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Woodrow, did Osama bin Laden's version of Islam cause you to disassociate yourself from Islam?
I suspect not.
Just as you are able to ignore the radical Muslims, many of us are able to ignore the radical Christians. For example, we do not have any desire to burn a Koran, but we don't care if someone else wants to.
I agree. If you leave a religion, or leave irreligion for that matter, because you find some of its members wacky or hateful than you'll ultimately have to leave most everything. I mean maybe there's some small denomination or something where everyone's nice, but I don't know. I think hateful people are most everywhere.
I actually did develop some negative views of Muhammad and Islam, doing my own research which was largely reading the works of non-Radical Muslims and non-Muslims who were positive or mixed on Islam, but like you I don't hate Muslims or Islam. I think they're wrong about some things, but they have many good qualities. I like/relate-to the emphasis on charity and prayer. Although I don't agree with them I can see why some would find the more "earthy" or "practical" elements of Islam appealing. (More to say about this-worldly hygiene, consideration about organizing a society, sex in the afterlife, etc) And some of the Sufi poets said some rather beautiful things about love and compassion.
And to be honest even many of the Radical Muslims were/are surprisingly smart people. They're not all low-level flunkies in Al-Qaeda. Some of them went to places like Oxford or the Sorbonne and are among the most educated people in their society. I remember reading one Islamist and being surprised, also a bit unnerved, that I found a certain validity in many of his points. Particularly I understood what he was saying on things like modern alienation and the division with public/private morality. Not that I precisely agreed, but I found myself thinking "Oh crud, this stuff is more impressive sounding than I thought so is likely going to be more lasting." To be honest I think a small part of why Radical Islam is more threatening than any other religious extremism is that it's often better organized and thought out. (Although some forms of Dominion-Theology and "Traditionalist Catholicism" are pretty well thought out too) Most Radical Christianity, what I've seen of it, is often just people shouting "It's in the Bible" at you. We don't really have a strong/organized Christian group using a scholarly treatise against say Nietzsche as a path to get you to agree to imprison atheists and stone homosexuals to death. The Muslim world kind of does. Although sometimes the more intellectual Islamists, like Hassan Turabi, end up drifting a bit afield.
And as I'm drifting a bit in this post myself I should probably stop
Woodrow, did Osama bin Laden's version of Islam cause you to disassociate yourself from Islam?
I suspect not.
Just as you are able to ignore the radical Muslims, many of us are able to ignore the radical Christians. For example, we do not have any desire to burn a Koran, but we don't care if someone else wants to.
Thus your silence indicates your approval.
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Should we as a modern society be able to censor religious expression?
Absolutely not. Freedom to worship freely is why we are the country we are today. Without that freedom we would be no different than many Middle Eastern countries. I don't see Europe as an end all but in some European countries the Churches have been emptying out over the last generation and I don't see those countries going to pot with the exception because the lack of organized religion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hiker45
Are you serious? You had never heard of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust?
Many Muslims and others bring up the Crusades and the Inquistion as evidence of Christianities violent past, which is ancient history compared with anything occurring today. I don't believe that there is any present day Christian driven events that were the equivalent to those two.
Maybe the 911 high jackers and other group organized attacks against the west can be looked at as the closest comparison.
Should we as a modern society be able to censor religious expression?
It depends on what the expression is. Things do get censored if they exceed limits. The debate is always ongoing as to what the limits are, but religion shouldn't be excluded from this debate.
I'm going by what your evil, lying, hate-spewing books teach. Muhammad drags Jesus's good name and legacy through the mud, while perverting to all Islammists the true essence of the charectures of the Bible, then spews hatred for all Christians and Jews and procalims that God hates all Christians and Jews and they all will burn in hell. THen he proceeds to slaughter, rape and pillage Jews. THEN he makes it illigal by penalty of death to anyone who thinks otherwise what he says is true or not. How can I NOT be disgusted with Islam? That is where Islam puts itself with God when they all woship an openly evil man, and tolerates all the evil he commits.
Mr. Pean, do you have any quotes from the Koran to back up what you say?
The only part of the Koran I have read is verse 4:34 which advises us to beat our wives if they give us trouble:
(Dawood's version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)
"Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them."
Woodrow, did Osama bin Laden's version of Islam cause you to disassociate yourself from Islam?
I suspect not.
Just as you are able to ignore the radical Muslims, many of us are able to ignore the radical Christians. For example, we do not have any desire to burn a Koran, but we don't care if someone else wants to.
Peace Hiker,
I've seen two sides of bin Laden. My first view of him was when he was fighting the Russian invaders of Afghanistan, with the full support of the USA. He was very dedicated to free Afghanistan and built an Army from scratch. Much with his own personal funds. In those days he was a Hero not only to the people in Afghanistan but also to us in America.
I can remember Castro in 1958 when he was a young rebel trying to overthrow Batista. I saw bin Laden as being similar. A freedom fighter.
I do not know what caused either bin Laden or Castro to unexpectadly turn anti-American. But they both did.
No bin Laden did not cause me to leave Islam. 9/11 occured 4 years before I embraced Islam.
I do not ignore the Radicals I fight them daily. I know that they are a danger to Islam and there actions have caused the Death of many innocent people. They do not represent Islam and I continue to do my best to get them to understand that. One of my efforts is my web site
Mr. Pean, do you have any quotes from the Koran to back up what you say?
The only part of the Koran I have read is verse 4:34 which advises us to beat our wives if they give us trouble:
(Dawood's version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)
"Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them."
Read post #12. The Koran teaches that Jesus was not who he said he was, and decieved people into thinking he suffered and defeated death on the cross. A false prophet to whom Allah loves, as Allah, apparently, is the loving God of all false prophets.
I've seen two sides of bin Laden. My first view of him was when he was fighting the Russian invaders of Afghanistan, with the full support of the USA. He was very dedicated to free Afghanistan and built an Army from scratch. Much with his own personal funds. In those days he was a Hero not only to the people in Afghanistan but also to us in America.
I can remember Castro in 1958 when he was a young rebel trying to overthrow Batista. I saw bin Laden as being similar. A freedom fighter.
I do not know what caused either bin Laden or Castro to unexpectadly turn anti-American. But they both did.
No bin Laden did not cause me to leave Islam. 9/11 occured 4 years before I embraced Islam.
I do not ignore the Radicals I fight them daily. I know that they are a danger to Islam and there actions have caused the Death of many innocent people. They do not represent Islam and I continue to do my best to get them to understand that. One of my efforts is my web site
It's the Koran that inspires people like Bin Laden to murder. We are the "infadels".
I’ve always wondered who the equivalent Christians are to Bin Laden and radicals like him. You can go back to the Crusades and the Inquisition but that would say that modern Radical Islam is where Christianity was at hundreds of years ago. Which may indeed be the case! Face it most of the countries where this has taken hold in were only a few years ago Primitives with no modern Production capabilities of their own. This is still the case in much of the middle east. Primitives’ dictating their beliefs on the rest of the world.
I like to think the Equivalent Christians are: David Karesh, Jim Jones, and some White supremist Christian groups. The big difference is the Branch Davidians and the Peoples Temple were small and a threat mainly to their own members and "radical Islam" is a threat to most every other Religion and every non-religious country in the world.
I’ve always wondered who the equivalent Christians are to Bin Laden and radicals like him. You can go back to the Crusades and the Inquisition but that would say that modern Radical Islam is where Christianity was at hundreds of years ago. Which may indeed be the case! Face it most of the countries where this has taken hold in were only a few years ago Primitives with no modern Production capabilities of their own. This is still the case in much of the middle east. Primitives’ dictating their beliefs on the rest of the world.
I like to think the Equivalent Christians are: David Karesh, Jim Jones, and some White supremist Christian groups. The big difference is the Branch Davidians and the Peoples Temple were small and a threat mainly to their own members and "radical Islam" is a threat to most every other Religion and every non-religious country in the world.
I tend to look for commonality between these "prophets" that have total control over people. Muhammad, Koresh, Jones, Joseph Smith, and Warren Jeffs. There is a lot of corruption going on among these dudes. They all seem like they are in it for the power and the perverted sex. There's a lot of abuse in Christianity and Islam with people worshipping Prophets, when it's pretty clear in the Bible that prophets are NOT to be worshipped, and when they do, well, we have these examples. I like the teachings of Buddha when it comes to how to be a person of prophecy and spiritual powers, and how to percieve others with the same powers, as these powers are for everybody. Not just you alone. Powers of prophesy are taught to be taken with the attitude that it's no big deal, and you are no more special than anyone else. No matter how powerful with God a person becomes, I always view them as just another Buddha. It's incredibly arrogant to think that you are a prophet, and nobody else around you has the same potential of being the same kind of friend to God as you. I think as soon as you think you are the only one with powers, then you won't recieve prophecy through other people, which is where God often works through, often without them even knowing it. I think it's false teachings to say that you are somehow more important to God than "normal" people. I believe I can be more closer to God because of my merits, but that doesn't mean another person can't merit the same, or even better relationship with God than me. Jesus taught to be more like him, and in fact, absorb his spirit and be a child of God, rather than teaching he deserved power over people and sex with children because of his standing with God. Ok, Im babbling...
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