26 months equal 202 lives
 

None of those two ends of the spectrum sound very nice to me, "violence as part legitimate and necessary jihad" & "a longer term struggle requiring patient proselytizing and military preparation"
translation: War now & talk now, then War later. Whatever happens in the meantime you're gonna have war. :down:

crap :cry:

Just dismiss it with the wave of a hand. Ask Scandium. He knows how.;)

As long as he still has a hand :lol: But a waving stump may do the trick, too.

Uh huh. Because I don't put the world's 1.2 billion Muslims into the same category as this nut then that means I support the terrorists right? :roll:

No you're just blinding yourself to reality. He isn't just some nut, he's a nut with followers. A lot of followers.

Seems about right.

You put all Christians into the same category based on what some genocidal priests did to the natives around the area where you live (it's a big neighborhood eh?), why can't you do it to Muslims too?

You fail to separate church and religion, doctrine and theology, mystics and ritual practice, phisosophy and politics. Just like you can't do the separation in Christianity, you can't do it in Islam, and while you demonize all of Christianity, you sanctify all of Islam.

If I asked you to give me the name of just one Christian Priest, or Bishop, who demanded natives from the American continent to be treated equally, to be considered equal under the law, and respected as the rightfull owners of the land, would you be able to do it?

No? It's irrelevant? History is on your side? Selective history?

Alright, a nut with followers. A lot of followers.

What category am I putting all Christians into? Nowhere have I ever said they are all genocidal, only that following Jesus rather than Muhammad has never been an exemption from committing the "war, aggression, repression, and land grabbing" that Skybird associated with Islam. My own Europeab Christian ancestors are a good enough example of this, so I used them.

I neither demonize Christianity nor sanctify Islam. You are right that I don't make many distinctions because historically they have been intertwined.

Selective how? Because I focused on North America and Europe, where Christianity has always reigned supreme?

In another thread you put the responsability of HIV deaths in the hands of Christian "religionists". One Christian who doesn't distribute condoms in Africa is enough in that case, however, one terrorist is not enough to do the same with Islam in this case.

You did not answered my question, I'll take that as a negative answer, you do not know of any Christian of any church who fought for indians to be treated equally as Europeans, perhaps you don't know all of history.

Very well then, it's all equal, it's all relative, one crazy Imam cannot stain the image of 1.2 billion Muslims, but whatever some cross-totting Christian supreme ruler of Europe, who happens to be your ancestor, did back then suits all Christians just fine.

Did you even read Scandium's post there, I wonder? :hmm:

Sorry, I'm with him on this one. No need to demonize anyone here; we're all people. Let's face it, there is a nasty case of "mass psychosis" going on with Islam nowadays. But it's just a violent case and there are other non-violent cases around there.

And yes, I'll put any groups who say "this is the truth because it says so on a piece of paper allegedly written by so-and-so so many centuries ago" into either latent, potential, non-violent or violent "mass psychosis" cases indeed.

Spirituality, mysticsm, and all else is fine and good. But when there are real negative ramifications to a dogma, then why point fingers at one and dismiss another?

There is one thing I will always reject, and that's countering/juxtaposing/separating-in-terms-of-prescribed-treatment Islam with Christianity, Judaism, or what have you. It's an irrational solution to a problem with irrational people. Sure doesn't sound promising to me :hmm:

It's hard NOT to lump all muslims into the same coal pile when they always seem to present a unitied front, in whatever they do. From their mass worshiping to their mass demonstrations over somethign as trivial as a carton. From their firebrand words, everyhthing comes accorss on the same note. Sure you'll have the odd muslim who will say, "No this is not islam", but their usually living in a western nation.

I know theres a mentality develping thats hard to a resist.. a mentality of "Them vs us". Im already past that. I feel its a case of "Them OR us". There will never be peace, there ill never be a stop to the terrorism, until one of the us is gone. That, im afraid, will be the cold hard reality to face. I hate feeling that way too, i really do. It's so hard not to.

Don't feel alone with those thoughts.

It's like when you put things in a centrifuge how things are forced to seperate. I feel the seperation process in action myself. Light and Dark must seperate.....But WE decide which is which or which we choose.

Excerpt from essays by Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald:
I read the news today, oh boy:

40% of Young Dutch Muslims Reject Democracy

Speaking of Abu Bakar Bashir and a minority of extremists:

Mass Murdering Cleric Gets Heros Welcome

I'll simply respond to the original article linked to in this thread. As an Australian and a Muslim I am disgusted and angry at the release of JI's Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.

That headline is a little misleading. To quote from the article:

"The study found 40 percent of the Moroccan youth in the Netherlands reject western values and democracy."

At least it is misleading unless all "young Dutch Muslims" are also Moroccan, and all Moroccans are Muslim.

Seems that way.

Netherland statistics.

Prove it. We still wait for proof to your absurd statements. As long as you don'T see that the motives of the churches for acting often violated clearly the teachings of Jesus, but where actings in it's own political interest, you do not have any argument here. And it seems I am not the only one being completely unable to see how one could call that church policy to be in the following of Jesus. It often was in violation of Jesus. Where as Islam showing a violant, war-mongering kind of behavior, it is not in violation of Muhammad, but in precise recognition of his demands. And that is the decisive difference you for whatever a reason try so hard to kill, but it is pretty obvious for most people here. How could you dare to compare a Ghandi with a Saddam Hussein, a Siddharta or a Jesus with Muhammad, simply stripping them off any differences because you say (yesterday) all ideas could be abused, and not ideas do kill, but people? Was Hitler a victim or an executor of his ideas? I bet the latter. But according to your absurd logic, fascism is of same value than pacifism, tyranny is of same value than democracy, Jesus' altruism is of same value as Muhammad's murderous selfishnes, becasue all ideas can be abused, and thus it is not worth to see the qualitative differences between them. But ideas are the reasons why people may want or may not want to kill. Ideas do make people act, or not act. Even you are driven by your ideas, and since your idea in this debate is queeer, your arguments are also queer. But according to you that doesn't matter. Ideas planted in people'S heads can even be a reason why people enjoy killing. Those thugs on those Iraq videos killing hostages even enjoyed it and thought to commit an act that earns them some heavenly praise. How could you dare to reject the differences here? How could you dare to say that Jesus' teachings are of the same value as the ideology that these thugs are follwing? How could you dare to deny any value in any cultural achievement, philosophy, idea - for the simple reason that it could be abused, if one is trying that? How could you spit on the efforts of generations during centuries that tried to improve life and living since the medieval, who often failed, that is right, nevertheless there can be no doubt that we live a far better life today than our ancestors a thousand years back? How can you reject all that with a single snip of your finger?

Time and again you are offending mindlessly hundreds of thousands of >true< Christians, what do i say: millions and millions, who turned away from the church in disgust for exactly this reason: the violation of Jesus teachings, and the fact that the empty facade the church is today for most people cannot offer them anything of what these people look for in a religion. Nevertheless the overwheliming majority of these still have no problem to see themselves as Christians, and to refer to Jesus as a valuable example to base your acting upon. I myself have left the church long time ago, but despite practicing Buddhist Zen, I have no problem to see the value in the teachings of Jesus and christian mystics like Meister Eckehard or Thomas a Kempis and so many others (all of which are not better than any given bad ideology, because Scandium says they can be abused and thus are not better than these bad ideologies), and I even have taught people in both and urged them not to look into the far away culture of the East, but stick to what this their own tradition has to offer. But in your attempt to level out all qualitative differences so that noone can politically incorrectly claim that one thing may be better than another thing (the big lie of the political left: everything is equal, each man is as valuable as another), you said yesterday that all this doesn'T matter.

You said it is not ideas that kill, but man. You said there is no difference between chru8ch and Jesus, and between Jesus' focussing on peace - and muhammad's wars. Well, the ideas that I follow do made people try to avoid war and violance. where they seek war and violance, they are not Christian or buddhist at all. Islam, as an idea, has made peopoe commit more war, violance, conquest and subjugation than any other in world history as we do know it. but according to Scandium, all this does not matter.

I do not know if I should shout at or laugh about you, sorry. It is ridiculous, all this hyper-intellectual reasoning of yours. But such ignorrance surely is the reason why politics and communties are desintegrating, and thus it raises my anger. The opinion you represent I call the EU-desease, and it does nothing constructive, it only destroys, it adds no conture or form, but deletes them; it kills identity and replaces it with the dictation of "solidarity". Growth without limits and rules is no structural order. It is cancer. Cancer kills.

I do not like this perspective a bit, and cannot bring it together with some of the buddhist and Christian ideas that I value, but when thinking Islam to it's logical end, he is right. Islam has come to the same conclusion - more than one thousand years ago.