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2006-03-28 Afghanistan

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Posted by Seafarious 2006-03-28 09:51|| || Front Page|| [8 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."

Not so dumb.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-03-28 10:08|| 2006-03-28 10:08|| Front Page Top

#2 perhaps the Christian Crusader Snipers can send a .50 caliber message to senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed to tone it down? Or at least to his successor

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-03-28 10:18|| 2006-03-28 10:18|| Front Page Top

#3 hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!"

There are no real "believers" in Islam. They cannot exist with Islam in its current form.

Because belief cannot be coerced or it ceases to be belief. It must be given willingly and must be a moral choice of the individual. And for a true choice to exist, there must be the ability to choose without threat from artificially imposed consequences. Your immortal soul is at risk, but your physical life should not be at risk unless you do something that is physically risky.

Right now, there is no Muslim that can truly say "I choose to be an unbeleiver (an Atheist), I choose to have doubts about wether ther is anything to beleive in (Agnostic), I choose to be a Christian, or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Zoroastrian", without coming under death threats and Fatwahs - i.e. the ultimate coercion.

They have no freedom to choose, and so cannot freely believe. Islamist's faith is so small as to not survive exposure to any doubts (real or imagined), and their belief is as credible as the confession of a man with a gun to his head.

The Hadiths are the source of this - the writings of Muhammed, not the divinely sanctioned parts of the Qu'ran itsef. They are a perversion of religion, not a true religion based on belief freely given and faith, maintained in the heart, not by the scimitar.

Until Islam changes and allows people to freely LEAVE, and learns co-exist and compete openly and honestly with other beliefs (or no belief at all), it is a cult of the coercer and the coerced. There will exist no REAL believers in Islam, only slaves who are threatened into compliance by threats of physical abuse and death.

All the other major religions of the world allow for this open-ness. All except Islam.

I have come to the opinion that in its current form, Islam is an abomination that must either be reformed or eradicated.

Ironically, the Islamists have a choice on this. But they must be made aware of the consequences of their choice: stay with the coercion and face eradication of their cult and its culture, or reform and join the modern world in the marketplace of ideas.

We in the west will provide the wipeout or the welcome, once enough of us awaken.

Choose: eradication or reform.

Posted by OldSpook 2006-03-28 10:41|| 2006-03-28 10:41|| Front Page Top

#4 Old Spook,
Great insight. Well put.

Posted by Danielle 2006-03-28 10:57|| 2006-03-28 10:57|| Front Page Top

#5 Eradicate ! I fear reform will provide a front for the radical element to go underground, only to rise again.
All of their madrasses must be closed and raised to the ground. All of the 'teachers' silenced.

Posted by wxjames 2006-03-28 10:59|| 2006-03-28 10:59|| Front Page Top

#6 by that definition, OS, there werent any christians in europe from at least 1000 AD or so down to the enlightenment. Converting from Christianity could get you killed too, and the people who converted you. Thats historically why Judaism became so reluctant to accept converts - in Jewish law someone who seeks to convert is supposed to be turned away three times, and can be accepted only if they persist. If they had been less resistant to converts, the Christian authorities would have destroyed them.

Posted by liberalhawk 2006-03-28 11:13|| 2006-03-28 11:13|| Front Page Top

#7 Islam has always been a heavy-handed "religion" from the top down. I really do not care what they do, as long as they confine it to their own little sh*tty domains. However, with the phenomenon of large fortunes in oil money into the picture, Islamists can export their psycho-babble system to places where other religions are tolerated. Our toleration is seen as our weakness to be exploited.

I'm with Old Spook, Islam will be reformed or eradicated. They reform it or we will eradicate it. The values of each system are imcompatable with each other.

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2006-03-28 11:27|| 2006-03-28 11:27|| Front Page Top

#8 OldSpook,

I've "appropriated" passages from your comment, Thanks.

Posted by RD 2006-03-28 11:39|| 2006-03-28 11:39|| Front Page Top

#9 100% agree with what you say, Old Spook.

And in SOME sense, liberalhawk is right as well: Catholicism could not rightly claim to have won converts by virtue of its nature during a time when force was seen as a legitimate way to enforce faith. But in THAT SAME SENSE, every Protestant, by converting from Catholicism, COULD be credited as being a true christian. Care to cite the dates for the Reformation versus the Enlightenment? Care to comment on why you ignore the differences between Catholics and Protestants, other than admitting that acknowledging those differences would shoot gaping holes in your implied argument that the Enlightenment was the Beginning of Truth and Light? (and ignoring the Terror during the French Revolution?)

Posted by Ptah">Ptah 2006-03-28 12:06|| http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]">[http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org] 2006-03-28 12:06|| Front Page Top

#10 We are talking about the modern world and Islam, not pre-protestant pre-enlightenment Christianity 1000 years ago. Nice try at changing the context.

Furthermore, it was never dogma that those who left the faith be executed. Show me a Papal proclamation and a biblical passage (with adequate context) to support your claim (and good luck as there really isnt anything like that in the new testament ro Christ's). I can show you Hadiths and Fatwas that show Islam's death threats to be in consonance, with a bit of cursory research on the internet.

Otherwise you are not comparing apples to apples.

Sorry Liberalhawk, your dog doesnt hunt.

Posted by OldSpook 2006-03-28 12:10|| 2006-03-28 12:10|| Front Page Top

#11 "Feets, don't fail me now!"

Posted by mojo">mojo 2006-03-28 12:31|| 2006-03-28 12:31|| Front Page Top

#12 I can show you Hadiths and Fatwas that show Islam's death threats to be in consonance, with a bit of cursory research on the internet.

A bit more research would turn up a pattern of executing apostates that runs right back to ol' Mo' himself. Not to mention Mo's habit of ordering the assassination of critics who displeased him.

Hard to make the comparison, though I'm not shocked when people do it.

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2006-03-28 12:33|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-03-28 12:33|| Front Page Top

#13 OS-
VERY well put. I have only heard words that genuinely chilling once before - regarding a Certain Politician who kept trying to subvert the will of the people.

Preach it, brother.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2006-03-28 12:35|| 2006-03-28 12:35|| Front Page Top

#14 So what your implying is that because someone wrote something down and it was preserved through time, that makes it a valid reason for murder. Certainly the catholics did persecute and wipe out the cathars but that doesn't mean it's justifiable does it?

Posted by luusbueb 2006-03-28 12:42|| 2006-03-28 12:42|| Front Page Top

#15 yes, Old Spook, you are very correct. All anyone has to do is actually read the Koran and they will find sura upon sura that justifies and actually orders to kill the infidel (the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever) for these people will face "grievous chastisement". LiberalHawk has brought up a good point however it is trumped by the reforms that Christianity has undergone and the depraved, psychotic state Islam is in today. My advice is to read the Koran and pick out the small amount of verses that focus on peace between the 3 major religions, for example the verse in which it says that if a Muslim meets a Christian or Jew who is faithful to his religion and is not a hypocrite then he is your brother, and when you get into a theological discussion with any Muslim you can point out the positive. And if he doesn't listen to you, then just kill the bastard.

Posted by banned from rantburg 2006-03-28 12:47|| 2006-03-28 12:47|| Front Page Top

#16 ....their belief is as credible as the confession of a man with a gun to his head.
Well put O.S.

With Islam it's "Believe it or else."

Posted by GK 2006-03-28 12:54|| 2006-03-28 12:54|| Front Page Top

#17 as credible as the confession of a man with a gun to his head.

Strangely enough, this is a standard interrogation technique in Islamic shitholes. Go figure.

Posted by mojo">mojo 2006-03-28 13:26|| 2006-03-28 13:26|| Front Page Top

#18 "Prolly on a CIA ghost jet?"

Probably not. Today's CIA (that's Cover Institutional Ass) doesn't give any appearance of giving a rat's ass about Christians. If anything, most of them appear to be ~~Christian-~~ Bush-hating Lefties. :-(

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2006-03-28 14:05|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/page/15bk1/Home_Page.html]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/page/15bk1/Home_Page.html] 2006-03-28 14:05|| Front Page Top

#19 There are two major differences between what Islam does and what the Catholic Church did a thousand years ago: one is based on, and firmly rooted in, the faith itself, while the other was an abberation reflecting the growing power of the "divine right of kings", another abomination brought about by the lust for power, not by the words of God.

Great summation, OS! I wrote something similar on my blog a few days ago. The scales are beginning to drop from the eyes of the world, and Islam is getting a very close scrutiny by more and more people. Each day, more intelligent people see it as the blood cult it is, instead of a true "religion".

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-03-28 14:08|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-03-28 14:08|| Front Page Top

#20 Ordinarily I find OldSpook to be very clear and as accurate as I have the background to understand. But I'm afraid he overstates the case rather dramaticly here.
In a sense I have a gun to my head, or at any rate a prison cell waiting for me, if I choose to murder somebody. In OldSpook's sense I don't have the freedom to chose that crime. But in reality, I do choose, and I would choose the same whether or not there were a human law about it. And so, I think, would he. The penalty does not interfere with our freedom.
I grant you that it is a subtle point--but it is possible to choose necessity. (I could go further and quote Paul about freedom and being slaves to sin, but that would only be of interest to the Christians.)
The only reason I want to belabor this is because the conclusion you naturally draw from OldSpook's analysis is that nobody would be a Muslim if they weren't threatened to stay. That's not true. There are plenty of reasons for the average Muslim to stay Muslim: he's comfortable with it, it is part of his familiar culture, part of the way his family lives, and so on. And for the devout (who seem a minority in every religion), Islam is a religion teaching the power and glory of God and that He expects men to live rightly. That's a message that resonates now as much as it did when Muhammad (may the Lord have mercy on his miserable soul) taught it to the pagans in Medina.
It won't occur to the average Muslim that there is anything sensible to convert to. He's already got something more sophisticated than paganism, and since preaching anything besides Islam is usually prohibited, all he will know about any other religions is the impressions he gets from the media. And if Brittany Spears and Sean Penn represent the Christian West--he's already got a system of ethics better than theirs. At least to his mind. After all, he's required to give a good-sized chunk of his money to the poor, right? (Magnifying your own virtues and the other guy's vices is always comforting.)
We all know that Islam has some deadly problems with it, not least of which is rulings from these schools that claim that apostates have to be killed. I could find quite a list myself, and I'm not an expert on sharia(s). The religion is a mix of appeals to the nobility within us and appeals to greed.
But we fool ourselves if we think that Islam doesn't have serious attractions to hundreds of millions of people who don't really care about the penalties for apostasy. Enforcing a freedom of religon law or dropping Playboys over the villages--it won't make much of a difference. We're not going to change people's minds that easily. Most will still keep on with the religion of their fathers.

Posted by James">James 2006-03-28 14:14|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2006-03-28 14:14|| Front Page Top

#21 Good job of putting words in someone's mouth that never came out of it. Great way to kill a strawman.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-03-28 14:18|| 2006-03-28 14:18|| Front Page Top

#22 So James surrenders, but the rest of us are preparing for the Mother of all Awakenings.
Modern society cannot co-exists with burka wearing, megaphone praying, slave holding, dhimmitude enforcing, 8th century behavior, which defends itself via decapitation, stoning and mutilation.
If you try a little role reversal, you will soon understand how they are able to create such unrest and insecurity within societies in which they are present. When your mind is atuned to the 8th century, all things modern seem frail and unfit for survival. A shovel of dust can stop a machine forever. How great are they ? How stupid are they ? How stupid are we not to put an end to this terror ? We have allowed them to hide under the cover of religion, and now we must perform surgery to save face ? Maybe not.

Posted by wxjames 2006-03-28 15:34|| 2006-03-28 15:34|| Front Page Top

#23 The example you use of constraint against murder is specious at best. The use of the power of the state to possibly kill you when you commit violence against someone else is not morally equivalent to the initiaion of force to impose a religious belief, and then maintained said "belief" under penalty of violence and execution. To declaim it as a "subtle point" is to expose a glaring error in your grasp of morality and ethics.

Your thought process is foggy at best when it comes to the morality you are discussing, at least from that poorly drawn example you introduced.

I never said there were not people who probably believed truly, but it is also true that they had little, if any, choice in the matter. As opposed to western, and asian, societies; where the freedom to leave or change is well established, except in Islamic nations.

But it is true that for true belief and faith, it best and strongest when tested. For some, they may be able to test it inside the constratints of the threat of physical coercion that currently penultimately binds them to Islam. But have they truly believed? Its impossible to say, compared to Buddhists, Hindus, Protestants, Jews and Cathlics in the free world. They, who are exposed to and must come to terms with other beleif systems, including atheism, must preserve their beleif and faith almost daily.

Yet Islam sees such tests and truths as an attack on their entire religious structure's foundation, and respond as described in their hadiths - with violence and death, rather than passion and faith.

And exposure of Muslims in the controlled countries to the other faiths will result in a fair amount of defections from Islam to the other faiths, and to agnosticism and atheism. Probably a much more significant number than anyone estimates. After all, take a look at what happened during the enlightement and reformation to the Catholic Church, with all its defects and errors, and rampant worldliness - at a minimum it was decimated, and did not fully recover until it did much reformign of the Church and its internal and external activities. The formation of the individual Catholic/Christian involves them makking choices on their own, individually, and the Church as a corrective, not punative entity. Indeed the worst punishment today in Christianity is exclusion - being told not to come back if you are protestant or excommunicated if you are Catholic, or being "shed" from the peopel if of certain orthodos Jewish belief. But no violence initiated against the individual, and they are free to come back without any coercion exerted.

Add to that the deep and long tradition of the study of the Bible and well developed set of hermeneutics in the Catholic church as well as extensive protestant biblican scholarship - and this was built on the long tadtiion of rabbinical study in Judiasm.

Islam is almost the antitheses in that only an Imam is allowed to do this reading or research with any degree of freedom, and even then is not allowed to differ at all from the text.

Islam has no provisions for freedom to change. Islam is not a changeable relgion- the Qu'ran is considered to be the literal word of Allah, which prevents any interpretation other than sheer bloody-minded literallness, down to the last jot and ink blot. Another notable difference is that Islam is very dependant upon the local Imam, and very little an individual can say opposing him and his reading of the Qu'ran.

Such utter dependence upon authority, and utter submission to worldy power as its manifestation is nearly a polar opposite to what open societies require.

The bottom line is that Islam is apparently incapable of reform from within - few Muslims are willing to dispoute the central hadiths of thier beleif in the mandated literal forms. And as evidenced in the world today, Islam as it now exists, when given power, does not allow any dissent nor exposure to such. Check Saudi Arabia as a prime example - try taking your Bible there or wearing a crucifix, or carryign a rosary openly.

As I said in another post, its a sad indictment of Islam that they have so little faith in their "faithful".

Posted by OldSpook 2006-03-28 15:55|| 2006-03-28 15:55|| Front Page Top

#24 Old Spook, you know I adore you, and I always read your posts several times to make sure I got everything. I recently spent several happily frustrated hours trying to find the post you wrote after the contractors were hung from the bridge in Fallujah, when you wrote (#16), Like it or not, there comes a time when you have to have hard men doing hard jobs. It must be done cold, not in the heat of anger. It must be systematic. It must be deliberate. And you cannot flinch. Words I have written on my heart, to keep me strong when I weaken -- as I too often do.

But you are wrong about the history of the religion you have chosen, and to which you are such a credit. From the third century of the Common Era until the Enlightenment, Christianity was as much coerced for those who would have preferred something else as is Islam today. The religious wars that swept across Western Europe -- sometimes local affairs such as the Catholics against the Heugonots in France, or against schismatic/heretic groups in England, in Prague, and elsewhere, ended in the massacres of the dissenters, in most cases, until the time of Martin Luther when, after all of Western Europe was convulsed by decades of religious wars (and in spots German peasants were reduced to cannibalism to survive) it was concluded that the common people were to be compelled to take the religion chosen by the local ruler. Which is why even today there are Catholic and Protestant States in Germany, why the Dutch Netherlands are mainly Protestant and Belgium is Catholic. And for those who clung to a semi-recognized faith, such as the Jews, the dhimmitude, as difficult as under Islam, was real, and legal, and enforced, and sometimes deadly.

Christianity has grown up, thank God. And I would not dream of comparing any of Rantburg's Christians to the beasts of expansionist Islam, whom we are all here are fighting -- some overtly, some just by participating in this forum. Y'all are good people, open to the clash of ideas, and accept that others can believe differently without that making them (and me) evil. But it is important that those of you who are Christian accept that your religion has matured over the centuries, and taken along the way some twists that are not now comfortable to look back upon. It is a credit to Christianity's current believers that this point has been reached; y'all should be proud, not ashamed. But like it or not, and despite being an aberration from Christ's message, Old Patriot, this was a major, even the majority of the history of your religion.

But nowadays those who are Christian are so by choice, and are free to leave at will, and thus know their faith to be true. Islam remains compulsory for those born to it, and chooses by force and dhimmitude to force non-members within its societies toward it; and thus none of its members can be said to believers whose faith they know to be true because it has been tested.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-03-28 16:56|| 2006-03-28 16:56|| Front Page Top

#25 But the discussion moved on while I was still writing, darn it! Old Spook, I agree with every word of your last post -- except that I could not test Saudi Arabia by taking my bible there; as I understand it, it remains illegal for Jews to even so much as enter the country. ;-)

I do hope Mr. Rahman has safely made his escape from Afghanistan, albeit without the children he'd come back for. And I do also hope (hopefully not in vain) that the events of these last few years are the beginning of the end for hermetic Islam, able to violently repel all others, and the beginning of Islam's evolution to a citizen religion of the world. I'm not keen on being forced into a war of complete eradication of the carriers of a faith, although at this point a large number of noisy Muslims seem enthousiastic on forcing the point.

But I am grateful that we have a society strong enough to produce hard men capable and willing to make hard decisions and, coldly, deliberately and unflinchingly follow through.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-03-28 17:08|| 2006-03-28 17:08|| Front Page Top

#26 She's right on the money.

Posted by Secret Master 2006-03-28 17:18|| 2006-03-28 17:18|| Front Page Top

#27 TW,

Christianity spread for its first 400 years through the blood of its martyrs alone.

Islam's first 400 years of expansion was through the blood of those unfortunate to be in its way.

The Early Christian Fathers condemned the execution of non-believers.

Muhammed sanctioned it.

Nuff said.

Posted by Ernest Brown 2006-03-28 19:47|| saturninretrograde.blogspot.com]">[saturninretrograde.blogspot.com] 2006-03-28 19:47|| Front Page Top

#28 Ernest, Christianity spread for the first three hundred years through the force of its ideas and the sure promise of Heaven. Martyrdom isn't attractive to most people, and generally isn't a pursuasive selling point for the unconvinced, which is why Islam spread so quickly by conquest.

I do not equate the two religions, and feel comfortable with religious Christians, which I do not with religious Muslims. Ptah wrote something interesting in a discussion at another site (scroll down) which I think sums things up nicely. Go take a look, if you'd like.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-03-28 21:30|| 2006-03-28 21:30|| Front Page Top

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