'Let's call God Allah'

[Skybird]

"I won't sacrifice the Enterprise... We made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space - and we fall back! They assimilate entire worlds - and we fall back! Not again - the line must be drawn here! This far - no further!" (Picard in Star Trek VIII)

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

....................the thankfully failed crusades.

To quote Robert Spencer, at the start of Chapter 13, in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades):

What if the Crusades had never happened?

If the Crusades had never taken place, what kind of a world would we live in today? Would there be peace, understanding, and goodwill between Christians and Muslims? Would the Islamic world be free of the suspicion and often downright paranoia with which it regards so much that comes from the West? After all, Amin Aalouf says, "there can be no doubt that the schism between these two worlds dates from the Crusades, deeply felt by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape."

Or would the world be different, in other, quite unexpected ways? Do the words "St. Peter's Mosque un Rome" mean anything to you?


PC Myth: The Crusades accomplished nothing

Faced with the Muslims' continued pursuit of Jihad even into the heart of Europe, the Crusaders' inability to establish any lasting states of continued presence in the Holy Land, and the enmity that the Crusades undoubtedly sowed not only between Christians and Muslims, but between Eastern and Western Christians, most historians have deemed the Crusades a failure.

After all, their objective was to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. They originally established the Crusader states for this reason. But after the Second Crusade, those states were immensely diminished, and remained so; after 1291, they were gone. Nor did the Crusaders prevent Islamic warriors from crossing into Europe.

However, it is significant that the level of Islamic adventurism in Europe dropped off dramatically during the era of the Crusades. The conquest of Spain, the Middle East, and North Africa, as well as the first siege of Constantinople, all took place well before the first Crusade. The battles of Kosovo and Varna, which heralded a resurgent Islamic expansionism in Eastern Europe, took place after the collapse of the last Crusader holdings in the Middle East.

So what did the Crusades accomplish? They bought Europe time - time that might have meant the difference between her demise and dhimmitude and her rise and return to glory. If Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard the Lionhearted, and countless others hadn't risked their lives to uphold the honor of Christ and his church thousands of miles from home, the jihadists would almost certainly have swept across Europe much sooner. Not only did the Crusader armies keep them tied down at a crucial period, fighting for Antioch and Ascalon instead of Varna and Vienna, they also brought together armies that would not have existed otherwise. Pope Urban's call united men around a cause; had that cause not existed or been publicized throughout Europe, many of these men would not have been warriors at all. They would have been ill-equipped to repel a Muslim invasion of their homeland.

The Crusades, then, were the ultimate reason why Edward Gibbon's vision of "the interpretation of the Koran" being "taught in the schools of Oxford" did not come true.

This is not a small matter. It is from Christian Europe, after all, no matter how reluctant the PC establishment is to acknowledge it, that most philosophical and scientific exploration, as well as technical advancement, have sprung. We have already seen one key reason why science developed in the Christian world and not in the Muslim world: Christians believed in a coherent and consistent universe governed by a good god; Muslims believed in a universe governed by a god whose will was so absolute as to preclude coherence and consistency.

But the implications of this all-important philosophical difference could not have worked themselves out without freedom. That freedom was not available to Christians or any other non-Muslims who had the misfortune to live under Muslim rule. In fact, any people who came under Muslim rule throughout history were ultimately reduced - no matter how extensive their numbers and grand their achievements before the Muslim conquest - to the status of a tiny and culturally derivative minority. Of course, few conquered peoples have ever escaped this fate. The only people who have escaped Muslim dhimmitude have been those who were successful in resisting Islamic jihad: the Christians of Europe and the Hindus of India.

Others were not so fortunate

The subject continues on in the book. Read and learn.

[Skybird]

(above)
Good perspective of looking at the crusades, where i usually focus on seeing them as a counterattack to regain ground that previously was lost to an aggressive invader. Not that both perspective are excluding each other - they are mutually supportive.

I always thought that turning the crusades into an act of aggresison instead of seeing it as the defensive counter-attack that it initially was, compares to a women being raped and then being accused of having provoked it, and being held accountable for her fate. Which, indeed, is the way in which Muhammedanism is dealing with such an issue: turning the victim into the perpetrator.

On a slightly more general level, since this topic is featuring "God" and "Allah" in it's headline:

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Skybird

On a slightly more general level, since this topic is featuring "God" and "Allah" in it's headline:

3""Let us break their bands and cast off their cords from us."
He Who dwells in Heaven laughs; the Lord mocks them."
- Psalm 2:3-4

(I've given you a finger and you've taken a hand).

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

(I've given you a finger and you've taken a hand).

Not really. I took almost four hands.



Are you a Jewish Kali, maybe? Eating forum members in secret, maybe?

That guy is good, he could almost be me. Sometimes there is a detail he mentiones that I do not agree with at all, but all in all I am with him. Only where he mentions "religion" in a generalized way, I differ between the esoteric (mystic) and exoteric (institutional, dogmatical) level of "religion".

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Are you a Jewish Kali, maybe? Eating forum members in secret, maybe?

When was the last time you heard from Drebel? or Abraham?

Think! Think!

Here's a drumstick. Now shut up. :p

That guy is good, he could almost be me. Sometimes there is a detail he mentiones that I do not agree with at all, but all in all I am with him. Only where he mentions "religion" in a generalized way, I differ between the esoteric (mystic) and exoteric (institutional, dogmatical) level of "religion".

I find many details of his I disagree with, many going right back at him. In short, he assumes that religion is based solely on faith and not on claims of fact. This is not true, at least for most major religions. One may argue whether the claims are true or not. That is another matter.

Anyway, running around the kitchen doing way too much way too late today.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

When was the last time you heard from Drebel? or Abraham?

Think! Think!

Here's a drumstick. Now shut up. :p

I find many details of his I disagree with, many going right back at him. In short, he assumes that religion is based solely on faith and not on claims of fact. This is not true, at least for most major religions. One may argue whether the claims are true or not. That is another matter.

Anyway, running around the kitchen doing way too much way too late today.

Many "claimed facts" in institutional religions I find to be belief items only, additonally having been object to hear-say and distortion over the times, so I do not see him contradict his attitude in this. In fact he illustrates that old passage from the kalamas-Sutra that I have quoted several times now in the past years:

"Do not put faith in traditions, even though they

have been accepted for long generations and
in many countries. Do not believe a thing because
many repeat it. Do not accept a thing on
the authority of one or another of the sages of
old, nor on the ground of statements as found
in the books. Never believe anything because
probability is in its favour. Do not believe in
that which you yourselves have imagined,
thinking that a god has inspired it. Believe
nothing merely on the authority of the teachers
or the priests. After examination, believe that
which you have tested for yourself and found
reasonable, which is in conformity with your
well being and that of others."

Pat Condell - or Buddha? well, it is said that all things are of Buddha-nature, so in the end it is the same.

[JetSnake]

Originally Posted by clive bradbury

Call him whatever you like - he won't care - he doesn't exist...

Can't prove that can you.

[Skybird]

Can't prove that he does exist, can you. so why is it more reasonable to believe in something unproven, unexamined, unchecked, untested? Is it really that much demanded that He shall give us a sign of existence if he expects us to worship him? I would call that a reasonable demand. Scepticism is no sin, but a prerequisite to develope true reason. Ancient scriptures just are not good enough and just records of hear-say and chinese whispers, buried under a lot of dust. Maybe good enough for some people, but certainly not good enough for me.

But honestly, an old man behaving as brutal and tyrannic and demanding submission in the way He does in the bible's old testament or Muhammad's files, is somebody that either is mentally ill and belongs into a psychiatric station (talking as an ex-psychologist here: we would enforce by court's ruling that every man behaving like that must be brought to hospital and prison if he behaves like He did), or probably is not real, but a product of human imagination. The OT is dripping with blood and cruelty and His selfishness and His narcisissm and sadism and war. And that humans are capable of all this brutality, tyranny and demands for submission is obvious and a well-proven historic fact.

Conclusion: He does not exist, but we can prove that we exist, can we.

The gods we imagine, tell something about man himself - not about the question wether there are gods, or none. If they are there, they can give us a hint that is undeniable. If they don't, they either are not there, or they do not care. If the latter, why running after them, then. I have more important things to do.

Religious talk on forums is never good, period...

This is coming from a Pagan of the Greek/Roman, Egyptian, Norse mythology syle with a grudge against a couple popular religions due to them causing downfall of his religion as a major belief system.

[robbo180265]