Let's try this again: it is what you've said that is bigoted. I have no idea whether you are a bigot or not. The only thing I can comment on are the posts you made, and they have been rife with bigotry.
Please try to understand the difference between loving the sinner, and hating the sin. You implied you were a Christian, than that concept shouldn't be foreign to you.
No, I said I was a Christian. And that's why I don't hate anyone either, including you. When I have demonstrated any hate for anyone?
Peaceful Muslims are peaceful IN Spite OF what the Qu'ran says, NOT because of it.
And this is where we disagree. The Muslim religion is no more or less peaceful than the Christian religion or any other mainstream religion in the world. Any of these religions have texts written for specific purposes that can be badly misrepresentative of the religious belief if taken in general.
Take what you've written about jihad. You've quoted very specific passages from the Qu'ran that seem to imply the Muslim religion is nothing more than an Al-Qaeda recruiting tool. But here's something that might interest you, directly from Bernard Haykel, a professor of Islamic law.
According to Islamic law there are at least six reasons why bin Laden's barbaric violence cannot fall under the rubric of jihad:
1) Individuals and organizations cannot declare a jihad, only states can.
2) One cannot kill innocent women and children when conducting a jihad.
3) One cannot kill Muslims in a jihad.
4) One cannot fight a jihad against a country in which Muslims can freely practice their religion and proselytize Islam.
5) Prominent Muslim jurists around the world have condemned these attacks, and their condemnation forms a juristic consensus (ijma) against bin Laden's actions. This consensus renders his actions un-Islamic.
6) The welfare and interest of the Muslim community (maslaha) is being harmed by bin Laden's actions and this equally makes them un-Islamic.
A “jihad” in this sense can only be declared by a religious leader. Originally only the Caliphate could declare it. At that time the caliph was the highest religious and political authority in the land.
Today because there are so many religious leaders, an individual cannot make this declaration. They will have to have something in Islam called ijma (consensus). No one person can make this declaration unless that person is truly the supreme religious leader, i.e. like the Pope. And in Islam there is no such person.
But you don't mention that in your posts. You don't mention the fact that Amir Taheri was the editor-in-chief of Iran's leading daily newspaper, and Iran has been an enemy of the United States for a long time. You don't think there might be a teensy bit of political influence in his interpretation of Islam, do you?
I have to wonder how many other things you don't mention in your screeds, how many facts you ignore in your arguments and religious citations. I have to wonder if you even recognize that this is the sort of manipulation leaders like Hitler used to start wars and declare fatwas.
Just to show you the dangers of posting religious texts without the proper context, here's Deuteronomy 13:6-18 (NIV):
"If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples that are round about you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him; but you shall kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and never again do any such wickedness as this among you. "If you hear in one of your cities, which the LORD your God gives you to dwell there, that certain base fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of the city, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which you have not known, then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently; and behold, if it be true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done among you, you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, destroying it utterly, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword. You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square, and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God; it shall be a heap for ever, it shall not be built again. None of the devoted things shall cleave to your hand; that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and show you mercy, and have compassion on you, and multiply you, as he swore to your fathers, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, keeping all his commandments which I command you this day, and doing what is right in the sight of the LORD your God.
Of course, the excerpt above is from the Penteteuch, and is directed towards the specific circumstances of the non-Gentiles at Mount Sinai, and should not be taken as God's final covenant with us. But the Muslim imams and leaders you quote earlier are every bit as blasphemous as anyone who takes the passage from Deuteronomy above and construes it to mean we should kill all non-Christians.
And quite frankly, I don't understand the point of the rest of your post. You show me a picture of your son, apparently to parade the fact that he's black, drop a few more Muslim names, cite a few more of the outrageous claims and practices of Islamic radicals, and then proceed to chide me for being a "multi-culturalist" (whatever that might mean in your eyes) and then projecting me with a homosexual lisp. (Are you trying to suggest that my post was homosexual? I don't think so.) And then there's some random outrage at whatever Madonna's wearing these days.
Whether or not you wish to forgive Robert Byrd for using the n-word is totally up to you. Frankly, I don't care what you decide. But you seem intent at all costs to steer the discussion away from what I asked earlier: when did Robert Byrd lie? When did he participate in or sponsor a lynching? When did he do anything illegal? When did he do anything other than precisely what he said he did? It's the sort of manipulation that's become the hallmark of your posts so far.
I have said REPEATEDLY to you: I don't know that Byrd ever burned a cross or lynched any blacks; whom he called: "...race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
But then again...I don't know that he DIDN'T... Do you???
So; Robert Byrd needs to answer one simple question to us all:
- Were you, Robert K. Byrd, ever involved in a Cross-burning or a Lynching, while in the Ku Klux Klan, or did you have knowledge of aforementioned Klan activities?
If Byrd burned even ONE cross on even ONE lawn of even ONE fellow American, he has nothing left to offer. He is discredited, disgraced, and has no other option other than to tender his resignation from the Senate.
So, tell ya what Sam: Provide us all a link, show us where Robert Byrd has apologized PUBLICLY for being in the Klan, and where he has completely denounced the Klan, OK?
So there's my challenge to you.
Show us, with Robert Byrd's own words, his apology for being in the Klan, and his denouncing the KKK publicly. and I'm not interested in any of your excuses for him, or the D.N.C. spin, or his own PR boy's B.S.
And don't give me that BS that he was in the Klan to fight Communism. The Cold War hadn't even started in 1942. If you can show his denouncement of the Klan and his apology, I'll shut-up, and never say another word about Bobby KKK Big Byrd...EVER. Fair enough?
BTW; Robert Byrd stayed out of the military in 1945, because he was opposed to the integration of blacks into the military, and you're DAMN Right I'm proud of my son, who (by golly you noticed, Sam: he's half-black) served honorably in our military.
In Islam all prayers and religious dialogue is done in Arabic. Seems to me that Africans would want to worship God in Swahili, or whatever their own tongue is Of course, the Christian ones in fact DO.
RE : Your defense of Islam:
Strip away all the B.S. from the differant Islamic and Christian religions, and take a look at the men who founded each: One is a barbaric murderer, who killed hundreds of people, the other, a Man who healed hundreds of people. One Man never harmed a single hair on anyones head; while the other beheaded his enemies. The deeds of both are recorded in their respective books, and in their own words.
"You don't mention the fact that Amir Taheri was the editor-in-chief of Iran's leading daily newspaper, and Iran has been an enemy of the United States for a long time. You don't think there might be a teensy bit of political influence in his interpretation of Islam, do you?"
Read Taheris words again,(below) and think about what he is TRYING to say; the same thing I have been trying to convey to you although not nearly as elequently.
His position is the same as mine, so stop trying to use the Hitler comparisons on me, ok?