that the pope sort of accuses islam of being a violent religion, so in protest muslims fire bomb churches and make threats etc because they are offended at being called violent

9/21/2006 11:42:03 AM

no you're not the only one

9/21/2006 11:43:22 AM

YEAH YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE

[Edited on September 21, 2006 at 11:45 AM. Reason : lock]

9/21/2006 11:44:25 AM

am i the only one that immediately sensed sarcasm in jwb's post? cause some people on TWW have a big problem differentiating sarcasm from literal posts

9/21/2006 11:46:28 AM

i hope it was sarcasm

9/21/2006 11:47:34 AM

I know the muslims in South Asia do some retarded shit some times but why dont they get all huffy when this stuff happens?

or do they and we just dont know it.

9/21/2006 11:56:37 AM

youre the only one

9/21/2006 12:04:03 PM

I'm dissapointed that the Pope was pressured into recanting his statement.

9/21/2006 12:04:26 PM

^^^

do people just ignore questions now to toot their own horn?

9/21/2006 12:06:41 PM

Quote :

"Am i the only one who finds irony that the pope sort of accuses islam of being a violent religion"

... in light of the history of the Catholic Church ....

9/21/2006 12:17:21 PM

They made fun of it on the Daily Show.

9/21/2006 1:10:49 PM

But what about Protestantism, too?

9/21/2006 1:27:28 PM

Sorry, Protestantism came too late in the game ... after the crusades ... after the inquisition ... there might be some religious violence, but most of it was before the church split ...

9/21/2006 1:32:16 PM

I'll bet you those millions of Native Americans whose descendants aren't with us today would disagree.

9/21/2006 1:32:50 PM

^&^^^^^We're talking about THE PRESENT. Not what happened hundreds to thousands of years ago. THE PRESENT, where we live now, in the CIVILIZED WORLD.

Quote :

"I'm dissapointed that the Pope was pressured into recanting his statement."

He didn't technically apologize for his statement, instead said he was sorry his statement was taken the wrong way.

9/21/2006 1:35:04 PM

Quote :

"where we live now, in the CIVILIZED WORLD. "

us agaist the subhuman barbarous brown people

9/21/2006 1:36:31 PM

You're not even the only one to make a thread about this.

9/21/2006 1:38:59 PM

Quote :

"I'll bet you those millions of Native Americans whose descendants aren't with us today would disagree."

I wouldn't necessarally disagree, but most of the Native American killing was more based on greed than religion ....

9/21/2006 2:02:41 PM

I'd argue much the same for Islam.

9/21/2006 2:10:41 PM

you dont see the massive global christian violence like you don with the muslims, so id say we are a little better in that regard. what religions did 100s of years ago in the middle ages is not relevant to stating today here and now that islam is a religion of violence and extremism. sure christians commited the same atrocities way back in the day, and sure violent christian extremists still exist today....but not nearly on the scale and degree that muslims do. christians pretty much cleaned up there act, islam not so much.

9/21/2006 2:58:23 PM

I don't think anyone has ever made a thread on this topic, ever

9/21/2006 3:01:44 PM

^^ The middle ages don't need to be relevant. Christian violence didn't magically disappear because you stopped reading about it being in conflict with other still-extant religions in History class. Christian violence includes: the witch trials (part of the Inquisition happened here), the Western expansion of America, the Conquistadores in South America, and many of the historically Imperialist misadventures of Britain.

America, friend, has never had a non-Christian President. What separates its violence from Christian violence if Church and State are philosophically separate or indistinguishable (as most like to say)?

9/21/2006 3:47:37 PM

Because our country has Christian Presidents, that means that the actions of our country are "Christian"?

For such a prolix person, you're pretty damn obtuse.

9/21/2006 4:19:26 PM

Quote :

"Christian violence includes: the witch trials (part of the Inquisition happened here), the Western expansion of America, the Conquistadores in South America, and many of the historically Imperialist misadventures of Britain."

I think we need to have a semantics discussion.

Christian violence would include Witch Trials, Inquisition, Crusades, Conquistadores, Eric Robert Rudolph, and others

Violence Perpetrated by Christians != Christian Violence

The expansion of America was perpetrated by Christians, but very little of it was done "in the name of Christ"

9/21/2006 4:27:14 PM

If we take the common rebuttal to arguments of Church vs. State, then yes. We can pretty easily attribute all violence carried out for ends that satisfy the means of the spread of Christian thought to Christianity. Why not? The actions of a few Wahhabists' and other minority sects are being extended to the followers, believers, and citizens of states under theocratic and Democratic rule of a single, broadly defined religious faith.

[Edited on September 21, 2006 at 4:35 PM. Reason : ...]

9/21/2006 4:35:06 PM

but Muslims who tell other Muslims "attack the American infidels for invading your holy land in the name of Allah" is definitely affiliated with religion

I don't think any of the American efforts in the Middle East in recent memory are to the effect of "Take out these terrorists in the name of Jesus Christ"

not saying that some of the individual battalions dont take their shots at Islam but its certainly nowhere near the extent of the Muslims...you have religious leaders saying to do this or that in the name of Allah...even when Bush mentioned 'crusade' I think that was about the closest thing to "Attack these people in the name of Christianity"

Hell, theres no "Christian Law" that we have in the United States, or at least no overlying Christian Law, whereas in the Middle East (Iran and Saudi Arabia specifically) they want everyone to conform to "Muslim Law"...non Muslims can either convert, be underclass citizens, or die...none of that going on in the USA

9/21/2006 4:38:36 PM

Yeah Gamecat, on this I think we just disagree.

I only count violence overtly perpetrated in the name of religion to be religious violence.

Not all terrorism is religious violence. Very often it is political instead.

The IRA, and Al Queda, however, are religious terrorists.

9/21/2006 4:53:16 PM

The IRA was political.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army

9/21/2006 5:06:09 PM

yeah the IRA is definitly political and anyone who claims otherwise is stupid. Yes religion has an influence but it is the politics of the matter

9/21/2006 6:14:13 PM

Eric Rudolph had a religious incentive. Don't know how else you can slice it.

And I'd argue that your understanding of domestic terrorists are simply more nuanced because you have more information about them. I'd argue you know far less, or at least would learn far less about the makeup of Islamic terrorists by following the media and would thus be less inclined to note the stark and numerous similarities.

9/21/2006 10:03:17 PM

Eric Rudolph is debatable: "Many good people continue to send me money and books," Rudolph writes in an undated letter. "Most of them have, of course, an agenda; mostly born-again Christians looking to save my soul. I suppose the assumption is made that because I'm in here I must be a 'sinner' in need of salvation, and they would be glad to sell me a ticket to heaven, hawking this salvation like peanuts at a ballgame. I do appreciate their charity, but I could really do without the condescension. They have been so nice I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-05-rudolph-cover-partone_x.htm


Regardless, a marked dissimilarity between Eric Rudolph and Islamic terrorists exists: Rudolph operated individually as opposed to very large Islamic terrorist groups operating world-wide.

9/21/2006 10:29:36 PM

Quote :

"America, friend, has never had a non-Christian President."

http://www.adherents.com/adh_presidents.html

according to this (and this isn't the first time I've seen such a list), we've had 4 Unitarians and 1 kinda-sorta Jehovah's Witness.

Quote :

"I'd argue much the same for Islam. "

Sure, to an extent. I'd say that Islamic violence is generally more religiously motivated than what our ancestors did to the American Indians.
____________________________________________________

If you want to argue about throughout history, that would be a different debate, but in our lifetimes, Islam has been far, far more violent than Christianity. A couple of nuts like Eric Rudolph and the dude who bombed the Olympics don't even remotely compare to Al-Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, PLO, etc.

9/22/2006 1:29:56 AM

^ Both forms of Christianity. Islam isn't a monolithic religion without fractured sects, either.

Quote :

"Regardless, a marked dissimilarity between Eric Rudolph and Islamic terrorists exists: Rudolph operated individually as opposed to very large Islamic terrorist groups operating world-wide."

Interesting that you'd compare sizes. Where'd you get your statitistics on the makeup of Islamist terrorist organizations?

9/22/2006 9:49:48 AM

JAHOVIA WAITRESSES!

9/22/2006 9:54:00 AM

^^i'd say that Islam is much more fractured than Christianity, but neither Unitarians or Jehovah's Witnesses are subsets of Christianity in my book. They're both their own religion.

9/22/2006 10:50:27 AM

Quote :

"Interesting that you'd compare sizes."

Do you need statistics to say that Islamic terrorist group membership is greater than 1?

9/22/2006 11:26:11 AM

No. But I'd need some kind of basis to go on if I wanted to get further than a few thousand.

9/22/2006 11:44:24 AM

A few thousand is significantly greater than one. And that few thousand has already amply demonstrated that they are capable of far more destruction and death than one Eric Rudolph.

http://www.milnet.com/state/2003/c12108.htm

al-Qaida alone is estimated to have "several thousand members and associates."

[Edited on September 22, 2006 at 12:04 PM. Reason : ]

9/22/2006 11:51:14 AM

How many individuals are in the Aryan Nations? The Order?

9/22/2006 1:37:39 PM

Quote :

"America, friend, has never had a non-Christian President. What separates its violence from Christian violence if Church and State are philosophically separate or indistinguishable (as most like to say)?"

Simply because someone says that they are Christian does not mean they live a life motivated by Christ. I mean 90% of this country claims to be Christian but I see no more than 5% of the population that I interact with remotely comes close to "walking the walk" if you know what I mean. 90% of the people claim Christianity as their religion but in the "most religious states" (NC and MO) only 60% of the population attends a service monthly... and these are the strongest numbers. And in some studies done in Ohio it was shown that while in a Gallup poll 40% of the people claimed to have attended church in the last 7 days but when they actually looked at attendance figures from all the churches in the polled areas they found that only about 20-25% of the population was attending on any given week.

I think equating current Muslim tendencies to violence and aggression is very similar to what Christianity went through in the middle ages... it is about the same point in both religions' history. I don't think there is much Christian violence presence today because most of the Christian-dominated societies are pretty stable and comfortable these days. Muslim cultures are as much dominated by rigorous social law/customs as they are by religious law.

9/22/2006 1:39:56 PM

And what makes the leaders of so-called Islamic states any different? Are they no less bound to play the part of the religious fanatic if it suits their alterior aims?

9/22/2006 2:04:47 PM

Quote :

"And what makes the leaders of so-called Islamic states any different? Are they no less bound to play the part of the religious fanatic if it suits their alterior aims?"

First off, I'm not so sure we are talking on the same wavelength here...

There is a difference between an elected leader of a nation who simply says "I am Christian" and someone assuming the role of a "religious zealot" whose sole efforts are to further their ideology with no regards for any other law, principle, or desire in society at large. I do agree whole-heartedly on the opportunistic nature of leaders in general, but fundamentalist Muslim terror cells are not in the same vein as a run of the mill politician who simply happens to be a specific religion. For example, Saddam may be a Muslim but you wouldn't consider his actions "Muslim violence" simply because he is a Muslim and in control... his identity is clearly more secular than it is religious.

I don't think you can say Islam is inherently any more or less violent than Christianity. However, there is definitely elevated aggression and violence in Muslim culture at this period in time. I do believe that presence will fade as Arab nationalism starts to win over Islamic fundamentalism (much like Western cultures went through). As I sad before, I think many of the ills in Muslim cultures are more socially derived than they are religious. It is not right to associate a faith with the actions of groups of people if those actions aren't inline with what they claim to be respresenting... its like believing that Zell Miller was something other than a DINO (actions speak louder than words).

9/22/2006 3:12:05 PM