Posted on 03/23/2002 3:18:00 PM PST by knighthawk
Afraid not. Almost from the moment of the hijira in 622 (the date Islam uses as the start of their calendar) Muhammad and his followers took up the sword and used it liberally, both to fill their coffers and to spread their beliefs.
If people do not begin to discuss their religion seriously, we are going to be in real trouble. We have gotten this far in trouble because we have ignored them and the warning signs during the 70's til now. We allowed the kidnappings, bombings of planes, embassys, airports... We kept hoping that they would join this century. It has nothing to do with reformation of their religion. It has to do with their religion at its base. With out discussing it honestly we will never get prepared or solve the problem.
So it would be a sign of your maturity that you accept the Aztec religion with its "heart rending" human sacrifices, the murderous Kali worshipping Thuggees, and the South Pacific cannibals??
How mature of you.
Things were too different then and the answers are more complex and people . . . I don't want to call them ignorant but they probably were about lots of things we know more about today.
Normally in those times people didn't choose their wives/husbands and there were no divorces. It was a social custom. We don't do that any more but we aren't particularly better off for it. Child abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction are epidemic and the only reason there isn't more of it is because of civil laws. Perpetrators know they will have to do jail time. Most of those individuals don't have a spiritual and church life. They are on the fringes of society.
Sure got a lot of people mad at me on this thread.
Thus "medinah" can mean "city-state" or today even "state" in the sense of an area under a common government and laws, thus an Israeli passport says on the cover Medinat Yishrael.
In turn, of course this is from "dina," meaning law or code of law, with the particle "m" which can mean "of" or "subject to."
Not all Arabs have always and everywhere treated Christians and Jews badly. There were times of tolerance. Something tipped the scales. Why add fuel to the fire by trashing their religion?
Trash me instead.
My point about that time was that a few led the people to do things that were not always in accordance with the Bible, even when they knew the truth, and knew that they were leading the people wrongly. It was a priest who started the reformation, one who felt he could no longer lead the people astray because the church told him he should.
The Arabs had to even borrow the word for "city" as well as the concept, from a more settled and civilized people.
I know they are a threat to our survival. Some of them. How many I don't know.
Arabic has changed far more in the 1400 yrs since the Koran tried to stablilize it, than Hebrew has in the 3453 years since the Torah was given...it is also such a LIMITED language, any attempt to teach a modern science or medical class in Arabic would just have to create a new language virtually, while it CAN be done in Hebrew, as in English.
As to whether the West-semitic language depicted on the Tablets of Ebla in N Syria (from the time of Abraham) may have reasonably represented an original Language of Abraham from which both Hebrew and Arabic sprung...well, to a degree I guess, but despite Ishmael's mother being Egyptian, there is more Egyptian loan words by far in Hebrew than in Arabic...
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.