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To: The_Reader_David; Gone_Postal
But when? at what prison? What was the imam's name? Someone should give a more detailed telling with verifiable facts to boost its impact by making it plain it's true

Rather than concern yourself with the names and places, why not concern yourself with the representation of beliefs that's been presented here?

Was the given definition of "martyr", as used by followers of Islam, true or false?

Was the given definition of "infidel", as used by followers of Islam, true or false?

Was the restatement of the purpose of "jihad", as used by followers of Islam, true or false?

How would knowing the names (of the parties taking part in this conversation) change the veracity of the answers given as they relate to the faith of Islam?

6 posted on 09/15/2004 8:36:33 PM PDT by Alex Murphy (Psalm 73)
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To: Alex Murphy
Yes, yes, yes, but it doesn't do to adopt CBS tactics and not care whether the details are true or not, so long as the message is 'accurate'.

I guess you've not read any of my critiques of the moral decline in the Islamic conception of martyrdom. Classically it was more similar to the Christian notion--death for the faith at the hands of unbelievers--with the important difference that death in battle counted. It is only in the last century that self-destruction in the killing of unbelievers was redefined as 'martyrdom' in most Islamic circles. This change is the influence of Sayed Qutb, who imported into Islam the existentialist notion of absolute commitment as the only reals source of meaning. The Koranic prohibitions on suicide somehow get trumped in this neo-Islamic conception by self-destruction in the pursuit of jihad as proof of absolute submission (reimaged as existentialist absolute commitment) to Allah.

The modern Islamist is much more akin to the Nazi neo-pagan or the devotee of the official Japanese Imperial cult during WW II than may seem obvious. All three movements are romantic attempts to recapture a mythical golden era defined in religious terms in contradistinction from Christendom (yes, even the Japanese Imperial cult--the Meiji recognized monotheism as an American strength, and reached back to the notion of the Emperor as the descendant of the Sun Goddess in an artificial reconstruction of kami worship), all three have imbibed fragments of Western thought and are not really representative of the classical form of the religion they purport to reestablish.

(Yes, I know about the hadiths and the Koranic verses about killing infidels. But after Mohammed's death, Islam settled down--the late Arab caliphs had Christian Lord Chamberlains (St. John of Damascus, who even wrote a critique of Islam), the Turks were content with kidnapping Christian children and subtle persecution, the Moguls even finally generated fatwas according Hindus almost the same status as 'people of the book' because it was too much trouble to follow the Koranic injunctions to kill idolaters.)

And, I can even think of two exceptions to death in battle not counting as Christian martyrdom: St. Lazar and His Companions Who Died on the Field of Kosovo, and (commemorated mostly by Russian Orthodox monarchists and converts to Orthodoxy with ties to the British Isles) St. Harold, Last Orthodox King of England, and His Companions Who Died at Hastings.

11 posted on 09/16/2004 6:54:39 AM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know what this was)
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To: Alex Murphy; The_Reader_David
Rather than concern yourself with the names and places, why not concern yourself with the representation of beliefs that's been presented here?

A false story is a false story. Fiction is fiction, history is history. If we try to pass off fiction as history, on the grounds that the fiction contains something we consider true, then we're no better than Dan Rather. If this alleged conversation did not occur we shouldn't be pretending it did. We're supposed to be interested in the Truth.

12 posted on 09/16/2004 7:15:20 AM PDT by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilisation is aborting, buggering, and contracepting itself out of existence.)
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