RELIGIOUS Debate on Terroristm-who, why, etc.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

However, I cannot possibly ignore the fact that he conquered Arabia by force of arms

He only took to arms because the Meccans were pursuing him. They wanted him dead. He managed to pull out a victory in a series of battles against all odds and survived. I wouldn’t call that exactly meaningless violence simply for the sake of killing. Nor would I call it anything at all equivalent to what the suicide bombers are doing today. They attacked head on. Not covertly attacking random innocents.

Furthermore, you will need to remember (Mr. Context… ) that at this time violent military struggle was the standard way of solving issues. So its not as if Muhammad defending himself against the Meccans and then uniting the rest of Arabia was some radical shift from the way the world worked then. Its only been done like this since time immemorial. The Jews certainly had a similar history as youll recall from your old testament. Does that make anything that evolved from their religious doctrine inherently violent? Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare in which tribe fought tribe back and forth and back and forth. After the Meccan battles Muhammad focused on building a PEACEFUL coalition of tribes and achieved victory by an ingenious campaign of NON-violence. When he died in 632, he had almost single handedly brought peace to war torn Arabia. This was a unique event you see… This was Arthurian in nature… Largely unprecedented.

And perhaps you have forgotten that the great Byzantine empire was at the very same time that Muhammad was fighting the Meccans pushing its way through Mesopotamia, destroying everything as they went. And this is a CHRISTIAN empire Lief… Gosh what does that tell us about Christianity… The answer is of course… nothing.

Here, I'd appreciate some context.

some context? Im not sure what more you need. It was on his program and he was calling for the expulsion of all foreign university students and racial profiling of arabs (by their dress I can only assume from his diatribe…). Its pretty straight forward:

In a November 10 broadcast, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart referred to the Prophet Muhammad as a "sex deviant" and "pervert." He also called for the expulsion of all foreign Muslim university students in the United States and for profiling of airline passengers "with a diaper on their head and a fan-belt around their waist." Of American Muslims, Swaggart said: "We ought to tell every other Moslem (sic) living in this nation that if you say one word, you're gone." Moreover, he even seemed to suggest violence against Muslims when he stated that others need to "clean their nose with their teeth," an apparent reference to a punch in the nose.

It sounds to me as though Swaggart was saying we should get rid of Muslims that support terror through preaching.

not unless every muslim student in the country is preaching terror…

I have not read the Koran. I have read a significant part of a book written by Muslims and called "An Introduction to Islam". I was given a history assignment for highschool of writing a fairly lengthy report about the rise of Islam.

Well Im sure you did some great research for your high school paper Lief… but lets look at what Religious Scholars say about Islam. Not historians.

Originally Posted by Karen Armstrong, well known Religious Scholar and Author of a number of books on Islam

The very word Islam, which means "surrender," is related to the Arabic salam, or peace.

hm… ok well that’s interesting and all. but we need more then that im sure youll agree.

Because the Koran was revealed in the context of an all-out war, several passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle. Warfare was a desperate business on the Arabian Peninsula. A chieftain was not expected to spare survivors after a battle, and some of the Koranic injunctions seem to share this spirit. Muslims are ordered by God to "slay [enemies] wherever you find them!" (4: 89). Extremists such as Osama bin Laden like to quote such verses but do so selectively. They do not include the exhortations to peace, which in almost every case follow these more ferocious passages: "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4: 90).

so a clear example of showing only one side of the situation. Funny, people do that with the bible all the time too don’t they…

In the Koran, therefore, the only permissible war is one of self-defense. Muslims may not begin hostilities (2: 190). Warfare is always evil, but sometimes you have to fight in order to avoid the kind of persecution that Mecca inflicted on the Muslims (2: 191; 2: 217) or to preserve decent values (4: 75; 22: 40). The Koran quotes the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, which permits people to retaliate eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but like the Gospels, the Koran suggests that it is meritorious to forgo revenge in a spirit of charity (5: 45). Hostilities must be brought to an end as quickly as possible and must cease the minute the enemy sues for peace (2: 192-3).

Ah so very Christian eh?

Islam did not impose itself by the sword. In a statement in which the Arabic is extremely emphatic, the Koran insists, "There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" (2: 256). Constantly Muslims are enjoined to respect Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book," who worship the same God (29: 46). In words quoted by Muhammad in one of his last public sermons, God tells all human beings, "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13)--not to conquer, convert, subjugate, revile or slaughter but to reach out toward others with intelligence and understanding.

So why the suicide bombing, the hijacking and the massacre of innocent civilians? Far from being endorsed by the Koran, this killing violates some of its most sacred precepts. But during the 20th century, the militant form of piety often known as fundamentalism erupted in every major religion as a rebellion against modernity. Every fundamentalist movement I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced that liberal, secular society is determined to wipe out religion. Fighting, as they imagine, a battle for survival, fundamentalists often feel justified in ignoring the more compassionate principles of their faith. But in amplifying the more aggressive passages that exist in all our scriptures, they distort the tradition.

Fantastic words that should really make you think quite frankly. Don’t misinterpret fundamentalism with a religion created in a time of war. That would be perhaps understandable but a grave mistake because that’s what the terrorists do…

Here's what Muslims say about Jihad:

and here is what the Koran says:

Islam is not addicted to war, and jihad is not one of its "pillars," or essential practices. The primary meaning of the word jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle." It refers to the difficult effort that is needed to put God's will into practice at every level--personal and social as well as political. A very important and much quoted tradition has Muhammad telling his companions as they go home after a battle, "We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad," the far more urgent and momentous task of extirpating wrongdoing from one's own society and one's own heart.

I would really like to agree with George Bush that these bombers are simply "murderers hijacking a religion." I think, however, based upon history and the Koran, that these bombers are interpreting the Koran correctly and liberal Muslims are not.

apparently you are interpreting the Koran quite selectively as we see above…