No, the Crusades were a bitch, to lapse into the inarticulate. I already recognized their existence, so you add little to the mix.
But they were also 1,000 years ago. (Acually, the First Crusade is just short of 1,000)
The evolution is such that the two institutions of the present church and the Crusade church are hardly recognizable. The Protestant Reformation even changed the Catholic church, as well as creating the various protestant branches.
It would be like comparing modern Italy to ancient Rome.
The problem is that Islam has never had the type of reformation that occurred in the West. Thus, the message being preached from mosques today is very similar to that being preached from mosques at the time of the Crusades.
For those who can't see the difference between modern Christian Fundamentalism and modern Islamic Fundamentalism, you overlook hundreds of years of evolution.
(P.S. I find it funny defending the church, since I am not Christian, but Jewish. Many Jews dislike the church, but they are still looking at it as it existed in the past, albeit the more recent past, but still the past. As a Jew today, I feel very comfortable in the presence of Christians and have never felt awkward in the least.)
Islamic Fundamentalists believe that if you are not a Muslim and you have not accepted Allah, you are an infidel and cannot go to heaven when you die. Christian Fundamentalists believe that if you don’t accept Jesus as your savior you cannot go to heaven when you die. You can clearly see which side “God” is on.
but I would not wish to fund either type of fundamentalist, fundamentally because they mentally have not mastered the fundamentals of dealing with the mentality of the mindsets of most folks... who fundamentally differ from themselves... or is that fundamentally what you are saying.?
Islamic fundamentalist cut off your head if you offend them. When artists portray Islam in a non-flatering light, they receive death sentences and are sometimes actually killed.
There is nothing like this in Christian fundamentalism. The most that Christian fundamentalist say is don't use their tax money to pay for having a cross in urine. If the private art world pays for it, that's fine.
Islamic fundamentalists still believe that apostasy should be punished by death. There is nothing like that in Christian.
Islamic fundamentalists are engaged in numerous places around the world killing people to further their religion.
Nothing like that in the Christian world.
In Islamic fundamentalist countries, there are no other religions, or if there are, they live a second class life worse than blacks in the Jim Crow South. The most Christian nation on earch (excluding Vatican City, which is more of an enclave than a nation) is the U.S. Non-Christians in the form on Jews, Moslems, athiests, Hindus, Buddhists, and a score of other religions are senators, Supreme Court Justices, Congressmen, mayors, governors.
I would like one Islamic country to be as tolerant as Utah, or most relgious state.
If you can't see the difference between the two types of fundamentalists, go up to an Islamic fundamentalist, give him a gun, and tell him Allah sucks. See what happens.
give him a gun and tell him "Jesus sucks and his mother was a whore" and see if the reaction isn't similar.
Yeah Christians are soooo tolerant, do I really need to remind you of the Salem witch burning, the extermination of the heathen savage on the land we now claim as our own, etc etc.
-- Modified on 11/11/2008 11:42:58 AM
Gallaleo, the Salem Witch trials, the massecre of many American indigenous cultures (in the name of all that is holy), to say nothing of the crusades (the original ones... and not the current ones).
So remember, we are when we are, and it took some getting to...
I know history. Read it very often. If you want to go back 500 years, there were things like you mentioned. The "massacre" of the American Indians was not a religious but a territorial conquest. During that time, people were not killed for religion as there were many religions living in the U.S.
Today, there may be a few religious nuts in the Christian world. But you can't find any in an organized group. Even the few violent "anti-abortionist do not find any support in any Christian church. No church has encouraged that behavior.
This is in direct conflict with Islamic mosques by the thousands around the world that urge people to kill the heathen.
No Christian leader in hundreds of years has issues anything like a fatwa. It is even silly to think about it.
Fatwas are common in the Islamic world. Indeed, when the Fatwa was issued against Rushdi, not one major Islamic group even tried to counter it.
No, the Crusades were a bitch, to lapse into the inarticulate. I already recognized their existence, so you add little to the mix.
But they were also 1,000 years ago. (Acually, the First Crusade is just short of 1,000)
The evolution is such that the two institutions of the present church and the Crusade church are hardly recognizable. The Protestant Reformation even changed the Catholic church, as well as creating the various protestant branches.
It would be like comparing modern Italy to ancient Rome.
The problem is that Islam has never had the type of reformation that occurred in the West. Thus, the message being preached from mosques today is very similar to that being preached from mosques at the time of the Crusades.
For those who can't see the difference between modern Christian Fundamentalism and modern Islamic Fundamentalism, you overlook hundreds of years of evolution.
(P.S. I find it funny defending the church, since I am not Christian, but Jewish. Many Jews dislike the church, but they are still looking at it as it existed in the past, albeit the more recent past, but still the past. As a Jew today, I feel very comfortable in the presence of Christians and have never felt awkward in the least.)
Sunni, Shi'a, Sufism, Kharijites and many others create issues within the muslim world... in case you had not noticed.
there are many reasons why your post has created the type of response it has, but perhaps the most obvious is that it contains little recognition that blind obedience to any dogma leads to a very narrow interpretation that cannot adapt to new situations.
I try to tell my kids, I cannot be with you throughout your day, I will try to give you guidelines, but in the end, you will have to make some judgement calls.... many fail to realize that is what religion provides, guidelines... to help with judgement calls throughout your life.
it is the religious zealots - be they hindu, muslim, scientologist or whatever, that trouble me... and not the fact that some may be muslim.
Come down here to the bible belt and tell some good ole boy that his god is a joke, give him a gun and see what happens. I doubt that you would survive much longer than you would with Achmed.
In every nation, culture, religion, or what ever, there are a certain number of individuals that will react violently. However, that is incredibly rare. "Piss Christ," the photo of the cross in urine, and other things have been shown around that nation to NO VIOLENCE.
Yes, there are a few individuals who may get violent, but in face of the extreme blasphemy that is common, the lack of violent reaction is very impressive.
I have been to the South several times. Not New Orleans, but the real south, like Natchez, and really like it.
I won't take your challenge because I don't like to offend people for any purpose.
I will repeat that given the level of provocation common today, the muted reaction of the majority is more important that a possible over-reaction by an irate individual.
and concede that Christianity has "mellowed" in its old age, while Islam has not. I still consider the "good christians" a rather intolerant lot, but after this election season they seem no more intolerant than the "tolerant, open minded" liberals.
I do consider both fairy tales equally ridiculous, but blasphemy in the modern Christian era is rarely a capital offense, the same cannot be said about the nation of Islam.
and take as many people with them as possible.
Oh, I forgot, it is not about a cause, it's about the virgins waiting for them.
They all believe in god. There is no god or heaven.
-- Modified on 11/11/2008 3:23:48 PM
I remember the first autopsy photo I ever saw. The victim was a 60-some year old security guard, ironically nicknamed "Lucky." He was shot up in a robbery. The photo was him lying on the autopsy table. They really are those stainless steel table you see on TV. He was naked and his paunch was hanging down to his genitals. He had holes in him.
I looked at it and thought, "Wow. This guy is really dead." It changed a lot of the way I view my profession, life, and society.
Charles - if you can't see the difference between groups that routinely organize to kill and groups that routinely encourage people to kill civilians in cafes and buses and office buildings and those that don't, I think you can't differentiate between good and bad.
Please, don't mention individual cases of Christians killing. There is not one church you can name that actively encourages murder, nor is there one church that issues death threats, There is not one church that tells husbands they can take stones and smash their wives to death if they are caught cheating. There is not church that tells brothers and fathers they can kill their sisters daughters who disgrace them by setting them on fire.
Smell the burnt flesh of women and tell me fundamentalists do that.
If you can't see the difference between actually killing people and not killing people, let me know and I'll send you a copy of Lucky's death photo.
Christian clerics have relinquished state power to the capitalist class. That is the difference that I see.
First, not all Moslem countries are controlled by the religion. Turkey is secular, as is Syria. Lebanon is not ruled by Clerics. I won't bother to check out the rest.
However, even if it is true it is irrelevant. Whether the religion controls the state or not, one religion engages in all the things I listed above. The other does not.
Whether the religion controls the state or not, one religion advocates murder AND ENGAGES in murder for hundreds of reasons and the other does not.
One religion bombs buses and cafes, the other doesn't.
In fact, the death and destruction come from both religion controlled countries (e.g. Iran) and non-religion controlled. (e.g. syria.)
No. You can't see the difference between killing and not killing. Well, if you can't see the diff between dead and alive, I don't know what else to say.
it has been around. Judaism, some 5,000 years old, can be compared to a 50 year old man, who has gone through all the phases of life. Judaism was violent in its early years, (ie invasion and genocide of eary Canaanites, Joshua massacre at Jericho, etc) but has mellowed and is now more tolerant as befitting an old man.
Christianity, some 2,000 years old, is as a 20 year old, but went through its violent teenage years (ie the Crusades, Inquisition, etc), and is now entering middle life wiser and more tolerant than centuries past.
Islam, having only been around for about 1400 years, is only now going through its violent teenage years--think like an angry 14-year old.
I have no doubt Islam will mature with time. I'm sure this analogy has its flaws, but it certainly makes you a little more tolerant if you think about it.
Islam has been around long enough to have had a chance to mellow. Especially in the last 100 years where ideas spread around the world at a rate not seen in the prior thousands.
I believe the Inquisition began in the 1400s. 1400 years is not very long in the grand scheme of the development of religious thought.
And in the last 100 years, ideas have indeed spread around the world at a rate not seen in prior years, but if you notice, most of the masses of people in Islamic countries are made up of some of the poorest and least educated people in the world. The spread of new ideas has actually been hampered and withheld by the oligarchies who have a vested interest in keeping the masses ignorant and obedient.
Islam is a religion for poor people who can't understand the concept of "free will" or free choice. They need to be told by their mullahs how to act and what to think. Reformation and renaissance will come to Islam, just like it came to Christianity.
I like to think we're helping it along by introducing enlightenment--ie women's rights, minority rights, basic human dignities. Once Muslim women get equal rights with the men, watch out--look how the right of women to vote changed our systems of government and society--I hope for the better.
Interesting topic.
While it is true that the masses of Islamic poor are uneducated, there have been huge numbers of Moslems exposed to western (read modern) ideas in the last 100 years, ever since the world started shrinking.
Huge numbers have gone to Europe, been educated in the West, exposed to Western ideas (tolerance, women's rights, etc), have contacts in their own country with Westerners, have had access to radio, television, fax, and now internet, granted in more controlled numbers, but still in huge numbers.
I was in a cave in central Turkey where people lived with television.
The Moslem world has had great exposure to Western ideals, but it hasn't taken hold.
Indeed, look at England where the second generation Moslems have huge numbers that favor Sharia. Same in France, Germany, and Sweden. Even exposed to the ideas and living there, they are back in the Crusades.
Europe has had scores of "honor killings" by people who have lived there for decades.
The Moslem world has had more exposure to the West in the last 5 years than the West had to modern ideas in the last 300.
-- Modified on 11/11/2008 5:53:57 PM
Iraqis didn't even have widespread mobile cell phone usage until February 2004. Iran still doesn't allow most of the public to have mobile cell phones.
TVs and radios haven't been around 100 years yet. The internet has only been around in the last few decades.
It takes a while to disseminate knowledge.
There are many examples where religion has corrupted or ‘taken over’ governments and monarchies and just as many where governments have likewise taken over religions, or maybe more correctly, governments have used religious fundamentals to accomplish their power brokering (e.g. The Spanish Inquisition). A more recent corruption of religion by a group not a government would be the KKK, believing that that had Christian values and justification on their side, but of course there was (is) nothing Christian about the KKK.. In general the corruption, crimes, genocide etc. have not been caused by ‘religion’ but by people using (or rather abusing) the religion for their own nasty purposes. The source of the corruption can originate from anywhere, a church, a government, a throne, a school, a basement, a cave.
Reformation or criminal prosecution or lack of critical mass or revolution have always seemed to correct all the instances of corruption over the millennia, but it certainly does seem that vast majority of Islam is standing firm against all the pressures of modernity.
-- Modified on 11/11/2008 7:15:56 PM
obstructive to reasoning.
Intolerant doesn't bother me if you aren't trying to kill me.
You don't have to like me. You don't have to approve of me.
Just don't try to kill me.
At worst, Christianity disapproves of some things. So what. They aren't cutting off heads, stoning people, or bombing markets.
Dead is different. And its worse, in case you can't see the difference, like Chaz
Everyone must die at some time or another. Religion is based on nonsense.
War is yet another thing, Phil if a country is controlled by clerics it is reasonable to these clerics that they send combatants into battle in the name of whatever religion that they represent. It is functionally no different than the POTUS ordering an invasion in the name of US imperialism based on the power granted to him by congress and the US constitution.