muslims PART 2

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Well thats the only sample pool you gave me. Are you saying you are using a single anecdotal incident to conclude things about liberals then?

Hey, don't use my sarcasm against me...it was my sarcasm first

Look, we should both pull up our best sources for liberal thought, and compare notes one of these days...


BTW, Rex, I see you've hit a new benchmark for posts!

[Insidious Rex]

Yeah hard to believe Im still blabbing away after 4,000 posts.

[Rían]

I may not agree with what you blab all of the time, but I like the person behind it

Congrats, Rexy!

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

I did that so it would be harder to scan through...

And yet I managed, despite your best efforts.

Originally Posted by Nurvi

Good for you for not smacking this moron upside the head, because violence is not the answer.

[Nurvingiel]

Ah, yes. But then this happens:

[Lief Erikson]

Good work, Insidious Rex! Keep those thousands of posts coming .


Spock and Hector, one thing I've been realizing more and more as I research more deeply into modern Islamic extremism is that whether the Qur'an and Hadith condone jihad against all unbelievers or not actually isn't a very important issue right now. This is because modern Muslim militants are focused on defense rather than offense. They believe that the West is attacking their civilization, so they rely on jihad passages in the Qur'an that advocate taking defensive action. One of the principle reasons Osama bin Laden became enraged with the US was that we engaged in sanctions against Saddam Hussein that left between 600,000 and 1.5 million civilians dead. Saddam certainly bears a lot of the responsibility for those deaths too, and Osama was definitely no fan of Saddam, but the US also bore part of the responsibility. Also, many Muslims think those sanctions were simply punitive, actions taken for revenge against Iraq rather than actually sanctions designed to serve a military purpose.

In many other Muslim countries, Muslims have experienced abuse and vast slaughters, directly or indirectly, as a result of the policies of the West. I'm not trying to justify their actions as I say this, but I am saying that because of our policies in the Middle East, they think we are trying to destroy the Muslim world. They are using religion as one of their arguments for fighting us, but they also are claiming that they should engage in jihad to defend their Muslim brothers. My point is that they view their jihad as defensive rather than as offensive, so whether or not Islam is an aggressive, offensive action is kind of just a matter of intellectual pondering at the moment. The issue doesn't actually have much bearing on what's happening on the ground in the current war against Islamic extremism.

I can cite many examples of how different abuses or perceived abuses against Muslims have spawned their jihad as a defensive action.

[brownjenkins]

Well put Lief.

[Nurvingiel]

Lief, that was the best post ever.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Ah, yes. But then this happens:

Black Mage forever!

[GrayMouser]

Great post, Lief

Speaking of the Pope... here's some comments from an expert on Middle-Eastern studies who is himself a Catholic (scroll way down to "Papal Bull" )
Excerpts:

For me, the more dangerous assertion in the Pope’s speech was underplayed in the media. He raised the issue of forced conversion to make the point that reason precludes forced conversion, and “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” Since His Holiness accepts the idea that forced conversion was part of Islam, this leads him to question whether Muslims believe that God is bound by reason. Here he turns to theology. He makes the argument, absolutely correctly, that the dominant strain in Muslim theology is that God is absolutely transcendent, omnipotent and inscrutable, not bound by any human category, including reason. The debate in the 10th century between the Mu’tazali rationalists, who were steeped in Greek philosophy and argued that, in effect, God is bound by His reason, and their opponents, who argued for the absolute transcendence of God, was decided against the Mu’tazilis. The Pope concedes that a similar debate occurred in Catholic theology about a century later, between rationalists like Thomas Aquinas and voluntarists like Duns Scotus and William of Occam (he of the famous razor). That debate was decided the other way, in favor of those who argued that God is bound by His reason.

............
The Pope, while professing his respect for Islam, doubts that it is a faith which respects reason, and thus implicitly questions the value of dialogue with it.

This is just profoundly wrong. His Holiness is an academic theologian, and thus would naturally look to theology for the essence of the role of reason in any religion. As I said above, his reading, at least on a superficial level, of the relation of reason to God’s essence in mainstream Sunni thinking is correct (though he ignores other important strains in Islamic theology, including all of Shi’ism, in his argument). However, it ignores the profound grounding in Greek rationalism that Muslim philosophers like al-‘Ashari, who argued against the Mu’tazilis, couched their points. It also ignores the absolutely central role of reason in areas of Islamic intellectual and philosophical development outside of theology.

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/qahwa_sada/

Don't know enough theology to comment, but would all Protestants necessarily agree that God is bound by reason- hard to imagine i.e. Kierkegaard agreeing with that. How about Luther or Calvin?

[Jonathan]

Just heard on the radio: Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging.

[Nurvingiel]

Hanging is part of Iraq's laws...

...

[Lief Erikson]

Brownjenkins, GrayMouser and Nurvi, thank-you! I'm glad you liked my post .

He raised the issue of forced conversion to make the point that reason precludes forced conversion, and “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” Since His Holiness accepts the idea that forced conversion was part of Islam, this leads him to question whether Muslims believe that God is bound by reason.

I would like to see evidence that he accepts the idea that forced conversion is part of Islam. I'm sure he believes that forced conversion is practiced in some Muslim countries and by many Muslims in various parts of the world, but saying that it is part of Islam is a rather different matter.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Hanging is part of Iraq's laws...

I have no problem with it, myself.

[Nurvingiel]

I very much liked your post.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

I have no problem with it, myself.

I do, but capital punishment is probably for another thread.

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Spock and Hector, one thing I've been realizing more and more as I research more deeply into modern Islamic extremism is that whether the Qur'an and Hadith condone jihad against all unbelievers or not actually isn't a very important issue right now.

That's what I myself keep saying!


http://entmoot.com/showpost.php?p=567215&postcount=419

http://entmoot.com/showpost.php?p=567314&postcount=424

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Just heard on the radio: Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging.

About time...

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Spock and Hector, one thing I've been realizing more and more as I research more deeply into modern Islamic extremism is that whether the Qur'an and Hadith condone jihad against all unbelievers or not actually isn't a very important issue right now. This is because modern Muslim militants are focused on defense rather than offense.

Well, that really depends on what militants.

They believe that the West is attacking their civilization, so they rely on jihad passages in the Qur'an that advocate taking defensive action. One of the principle reasons Osama bin Laden became enraged with the US was that we engaged in sanctions against Saddam Hussein that left between 600,000 and 1.5 million civilians dead. Saddam certainly bears a lot of the responsibility for those deaths too, and Osama was definitely no fan of Saddam, but the US also bore part of the responsibility.

The U.S. has always born responsibility for these kind of things. We did fund Saddam to get in in the first place, but we didn't tell him to killd thousands of people...
I understand that a lot of our actions have a long effect of bad chain reaction, but it certainly does not put a halo over Osama for me... I don't feel a shred of sympathy for his stance. I suppose all the cheering when the planes hit the twin towers was all about this...someone was really glad that "America had been taught a lesson."

I can't see why we have to fall on our knees for what Saddam did, and why when we try to fix it a large part of the world turns against us. You know the PM before Churchill (I think it was Neville Chamberlain) appeased Hitler by letting him have some or such small country. The agreement was that he wouldn't try to take Czechoslovakian lands. So the deal was made. And then Hitler did it anyways. We can talk all we want about how Hitler himself was trying to be defensive, trying to preserve the German race etc...heck, he thought german art at that time was degenerate and evil, thats how much he cared.
I suppose maybe after he died we could reflect on how sad the human story is...but it doesn't win a war. And we cannot just lay back and say "Ok, we we give up!" after something like 9/11.
I don't believe it's all our fault for the problems in the Middle-east. Some people are just going to be whackos no matter what.
I don't imagine that if we had kept out of the middle-east altogether that Muslims would be living in peace. They'd most likely be a pretty big power like Russia. Certainly Israel would not be there...

You have to realize, that this mentality that we are the root and cause of all evil in the middle-east sounds good and seems to make sense, but it cannot explain for things like Saddam's killing his own people. I mean, you can't say that WE told him to do that, can you? We put him in power, BIG mistake, but we didn't tell him to gas bomb people. I'm not saying we're scot free from responsibility, I'm just trying to point out that some people are just rotten; we didn't necessarily tell them to be that way.
It's that "if only we hadn't"...after we did, when we really couldn't have prevented it anyways.
We should feel responsible, and we should try to amend our actions; but we should not shrink up and crawl into a pity party cave thinking "if only".

Let me tell you, I am thoroughly sick of this "well, if we have nuclear weapons, whose to say they can't?" That's the "fair" view, which can result in trazillions of people dead. "Well, they think WE'RE dangerous!"...Well too bad! Because we know better about ourselves, and as long as we keep them from getting weapons, their fears of us trying to wipe them out are not going to be realized. You can only please so many people at once. And trying to convince them is even harder...
It so happens that American Gov't is not interested in gassing it's own people or trying to make some kind of Supreme Race, and if not everyone is convinced of that, it's their problem, and it really doesn't change actual reality. Maybe after America falls to the pits, some jerk will amass plenty of nuclear weapons to go around for all his pals, and we'll finally have some "fair" distribution so we can all die and have some peace. Peace, that's what everyone wants, isn't it?

Also, many Muslims think those sanctions were simply punitive, actions taken for revenge against Iraq rather than actually sanctions designed to serve a military purpose.

I hate it, I really do...that Muslims see such a rotten example of us.

[hectorberlioz]

Click her for the full thing

"Israel is destined for destruction and it will disappear soon," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday.

Translation for those of you who want to turn this into a huge to-do about how evil AchMyLittleJihad is. You see, the translators we have are very biased against Ahmadinejad, and so we'll never really know what he really meant. But I figure it means something like "Israel is going on vacation, and they're just giving us the land peacefully."

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by BBC News

Mr Olmert said Israel would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran and would do everything in its power to stop Tehran crossing the "technological threshold" that would allow it to develop nuclear weapons.

He accused the Iranian government of "fanaticism and extremism", saying it threatened not only the existence of Israel, but also the whole world.

I think that there is going to be a major war in the Middle East over Iran's nuclear program, Iran against the US and Israel, and probably some other powers. I think that this war will enormously increase Islamic extremism in the Middle East and around the world.

On the other hand, if we decided not to attack Iran, we'd be left with a very, very nasty scenario. They'd have nuclear weapons and could support terrorists worldwide, without us being able to take any decisive action on the matter.

[Lief Erikson]

This rally in Beirut of at least 800,000 protesters has got to be one of the biggest I've ever heard of.

[Jonathan]

That's many! Hezbollah has a huge support from the population alright.