Islam is a peaceful religion is it..

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Because you don't bring up any modern Muslims like for instance my friend Shirin, who doesn't wear a veil, or a burqa, or an aba, has her own job, her own car and doesn't espouse the violent overthrow of the United States or Great Britain.

It's very easy to say all Muslims are like this, or like that, but not actually provide any evidence.

I bring up the ancient and mediaeval Christians to show how little the thinking of some modern day Christians has changed with respect to the status of women.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have been brought up in a tolerant Lutheran Scandinavian country.

You only have to see what some of those modern day Christianistas have to say about homosexuality for instance, to see how very much in touch with the spirits of Tertullian and St. Jerome they are.

And I don't mean that in a complimentary way, either.

How many Muslims do you know personally, Gangerolf?

How many countries with an Arab or Islamic culture have you visited, just out of curiousity?

Some Christians have ancient views on women and homosexuality. Yes. So what? Does that explain, justify or somehow make irrelevant the fact that Islam is not very women-friendly? Sure, there are exceptions, like your friend. But she lives in the West, right? She probably has a much easier time realizing herself than her sisters in the third world.


How many muslims do I know? Quite a few. Nearly half my class in high school were Muslims. Pakistanis, but also some Turks and Bosnians. Some of the girls in my high school wore headscarves. Other than that, they were pretty normal kids, but their parents.... I thought my dad was strict (being devout Lutheran and all). But I can't imagine my Muslim friends becoming like their parents, so I guess there are progress. Although I know one of the girls was sent back to Pakistan to get married stright after high school.

I've been to Tunisia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The latter two didn't strike me as very religious though. At least not when it came to alcohol.

[Dinner]

There was fairly wide spread public displays in several Arab states. Much of this had to do with American support of Israel but the fact remains that Arafat and Mubarak (misspelled name of the leader of Egypt) both had to issue orders telling people to stop celibrating.

[Last Conformist]

Actually, "Mubarak" is the standard transliteration.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oerdin
There was fairly wide spread public displays in several Arab states. Much of this had to do with American support of Israel but the fact remains that Arafat and Mubarak (misspelled name of the leader of Egypt) both had to issue orders telling people to stop celibrating.

There was fairly wide spread public displays in several southern states. Much of this had to do with support of slavery, but the fact remains that the goverment had to issue orders telling people to stop lynching.

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have been brought up in a tolerant Lutheran Scandinavian country.

I find the juxtaposition "tolerant Lutheran" faintly amusing. In the days when Lutheranism had any real influence on Scandinavian state policies, we were if anything exceptionally intolerant.

Now it's the other way around though. The state dictates the Church's policy. So now you get female bishops, gay married priests etc etc. The Church has become a mirror of society, a society which really isn't very religious at all. The people who actually are religious have all become Pentecostals or Mormons or whatever.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Oerdin


If you remember the case then you may remember they weren't doing it on religious grounds but because they wanted to fight against a government which they felt had usurped powers not granted to it in the constitution. In short they were political wackos and not religious wackos.

All those god fearing folks in the Deep South who happily watched black men dangle from nooses- you think they were Liberals, or Muslims?

A very small minorty ever took part in lynchings and a significant number even opposed them. By and large there were few public displays of support for lynchings (unlike say segregation which is different). How many Arabs were filmed dancing in the streets after 9/11?

Northern Ireland- many mullahs inciting Christians to kill each other there?

Ireland has always been a political fight and not a religious fight. True, the two political groups broke down mostly along sectarian lines but ask most experts about Northern Ireland and most of them will agree the big deal is about politics not religion.

Try asking someone like me who is both Irish (I have dual nationality) and Roman Catholic, whose great grandfather was in the Fenian Brothers and whose grandfather witnessed the Easter Rising.

I was brought up on a diet of Irish independence, the Irish Civil War and hostility towards Protestantism.

It is frankly naive to ascribe it to simply being about politics, when religious demagogues on both sides have done so much to keep the conflict going.

Should I quote the Presbyterian Ian Paisley on Papists for you, or digress about how Catholic Primates of Ireland have consistently refused to countenance the excommunication of mass murderers, and yet were willing to punish as far as they possibly could, women who sought abortions in Great Britain?

Ian Paisley:

'Though fiercely anti the Roman Catholic Church (as an MEP he verbally abused Pope John Paul II in the parliamentary chamber when the Pontiff came to address the European Parliament)'

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ian_Paisley

Now exactly which of the Pope's political stances would you say Paisley was protesting against when this occurred:

"Paisley has also been arrested in Vatican Square for giving out copies of the King James Bible. In October 1988, Paisley was beaten and carried unceremoniously out of a European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France. The occasion was a speech made by Pope John Paul II before the Parliament. As the pope began his message, Paisley stood and held up a red sign painted in black letters with the words "John Paul II ANTICHRIST." Paisley shouted, "I refuse you as Christ's enemy and Antichrist with all your false doctrine." These were the words spoken by Archbishop Cranmer before he was burned at the stake for his testimony. Paisley tells what happened at that point:

"I have read in the Book of Revelation the power of the word of testimony, but I never realised what power was in a martyr's testimony. If I had brought a ton of explosives and let them off in that Assembly it could not have had a greater effect. That vast Assembly erupted, and the books started to fly and the punches started to be thrown, and the kicking started, but I held my ground and maintained my testimony. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EUROPE TODAY AND EUROPE IN REFORMATION TIMES. This afternoon I read again the story of Luther, at the Diet of Worms. Who presided over the Diet of Worms? The Emperor Charles, Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Who was he? He was a Hapsburg. It is interesting to note that one of the men who attacked me is the last of the Hapsburgs-Otto Hapsburg, the Pretender to the Crown of Austria and Hungary. I said to myself, 'The Hapsburgs are still lusting for Protestant blood. They are still the same as they were in the days of Luther.' The members of the Roman Catholic Party of Mr. Le Pen of which John Taylor is a member were round me battering away at me as hard as they could. "

http://www.freepres.org/paisley.asp?paisley

With respect to lynchings, not only were they popular events, but they were treated as family outings, with refreshments being served, souvenir postcards, and pieces of the noose to treasure.

http://www.americanlynching.com/pic2.htm

'When word of the lynching spread, crowds gathered to see the body hanging from a tree. Photographs were taken, one of which later became a souvenir postcard. Several onlookers began to inflict violence to Frank's body but a former judge, Newt Morris, convinced them to stop.

No one was ever prosecuted for the lynching of Leo Frank. Not a single resident stepped forward, nor were the participants who were clearly photographed identified at the time by local law enforcement officials.'

http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/l/le/leo_frank.html

"The 1909 murder of Will James was carried out in front of a crowd of thousands gathered beneath a cosmopolitan street arch with electric lights. "

http://eserver.org/bs/reviews/2000-4-7-7.53PM.html

No mention of them dancing, but I suspect a good time was had by all. Except Will James.


In any case, the issue was not how popular or how many people attended, but the faith of those involved.
Invariably god fearing Christians, I think you'll find.

Having regard to Oklahoma City, one may be both a religious and political whacko. You'll find that many of the right wing groups McVeigh hung around combined a virulent racist anti-government rhetoric with a bizarre 'Aryan' version of Christianity in which the Jewish origins of Jesus are denied.

People like Park Avenue don't scruple to say whether a Muslim is committing a terrorist act for political ends or religious ends- they're Muslims, so it must be religious, right?

This despite the secular nature of Syria, Libya and Iraq's regimes, who were more than happy to shelter secular Marxist-Leninist Palestinian organisations dedicated to the violent overthrow of Saudi Arabia and Israel.

As religious extremists have shown in India, in Ireland, in the Balkans and elsewhere, political extremism can go hand in hand with perversion of religious belief or fundamentalist religious belief.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Oh well I'm glad you said that, because now I feel so much better about the genocide of Guatemalan Indians, the Thirty Years War, the many Crusades, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the Holocaust.


All is forgiven, killers for Christ, those god damned Mooslims killed a bunch a people.

Once again, your comments have no bearing whatsoever on the issue you apply them to. How in any stretch of logic are the Guatemalan Indians responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing? Your completely illogical declarations make no sense.

Anyone can make similiar unconnected comments:

"The reason Kerry has big hair is because of abnormal sunspot activity on the surface of Sol."

"Meteorites hit earth due to the weekly transportation of Pepsi Cola."

Look everyone! I can use Molly Bloom logic too!

[Wernazuma III]

I hate these threads that become page long before I visit Poly again!
So I have to limit myself to isolated posts.
Anyway:
We should not too much look back in history. Surely, both Islam and Christianity have had their more bloody and more peaceful eras and regions, let's not get into detail. Yet there's one thing almost every Christian/former Christian society has gone through: Enlightenment and seperation of state and church. I'm not one of those who claims this development was DUE TO christianity, of course there was harsh reaction from the religious side and looking at the US, it seems that it's not a small group that didn't notice enlightenment even until now, but most grouos have accepted the principles of freedom of religion etc. The islamic world, especially the arabic countries, seems to have completely ignored enlightenment altogether. Look at "non-fundamentalist" nations like Morocco or Egypt: In both countries it is strictly forbidden for a muslim to change religion and although not in the way funamentalists do it, both nations express that their laws are based on islamic law or sharia. In those few islamic nations where it is not forbidden by law, it's not recommendable to do so in a muslim environment: You'll be a "murtadd" or traitor who deserves death. I know of exactly one self-confessed muslim teaching that allows the conversion of msulims to another faith: the Ahmadiyya follwers from Pakistan. They adopted this approach right after they were excluded from the umma (community of all muslims).
There is something structural in islam that makes it almost impossible from a religious muslim viewpoint to argue for seperation of state and religion, much more than in Christianity: The latter, in the first centuries of their existance, had to live under a non-christian state and there was no expressedly planned Christian society, no corpus of Christian laws. Of course this changed when Christians became dominant and developed ideas how a Christian state would work and, well, we know what this alliance brought us over the centuries. I'm very often stunned that Christian laws reached generally very similar conclusions like the muslims.
Muhammad, on the other hand, from the start. He not only teached moral principles (which in many ways are perfectly fine in my eyes, like attituede towards the poor etc.), he also designed a muslim society and described how it has to work in the Quran. That made it more inflexible. For a long time, this was also positive, at least for Christians and jews, as there exists also a kind of codex, how those groups have to be treated under muslim rule: the dimma-system. This system gives them certain duties and rights, which was quite often much more than other beliefs had in Christian nations (=0). But being so much more at the core, an islam without sharia, an islam that "historicizes" many of the teachings of Muhammad seems to be much more difficult to envision. It's also easier for a Christian to withdraw to the teachings of Jesus,"historicizing" what Ezechiel teached, as it is for a muslim to disregard/put aside parts of what Muhammad himself teached. That doesn't mean there couldn't be an authentic muslim reformation process. There exist several believing muslim intellectuals who try to work out systems which parts of the Quran should be considered "eternal truth" and which were "truth and correct for the time when Muhammad lived" and thus possible subject of change. But they aren't popular in most of the muslim world to say the least. Actually they live with continuous fear of retaliation by extremists.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oerdin
How many Arabs were filmed dancing in the streets after 9/11?

Oh, and let's not forget the christians who where dancing in the streets.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

The Twin Towers were gay?

I guess it was obvious.

[Solly]

Photoshopped.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb

How in any stretch of logic are the Guatemalan Indians responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing? Your completely illogical declarations make no sense.



Look everyone! I can use Molly Bloom logic too!

Unfortunately it's quite apparent that you can't.

If you'd bother to read what I wrote, you'd notice one of the quotes I provided was from a CHRISTIAN missionary in Guatemala, who told of his experiences of being tortured by fellow CHRISTIANS. Not just brothers in Christ, but ones he knew, personally.

Nothing to do with Oklahoma, which was a separate incident, not linked by me to Guatemala.

A second quote was from an unnamed CHRISTIAN pastor in Guatemala who reasoned that the slaughter of the Indians was necessary because they were 'demons', communists. The lovely evangelical Protestant CHRISTIAN in power in Guatemala at the time was Efraim Rios Montt, a man much favoured by American intelligence and right wing American CHRISTIANS.

"Montt, a born-again Christian, once was forced to leave the country because of public outcry over his repression and bloody campaign against Indian campesinos. When he returned to power, the Vietnamization of Guatemala was stepped up with pacification programs, fortified hamlets, and search-and-destroy missions in what Montt referred to as a "beans and rifles" program.

UPDATE: It was not until March of 1995 that Guatemala was finally put on top of the media's news agenda with revelations that a Guatemalan military officer on the CIA payroll had been involved in the murders of an American citizen and a guerrilla commander. "

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Project%20Censored/CensoredNews_1982.html

Now what do you think might link the Thirty Years War, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Bosnia, the Holocaust, civil war and genocide in Rwanda, the Crusades, the Wars of Religion in France, the conflict in Northern Ireland?

Many Buddhists involved in Rwanda?

Any Jains cooking up a mess of trouble in Srebrenica?

Lots of animists herding Jews into gas chambers?

Way too many Zoroastrians killing folks in Gorazde?

Have I spelt it out simply and plainly enough for you now, Ghengis?

Would you prefer binary code, semaphore, or American sign language?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Park Avenue
Photoshopped.

Ah, precious denial. Goto the URL on her shirt.

Here's a few more images taken from their own site.

[Ramo]

molly, you're my hero.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Have I spelt it out simply and plainly enough for you now, Ghengis?

Fine, that all ties together BUT IT STILL DOESN'T TIE BACK TO THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING.

Unless you figure that there are Christians in the United States, and Oklahoma is a state. That's pretty thin, but I guess that's works for you.

You still haven't backed up your original insinuation that the Oklahoma City Bombing was done for the glory of Christianity.