of Christians by moslems in Indonesia, which are still continuing to this day. Whether or not our military was their would have made no difference.
You run into the same problem with lots of Protestant sects. It's probably one reason Luther found it necessary to edit the Bible somewhat so as to better comport with his personal interpretation.
So, at that point, it's just a matter of discerning which of Islam's groups have the interpretation most closely aligned with what other believers (and non-believers) would recognize as "Self-Evident" or universal truths.
It's not JUST that the take of these so-called "radical Muslims" is abhorrent to all ... it's that their "consciousness raising" tactics and clearly materialist and hateful mindset reveal them to be the product of a more insidious "organizing". Despite the overlay of "Islam" under which they operate, they've far more in common with the rest of the world's radicals -- IRA, Black September, Weatherman, Black Panther, Shining Path -- than they do Islam.
That's because they're communists -- militant ATHEISTS -- masquerading under cover of Islam.
The beauty being that -- as with the co-opting and revolution from within of the Church (where the revolution works inversely ... turning heretofore Christian Soldiers into "peace and justice" pansies whose battlecry is "Tolerance!") -- there's a sucker born every minute and plenty of Extras ready to latch on to give the militant atheist top-down vine of organization and control the followers necessary to mask it with "grassroots".
I'll agree with you to some extent, but Islam has always been a war-like religion. il-Ilahi [moon-crescent] was the greatest of the 360 pagan gods of Mecca and Medina. Ilahi was a war god--god of the sword, of the bow and of the arrow. In order to build his religion Mohammed abolished the other 359 lesser gods, leaving Allah [the pagans term for a monotheistic god].
I got flamed for saying this on another thread but you can trace the roots of the violence back to Genesis 16: 11-12.
11 And the angel of the Lord said unto her (Hagar): "Behold, thou art with child, and thou shalt bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the lord has heard thy affliction.
12 And he shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of thy brethren.
They have always been war-like and are perpetually at war with everyone.
Respectfully disagree, as Turkey is shaky at best. All of Islam and the Arab world seeks to deny any form of democracy, freedom of worship, and marches backward to the brutality of the middle ages. There isn't one Islamic country in which, as a woman, I would want to live. Islamic values widely differ from ours. For example, if I were to go live in Algeria or some other Islamic utopia, my future husband would [according to the Qu'ran] be entitled to 4 wives. I would have to completely veil myself from head to toe because it is evil to be seen. I would eventually be pressured into converting to Islam because I would be a Christian infidel defiling the holy Islamic land of wherever, and if I am disobedient the Qu'ran says it is lawful for the husband to beat me. And if I do not like this I may be found at the bottom of a ravine somewhere and no one in the Islamic judicial system will give a rat because justice there, really means something entirely else.
No...Islam cannot be reconciled with democracy and is not friendly in any way toward western Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Not yet it isn't. But I'm not so sure that we don't have a big problem here on our own soil.
Moslems now account for more than 5% [14 million strong] of the population and they aren't aborting anyone. And if anyone has noticed there is a "push-pull" tendency of islamic immigration which will play a major role in our future. In every other country they've immigrated to they at first live quietly, respecting the laws in the land which they live. However, as their birth-rate surpasses that of their Christian and Jewish neighbors, they become a sizeable minority with a big voting constituency, a fact that won't go ignored by pandering politicians [or by Bush who says that we aren't at war with Islam] who want to be re-elected.
From a small minority, these moslem citizens use their vote, and demand to be heard and to influence their neighbors more and more to accept "Islamic" rights, and then finally the aggressive, mutant form of Islam.
Islam is already a threat here at home because as they reach 20% and 30% of the population, it will utilize American democracy just as Hitler utilized Weimar German Democracy to ascend power or act as power brokers within the system and then eject the democratic system which is unacceptable and unreconciled to Islam. That can happen within two decades. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
France is looking at the same problem. Moslems now make up 15% of their entire population. That is huge considering that France is not that big of a country to begin with. Everywhere the moslems have gone they have had a population explosion--and with their sheer numbers they use the democratic system to get themselves elected and win power--then out comes the radical strain of Islam that can't be rectified with democracy.
The problem I have with your characterization of all Muslims as warlike is that it is an over-generalization that isn't even true for the most part.
I think moslems are as much a victim of Islamic violence as everyone else, and I have nothing agnist them as a people. I have no military solution to offer. The only thing I can see is to pray for a revival of traditional Judeo-Christian values and to preach the Gospel to those on our own soil. I know many people disdain my belief system, but it is the foundation of this country and the root of our freedom.
The attempt of you and others on this board to whitewash the brutal nature of Islam and its perpetual war with the West is as nauseating and disgusting as the attempt of homosexual activists who lie and claim that homosexuality has nothing to do with pederasty or nothing to do with Jesse Dirkhising.
And it should be condemned.
May start lobbing links in here re: the triangulation of the People of the Book under the guise of "Holy War".
Terrorists are terrorists, their religion will not spare them anymore than it will condemn others of the same faith who are not terrorists. Enough Said!
No, because it wasn't the Christian religion itself that taught hate for Jews, it was Hitler. Christians in Germany were, however, accountable for the fact that Hitler was able to advance in power like he did. Which is why we should pay attention to what is going on right here at home.
Its funny you mention Germany because I was talking about Nazis yesterday to tex-oma on a different thread. I basically said the reason why someone executes a suicide/mass murder on that scale is quite clear. The Qu'ran, the Haddith, and the Islamic press make that clear every day.
Have you ever read Hitler's "Mein Kampf?" That book was written while he was in jail in Munich in 1923. Critics scoffed at him and he was considered a buffoon. No one took him seriously. He may have been crazy and a megalomaniac, but Hitler was honest when he wrote Mein Kampf. Everything he wrote in that book he later carried out. He had no hidden agenda. The fact that few people read his book, and did not take him seriously was not his fault.
The same holds tree today with radical Islam as a threat to Judeo-Christian Western civilization. With the power of oil and the petrodollar these moslem fanatics have risen their heads with the dream of converting the world to Islam.
Mein Kampf was a sure giveaway to understanding the nazi system, so the Qu'ran must be read by all Christians, Jews, and Moslem alike, in order to understand the aims and goals of the radical Islamic powers.
Similarly, the Islamic press is just like that of Goebbels the nazi press. It is a clear guidline in Arabic or Persian to the moslem believers as to what to do with the corrupt west--the great satan--America, and her agent in the middle east--Israel.
As long as the world runs on petroleum, radical Islam will be around, waging war, as evidinced by the Sudan, East Timor, Israel, USA, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebannon, chechnya, etc. etc.
But the Nazis were not Christian ... not by a long shot. Rather, they were "New Agers".
I posted an C. S. Lewis essay in 1999 (now in the black hole offline) called "First and Second Realities" in which he speaks in real time of Germany's embrace of a perverted Norse mythology as reported in a early 40's issue of Time and Tide.
I can repost it if you like.
This is completely irrelevant. Jesse Dirkhising's mother knew her son's torturers/killers for years and she never thought those homosexuals would hurt one of her own.
As for the you being buddy buddy with the Moslems, so what? In 1929 there was something called the Hebron massacre where Arabs killed many Shephardic Jews. These Arabs were "friends" with the Jews for many years. One of the survivors of the massacre noted that Arabs can keep hidden their enmity for many years and when it is revealed it is quite shocking.
Btw...Here's a link I found about more Muslim killings of Christians Indonesia worst Opressor of Christians.
from the link
<<<<<<<< "The Indonesian government seems incapable of taking sufficient measures to end the atrocities," he said. "The Indonesian army and police are either unwilling to interfere or they are scheming the clashes to increase their power, which has been clipped by the new regime of President Wahid. Since the war erupted 18 months ago, more than 2,500 people are reported to have died. These are official figures; the actual number of dead may be higher. In the first six months of this year, nearly 1,000 people were killed. Most of the victims are Christians."
Open Doors, the ministry that was begun 45 years ago by Brother Andrew, the Dutch-born author of "God's Smuggler," has just announced its findings with the semi-annual release of its closely followed World Watch List. The Top Ten "Hall of Shame" is headed once again by Saudi Arabia - as the world's worst persecutor of Christians - closely followed by Afghanistan, China, Chechnya, Sudan, Yemen, North Korea, Maldives, Iran and Morocco....>>>>>
What do these attacks on Christians in Indonesia have to do with the existence of Israel? I don't even think Charly Reese can spin that one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.