Posted on 06/09/2005 10:37:53 AM PDT by quidnunc
Are all religions equal in their capacity to inspire fanaticism and violence? In the wake of the Koran flushing scandal, Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor blog wrote a piece to that effect. Even though that scandal has faded from the headlines, the attitudes Regan expressed remain — and interfere with our ability to resist the global jihad. Taking issue with the assertion by Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe that “Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don’t lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted” and “don’t call for holy war and riot in the streets,” Regan wrote that Jacoby had made “an interesting point. There’s only one problem with it — it’s wrong.”
-snip-
The question here is not whether or not Jews or Christians commit violence. Of course they do. Human nature is everywhere the same. The question Regan is obfuscating is whether or not Islam as an ideology exhorts people to violence. Manifestly it does, and violence committed by members of other religious traditions does nothing to mitigate that fact: Islam is unique among world religions in having a developed doctrine mandating violence against unbelievers. This has spawned in our day a global network of Muslims dedicated to jihad. Are Jews targeting non-Jews, or Christians non-Christians, on a global basis? Of course not. Until the Muslim and non-Muslim world are ready to acknowledge the role of Islam in inspiring people to violence, that violence will continue.
-snip-
Our need to answer this question is not just Judeo-Christian boosterism, a chant of “Yea, team! The West is Best!” The nature of jihad violence has serious consequences for the Bush policy of attempting to destabilize terrorism by establishing democracies across the Middle East. It shows how difficult it will be to export the live-and-let-live attitude necessary to make for a society that enacts the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority. Thomas Jefferson said: “If my neighbor believes in one god, or twenty, is of no concern to me, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” But is that exportable as a political credo to societies in which the legal tradition includes death for blasphemy and apostasy?
-snip-
No.
As a friend put it, Islam is the only religion that not only allows conversion at the point of the sword, but actually REQUIRES it.
I don't really see that it's really a religion at all.
Or as a Hindu co-worker put it, if they cannot practice their religion without becoming violent they should not be allowed to practice it.
The Crusades are over. This discussion is of the here and now. They muzzies love to pull the Crusades into the argument. It is a false argument.
Havamal 16.
*** violence in protection of ones self or another to the point of killing is does not prevent salvation.***
Thinking through this...
I can think of no NT basis for the above statement. And though it does make sense from a certain perspective, we have comments like...
Matthew 5:39
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matthew 10:28
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Heb 12:3
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
Ultimately we shall be judged by the words of Christ - not Aquinas.
Thoughts?
this does not exactly address your point, but there in no basis for violence in any form in the New Testament.
___"The Bible is One," you can't
make a radical break between the
two "testaments."
There was plenty of violence in the Bible and much of it "justified" by invoking God.
O think we should stop Islam-bashing and concentrate on defeating the actual jihadists.
The Bible is One," you can't make a radical break between the two "testaments."
You most certainly HAVE to my friend.
Heb 8:13
"In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."
***There was plenty of violence in the Bible and much of it "justified" by invoking God.***
The Jews were given an earthly kingdom. It operated by earthly rules. Christ's Kingdom is heavenly or spiritual and operates by a very different set of rules.
***O think we should stop Islam-bashing***
The history of violence shows that it is not the jihadist but the very nature of Islam that is the problem.
OT...cases of wiping out the Ashmelik or Canaanites..etc... Was there a reason other than believing in a different god for the Isrealites to attack their cities? Would not human sacrifice be an adequate reason for God punishing these nations? What reason and was it justified for God to punish Isreal and Judah with invasion and slavery? Hmmmmm...
[[Our need to answer this question is not just Judeo-Christian boosterism, a chant of “Yea, team! The West is Best!” ]]
Oh yes, the west IS the best. I don't see people breaking into Saudia Arbia where they can be beheaded for being a Chrsitian, do you?
wiping out the Ashmelik or Canaanites..etc... Was there a reason other than believing in a different god for the Isrealites to attack their cities? Would not human sacrifice be an adequate reason for God punishing these nations? What reason and was it justified for God to punish Isreal and Judah with invasion and slavery? Hmmmmm..
____Wiping out a people who did not commit aggression against a nation but was standing in the way of that nation fulfulling a God-given destiny is exactly the same as wiping out people who are infidels and oppose Islam.
I would say that God's wiping out ALL the first born of Egypt was also a horrible version of God's Justice...when it was only Pharoah
who kept the Hebrews in bondage.
What I am saying is that religion is not purely divine, it is tainted by the goals of the human race, of conquest, of control, and we must find the purity in our fauths and separate it from the temporal and the political. All faiths have been guilty of impurity, not just Islam.
The Bible is One," you can't make a radical break between the two "testaments."
You most certainly HAVE to my friend.
____Not true. The only difference is the person of Christ, who fulfills the prophecies of the original covenant.
Heb 8:13
"In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."
____Without the old convenant, there could not have been a new one. The history of the Jewish people has been grafted onto the history of the new people of God.
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