Religion of Peace At It Again

OK, aside from the issue of biased news coverage by Fox and others, there were TWO stories posted above - one from Fox and one from the (London?) Daily News. Discounting for a moment the possibly biased way in which either story MAY have been presented, the SOURCES of each of the stories were apparently presenting first-hand information.
I was particularly impressed by the Daily News story by a British Muslim who explained that it is a basic tenet of Muslim theology that the world (and the people in it) is divided between Muslims and infidels (read "US" and "Them"). I had not seen this aspect of the overall conflict before reading this story. I believed (like OPGhostDog apparently believes) that Islam is as peaceful as is Christianity at its core and that it is just a small portion of adherents who are extremist enough to use terrorist tactics in the name of their religion.
The Daily News story makes it clear that, at least in the case of the "British Jihadist" group, this may not be accurate. That group, at least, claims a theological basis for their activities - and the 'moderate' Muslims who won't argue for a different interpretation of their scriptures are enablers when they say nothing in the face of senseless killing of innocent victims just because they are not Muslims.
I am re-thinking my beiefs about this whole issue.
 
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I believed (like OPGhostDog apparently believes) that Islam is as peaceful as is Christianity at its core and that it is just a small portion of adherents who are extremist enough to use terrorist tactics in the name of their religion.

I've never seen anything in the Bible that advocates killing those who do not buy into the Christian religion("infidels" as Mohammed would call them). Secondly, the "small portion" of Islam's irreconcilable wing is somewhere between 39 and 50 million people. This is very disturbing.
 
Originally Posted by Coyote View Post
Is any religion truely peaceful?

Christianity is, but it's followers are sometimes not. Guess some of them are not following to closely are they?
 
I've never seen anything in the Bible that advocates killing those who do not buy into the Christian religion("infidels" as Mohammed would call them). Secondly, the "small portion" of Islam's irreconcilable wing is somewhere between 39 and 50 million people. This is very disturbing.


In Luke 19:22-27, Jesus orders killed anyone who refuses to be ruled by him.


Deuteronomy also has some nasty stuff about unbelievers.

"And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 5)

"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;" (Deuteronomy 13: 6)

Now...the Quaran has statements against forcing religion on others, yet Muslim leaders have sometimes threatened to kill unbelievers if they did not accept Islam. But...surprise...so have Christian leaders...

Beginning around the ninth century, though, another important evolution of Christian thinking occurred. Killing unbelievers was actually declared by popes Leo IV and John VIII to be spiritually beneficial for Christian soldiers: Their sins could be erased if they killed in defense of the Church. In the year 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, urging European leaders to rescue the Christian holy lands from their non-Christian occupiers. He referred to the Muslims who then controlled Palestine as an "unclean nation" that had polluted Christian holy places. Killing Muslims became itself a form of penance for Christians for remission of their sins. Moral rules governing the conduct of war were abandoned, and unlimited tactics were permitted. No one was immune from attack by Christian crusaders; whole cities were slaughtered. (Halsall)
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/Perry/holywar.html
 
No, Christianity isn't. Some would like to believe it but both testements contain violent verbage, and history is proof of it's violence.


Since the beginning of Christianity (let's just say 1 AD for sake of argument)
the Bible has not advocated violence. The lack of advocation of violence is so obvious that many think it advocates pacifism.

None of the wars or acts of violence since 1 AD (and quite a long time before that) have been endorsed by the Bible. In all honesty there is predicted to be a war near the end times. I do not know enough about it to know if it will be a defensive war, but that would be my expectation.

Nevertheless, between the birth of Christ and the war at the end of the world Christians are suppose to be peace loving. When they are not blame the individual and not the religion.

If the war at the end of the world is a just war then it could hardly be used as proof that Christianity is not peace loving.
 
In Luke 19:22-27, Jesus orders killed anyone who refuses to be ruled by him.

This is a PARABLE (it says it is a parable) indicating that in the afterlife those who do not believe will lose their lives. Since spirits cannot die what it really means is that they will not be permitted to live in heaven with God.

Can you find any Christian group (even some fringe but still Christian group) that thinks this means on earth Christians should kill non-believers? More importantly what have virtually all Christian scholars said about this passage?

It is a dangerous thing to blame others for the interpretations you put onto their ideas.

Deuteronomy also has some nasty stuff about unbelievers.

"And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 5)

This passage is not speaking about unbelievers. It says right in the beginning that it is talking about prophets. More in a moment.
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;" (Deuteronomy 13: 6)

The Jewish people belonged to a state with it's own internal laws. The fact that Jews had capital punishment for their own people is not proof that Christianity is a religion that wants to go out and kill unbelievers.

Beginning around the ninth century, though, another important evolution of Christian thinking occurred. Killing unbelievers was actually declared by popes Leo IV and John VIII to be spiritually beneficial for Christian soldiers: Their sins could be erased if they killed in defense of the Church. In the year 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, urging European leaders to rescue the Christian holy lands from their non-Christian occupiers. He referred to the Muslims who then controlled Palestine as an "unclean nation" that had polluted Christian holy places. Killing Muslims became itself a form of penance for Christians for remission of their sins. Moral rules governing the conduct of war were abandoned, and unlimited tactics were permitted. No one was immune from attack by Christian crusaders; whole cities were slaughtered. (Halsall)
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/Perry/holywar.html

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Pope Urban and the Crusades are problematic but still it is reflective of the Pope and the people around him and not of Christianity. The pope was not without fault but the crusades were not as evil as you might imagine. The crusades were the Pope's response to a plea from the Byzantines for help as they were being attacked. It was a war in defense of a helpless people.


All in all the Bible (the source of Christian doctrine) endorses an extreme form of peace and may or may not permit just wars or pacifism depending on who you ask.

By the way here is the very next sentence after the quote you provided.

"Tragically, some advocates of aggressive religious war can still be found today in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What they cannot legitimately claim, though, is that their position is the authentic expression of their faith. Every major religious tradition contains ethical principles that are incompatible with total war."

Is it really honest to provide the first quote and not the second? I have seen enough of your posts to assume it was an honest mistake.
 
Since the beginning of Christianity (let's just say 1 AD for sake of argument)
the Bible has not advocated violence. The lack of advocation of violence is so obvious that many think it advocates pacifism.

There is plenty of violence advocated in the OT - and like it or not, it is as much a part of Christianity as the NT. The NT itself is not devoid of violence either. Certain Christian sects and individuals have certainly latched onto it as justification for bloodshed.

None of the wars or acts of violence since 1 AD (and quite a long time before that) have been endorsed by the Bible. In all honesty there is predicted to be a war near the end times. I do not know enough about it to know if it will be a defensive war, but that would be my expectation.

It's all endorsed by the Bible - it just depends on who does the interpreting and how. That's the problem. Any religion can be perverted.

Nevertheless, between the birth of Christ and the war at the end of the world Christians are suppose to be peace loving. When they are not blame the individual and not the religion.

That applies to most religions: blame the individual, not the religion.

If the war at the end of the world is a just war then it could hardly be used as proof that Christianity is not peace loving.

Christianity has been the excuse for horrendous bloodshed. Like Islam it is hardly a "relgion of peace" in practice. As Ghandi said: I like your Christ, it's your Christians I can't stand.
 
That's the problem. Any religion can be perverted.

These days it seems that there's primarily one religion being perverted and sadly, the so-called "moderate" members of that religion are silent in denouncing what they refer to as the minority irreconcilable wing.
 
This is a PARABLE (it says it is a parable) indicating that in the afterlife those who do not believe will lose their lives. Since spirits cannot die what it really means is that they will not be permitted to live in heaven with God.

Can you find any Christian group (even some fringe but still Christian group) that thinks this means on earth Christians should kill non-believers? More importantly what have virtually all Christian scholars said about this passage?

It is a dangerous thing to blame others for the interpretations you put onto their ideas.
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See, this is where I have a problem with Christians...you interpret the Bible in parables. But then you interpret all the Quran literally. Both are steeped in context, the culture of an ancient world, both were translated from other languages - the Bible in particular, many times over. Arabic does not translate literally into english very well - it's a very poetic language.

For example, Jihad is an Arabic word that means "striving in the way of God." This striving can take a number of forms, including the daily inner struggle to be a better person. However, jihad is often used to refer to an armed struggle fought in defense of Islam. Muslim scholars (not fundamentalists) will adhere to the former meaning. Fundamentalists - and many Christians insist on the latter.

You say: "It is a dangerous thing to blame others for the interpretations you put onto their ideas." I agree. Why don't you apply that to Islam?

Christians make excuses for the excesses of their religion - but they condemn other religions for those same excesses. Why?

I think that true Christians and true Muslims look for the spirituality and compassion that is inherent in their religions - but any religion is easy to pervert.
 
Christians make excuses for the excesses of their religion - but they condemn other religions for those same excesses. Why?

You've got this backwards. In the few instances that an abortion clinic was bombed in the name of "Christianity" you had unquestionable condemnation throughout the entire faith -- top to bottom. The condemnation is not followed by the word "but" like the Islamists do today. It is honest and straightforward: "Our religion will not tolerate extremists".

Islam on the other hand, well the silence is deafening.
 
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These days it seems that there's primarily one religion being perverted and sadly, the so-called "moderate" members of that religion are silent in denouncing what they refer to as the minority irreconcilable wing.

They are not silent.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132244,00.html
http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/12/stories/2006021205281400.htm
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052207B



Exploding the myth of Muslim silence

http://midtopia.blogspot.com/2007/05/exploding-myth-of-muslim-silence.html

That's the purpose of an interesting piece by Stephen Schwartz, author of "The Two Faces of Islam."

In it he argues that the media ignores moderate Muslims while covering the radicals in lavish, horrific detail, painting a distorted picture of the faith. The centerpiece of the article is a deconstruction of coverage of the plot to attack Fort Dix. He notes that the plotters weren't, as first assumed, Kosovo Albanian Muslims. They were, instead, ethnic Albanians from Macedonia who came here as children and were radicalized in Arab-dominated Wahhabi mosques. His point is that the media misses distinctions between different kinds of Muslims, lumping peaceful, moderate Albanians in with violent Wahhabis.

He then cites several examples of Muslim commentary on the case -- all of it condemning the plot -- that he says got scant coverage.

I didn't follow the Fort Dix story closely enough to judge whether he's right on that score, but the piece once again points up the intellectual bankruptcy of those who demand that Muslims "speak out" against terror. Continuing to make that argument ignores several relevant facts:

1. They do. All the time. I've cited multiple examples in the past year.

2. Demands that Muslims take the lead assume that moderate Muslims have some sort of connection to (or influence over) the extremists. What are (for example) American Muslims supposed to do: Call up Al-Qaeda and yell at them? They don't have AQ's number any more than you or I do, nor will their words be heeded any more than yours or mine.

3. Few groups spend a lot of time flagellating themselves for the extremists in their midst.

Let's expand on that last point for a moment because it's an important one, tied in with assumptions about group identity that simply are not true.

The underlying logic of the "Muslims must denounce terrorism" goes as follows: The terrorists are Islamic, and therefore Muslims have a particular duty to denounce Islamic terror.

This is reasonable to an extent: disavowing the nutjobs operating under your banner is sometimes necessary.

But where it goes off the rails is when people demand that every Muslim denounce every act of Islamic terror every time one occurs.

This is ridiculous. Every time a Christian commits murder, are Christians obligated to go on television and state the obvious -- that murder is wrong and the offender doesn't represent Christian views?

Of course not. They can simply state once (or occasionally) that murder is wrong and unChristian. Actually, they don't even have to do that; it's considered obvious that murder is wrong, so they aren't required to say anything. Silence is not assent in such cases.

So why are Muslims treated differently? Because groups are always good at pointing out the mote in other groups' eyes, even while giving their own members the benefit of the doubt. Do conservatives regularly call out nutjob conservatives? No. Liberals do that, and conservatives disavow them if necessary. Do liberals regularly call out liberal nutjobs? No; conservatives do that, and then liberals disavow them if necessary.

In this country, who spends time identifying atheist/agnostic misbehavior? Believers. Who are most likely to point out believer wrongdoing? Atheists/agnostics.

Simply put, groups are horrible at policing their own, because doing so requires admitting some kinship between your own beliefs and those of the nutjobs -- admitting that your beliefs can be twisted to bad ends. No one likes doing that.

Beyond that, when you're in the group you know that the extremists are just that -- extremists, a tiny minority that do not represent the group as a whole. They are shunned, dismissed; psychologically, the majority separates themselves from the whackjobs to the point they no longer feel kinship with them -- and thus no particular responsibility to account for their actions. Hence Christians feel no particular need to respond every time a Christian misbehaves, and Muslims feel no particular need to respond every time a member of some fundamentalist sect detonates a car bomb.

This is especially true when the actions cross national and sectarian boundaries. Demanding that a mainstream American Muslim denounce fundamentalist terrorism is like demanding that Lutherans denounce the actions of Baptists -- or, more aptly, Christian Identity adherents. It's actually even sillier than that, because at least in the example above everyone involved is American. In the case of Islamic terror, we're demanding that American Muslims feel responsibility not just for another sect, but for another country and culture. So it's more like demanding that Lutherans apologize for the atrocities committed by the Lord's Resistance Army.

Now, political reality is a different matter, and not always fair; in this day and age, there is more political need for Muslims to speak out than there is for Christians. But that doesn't make demands that they do so any less illogical. Nor does it justify the assumptions made about them when they fail to speak up in any given instance.
 
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