Posted on 10/20/2003 10:44:21 AM PDT by quidnunc
Islam is dying. In its death throes, it has turned not just on its perceived enemies, the modern world, but upon itself, killing with seeming indifference both Muslim and non-Muslim as it thrashes about, filling each day with new corpses, the last of which will be its own.
It took hundreds of years for the Roman Empire to be built and to come to an end. During that long period in the early history of Western civilization, the populations under its control throughout the Mediterranean and up into England were largely permitted to worship any of the many gods in local areas, although they were expected to also honor the state gods of Rome.
By 312 AD, the emperor Constantine began his ascendancy, attributing it to the God of the Christians and, in 325 AD, he called the Council of Nicaea, the first council of bishops to formalize a Christian creed. After that, Christianity, one of many faiths in the vast empire began its path toward becoming, not just the religion of the empire, but one that now numbers more than two billion people worldwide.
In 610 AD, Mohammed began to create Islam to gain control over the desert tribes of Arabia. He built his religion on the wealth acquired through raids on caravans and attacks on cities such as Medina and Mecca. Islam’s text, the Koran, was said to supercede both the Old and New Testaments, disputing the laws of Judaism and the divinity of Jesus.
Following Mohammed’s death in 632 AD, the religion, a warrior cult built around adoration of Mohammed, quickly spread throughout North Africa and into Spain. Today, Islam is estimated to have more than 1.2 billion adherents around the world, although most are largely located in the Middle East and Africa. There are some 31 million in Europe, more than 845 million throughout Asia, and 323 million in Africa. A little over a million are in South America and approximately 2.9 million in North America. It remains a distinctly "Arab" religion.
Islam has literally been at war with all other religions since its inception. It looks at the world as being divided between Islam and the world of the infidel, the unbeliever. The central prayer of Islam, the Kalima, spoken daily, states "There is no God by Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet." A militant religion. Mohammed said, "The sword is the key to Heaven and Hell." By contrast, six hundred years earlier, Jesus said, "He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword."
A Muslim’s first allegiance is to Islam. One’s nationality and other allegiances are secondary. In the latter half of the last century, Middle Eastern Arabs strove to establish a national identity and it proved a failure from its inception. In late October, 35 heads of state will gather for a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in an effort to achieve a unified voice for Islam and to try to offset perceptions that Islam is linked to the violence being perpetrated worldwide. Observers, however, note that the OIC is unified only in its support for the Palestinian attacks on Israel.
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(Excerpt) Read more at torontofreepress.com ...
It also provides a simple and easily understood alibi for living in miserable conditions with zero chance of change - someone else did it, "they" did it to "us", "they" have stuff and we don't. That factor alone means that islam has a great chance among the "victim-American" crowd and the illegal immigrant opportunists that our own left considers their power base.
Islam provides the same morbid comfort found in living under any dictatorship. Years after the fall of Hitler, the Berlin Wall, and the USSR, there remain echos of how easy it was to live in a system that planned your entire existance for you.
This is why Muslim governments must use force to prevent any word other than Islam from being heard. There is no foundation for Islam. All they have is a single book written by one man. Everything else is either fantasy or distortions of much older scripture. You can deny clear historical and archaeological evidence only so long.
They might do it. They'll advertise it as Jews killing Jesus (a prophet in Islam) and show it after suitable editing.
I tend to see Muhammed as someone who was sincere at first. He later got a taste of power and found he liked it. He then degenerated into just another warlord, though obviously a fairly good one, using religion as a tool to enhance his power.
Sounds like Protestantism (belief gets you to heaven, not good works).
(Dons flameproof underwear)
Exactly where it has been since its inception, and NOT a recent phenomenon. Islam has always been thus, and shall be thus until it becomes extinct...
the infowarrior
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