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#1
12-07-2006, 03:02 PM
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I'll give you analogy. A father tells his son that he should not smoke marijuana. He tells his son that he thinks marijuana is harmful and that it's not a good idea to smoke it. But if his son chooses to smoke it any way, that is his decision. Another father tells his son not to smoke marijuana and makes it clear that if his son does smoke it that he will literally murder him in cold blood. The father is serious and will murder his son with a butcher knife if he catches him smoking marijuana. I don't think it would be fair to say that the two fathers are pretty much the same because they don't want their kids to smoke marijuana. The two fathers are not the same at all. 
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#2
12-07-2006, 03:51 PM
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For the love of Pete, go take a World Religions class or something. "The other religion will tell you what to do and if you don't do it they will kill you."????? That's what you think Islam is? Oh, God help us. I'd laugh if it didn't make me feel so very sad and hopeless for the world, because sadly, I don't think you're alone in this country in your insistance on villifying any religion besides your own. And what about your heroine, Ann Coulter, saying, in the wake of 9/11, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity." How does that tie in with your insistance that, "One group tells people that they should repent from their sins. But it is your choice whether or not you choose to repent."????
__________________
Gentlemen! We're burning daylight! Riders up! -Bill Murray
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#3
12-07-2006, 05:02 PM
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[quote=GenuineRisk]Rupert, that's about as bad a mischaracterization of Islam as ever I've seen. The fact that you think honestly think Islam advocates killing nonbelievers any more or less than Christianity does is mind-boggling and a testament to the effectiveness of right-wing media. As DTS said, take a look at Christianity's history and you'll see several movements by some of its misguided followers to kill off non-believers, several of said movements being directed against Moslems. Fundamentalists are violent. Islam and Christianity are not.
For the love of Pete, go take a World Religions class or something. "The other religion will tell you what to do and if you don't do it they will kill you."????? That's what you think Islam is? Oh, God help us. I'd laugh if it didn't make me feel so very sad and hopeless for the world, because sadly, I don't think you're alone in this country in your insistance on villifying any religion besides your own. GR, Sometimes it seems like you're shouting words against the wind. Sorry. To me, it's a bit amusing that those that seek to justify due to their overwhelming knowledge ignor the fact that after Indonesia, India has the second highest Moslem population, 150 million (that's half of the total US population). So what's next? Attack India? Crazy stuff! DTS
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#4
12-07-2006, 05:22 PM
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christanity and the muslim religion may have alot of viewpoints the same, but they differ where it matters, theology.
Muslim faith teaches that entrance into heaven is by following the 5 pillars of islam and basically working your way into heaven. Christianity teaches thats its by grace not works. Of course there are other similarities and diffrences but it matters not if the two do not agree on how to enter heaven. Either one is wrong and one is right or they are both wrong.
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#5
12-07-2006, 05:24 PM
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Also in the quoran it does say "Kill all the infidels" ( i have citation if anyone doubts) but you have to read it in context with the rest of the paragraph. Most muslim commentaries believe that it was meant kill the infidels(or pagans) that attack you first and kill in self defense. No where does it say go out and hack people that are not muslim. And this is coming from a person of christian faith,i am by no means a muslim. Just thought a clarification was neccessary.
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#6
12-07-2006, 05:32 PM
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For those that don't know the story...it's in Genesis 16 and 21. One born and rejected, one born to address a promise that was doubted. For those that wonder how we got here, those two chapters won't take a lot of time. Round and round we go....
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#7
12-07-2006, 05:51 PM
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#8
12-07-2006, 05:56 PM
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Faith is a tough thing we want things on our time not god's. Selfish creatures we are.
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#9
12-08-2006, 10:54 AM
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Think of the problems that could've been avoided if Abraham had taken a cold shower or watched the football game instead.
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#10
12-07-2006, 05:33 PM
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I don't know what Christians or Muslims did hundreds of years ago. All I know is what I see in the world right now. I don't see Christians killing non-believers. I can't speak for Ann Coulter. I would have to think she was kidding but if she wasn't then she's crazy. I feel sad for you if you think that the Christian Right(in this country today) wants to kill gays and non-believers. Sadly, I don't think you're alone in your belief. That is why there are plenty of liberals out there that think the Christian Right are some kind of terrible people. They actually think that a guy like Jerry Fallwell is comparable to Bin Laden. Last edited by Rupert Pupkin : 12-07-2006 at 05:40 PM.
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#11
12-07-2006, 05:46 PM
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Rupert, just because some muslim people misinterpret doesn't mean the whole religion wants to off everyone thats not muslim. Look at westboro baptist in the kansas. They would love to kill gays, that doesnt mean all christians do. You can't selectively slice out parts and apply them overall its not fair.
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#12
12-07-2006, 06:01 PM
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#13
12-08-2006, 09:00 AM
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And Rupert, if you want to sound like you understand anything about this situation, you should take time to learn what happened hundreds of years ago, because I promise you, Moslems in the Middle East know and in some cases, are still mad about it. Remember Bush referring to the initial attacks as a "crusade?" Remember how upset the Moslem world got? But thanks for agreeing one religious fanatic who would kill in the name of the religion is as bad as another, regardless of the religion. I knew there was common ground somewhere in this discussion. 
__________________
Gentlemen! We're burning daylight! Riders up! -Bill Murray
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#14
12-08-2006, 02:16 PM
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In World War II, Serbs had been massacred by the tens of thousands in concentration camps. Then in 1991, the new Croat government was reviving fascism and enacting discriminatory laws targeting Orthodox Serbs. There was a civil war and the minority Serbs ended up fighting back and outgunning the Croats and the Albanians. There ended up being mass executions of Croats and Albanians at the hands of the Serbs. I'm not excusing what happened there. You had a civil war there with a history of each side massacaring the other side. If there was no outside intereference, I think that whichever side had the most firepower would have massacred the other side. That is often times the case in wars. You have atrocities committed by both sides. In Vietnam, there were plenty of atrocities committed by our troops. There's no excuse for it, but it continuously seems to happen in wars. Anyway, I don't think part of the theology of the Christians there was that all non-Christians in the world should be killed. It was just a case of bitter enemies who had a history of killing each other that wanted to continue to kill each other. I want to make sure you understand that I'm not condoning what happened in Bosnia. It was murder. Murder is murder. I'm simply saying that I don't think theology was the reason for the murders. It was just a case of enemies killing each other. I think that is different from someone saying that you will be beheaded if you don't follow their religion. Last edited by Rupert Pupkin : 12-08-2006 at 02:20 PM.
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#15
12-08-2006, 04:35 PM
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I agree with you that the tensions in Bosnia were ethnically based, but you still had Christians killing, which implies that they feel they have a right to kill "other." Which of course, is not very Christian as we understand Christianity. My point was, I felt you were grossly generalizing Islam as a "We kill nonbelievers" faith, when in fact members of all faiths do terrible things, many of those things allegedly in the name of the faith (though I tend to think, at its essence, most war is about who has the stuff. I'm with George Carlin on that). This law in Somalia is barbaric, to those of us looking from the outside. But barbarism happens in many faiths and to say basically, "What do you expect from Islam?" is not helpful nor fair.But here's the thing-- your posts really started me mulling over the "They're attacking us because their faith is crazy and they hate our freedom" mentality that is not all that uncommon here in the US (i'm not saying you have that mentality, though you may; I don't know). And I thought, it's obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that that's a ridiculous position. Most nations with a majority population of Moslems live pretty peacefully, and what in the world is, "hate our freedom?" And here's the thing I started mulling, and I thought of it in part thanks to Cajun's smart observation about people wanting to do what's easy-- if one can convince oneself that we were attacked on 9/11, and before (the USS Cole, etc) because a religion is "crazy" then we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility and be the innocent victim (as a nation-- the people killed on 9/11 were certainly innocent victims themselves). We can retaliate in any we want because hey, they're crazy out there and we didn't do anything wrong. BUT-- if we take away the "crazy" position, we have to ask ourselves why in that case we were attacked, and that starts to open up an uncomfortable can of worms about US foreign policy over the last 50 years in regards to the Middle East and oil. Where maybe we aren't always the stellar perfect good guy we imagine the US to be. Because most of us don't pay much attention to the rest of the world. We have our cheap food, our cheap oil, our prosperity and what the costs of that are to the rest of the world, we don't really know or care. Until we get attacked, and then we stand, amazed. How could anyone want to attack us? We're nice! We're the good guys! The good guys, that is, who are less than 5 percent of the world's population, yet consume 25 percent of the world's energy. The good guys who pushed for NAFTA, touting it as a chance to open up free trade, then continued to subsidize our own farmers, condemnng farmers from other countries bound by the agreement to poverty. The good guys who turn a blind eye to Saudi Arabia's human rights violations, as long as we get a supply of oil. In fact, Bush elder once ranted to Queen Noor about Hussein that he thought it completely unfair that "that madman" controlled a quarter of the "civilized world's" supply of oil. Huh? Madman or not, that's not "the civilized world's" oil, it's Iraq's oil. You want it, pay for it. But we don't want to. We want it cheap or free and we're big and rich and powerful and we can bully our way into lots of things. And you and I, the average citizen, happily ignore the rest of the world until the results of our policies hit our shores, killing people who also had nothing to do with the hatred aimed at our government. Al Franken said something about differences between conservatives and liberals-- amusing (to a liberal), but there's a nugget there, though maybe not in the way he put it. He said conservatives tend to love their country the way a four-year-old loves his mommy-- mommy is perfect and anyone who would say anything against mommy is bad. Liberals love their country the way an adult loves his mom-- the love is just as strong, but tempered by an awareness that his mom is not infallible. Now, I think he's not right-- I know plenty of conservatives with a very clear-eyed view of the US, but I think there is something to how you love your country-- it's not fun to think we do some sh*tty things to the rest of the world, because we want to think we're always the good, nice guy. But to really grasp what starts things like these attacks, we have to be willing to look at our own actions, as well as the other nation(s)' and decide was our government, in any way, culpable? And we have to be willing to look back 50 years or more to things that happened then and see what the outcome has been. Because it's only then we can really start to find solutions that will, in the end, keep the innocent men and women just trying to go to work safe. It's funny-- dissenters get branded as terrorist-lovers and traitors, yet, by trying to really understand WHY a human being would take up arms and bombs against other nation, by being willing to step into a jihadist's shoes for a moment, and try to see things from his perspective, they maybe are the only ones who will find the root causes and so help find solutions. As Danzig said, I'm grateful to live here, with at least more chances as a female than I'd have in Islamic nations. But that freedom is not due to the Christianity; it's due to secularism. A secularism that says that I'm my own person, not a creation from a man's rib, that I'm an equal partner in a marriage, not the junior one, and that the male of the species is perfectly capable of controlling his sexual urges without my having to cover my ankles (one of the reasons I'm against the Islamic head-scarf-- whatever else women insist it symbolizes, it also symbolizes an attitude that women have to cover themselves because men can't be held responsible for their actions otherwise and that's insulting to men and demeaning to women. In my opinion, anyway). And that means freedom for me and my fellow women. But again, that's due to people being willing to say religion should be off the table when it comes to governing. Any religion. Apologies, Rupert-- I'm sure I've bored you to tears by now.  If you're even still reading at this point.
__________________
Gentlemen! We're burning daylight! Riders up! -Bill Murray
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#16
12-08-2006, 04:42 PM
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__________________
I'm like evil, I get under your skin Just like a bomb that's ready to blow 'Cause I'm illegal, I got everything That all you women might need to know
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#17
12-08-2006, 05:29 PM
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For example, let's take the shoe-bomber. I think his name is Richard Reid. This guy was a simple criminal. He wasn't a Muslim. He wasn't even religious. He was just a criminal who kept getting arresting. He had no grievance against the US. Anyway, while he was in jail just a few years ago, he converted to Islam. When he got out of jail, he was still bent on being a criminal and breaking the law. He joined a mosque and he ended up leaving because they weren't radical enough. They didn't encorage him to do anything bad. He didn't like that. He wanted a mosque that would encourage him to contiue his criminal behavior. Then he found a mosque that was radical where they encouraged him to be violent and go on jihad. They encouraged him to try to blow up an American plane. So the religion was just an excuse for him to continue his anti-social behavior. He had no grievance against the US. His attempt to try to blow up the plane had nothing to do with US policy. It was just a continuation of his criminal behavior. In some ways, Bin Laden is a similar story. He may have had a legitimate grievance at one time, but that was against the Soviets. We helped him and the Afghans in their fight against the Soviets. They were victorious. The Soviets ended up leaving Afghanistan. Do you think Bin Laden was going to retire after that? Of course not. He's a terrorist. He's going to find someone else to go after. So he decided he would go after us. He was mad at us(infidels) for being in Saudi Arabia. He thinks that foreign infidels should not be on the sacred ground of Saudi Arabia. But why should it be up to him? The Saudi government wants us there. If you are a terrorist, you can always find a justification for attacking people. Just because a terrorist has a justification, it doesn't make it legitimate. Let's say that I don't like Korean people because I don't like them being on the sacred ground of the United States. So I go to South Korean and bomb some building. My justification is that I am mad at their country because I don't like Koreans being in my country(the US). If that happened, would you say that South Korea needs to look at their policy and that they are partly at fault for me bombing them? That is ridiculous. Last edited by Rupert Pupkin : 12-08-2006 at 05:32 PM.
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