The future of europe?/Islam threads (Merged)

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by scandium

You amuse me AL. I only joined this thread to suggest you show the conviction of your belief in the evil of Islam by abdicating your own religion, since you think that other religion should be banned.

Did you hear me asking for Christianity to be banned? Budhism? Hinduism? StarTrekism?

Is there something different about Islam? I posted what I believe clearly shows a difference. You joined this thread and claimed they are one and the same. I asked you to site your proofs. Other than your condom connundrum, which has since been responded to and proven to be full of holes:p , you have yet to prove your point.

But I'm the one on the attack here eh? Now you are really projecting.

If ya can't take the heat, get outta the kitchen!

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

What a bunch of BS tripe. Scandium, your fallacious argument is the reason why left-wing politics is dying in North America. First of all, you give an example without a source. You generalize your facts. And then you attempt to draw moral equivalency. What Christian groups are preventing the distribution of Condoms to third worlders? :p And how are they enforcing it?

Some relevant snippets from a Rolling Stones article on the HIV epidemic:

Bush's plan calls for an "ABC" approach to HIV prevention -- which stands for abstinence, "be faithful" and condom use -- but the administration is stressing the "A." In its first year, PEPFAR spent more than half of the $92 million earmarked to prevent sexual transmission on promoting abstinence programs. Studies show that such programs actually increase risk by discouraging contraceptive use. What's more, focusing on abstinence and monogamy ignores the reality facing young women and girls in Africa and other impoverished regions, who are often infected by wandering husbands or forced to have sex in exchange for food or shelter. Among fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa, studies show, more than three times as many young women are infected with HIV as young men.


"It's only a matter of time before the impact of abstinence-only programs can be measured in needless new HIV infections," says Jonathan Cohen, an HIV/AIDS researcher with Human Rights Watch.


The emphasis on morality is being driven by social conservatives, who have made spreading the gospel of abstinence and monogamy to Africans their primary mission. "Condoms promote promiscuity," says Derek Gordon of the evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family. "When you give a teen a condom, it gives them a license to go out and have sex." At a congressional hearing in April, Rep. Henry Hyde threatened to cut funding for organizations that promote condoms. "The best defense for preventing HIV transmission is practicing abstinence and being mutually faithful to a non-infected partner," Hyde declared.

BTW, you do know that a condom doesn't guarantee HIV and AIDS prevention right?

They don't need to in order to be effective. Seat belts don't guarantee you won't be killed in a car accident but I wear mine all the same.

And you must know that many third worlders themselves may not even want to wear condoms.

That is not the same as having the choice taken from them by supposedly well meaning religious groups.

Unless you force Africans to wear condoms, you are Al-Qaeda, in the mind of Scandium.

Maybe in your mind. I think it enough to educate and provide them with the means to protect themselves. My arguement is against religionists forcing their own beliefs into the equation by limiting their options. How you can twist that into forcing people to do things says more about your own mindset than anything I wrote does.

Christians are responsible for the African AIDS crisis?

Nowhere did I say that either.

[The Avon Lady]

Indeed, condums has much to do with the future of Europe.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

If ya can't take the heat, get outta the kitchen!

What heat? There is only your usual ultra-conservative "my religion is better than yours" intolerant drivel here.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

Indeed, condums has much to do with the future of Europe.

Perhaps that is part of your problem. If you looked at a map you would see it has more than Europe on it.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by scandium

What heat? There is only your usual ultra-conservative

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ultra-conservatives! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

"my religion is better than yours" intolerant drivel here.

You really don't catch on, do you? While I certainly believe that Judaism is better than Christianity :p and a poster like Iceman believes that Christianity is better than Judaism, we are all tollerant of each other.

What we all do not mutually tolerate is a religious ideology that translates their claim to superiority into actions that will not tolerate even the likes of you, once you've served their purpose.

You just don't catch on, do you?

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I wonder what the Old Testament should have to do with all this. Christian acting refers to the Christ - who by his own life alone became the founding figure of "Christianity", before him their was no idea of a christian religion at all, there only was Judaism. A christianity referring to the OT is not Christian at all, in the meaning of the word. I tend to understand these constant references to the OT as attempts to put things into politically correct relations and make it seem that Islam compares to Jesus' teachings (these are the only true Christian message there is, necessarily and as expressed in the word "Christian", anything else is church and politics only), and that Islam is as harmless. It does not compare, in any way. If you want to do a structural comparion of scriptures in Islam and christianity, than only the message of Jesus is truly representative for Islam, and the Koran as it should have been dicated by Muhammad is representative for Islam. I do not see what Islamic scripture could compare to the role that the Old Testament plays.

Skybird, Christianity is based on both the Old and New Testament. The New Testament may be what makes it distinct from Judaism, but all mainstream Christian faiths base their teaching on both books.

The current "Intelligent Design" debate in the US, for instance, is based on Genesis which is from the Old Testament. The Ten Commandments that prescribe how a faithful Christian should conduct their lives are also from the Old Testament.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by scandium

Perhaps that is part of your problem. If you looked at a map you would see it has more than Europe on it.

Au contraire!

But you obviously missed my point anyway.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

You really don't catch on, do you? While I certainly believe that Judaism is better than Christianity :p and a poster like Iceman believes that Christianity is better than Judaism, we are all tollerant of each other.

What we all do not mutually tolerate is a religious ideology that translates their claim to superiority into actions that will not tolerate even the likes of you, once you've served their purpose.

You just don't catch on, do you?

You would rather I join your own little intolerant crusade, or Jihad, against Islam? No thanks.

[Skybird]

I found this article to be a good summary of differences in Muslim and Christian attitude towards violance.

http://www.canada.com/components/pri...2-2b7b0ccce158

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by scandium

Skybird, Christianity is based on both the Old and New Testament. The New Testament may be what makes it distinct from Judaism, but all mainstream Christian faiths base their teaching on both books.

The current "Intelligent Design" debate in the US, for instance, is based on Genesis which is from the Old Testament. The Ten Commandments that prescribe how a faithful Christian should conduct their lives are also from the Old Testament.

I stick to it: Christian is who follows the Christ. Before Christ, there was no Christian religion. the Christian church is an ursupator only, it is not what Jesus was about, he did not found it, he did not authorize it. The only christian "club" that I could imagine to be in the following of Jesus, are the Christian mystics, not the church and not today'S fundamentalists, both all too often in clear violation of Jesus teachings. Without these teachings, christianity is nothing, meaningless. Institutionalization and politics started not before people like Paul took over. You have not understood that most essential difference between church and Jesus in a debate some days ago, and I think you will also try hard not to realize it today.

Where a Christian acts with terror and violance, he is violating his own religion named christianity, deriving from the Christ, Jesus. He can be a church member nevertheless. The church is not Jesus, and never was.

In contrast to that, the institutional structures of Islam had been rasied and, in a way, authorized by Muhammad. Where Jesus did not found a church, Muhammad did.

Where A Muslim acts with terror and violance, he is not violating but followung the explicit rules and demands as set up by Islam's founder, Muhammad, in word, practice and teaching.

Muhammad murderd men already when he was leading caravans of his uncle thorugh the desert. He ordered 70-80 wars and pradotry raids. He ordered mass murder and genocide. He orderd murder and torture. He orderd slavery and supression.

Now show me where in the teachings of Jesus, Christians are ordered to do all that. Jesus, like buddha, tought exactly the opposite.

This difference is what it all comes down to. And btw, even the ursupatory christian chruches has seen a develoepment that made it less tyrannic and murderous than it was during the inquisition. Whereas the history of Islam is that of constant aggression, landtaking, war, violant subjugation (have you red the news on Somalia today?), and cultural cleansing up to the very present.

Read the article I linked to one post above.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I found this article to be a good summary of differences in Muslim and Christian attitude towards violance.

http://www.canada.com/components/pri...2-2b7b0ccce158

That article makes the same point I've made here as well:

But this need not be the only way of interpreting these texts. One alternative -- quite common in some faith communities -- might be to decide that these were commands for a very particular set of circumstances, but that they no longer apply to modern believers in this time. Another option, advanced recently by the Turkish scholar Israfil Balci, is to reject the classical interpretations of these commands as a product of the political tensions of the period.

Muslims are not the only scriptural community to face challenges of interpretation. Jews and Christians who regard the Hebrew scriptures as the Word of God must deal with the conquest of Canaan, the commandment of total cherem destruction, the violence of judges like Samson and the bloodshed of kings like David -- among many other materials that suggest Godly approval for aggressive warfare against non-believers.


Conversely, warring Christians who accept the authority of the Gospel must deal with the apparent prohibition of violence in the teachings and life example of Jesus. This discussion has been going on among Christians at least since the Crusades, when critics were heard to say "that it is not in accordance with the Christian religion to shed blood in this way, even that of wicked infidels. For Christ did not act thus."

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I found this article to be a good summary of differences in Muslim and Christian attitude towards violance.

http://www.canada.com/components/pri...2-2b7b0ccce158

Skybird, I posted a link to that article a page back.

Originally Posted by Scandium

You would rather I join your own little intolerant crusade, or Jihad, against Islam? No thanks.

Then you will die or become a dhimmie. The choice is yours.

BTW, care to remind the folks what brought about the Christian Crusades to begin with? History is repeating itself.

I've decided to help you out a bit with your quotations from the "Old Testament", which you would love to use to claim that all religions are intollerant of each other. I've just spent a good amount of my time typing this out. If you don't appreciate it, others will and my efforts have not been wasted.

Perhaps aware of how absurd such New testament areguments are, Islamic apologists more often tend to focus on several Old testament passages:

• "When the Lord, your God, brings you into the land to to which you are coming to possess it, He will cast away many nations from before you: the Hittites, the Girga****es, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful that you. And the Lord, your God, will deliver them to you, and you shall smite them. You shall utterly destroy them; neither shall you make a covenant with them, nor be gracious to them."
  - Deuteronmy 7:1-2

• [i]"When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall propose peace to it. And it will be, if it responds to you with peace, and it opens up to you, then it will be, [that] all the people found therein shall become tributary to you, and they shall serve you. But if it does not make peace with you, and it wages war against you, you shall besiege it, and the Lord, your God, will deliver it into your hands, and you shall strike all its males with the edge of the sword. However, the women, the children, and the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoils you shall take for yourself, and you shall eat the spoils of your enemies, which the Lord, your God, has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations. However, of these peoples' cities, which the Lord, your God, gives you as an inheritance, you shall not allow any soul to live. Rather, you shall utterly destroy them: The Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord, your God, has commanded you."[i]
  - Deuteronomy 20:10-17

• So now kill every male child, and every woman who can lie intimately with a man you shall kill. And all the young girls who have no experience of intimate relations with a man, you may keep alive for yourselves.
  - Numbers 31:17-18

Strong stuff, right? Just as bad as "slay the unbelievers whereever you find them" (Quran 9:5) and "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them" (Quran 47:4) and all the rest, right?

Wrong. Unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girga****e, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, these Biblical passages simply do not apply to you. The Quran exhorts believers to fight unbelievers without specifying anywhere in the text that only certain unbelievers are to be fought, or only for a certain period of time, or some other distinction. Taking the texts at face value, the command to make war against unbelievers is open-ended and universal. The Old Testament, in contrast, records God's commands to the Israelites to make war against particular people only. This is jarring to modern sensibilities, to be sure, but it does not amount to the same thing. That's one reason why Jews and Christians haven't formed terror groups around the world that quote these Scriptures to justify killing civilian non-combatants.

By contrast, Osama bin Laden, who is only the most visible exponent of a terror network that extends from Indonesia to Nigeria and into Western Europe and the Americas, quotes the Quran copiously in his communiques. In his 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," he quotes suras 3:145; 47:4-6; 2:154; 9:14; 47:19; 8:72; and of course the notorious "Verse of the Sword," Sura 9:5. In 2003, on the first day of the Muslim holy celebration Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, he began a sermon: "Praise be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to His servant and messenger [the Prophet Muhammad], in order to establish truth and abolish falsehood."

Of course, the devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose, but Osama's use of these and other passages in his messages is consistant (as we shall see) with traditional Islamic understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don't interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretive traditions that have moved away from literalism regarding these passages <Avon: i disagee with this. The reason is as the author already stated previously: "Unless you happen to be a Hittite", etc.>. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretive tradition. The jihad passages in the Quran are anything but a dead letter. In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere, a key recruiting ground for jihad terrorist groups is the Islamic school: The students learn that they must wage jihad warfare, and then these groups give them the opportunity.

- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer, p.28-32

If any of you have not yet bought Spencer's book, do so. Ignorance is not bliss, I can assure you.

UPDATE: This answers some of Scandium's arguments based on his quotes from the Canadian National Post article. The answers here are also appropriate for the most part from both a Jewish and Christian point of view of the Torah or "Old Testament."

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

Skybird, I posted a link to that article a page back.
"

Haha, I apologize, I did not want to steal your credits. It seems I fell victim to my own mental brain processing when searching again for that article. Had already seen it some days ago. at Jijhadwatch (these Arab word's spellings are killing me...)

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Whereas the history of Islam is that of constant aggression, landtaking, war, violant subjugation (have you red the news on Somalia today?), and cultural cleansing up to the very present.

And the history of Christianity isn't? As one who lives in a place where the indigenous peoples were regarded as "uncivilized heathen" who were then treated accordingly, I see things differently. But that could be because my civilized and enlightened Christian ancestors had proceeded to treat these indigenous peoples with genocide, committing a 100% extermination of them.

That is about as complete a "constant aggression landtaking, war" as you can get, since it didn't end until there was nobody left to kill off.