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Posted on 06/15/2002 4:58:56 AM PDT by Clive
What happened to two American missionaries, husband and wife, in the Philippines recently was surely the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
A pair of innocent, noble people trying to educate the poor and introduce better health care were kidnapped by Muslim terrorists and then abused and starved. When government soldiers tried to rescue them, one hostage was killed, another badly injured.
Once again, the people who shot, slashed, bombed, tortured and maimed did so in the name of Islam.
I'll follow the statement immediately by saying the majority of Muslims I have met have been fair and fine people, and that many Muslims live in dreadful conditions around the world and have a right to demand change.
Problem is, most of their governments are Muslim, too. Many need to stop blaming the West, Christianity or Israel for sufferings imposed on them by their own regimes.
Nor will I play the white liberal card here and say their religion is the same as mine.
I respect Islam, but I do not believe in it and also consider it misguided. I've said so when I've spoken in mosques, dined with Muslim leaders, shaken their hands and embraced them.
In many instances, Islam has either lost its way or, more worrying, some of its leaders have encouraged it to walk down a twisted path.
It is not Christians, Marxists or secular nationalists who strap explosives to themselves and mass murder children in Israel. It is not Jews or Hindus who plant bombs in Kashmir and kill innocent people.
It is not Roman Catholics or Unitarians who fly airliners carrying mothers and children into buildings full of the harmless.
Theological support
Yes, of course, people of all faiths do dreadful things. But none with such regularity and with such theological support from so many. Important this.
It is simply untrue to claim the Muslim world universally despises violence.
Equally untrue to claim that thugs in, for example, Northern Ireland, act in the name of religion. Their actions are immediately and genuinely condemned by most Protestants and Catholics alike.
Similarly in Israel, where just a few days ago the members of a small Jewish group planning to bomb Arab targets were arrested and incarcerated.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Harakat ul-Mujahedin in Kashmir. Muslim terror gangs in the Philippines, India and the Balkans. Muslim teenagers bombing synagogues in France, Britain and Belgium. A novelist threatened with death for having an opinion, embassies invaded and trashed, journalists having their throats cut and their bodies dumped like garbage.
It's certainly true that parts of the Muslim world have been badly treated, colonized and economically deprived. But truth cries out to be heard.
There is now more money and wealth in large parts of the Muslim world than in many other places, and it doesn't seem to stop the violence and the anger.
I see passages in the Koran that appear to call for vile levels of brutality and bloodshed. Muslim friends tell me all this needs interpretation, and that the Bible is just the same.
Of the first, I am yet to be convinced. Of the second, I totally disagree. The old covenant tells a story in which terrible as well as wonderful events occur. The central messages, however, are of justice and peace.
Added to this is the fact that for Christians, everything must be viewed through the prism of the New Testament.
Let me be direct. This consistent and ideological cult of blood and death simply does not exist today among Jews and Christians, or among members of most non-monotheistic faiths.
It may well be that Islam is at a particularly difficult and confused stage in its evolution, but then Muslims tell me their faith is unchanging.
Other religions certainly have used violence to pursue their ends, but most if not all have realized the error of their ways. We cannot constantly refer back to early Medieval Spain and cite Muslim tolerance, which was true in its day. But today, we also have to observe the present and count the number of Muslim terror groups that roam the world.
Change has to come from within. Until that happens, many of the bullies, the bigots and the bad of the world will listen to the cries of Islam.
Nope. Not at all. It's always been a killer religion.
Bump.
From the get-go they have spread their faith by violence. That is a simple historical fact.
Do you think those that disagree with you can't see you are far from being a "non-aligned" anything? Probably not. I sense solipsism. I will leave you to your "unaligned" deism and Christian baiting. I am not surprised you are welcomed by the folks you cited. Stalin had a phrase for folks who are so susceptible to being used. Remember the phrase?
That so? Ok, tell us what in the Koran it is you reject?
With that level of cognitive incompetence, I hope to hell you kept your mouth shut among your moslem "houseguests." Unless you are one of them, they already sneer and laugh at you behind your back~~no sense giving them a good reason.
The Sense of Islam's Meeting has been expressed all over the world. It is to convert infidels or kill them. Perhaps the more merciful Muslims may only wish to enslave them.
Your "Muslim friend's" view that his religion has been highjacked by thugs, while it echoes the blandishments of the government, is utterly false. The Muslim terror is supported directly, or to be supremely charitable, indirectly, by all Muslims. If it were not, the terror would not exist.
OBTW, neither would Islam.
That's what they said, but the truth is elsewhere. They are revolutionaries operating under cover of religion. They might have operated under cover of communism in an earlier day. They don whatever camoflage is effective in their day.
We can see this [apparently most people still don't see it] in the environmentalism and global warming movements, and even in the back-to-nature trampling of property rights for scenic trails. The revolutionaries are operating under cover of science or the UN. Call them what you want, elitists, fundamentalists, activists, students, there is something inside them that is not at all attractive.
On Art Bell last night the discussion was Planet X, which some think could be here in a few years and will wipe out 90% of humanity on earth. I am not worried about this, spend no time on the subject, but I listened to some calls to the program. Almost without exception the callers seemed to favor the idea of reducing earth's population by 90% or even 100%. And most were willing to face the consequences of loss of civil control by law by going out on their own and raping and pillaging until somebody bigger stopped them.
The Islamists should know that they aren't special. They are attacking civilization, but the veneer of civilization is thin. Many of us, maybe most, would just as soon wipe their DNA out of existence as have to listen to them and watch their pranks and stunts. But we are being civilized. For the moment. Don't push too hard, Omar. We might go jungle on you and then revert to civilized again as if nothing had happened.
The issue is that they have an inferior culture. You are making excuses for them. They are free to practice their religion in our country - are you free to practice your religion in theirs?
Who still owns slaves in 2002?
Whose priesthood openly requests the killing of innocent Jews and Gentiles?
Whose countries hold women as inferior - not just culturally, but literally?
What more do you need to know?
Please - none of us give a damn about your "houseguests". But their governments, home country cultures, and many of their religious leaders need to be taken at their own words for what they really stand for. Ask youself "Why do my houseguests live here - as fully protected citizens, men and women. Does your wife have the same rights in their home countries?"
Please get a grip
No doubt, this took place in the United States, not Riyahd, Cairo, Bagdahd, Kabul, etc.
And why didn't it take place in one of these wonderful Islamic places? It didn't because Islam is NOT the peaceful, tolerant system, you have been deluded into thinking it is. Islam has clearly lost its way. The article says it, I say it.
Your breakfast friends enjoy the freedoms of our country, which came about based on Judeo-Christian values, which Muslims take for granted here in the US, but have done virtually nothing as a race, religion or culture to gain and protect.
The widespread failure of American Muslims to oppose ALL forms of terrorism has been noticed.
If Islam is to be respected, then why are the places where Islam (the religion and the government) practiced such unlovely ones? Why are most of them charity cases?
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