Chrono Compendium
Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Legend of the Past on April 07, 2006, 04:23:01 pm
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I've had a chat with BZ lately, so it's been on my mind for a bit. Just wanted to see what the majority think. For the record: you can take my opinion as 100% biased. Also, note I'm not an Arab-hating Israeli... But at times, anger gets the best of me, and another solution other than kicking them the hell out isn't in sight.
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The eventual seed of global power will culminate out of Israel. This is what I believe but I try not to pay attention to the chaos over in the middle east. Too much crap going on.
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You know I stand in the middle-ground, favouring neither.
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We should turn the whole country into a wildlife refuge.
Really, I don't think either side wants peace, and the requirements for victory are not acceptable in this enlightened era.
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The eventual seed of global power will culminate out of Israel. This is what I believe but I try not to pay attention to the chaos over in the middle east. Too much crap going on.
How do you figure? Do you assume America will somehow rot to death?
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The eventual seed of global power will culminate out of Israel. This is what I believe but I try not to pay attention to the chaos over in the middle east. Too much crap going on.
How do you figure? Do you assume America will somehow rot to death?
I doubt it will, but Israel and America would become giant allies, and Israel would become the main hub of power in the Middle East.
We should turn the whole country into a wildlife refuge.
What a perfect solution.
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The eventual seed of global power will culminate out of Israel. This is what I believe but I try not to pay attention to the chaos over in the middle east. Too much crap going on.
How do you figure? Do you assume America will somehow rot to death?
America has a role. We just don't know what it is. I'll never have access to the agendas of countries, but that's what just might happen since America is the way it is.
Tho I agree much with Gray Lensman :P
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I support Israel. I've given my reasons in the past. The jews were given a small piece of land after the hardships they endured under Hitler. There was Israel and Palastine. But the Palastinians didn't like that too much, and the enter Arab world (just about) went to war with Israel, with Israel eventually conquering Palastine.
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I side with Israel and its people. The Palestinians are too bloodthirsty, and their neighbors are a bad influence. What these people need is relief from their troubles.
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The Palestinians are people, like you and me. They fight for land, just like most people do when someone takes their home
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The Palestinians are people, like you and me. They fight for land, just like most people do when someone takes their home
They fight for land they lost fairly (well, as fair as war can be) when they tried to take the Israeli's*
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Yes, and they battle on. Israel has always been a sought after land...Jeruselam more specifically. Remember the Crusades, Sentenal :P
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What the hell do the Crusades have to do with Palastinians attacking Israelis simply because they are there?
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Israel technically got it before Islam ever came about. But I'm with GrayLensman on this one; the Middle East is
(http://www.movies-on-dvds.com/chris_tucker.jpg)
CRAZAAAAAAAAAY
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Israel has always been a sought after land...Jeruselam more specifically
'Cept I'm pretty sure Israel didn't start that. I'm pretty sure it was the Holy Roman Empire.
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What the hell do the Crusades have to do with Palastinians attacking Israelis simply because they are there?
I'm saying how everyone
(http://www.links.net/vita/trip/japan/akita/yokote/bonden/rush/pix/cheering-sm.jpg)
wants it
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And that somehow makes it okay?
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I'm just saying that everyone wants it :roll: Its not like its only the arabs
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Now a review of your arguement:
The question: Do you support the Israelis, the Palastinians, or neither?
BZ wrote:
The Palestinians are people, like you and me. They fight for land, just like most people do when someone takes their home
Notice the "when someone takes their home" part. The addition of that implies that the Palestinians have had their homes taken from them. If you just take that, then that makes the Israelis bad guys who stole the land from the Palestinians, and they are being noble and trying to reclaim what is theirs.
Now, when I point how that they only had their homes taken because they launched an attack on Israel first. Wow, now they don't seem so noble, and the Israelis don't look so bad for taking it. BZ now has to make the Palestinians not look bad for this unwarranted aggression:
Yes, and they battle on. Israel has always been a sought after land...Jeruselam more specifically. Remember the Crusades, Sentenal
So now that he has said people have always fought over Israel, its not as bad.
What then, BZ, is your point? You have effectively argued in a circle. First, Palestinians are fighting to reclaim their homes. But wait, they are only doing that because beforehand, they had fought to take other's homes. But they only did that because thats what everyone does.
The way I see it, the arabs had brought this situation on themselves by not leaving Israel alone. Now they have to pay for their mistakes.
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Remember, Israel is far smaller than it was in the sixties. The whole Asian segment of Egypt was part of Israel, after Egypt attacked, and was defeated.
It seems to me that Israel is the only nation in the world that is not allowed to keep the land it conquers.
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The Arabs have had the land for 1200 years. The Israelis were nomadic, and at the time I believe they weren't there. Where were they? If they were there, what became of them? The Islamic Empire had expanded from Arabia to parts of Africa, the Meditaranean (sp??) and India. Its not like they went around Israel. It was just a normal part of their conquest. So yeah, they had it for 1200 years...then Zionism comes around! Now they want it back after millenium+ of not being there! If I am mistaken, correct me please.
But the British took their (Palestine) land and gave it to the Jews. Now the Palestinians are the victims (and many became refugees) and Israel is the new owner of the land. Palestine wants to take it back. To answer the dilema, where were the Jews all those many years ago?
Hope I made sense, because I think I didn't :?
EDIT: Seems it was under the rule of the Byzantine for a loooong time
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Okay, BZ. So let's just say this. Let's just say some evil guy called... Hdolf Aitler... from.... an unnamed country... led the slaughter of the Jews, and left them a wounded, dying people. And they wanted to return to their anscetral home, because, well, they're hated everywhere else. Who would you be more symphatic to, the hurt and dying Jews, who are hated everywhere or the Arabs, who have friends and members of the same religion IN EVERY COUNTRY AROUND ISRAEL?
The place is smaller than New Jersey, GIVE US A BREAK. We want a tiny strip of land so we won't conquer the world by taking control of the economy (>_>) and you STILL complain!
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This might sound ironic coming from me, but years ago (in the college newspaper biz) I recognized the Israeli-Palestinian debate as perhaps the single most pointless political feud in modern times--not because it isn't important, but because nobody ever changes their mind once they've developed an opinion, and nobody ever wants to look for a reasonable solution. This sort of absolutism is absurd; it led to me (of all people) being the only one to say "let's give the new Hamas government a chance" the last time this came up. It's just pointless. "Discussion" on the subject amounts to arguing for arguing's sake, which--perhaps again sounding ironic coming from me--is an asinine endeavor.
I'm with Israel because its government can govern and its people have their shit together. Of the Palestinians, neither is true. Israel is a spectacular flower of a country amidst a realm of dirt, driven by necessity and ideology toward innovation and prosperity. And can I help it if I admire Israel a little bit; it's the only country in the region to treat its female half of the population as human beings--including conscripting them into the military! Now that is freedom on the march.
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Yeah I guess you are right. I don't exactly want a Palestinian state. Why not a shared state? And yeah, I know its not like the Arabs would be wanting too anytime soon -.-
And this Hdolf Aitler guy sounds like a bitch :x
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Isrealis, for J's reasons, plus the fact that they were there, were driven and held captive away from it, then wanted it back when they could go back. According to history books + the bible, as reliable as they are.
Share it? That's like giving two sex depraved men the hottest girl in the world to fuck, telling them to share. Not happening.
...k, not the greatest example, but...yeah.
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Hey, the guys might share! Hasn't anyone watched Harold and Kumar: White Castle (or w/e its called)?
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How many 2 male on 1 female gangbangs have you seen/heard of outside of paid porn/movies? Me? None, outside of rape.
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I voted "Neither" but actually supports "Both" if that makes any sense. There are crazy extremists everywhere and I don't know what should be done about them. But apart from them, on both sides, there are people who don't give a crap about borders, religion dominances, countries, etc. and just want to live a decent life with normal access to water and health care.
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Hence, the shared country.
That, or the wildlife reserve 8)
And, uh, people don't tell me about their sexual adventures...so...
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We can't share a country with the Arabs. Not because of differences, but because they breed so quickly, in ten years WE'LL be the minority. No option.
I say give them Antartica. Use technology to make it worthy of normal life, and put them there. They'll have plenty of room.
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We can't share a country with the Arabs. Not because of differences, but because they breed so quickly, in ten years WE'LL be the minority. No option.
I say give them Antartica. Use technology to make it worthy of normal life, and put them there. They'll have plenty of room.
Antarctica is reserved from development by international consensus. It's also kind of cold (pun intended) to decide that a people are so inconvenient to have around that you would as soon sweep them to the ends of the Earth. You're no better than them, to be talking like that.
Furthermore, Antarctica is already the sacred capital of the Joshalonian Empire, promised to my Joshalonianites in the Holy Book of the J. No way we're giving up these rad ice sheets and totally gnarly glaciers.
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Antarctica is reserved from development by international consensus. It's also kind of cold (pun intended) to decide that a people are so inconvenient to have around that you would as soon sweep them to the ends of the Earth. You're no better than them, to be talking like that.
Oh, no, no. I meant it as a joke, but there was a hint of seriousness. There's got to be somewhere they can be. Israel isn't the perfect climatic place. Some areas are outright desert, and for a country this small...
I woulden't mind sharing Israel with them. But we can't. So if we can send them anywhere, let's send them to a place with plenty of room that can contain them. Antartica was a joke, but it'd be nice to find a good enough spot.
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Ah. I stand corrected.
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No prob. Though there are times I'd say some pretty nasty things... That's when I'm in a rotten mood, and they only make it worse. I do, however, support any solution that'll lead to both sides being pleased.
But you gotta admit it pretty sucks. Wherever we are, someone's not pleased. Either we're in Europe in the 19th century, where we're hailed as the diabolical hell-spawn bent on conquering the world, either we're in Israel, where the Arabs say we stole their land and that we suck.
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I feel I have to enlighten you guys on an aspect of Jewish people that no one seems to know about. The Jews cover it up because it makes them look bad; the Christians cover it up because it makes Jesus look bad.
Throughout the age of the Roman empire, the Israelites were a warlike state. They had originally come to glory under the reign of the king David, who had led a miraculous victory against outnumbering forces ("Goliath") to gain the Jews land. They soon lost most of it, however, and the people then came to believe that a new messiah would rise up and lead them in a military campaign to reclaim their land. Many men attempted to take on this mantle, and all failed. Eventually, the Jewish empire completely crumbled and they lost the remainder of their land.
It was at this point that some of them created a new religion, Christianity. They picked a messiah from the past, Yeshua (or the Greek "Jesus" if you prefer) and colored his actions differently. They claimed he was a prophet of peace, and that his death was the fault of other Jews, not the Romans. This eventually allowed them acceptance into the Roman empire. But that's a sidenote.
My point here is that the Jews originally lost their land through their own attempts to conquer others. They couldn't be content with what they had, and they ended up losing it. So don't judge the Palestinians any differently for doing the same thing.
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First time I've heard of that, actually, but than again, if that's true... I guess it would be covered up. Just intrested to know how it came to your knowledge, Leebot.
But sure, I never said we were angels. Far from it, some Jews are horrible people and I'm not a declared arab hater. I'm a terrorist hater, and I think everyone here would agree to that, as well. I'm not after who's right and wrong, and though it has emotional weight on me, I'm willing to completely ignore the 'Anscetral home' claim. I just gotta wonder: Do we really don't deserve this country this much?
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*shrug* Nowadays, it's just general historical knowledge for anyone who studies that period. (Of course, there are debates from Christian and Jewish historians that this isn't the truth.) I'm not a history student myself, but I read something somewhere that piqued my interest in figuring out what really happened in that era, and this is what I found.
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Furthermore, Antarctica is already the sacred capital of the Joshalonian Empire, promised to my Joshalonianites in the Holy Book of the J. No way we're giving up these rad ice sheets and totally gnarly glaciers.
Would you be so kind as to quote the verse where that comes from?
Throughout the age of the Roman empire, the Israelites were a warlike state. They had originally come to glory under the reign of the king David, who had led a miraculous victory against outnumbering forces ("Goliath") to gain the Jews land. They soon lost most of it, however, and the people then came to believe that a new messiah would rise up and lead them in a military campaign to reclaim their land. Many men attempted to take on this mantle, and all failed. Eventually, the Jewish empire completely crumbled and they lost the remainder of their land.
Well, I'm intending to be a historian of the Classical era and, though Middle-Eastern history isn't exactly my focus (I know quite a bit more about Greek history), I'll try and answer this to the best of my knowledge. In some regards, I am a student of that era of history, so I'll do my best to answer it what you've said.
Firstly, ALL states were warlike in that era, and I can very confidently say that Israel was FAR less warlike than Assyria, which existed at the same time.
Now for the rest...
Not quite. King David did not lead the Israelites to gain the land. Joshua did. Thereafter, they were still a relatively minor power in the area, despite having conquered it. Certain fortresses (such as Jebus, the city of the Jebusites - later to be called Jerusalem) remained, as did the threat of the Philistines, who had arrived in Palestine from Greece in about the same time as the Hebrews. These Philistines (Goliath amongst them) were very possible the same people who fought at Troy, now driven to the sea and eventually landing in the Levant. Anyway, as such, the forces which Goliath championed were no less invaders of Caanan than the Jews were. However, David did manage to secure the land, conquering such places as the aforementioned Jebus, making it his capital.
Now, they did not lose this very quickly at all. In fact, they kept power in the region (or, relative power - at times they were in alliance with others in order to secure it) for several hundred years. David lived about 1000 BC - the downfall of the northern kingdom was to the Assyrians, in the late 700s... nearly 300 years. The southern part, Judah, with Jerusalem as a capital, in fact outlasted the Assyrians themselves, and only fell to the Babylonians in about 600BC... after having had a lengthy run of some four hundred years being more or less the power in a VERY contested region (the entire area of Megiddo, which Ahab fortified, was the pass between Assyria and Egypt - countless battles were fought there, so that it became proverbial in Revelations as the sight of the ultimate battle.)
The Jews thereafter suffer captivities, until being returned in the reign Cyrus the Persian, likely the messianic figure to whom Isaiah refers. Now, this must be looked at in an interesting way. I well understand that the book of Isaiah is said to be the one of the most prophetic and messianic books, but that isn't depreciated. Isaiah wrote things regarding his own time - but they also, incidentially (whether known to him or not), foreshadowed the future. That's the general take on that in scholarly Theological circles, I think. Anyway, moving on, the Jews run into bit of a problem a little bit later. You see, one of Alexander's generals, Selucus, comes into power in Asia. This is alright for a time, but one of his descendants comes into bitter conflict with the Jews, setting up an idol in their temple. Many of the priests allow this, but Simon the Maccabee sets up a guerilla force, and drives off the power of the invaders, granted them freedom... for a very short time. One of his family, I think it's his brother, decides to make a political move, and allies himself with the Greek overlords, who give him the office of High Priest - a thing not allowed to the family he was part of. At that point, a division occurs. The priestly class has become a sycophantic political institution, catering to the rulers... the Sadduccees of later times.
However, dissenting groups appear, such as the Essenes, and more radically in Roman times, the Zealots. The Essenes are those that more than any other kept alive the idea of a Messiah. A third group at this time where the Pharisees. Now, the Pharisees were not the corrupt political group that the Sadducees were. In fact, they were lay people, and not even priests. At that time, most people didn't go to the temple save for special days. However, synogogues were set up, and those who frequented them to study the Law were the Pharisees. Now, this is why, in the New Testament, we see the Pharisees not exactly sure about Jesus, but often just questioning, and sometimes siding, with him. The Saducees, on the other hand, were politically oriented, and saw Jesus as a threat. Unfortunately, the Sanheedran was made up of equal numbers of Saducees and Pharisees, with the odd number being the High Priest... a Saduccee. It was the politicians, therefore, that condemned Jesus... not the religious. And, well, I think everyone else knows how the rest of everything here went. I'm remaining a historian in this, not delving into religion.
However, Jesus was not the last of the Messianic figures to arise. Simon Bar Kochba was another who appeared later, and it was at this point that the power of Rome utterly demolished Israel. My history is a little fuzzy here, but I think the rebellion of Bar Kochba was after the destruction of the temple by Vespasian.
It was at this point that some of them created a new religion, Christianity. They picked a messiah from the past, Yeshua (or the Greek "Jesus" if you prefer) and colored his actions differently. They claimed he was a prophet of peace, and that his death was the fault of other Jews, not the Romans. This eventually allowed them acceptance into the Roman empire. But that's a sidenote.
Now, on this part, it's rather difficult to judge anything by fact. I've actually never heard of the theory that they simply picked a messiah from the past, however - usually, even by those who don't believe it, it's said to be the followers who claim that there was a resurrection directly thereafter. That, I think, is the standard consensus of historians.
Well, I spoke in reference to the rest of this before. If they picked a messiah from the past, it wasn't far in the past (I think the gospels were written what, 50 years after Jesus?) Now, the death of Jesus was, as I've said, the fault of the politicans, far as we know. There's no other evidence for anything else, as it is. The only other person that speaks of Jesus is Tacitus in around 100AD, and all he says is that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate. The acceptance into the Roman empire, however, had nothing to do with an apportioning of blame. If so, they would not have been persecuted under Nero, Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, and Diocletian. And those persecutions were, indeed, unwarranted and violent (proven by Tacitus who, quite plainly, despises Christians, but makes it plain the pretext for their persecution, the Great Fire of Rome, was not their fault.) Indeed, if acceptance rested on that fact, it should have been swifter. Rather, it was only by power of general Constantine in the 300s that finally allowed for this to occur. That imperial decree, and nothing else, allowed for its adoption.
What I've said here is pretty much the standard interpretation of history for the events - from a secular view (though not contrary to anything I'd believe.)
Oh, and an absolutely useless comment that my Philhellenic mind is forcing me to say: it's not Jesus in Greek, it's Iesu. Jesus would be Latin. Or, the other Latin version of the name, which is Joshua (more direct from Yeshua.)
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Wow. There is such thing as Jebus. Wow.
I think we should give the Israelis Australia. We aren't really using it, its desert, its far away from the Middle East. But then there is the whole Zionism thing so that won't work...And the Palestinians are Arabs so they can just leak into other Arab nations...I say give Australia to hot climate Penguins...
Anyways, this Isaiah character...Muslims seem to quote him a lot. Him a Deutronomy (sp?).
And this Bar Kobcha guy, he came after Jesus? Is he considered a prophet, universally in Abrahamic Religions?
And yes, the Middle East is a shit hole. Just ignore Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait...sure these are all pro West...KSA looks ok too. I guess.
(http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/1/1b/275px-Masjidnabawi.jpg)
Am I even allowed to show you that?
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Who was the freakshow who voted Arabs . . .
I just think we need to stop involving ourselves with so many conflicts. Tho some of the things we do are very good and are needed, will there ever be a time when we will NOT intervene with the development in a country or the intervention of a countries problems?
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Who was the freakshow who voted Arabs . . .
Um...me :roll:
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Throughout the age of the Roman empire, the Israelites were a warlike state. They had originally come to glory under the reign of the king David, who had led a miraculous victory against outnumbering forces ("Goliath") to gain the Jews land. They soon lost most of it, however, and the people then came to believe that a new messiah would rise up and lead them in a military campaign to reclaim their land. Many men attempted to take on this mantle, and all failed. Eventually, the Jewish empire completely crumbled and they lost the remainder of their land.
Well, I'm intending to be a historian of the Classical era and, though Middle-Eastern history isn't exactly my focus (I know quite a bit more about Greek history), I'll try and answer this to the best of my knowledge. In some regards, I am a student of that era of history, so I'll do my best to answer it what you've said.
Firstly, ALL states were warlike in that era, and I can very confidently say that Israel was FAR less warlike than Assyria, which existed at the same time.
Now for the rest...
Not quite. King David did not lead the Israelites to gain the land. Joshua did. Thereafter, they were still a relatively minor power in the area, despite having conquered it. Certain fortresses (such as Jebus, the city of the Jebusites - later to be called Jerusalem) remained, as did the threat of the Philistines, who had arrived in Palestine from Greece in about the same time as the Hebrews. These Philistines (Goliath amongst them) were very possible the same people who fought at Troy, now driven to the sea and eventually landing in the Levant. Anyway, as such, the forces which Goliath championed were no less invaders of Caanan than the Jews were. However, David did manage to secure the land, conquering such places as the aforementioned Jebus, making it his capital.
Now, they did not lose this very quickly at all. In fact, they kept power in the region (or, relative power - at times they were in alliance with others in order to secure it) for several hundred years. David lived about 1000 BC - the downfall of the northern kingdom was to the Assyrians, in the late 700s... nearly 300 years. The southern part, Judah, with Jerusalem as a capital, in fact outlasted the Assyrians themselves, and only fell to the Babylonians in about 600BC... after having had a lengthy run of some four hundred years being more or less the power in a VERY contested region (the entire area of Megiddo, which Ahab fortified, was the pass between Assyria and Egypt - countless battles were fought there, so that it became proverbial in Revelations as the sight of the ultimate battle.)
The Jews thereafter suffer captivities, until being returned in the reign Cyrus the Persian, likely the messianic figure to whom Isaiah refers. Now, this must be looked at in an interesting way. I well understand that the book of Isaiah is said to be the one of the most prophetic and messianic books, but that isn't depreciated. Isaiah wrote things regarding his own time - but they also, incidentially (whether known to him or not), foreshadowed the future. That's the general take on that in scholarly Theological circles, I think. Anyway, moving on, the Jews run into bit of a problem a little bit later. You see, one of Alexander's generals, Selucus, comes into power in Asia. This is alright for a time, but one of his descendants comes into bitter conflict with the Jews, setting up an idol in their temple. Many of the priests allow this, but Simon the Maccabee sets up a guerilla force, and drives off the power of the invaders, granted them freedom... for a very short time. One of his family, I think it's his brother, decides to make a political move, and allies himself with the Greek overlords, who give him the office of High Priest - a thing not allowed to the family he was part of. At that point, a division occurs. The priestly class has become a sycophantic political institution, catering to the rulers... the Sadduccees of later times.
However, dissenting groups appear, such as the Essenes, and more radically in Roman times, the Zealots. The Essenes are those that more than any other kept alive the idea of a Messiah. A third group at this time where the Pharisees. Now, the Pharisees were not the corrupt political group that the Sadducees were. In fact, they were lay people, and not even priests. At that time, most people didn't go to the temple save for special days. However, synogogues were set up, and those who frequented them to study the Law were the Pharisees. Now, this is why, in the New Testament, we see the Pharisees not exactly sure about Jesus, but often just questioning, and sometimes siding, with him. The Saducees, on the other hand, were politically oriented, and saw Jesus as a threat. Unfortunately, the Sanheedran was made up of equal numbers of Saducees and Pharisees, with the odd number being the High Priest... a Saduccee. It was the politicians, therefore, that condemned Jesus... not the religious. And, well, I think everyone else knows how the rest of everything here went. I'm remaining a historian in this, not delving into religion.
However, Jesus was not the last of the Messianic figures to arise. Simon Bar Kochba was another who appeared later, and it was at this point that the power of Rome utterly demolished Israel. My history is a little fuzzy here, but I think the rebellion of Bar Kochba was after the destruction of the temple by Vespasian.
It was at this point that some of them created a new religion, Christianity. They picked a messiah from the past, Yeshua (or the Greek "Jesus" if you prefer) and colored his actions differently. They claimed he was a prophet of peace, and that his death was the fault of other Jews, not the Romans. This eventually allowed them acceptance into the Roman empire. But that's a sidenote.
Now, on this part, it's rather difficult to judge anything by fact. I've actually never heard of the theory that they simply picked a messiah from the past, however - usually, even by those who don't believe it, it's said to be the followers who claim that there was a resurrection directly thereafter. That, I think, is the standard consensus of historians.
Well, I spoke in reference to the rest of this before. If they picked a messiah from the past, it wasn't far in the past (I think the gospels were written what, 50 years after Jesus?) Now, the death of Jesus was, as I've said, the fault of the politicans, far as we know. There's no other evidence for anything else, as it is. The only other person that speaks of Jesus is Tacitus in around 100AD, and all he says is that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate. The acceptance into the Roman empire, however, had nothing to do with an apportioning of blame. If so, they would not have been persecuted under Nero, Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, and Diocletian. And those persecutions were, indeed, unwarranted and violent (proven by Tacitus who, quite plainly, despises Christians, but makes it plain the pretext for their persecution, the Great Fire of Rome, was not their fault.) Indeed, if acceptance rested on that fact, it should have been swifter. Rather, it was only by power of general Constantine in the 300s that finally allowed for this to occur. That imperial decree, and nothing else, allowed for its adoption.
What I've said here is pretty much the standard interpretation of history for the events - from a secular view (though not contrary to anything I'd believe.)
Oh, and an absolutely useless comment that my Philhellenic mind is forcing me to say: it's not Jesus in Greek, it's Iesu. Jesus would be Latin. Or, the other Latin version of the name, which is Joshua (more direct from Yeshua.)
Wow. There is such thing as Jebus. Wow.
And this I propose we call the "Comedy of Life."
I think we should give the Israelis Australia. We aren't really using it, its desert, its far away from the Middle East.
Australia is already a country, and the "desert" parts of it you would propose giving to the Israelis would be inhospitable. This would amount to a pogrom. Perhaps we should give the Israelis Saudi Arabia instead of Australia. And in exchange for giving the Jews control of your holiest cities, the Palestinians can have Jerusalem. Then everyone will live happily ever after and there won't be any more religious wars. Yep.
Furthermore, Antarctica is already the sacred capital of the Joshalonian Empire, promised to my Joshalonianites in the Holy Book of the J. No way we're giving up these rad ice sheets and totally gnarly glaciers.
Would you be so kind as to quote the verse where that comes from?
Joshua, 15:32 "And that icy world in the southmost south who sits in judgment of the affairs of humankind..."
This is part of a longer section where the Joshalonianites are being promised the four corners of the Earth in keeping with the Empire's divine rights. Notice the allusion to Antarctica's ice sheets, cited by modern historians as proof of the book's veracity and the existence of Josh.
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Who was the freakshow who voted Arabs . . .
Um...me :roll:
!!!!!!
Everyone has their own opinions I guess. My apologies for the foolish comment Zeppelin.
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Joshua, 15:32 "And that icy world in the southmost south who sits in judgment of the affairs of humankind..."
This is part of a longer section where the Joshalonianites are being promised the four corners of the Earth in keeping with the Empire's divine rights. Notice the allusion to Antarctica's ice sheets, cited by modern historians as proof of the book's veracity and the existence of Josh.
Nice! I'll have to remember that one.
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Lots of stuff...
So yeah, they had it for 1200 years...then Zionism comes around! Now they want it back after millenium+ of not being there! If I am mistaken, correct me please.
But the British took their (Palestine) land and gave it to the Jews. Now the Palestinians are the victims (and many became refugees) and Israel is the new owner of the land. Palestine wants to take it back. To answer the dilema, where were the Jews all those many years ago?
First, let me explain something. The British created a state for the Palastine also. There was Israel, and Palastine. They could do that because they had liberated the area from the Turks. But after they were created, Palastine attacked Israel. They counterattacked, and took Palastine. They got what they had coming to them.
Yeah I guess you are right. I don't exactly want a Palestinian state. Why not a shared state? And yeah, I know its not like the Arabs would be wanting too anytime soon -.-
Looks like you answered your question, and also pointed out the unreasonable party in all this.
And Daniel, nice informative post :)
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I think we should give the Israelis Australia. We aren't really using it, its desert, its far away from the Middle East.
Australia is already a country, and the "desert" parts of it you would propose giving to the Israelis would be inhospitable. This would amount to a pogrom. Perhaps we should give the Israelis Saudi Arabia instead of Australia. And in exchange for giving the Jews control of your holiest cities, the Palestinians can have Jerusalem. Then everyone will live happily ever after and there won't be any more religious wars. Yep.
Oh yeah totally. No religious wars. And yeah, we don't need Australia. Pfft.
How large was this Palestinian State Sentenal?
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The same size as the Israeli state. It was divided between them.
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Yeah. You are right. Too bad Britain went behind the Palestinians back and did something the Palestinians didnt want. See, Israelis DID live in palestine before, but because the Zionist movement wanted their own state, they had to go and get their own state. The Israel went off to conquer Syria and Egypt (well parts)
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Personally, from what I know, I blame the whole mess on the British empire. They promised the land to France, the Arabs, and the Jews. Smart move, eh?
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I think we should give the Israelis Australia.
Maybe we'll give the Palestinines Australia?
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I'd say we give the convicts Australia, but that's already been done...
(Just thought I'd say that, because I've got no bloody clue how Australia got dragged into this.)
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Personally, from what I know, I blame the whole mess on the British empire. They promised the land to France, the Arabs, and the Jews. Smart move, eh?
Well...France got everything else...
I think we should give the Israelis Australia.
Maybe we'll give the Palestinines Australia?
Yeah but the Palestinians are so stubborn. Plus, in Palestine the Arab chain of nation continues
I'd say we give the convicts Australia, but that's already been done...
(Just thought I'd say that, because I've got no bloody clue how Australia got dragged into this.)
Just a joke :wink:
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Plus, in Palestine the Arab chain of nation continues
Which is why the Palestinians SHOULDEN'T get Israel, in my opinion. Spice it up a bit, less Jihad crazed countries.
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Um...how does that make sense? Most of the religious hatred is going towards the Israeli state and its allies...
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Um...how does that make sense? Most of the religious hatred is going towards the Israeli state and its allies...
YOUR religion's hatred.
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Nuke them. Nuke them all. This moronic issue will be argued and fought to death until one side or the other has no one left. And you all know that. I'd rather both sides be eliminated than EVER allow one side to win, frankly no one deserves it.
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Nuke them. Nuke them all. This moronic issue will be argued and fought to death until one side or the other has no one left. And you all know that. I'd rather both sides be eliminated than EVER allow one side to win, frankly no one deserves it.
Okay, that's a bit extreme... But if you don't like neither, sure...
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You know what we need over there? Separation of church and state. Have a secular nation, and let people practice whatever religion they want. But if we can't manage it in America, no way we'll be able to manage it there. (Canada and certain European countries, on the other hand, do seem to be able to manage it.)
Daniel - Thanks for correcting me there, I was working off of somewhat vague memory of what went on in that time. Thanks for posting that; understanding the actual history should give us all some better perspective.
Now, since you raised a few questions about what I said regarding Jesus, I'll give you a few references that, if nothing else, shed doubt on the Christian claim of history: Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51, and Luke 22:36, all from the Bible, and all quotes of Jesus. I'm not quoting them here as for potentially inflammatory stuff like this, I feel it's better if Christians who might get mad go out and see for themselves exactly what it says.
(And no, I'm not saying all Christians are like this, but some are, so I'm being cautious because of them.)
Basically, these all directly contradict the idea that Jesus was a peacemaker. If they idea of him as a peacemaker was true, why would they have been included? The church had plenty of opportunity to edit it, and would have gotten rid of them if they were false. Now, if he actually said these things, then the rest is probably a fabrication to make him appear peaceful. These were left in because they're true, and there were too many pushing for the truth to omit them. The rest were in because they painted Jesus as a peacemaker.
As for their blaming the Jews--I didn't say it was a very successful attempt. And personally, if the theory of Jesus being a messiah-guerrilla is correct, the fault of his death lies at his own hands. He committed an act of war and attacked a governmental institution, a crime punishable by death. And death he got for it.
A few more corrections to what I said following Jesus' death, after checking some source material: The key here is that after his death, many of his followers had visions of him (probably dreams). The gospels already had the idea of a messiah who ressurects to finish his duty, so they took these as signs that he would come back. This is why, unlike other messiahs who were abandoned after failing, the Jesus cult stuck around. In 68 AD, after a miserably failed war against Rome and the ascent of the two Roman generals of that war--Vespasian and Titus--to the rulership of Rome, the cult changed. It was now more practical to claim to be peaceful rather than warlike; if they were warlike, they'd have been slaughtered immediately. This is the era in which the gospels were written. Of course, enough of Jesus' actual disciples were still living that knew the truth that elements of what Jesus actually said slipped in.
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You know what we need over there? Separation of church and state. Have a secular nation, and let people practice whatever religion they want. But if we can't manage it in America, no way we'll be able to manage it there. (Canada and certain European countries, on the other hand, do seem to be able to manage it.)
Daniel - Thanks for correcting me there, I was working off of somewhat vague memory of what went on in that time. Thanks for posting that; understanding the actual history should give us all some better perspective.
Now, since you raised a few questions about what I said regarding Jesus, I'll give you a few references that, if nothing else, shed doubt on the Christian claim of history: Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51, and Luke 22:36, all from the Bible, and all quotes of Jesus. I'm not quoting them here as for potentially inflammatory stuff like this, I feel it's better if Christians who might get mad go out and see for themselves exactly what it says.
(And no, I'm not saying all Christians are like this, but some are, so I'm being cautious because of them.)
Basically, these all directly contradict the idea that Jesus was a peacemaker. If they idea of him as a peacemaker was true, why would they have been included? The church had plenty of opportunity to edit it, and would have gotten rid of them if they were false. Now, if he actually said these things, then the rest is probably a fabrication to make him appear peaceful. These were left in because they're true, and there were too many pushing for the truth to omit them. The rest were in because they painted Jesus as a peacemaker.
As for their blaming the Jews--I didn't say it was a very successful attempt. And personally, if the theory of Jesus being a messiah-guerrilla is correct, the fault of his death lies at his own hands. He committed an act of war and attacked a governmental institution, a crime punishable by death. And death he got for it.
A few more corrections to what I said following Jesus' death, after checking some source material: The key here is that after his death, many of his followers had visions of him (probably dreams). The gospels already had the idea of a messiah who ressurects to finish his duty, so they took these as signs that he would come back. This is why, unlike other messiahs who were abandoned after failing, the Jesus cult stuck around. In 68 AD, after a miserably failed war against Rome and the ascent of the two Roman generals of that war--Vespasian and Titus--to the rulership of Rome, the cult changed. It was now more practical to claim to be peaceful rather than warlike; if they were warlike, they'd have been slaughtered immediately. This is the era in which the gospels were written. Of course, enough of Jesus' actual disciples were still living that knew the truth that elements of what Jesus actually said slipped in.
Hmmm... those are some interesting points. Yes, there are some things, you are right, that seem to contradict the Jesus-peacemaker portrayal. I'll have to think about that a bit.
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You know what we need over there? Separation of church and state. Have a secular nation, and let people practice whatever religion they want. But if we can't manage it in America, no way we'll be able to manage it there. (Canada and certain European countries, on the other hand, do seem to be able to manage it.)
Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, everyone would not agree because of their bias towards like everything in life. Everyone should have a right to practice their own religion (regarding flying planes into buildings for Mohammed, stupid towel heads like them need to get slapped) freely. But their will always be opposition of the people in regards to certain religious beliefs.
I wish some day we will all stop harming one another and killing each other. When will that time come when we finally say, what the hell are we doing, and why did we ever do shit like that?
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You know what we need over there? Separation of church and state. Have a secular nation, and let people practice whatever religion they want. But if we can't manage it in America, no way we'll be able to manage it there. (Canada and certain European countries, on the other hand, do seem to be able to manage it.)
Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, everyone would not agree because of their bias towards like everything in life. Everyone should have a right to practice their own religion (regarding flying planes into buildings for Mohammed, stupid towel heads like them need to get slapped) freely. But their will always be opposition of the people in regards to certain religious beliefs.
I wish some day we will all stop harming one another and killing each other. When will that time come when we finally say, what the hell are we doing, and why did we ever do shit like that?
Shockingly enough, the majority of Israelis support this. However, the orthodox Jews are very much considered of having a powerful pull over things. That's why we don't have a constitution; the Orthodox say 'But we have the Bible! Who needs a stinkin' constitution?' To this I would reply: 'Any country that wants to be unified. Like us.'
Oh, and Leebot, when discussion Israel, avoid saying seperation of 'Church and state'. That line is wrong due to the region we're discussing. And state. Of course, you're right. We need that, but like I said... I just hope this problem gets by.
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Nuke them. Nuke them all. This moronic issue will be argued and fought to death until one side or the other has no one left. And you all know that. I'd rather both sides be eliminated than EVER allow one side to win, frankly no one deserves it.
What a grotesque suggestion, the more so because of the ignorance in which it was borne. I should rather we nuke the naysayers.
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Yeah. You are right. Too bad Britain went behind the Palestinians back and did something the Palestinians didnt want. See, Israelis DID live in palestine before, but because the Zionist movement wanted their own state, they had to go and get their own state. The Israel went off to conquer Syria and Egypt (well parts)
Wait, let me get this straight. Right now, your for the Palastinians getting their own state, but against the exact same thing for the Jews 60 years ago? Double standard, anyone?
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You know what we need over there? Separation of church and state. Have a secular nation, and let people practice whatever religion they want. But if we can't manage it in America, no way we'll be able to manage it there. (Canada and certain European countries, on the other hand, do seem to be able to manage it.)
Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, everyone would not agree because of their bias towards like everything in life. Everyone should have a right to practice their own religion (regarding flying planes into buildings for Mohammed, stupid towel heads like them need to get slapped) freely. But their will always be opposition of the people in regards to certain religious beliefs.
I wish some day we will all stop harming one another and killing each other. When will that time come when we finally say, what the hell are we doing, and why did we ever do shit like that?
Oh yeah. Totally. They're doing it for Muhammad. I mean ALL Muslims believe that a dead person wishes them to fly planes into buildings :roll:
None of you would believe me, but no Muslims want war. Period. Except in the "Final Days" context...
Lol. Towel heads. Good one :roll:
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None of you would believe me, but no Muslims want war. Period. Except in the "Final Days" context...
Oh, I believe you. I have some familiarity with Islam, and I know that it on the whole advocates peace and tolerance. Judging Islam by those terrorists is like judging Christianity by the Ku Klux Klan.
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I know Jihad never meant blowing yourself up on the bus, but history does state that Muhammad wasn't very good with keeping promises. That draws similarities with Arafat.
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Need one really bring religion into this?
I seriously think that this is in no measure a religous conflict, but almost solely a political - and racial - one. A land war, essentially. It's true that there are those few that use it as a way to band fantatics to their cause - and maybe, just maybe, a few of such leaders that actually believe it themselves. But by and large, I think those people are essentially after power, or a legacy, or some such thing. If they think they're doing it for God, it is their own ambition that has corrupted their faith till the point where they still see it as faith, but all it is is bloodlust masked with the name of religion. And it gives their faith a very bad name in the process.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but the idea of going to war against another people on religious grounds seems so foreign. Or maybe it's my western upbringing that instilled that in me. But for most of history, religion has just been an apt excuse for the warmonger. Ever since the old kings of the ancient world claimed their divine right to rule the world, since Assyria's kings went to war in conquest in the name of the god Ashur... and all the way down to such things as the Hundred Years War, the cause of religion has been a mask for the bloodthirsty people with political ambition. But for me... I can never see myself thinking 'God wants these people killed.'
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You can't avoid going into religion here. Religion is the reason the Jews insisted on setteling here (It's a well known fact we could have been at Oganda, but chose not to because Israel is our religious home). Arabic terrorist organizations use religion to draw the masses around themselves and, excuse the term, brainwash citizens to become terrorist-bombers.
Asking us to take religion out of this is like asking to take out colonisation out of a discussion about the indians. You take out the reason. Right now it's a political struggle, but it started as religous and still has religion has quiet it's roots in it.
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None of you would believe me, but no Muslims want war. Period. Except in the "Final Days" context...
Oh, I believe you. I have some familiarity with Islam, and I know that it on the whole advocates peace and tolerance. Judging Islam by those terrorists is like judging Christianity by the Ku Klux Klan.
Why should the observances of these religious people over here somehow overrule the observances of those religious people over there? On whose mortal authority are the peaceniks of Islam judged to be “truer” Muslims than those who believe in bringing war to their enemies? Join me below as I reply to Daniel Krispin’s post…
Need one really bring religion into this? I seriously think that this is in no measure a religous conflict, but almost solely a political - and racial - one. A land war, essentially.
If “this” is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or even the broader instability of the Middle East in general, it would be impossible not to bring religion into the discussion. Religion is at the heart of these conflicts. Perhaps your belief that religion has always been the victim of aggression rather than the perpetrator of it would influence your otherwise historically considerate mind.
There are political games afoot in the Middle East; this much is true. Every government in the region has its own strategic interests, and politics could no more be excluded from the equation than religion. I grant you this point without debate.
On the other hand, I would disagree completely that this is a “racial” conflict. Judaism is a religion, not a race, and many Jews consider it a slur to be referred to as their own racial group—for obvious reasons. Certainly many enemies of Israel or of Jews would like to think of Jews as comprising an inferior race, but these considerations have little biological veracity and the continuous dispersions of the historical Jewish people have actually given Jews a noteworthy racial diversity when considered as a group. If we must speak racially, many native Israelis are Semites—as are many Arabs. The Middle Eastern conflicts, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, are not Semitic in motivation.
As an aside, you did not mention the word specifically, but there is room to ask whether Judaism is an ethnicity. This depends on how you define ethnicity, and I personally would not consider it to be a productive discussion in this context, because the same people who like to think of Judaism as a race are apt to call it an ethnicity as well, and then allege “Same thing.”
So far we have it that you are right about the conflict as containing a measure of political intrigue, and wrong about it as being racist in nature. Therefore when you describe a “land war,” you are saying the right thing for the wrong reasons. Yes, the dispute between Israel and its neighbors, including the Palestinian territories in particular, and between the various Arab states who are fond of quarreling amongst themselves as well, is certainly a “land war,” but this is not a war for oil or farmland. This is a war over sacred land—at least in the eyes of the combatants—which absolutely necessitates a religious component. The additional factor is the strategic defense of each of the nations involved; no one wants to be drawn off the map. Nevertheless, it is overwhelmingly a set of religious rather than strategic concerns that make Israel such a tempting foe for Muslims. Be open-minded and admit this truth; this is not your religion under the microscope, and so you have nothing to lose.
It's true that there are those few that use [religion] as a way to band fantatics to their cause - and maybe, just maybe, a few of such leaders that actually believe it themselves. But by and large, I think those people are essentially after power, or a legacy, or some such thing. If they think they're doing it for God, it is their own ambition that has corrupted their faith till the point where they still see it as faith, but all it is is bloodlust masked with the name of religion. And it gives their faith a very bad name in the process.
This is what Leebot mentioned, in so many words: the old “hijacked religion” belief. By this theory, when religious people commit crimes in the name of their religion, a chorus arises to sing that these people are not genuine believers taken by holy zeal, but evil terrorists and thugs whose interests are selfish and unrighteous. This is a very common argument nowadays, used by conciliatory but shortsighted people to defend against blanket statements like “all Muslims want to kill Americans.” Yet for all its good intentions this bit of rhetoric is just plain phony, and I will tell you why:
Step outside of every religion, just for a moment, and look at the world from an agnostic point of view: The Earth is crawling with competing faiths, most of which contrarily claim that their dogma alone is God’s Truth. These religions can’t all be right, and even at best the vast majority of them are wrong. Stepping back into your own religion, you can agree: Yours is right; theirs are not.
As it goes between the world’s religions, so it goes between the adherents of any one religion. Every religion on Earth has sects or denominations which represent conflicting dogma within a larger religious mythos. Christianity is famous for its extremely diverse, wildly violent sectarianism. But Islam has its own sects too, which are famous in their own right for fighting incessantly with one another in the name of a Higher plan. You can agree with this, too; you admitted once to being an unapologetic, old-world Lutheran, and you have gone out of your way to impose it upon me that you distance yourself from the tactics and beliefs of the American Religious Right. So those “other Christians” over there are out of line, yes? Prolly going to Hell, too. Well, you can bet that most people who belong to a religious sect with your degree of fervor feel the same way you do.
As it goes between sects, so it goes between individuals. Religious sects never represent a harmony of thought. The only religious harmony in the world is the solo, and individuals who belong to the same religion and the same sect in that religion will still find “very important” points of contention amongst themselves, worthy in their eyes of an unending quarrel. If the infighting gets bad enough, old leaders will be deposed, or new sects will form, or a massacre will silence the opposition. But the fighting always continues. Everybody thinks they alone are right, either they themselves or their surrogate demagogues, and their quarreling outpaces the multitudes and outlives the generations. No devout person has ever sincerely told me, “I am against God’s Will in this, while my enemies’ ways are true.” At the end of the day, religious people all want exactly the same thing: They want to be acknowledged that their particular faith is God’s Own. And many of them will die, and kill, for that acknowledgement. That is religious zeal.
What is so pathetic is that the acknowledgement they crave is not God’s, but those of their fellow human beings, which brings me back to my original question: Who among us is authorized to judge this? Who among us in the mortal world has the authority to say “I speak for GOD”? When two people look at the same Bible verse and draw divergent conclusions, who arbitrates the dispute? Likewise, who gets to decide that Muslims whose zeal compels them to dive-bomb skyscrapers are less “Muslim” than those who would abhor the violent slaughter of civilian lives and the wanton destruction of valuable property? The holy texts themselves? Nope. Religious extremism is almost always the product of people acting in their faith. What was it that Luther himself did? Was that selfish terrorism, do you think?
Don’t tell me about Cardinals and fatwahs. The same question arises again: Who invests these Cardinals with their power? Who declares the Sheiks to be representative of God’s Will? Even if the holy texts really are the Word of God, who resolves disputes in the interpretation? Who has the power to speak for God?
At the end of the day, any institution on Earth that claims to possess this authority is lying to itself, and deluding its people. Religions strive for a unified, official dogma, leading to the creation of councils and hierarchies and orders, but these artifices are always going to be the handiwork of human beings. Yes, yes, each will claim that God has blessed or otherwise sanctioned the legitimacy of whatever council, but that is just another statement of what I said before: Everyone thinks their own faith is the real McCoy. No one can prove their claim; it is always a matter of faith.
The fact of the matter is, Daniel—and you too, Leebot—that for every Mother Theresa there is a Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. We may wish, for our own selfish purposes, to believe that one was God’s child while the other was not, but the faith of these two people was sincere, and the same ineffability of faith that the devout claim protects their religion from the realities of science and industry, also prevents them from ever passing absolute judgment as to the sincerity and righteousness of their fellow human beings. The same shield that protects their belief from reality, isolates each believer unto his or her own, lonely island.
I am prepared to accept that the terrorists who struck us on September 11 were sincere, devout Muslims, whose actions were honestly committed in God’s name, not for their own glory but for His, not for their own vengeance but for His. I am prepared to accept that just as I am prepared to accept the claims of those who call themselves Muslim but would categorically renounce such destructive deeds. Anybody gets to belong to whatever religion they want, and they get to interpret their religion however they want. Whether or not their faith is true is a matter for them and God, not for you or I.
So consider this, Daniel Krispin: You are not God. You have no authority to decide which Muslims are true Muslims. It is not going to destroy your faith to admit that the faith of other people is, however misplaced, equally sincere. And to deny this truth further, will disservice none more than you. You speak crudely of ambition, but ambition is not an enemy of the Almighty. It is the enabler of our own will. What we do with our willpower can be holy, or profane. Do not dismiss criminal acts as inherently, implicitly, or unknowingly nonreligious, when the perpetrators of these acts sincerely devote their earthly actions to a Higher power. You have no authority to decide what another person’s faith will be.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but the idea of going to war against another people on religious grounds seems so foreign.
Your faith is an interesting country.
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It's a well known fact we could have been at Oganda, but chose not to because Israel is our religious home.
I looked up Uganda on Wikipedia, and I'm genuinely curious how that would have turned out.
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I realize that on the Jewish side its all about religion, but Islam has nothing to do with this. Them (the Palestinians) would not listen to anything lest it be a command from God. Thats why rebels are using terrorism, as a grounds to gain the support of the masses. Except for the age old "Islam~Jew Hatred" which basically started with Zionism (If God wants us to kill Jews so much, why are they a protected religion in an Islamic Caliphate? :roll: ), religion on the Muslims side doesn't come in here. You must realize that not all Palestinians are Muslim. Many are Christian, and quite a lot are actually Jewish. So basically, you're right Legend.
None of you would believe me, but no Muslims want war. Period. Except in the "Final Days" context...
Oh, I believe you. I have some familiarity with Islam, and I know that it on the whole advocates peace and tolerance. Judging Islam by those terrorists is like judging Christianity by the Ku Klux Klan.
Why should the observances of these religious people over here somehow overrule the observances of those religious people over there? On whose mortal authority are the peaceniks of Islam judged to be “truer” Muslims than those who believe in bringing war to their enemies?
Why you ask? The whole goal of Islam was to make the Muslim people, or ummah one. It is basically forbidden to split the Ummah into sects. That is why so many sheiks and imams and what have you say.
"Boy...if anyone asks you whether you are Shi'ite or Sunni...say you are a Muslim"
The point of that was is that Josh said that why are peaceful muslims deemed truer Muslims than warmongers. Whose authority you say? Well, most Muslims believe in God...so I would say...wait...umm...possibly...God. Seriously, you may think that war is a giant part of Islam, but it is not. I don't see war in the things that make you a Muslim. I however see giving to the poor a necessity. How 'bout the fact that patience and cleansliness are some of the giant parts in being a Muslim?
This is definetely not a racial conflict (I hate when people call this a war -.- ) and quite possibly not a religious one. This is Land, plain and simple. It is not because it is holy. It is the land. Land. The most precious, most fought over, most loved possession. Strangely enough, the thing is that this denies Arafat his martydom. He is not fighting for God. He is fighting for his people. Well, was. A cause that is noble, I'll give him that, but a cause not embedded into Islam. One could argue that he is fighting oppression. Josh will almost definetely take this the wrong way, but hey, I've grown to love him, and put up with his oh so cute antics.
And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. [2:191]
and turn them out from where they have Turned you out: if anything this is what the Muslims are using as a basis to attack the Israelis. However...Such is the reward of those who suppress faith: One could debate about this, and whether they actually are supressing faith or not.
More quotes, possibly to do with this topic...
* "You are neither hard-hearted nor of fierce character, nor one who shouts in the markets. You do not return evil for evil, but excuse and forgive." (Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 362)
* "Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman" (Abu Dawud)
* "Do not kill the monks in monasteries" or "Do not kill the people who are sitting in places of worship". (Musnad of Ibn Hanbal)
Sunnis believe that one of the most general and encompassing rules of warfare in Islam was given by Abu Bakr to an Islamic army set out for Syria. Abu Bakr was Muhammad's first successor and is considered by Sunnis to have been his closest friend.
Abu Bakr is reputed to have said:
* "Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone."
It is not like we don't want peace Josh. Christians do, Jews do, Hindus do, Buddhists do...and so forth. I know where you are going, but ask any Muslim on the street, and s/he will tell you that they wouldn't mind a world with all the religions, and that as long as there is peace, it is good. But I know where you are going, and sadly, you are almost definetely right.
I know Jihad never meant blowing yourself up on the bus, but history does state that Muhammad wasn't very good with keeping promises. That draws similarities with Arafat.
Explain. I'll counter you afterwards :P and say how during his time, the Jewish tribes broke the promises too.
You can't avoid going into religion here. Religion is the reason the Jews insisted on setteling here (It's a well known fact we could have been at Oganda, but chose not to because Israel is our religious home). Arabic terrorist organizations use religion to draw the masses around themselves and, excuse the term, brainwash citizens to become terrorist-bombers.
Asking us to take religion out of this is like asking to take out colonisation out of a discussion about the indians. You take out the reason. Right now it's a political struggle, but it started as religous and still has religion has quiet it's roots in it.
Zionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism)
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I realize that on the Jewish side its all about religion, but Islam has nothing to do with this.
Denial. How can you seriously deny that Islam is not a guiding factor in this regional conflict? In a single stroke you have missed the entire point of my last post, which is that we do not have the authority to decide who is interpreting his or her religion "correctly," and who is not. Islamic militancy is no less a part of Islam than is Islamic altruism. For all your claims that any Muslim would preach peace and tolerance, there are millions who want blood, and thousands who have taken it. You cannot defend your religion by saying that people who commit violence in service of the same god you worship are not true believers whose actions are sincere. Islamic scripture has enough invocations to violence, and more than enough room for interpretation of toward the same end, to provide a religious grounding for what has become the most bloodthirsty and violent religion in modern times. Why deny what is so brazenly obvious? Are you truly that naďve, or do you have an agenda?
Islam is not a place, or a people. When it comes to describing Islam's near-universal enmity toward Israel--and toward the West--what we are talking about is a religious grudge. Despite the assertions of the faithful, no religion is absolute in its nature. Every religion changes with the times as people demand different things from it. Islam has become the main opponent of the postindustrial developed world. To a large extent, Islamic hatred of Israel and of the West has always been religious in nature. However, to the extent this contempt was also rooted in geopolitics, Islam has since become the grounds for expressing and justifying that as well. Such is what Daniel meant when he said that those who conceal their actions in the shrouds of religion are not being true to that religion, but what he ignored--and what you have also failed to see--is that a religion answers to its practitioners, and not the other way around. No matter how immutable a holy text may be, there is a different interpretation of it for every pair of eyes on the planet. No matter how obvious "God's will" may seem to you, others will find it equally obvious that God's will is something quite different. It will always be this way, because religion denies rational truth in favor of personal faith. The scientific tools that might conclusively establish an "official" version of Islam, or any other religion, are always rejected by the devout. No sacular or sacred authority can impose itself on the faith of religious believers, because faith is inherently an irrational thing and answers to no external power. Not even God could resolve this mess, short of overriding the will of everybody on Earth. (Or cooking the books.) (In fact, most human institutions are like this; it is just as unreasonable to expect that one perfectly uniform political party comprising all citizens would result from the singularness of the US Constitution.)
Them (the Palestinians) would not listen to anything lest it be a command from God. Thats why rebels are using terrorism, as a grounds to gain the support of the masses. Except for the age old "Islam~Jew Hatred" which basically started with Zionism (If God wants us to kill Jews so much, why are they a protected religion in an Islamic Caliphate? :roll: ), religion on the Muslims side doesn't come in here.
Zeppy, if your life were as miserable, or empty, as some people's are, and you felt that a particular Enemy was the cause of all your woe, you too might resort to terrorism in hopes of shedding your oppressor's yokes and improving the quality of life of yourself and those you care about. Terrorism is perfectly understandable, whether or not you would condone it yourself. Yet you speak of Palestinian militants as rebels, and their tactic of choice you call terrorism. This is a misreading. Never mind that your "rebels" now control the Palestinian government; it is their religion that fuels their continuing hatred. It is their religion that is the aggressor in all of this, and not the bystander. Islam has become the conduit for their hate, just as it has for the hatred of Muslims everywhere on Earth. Islamic militancy resonates with ordinary Palestinian people and with Muslims all over the world--people who behead innocent civilians in Iraq, loot businesses and burn cars in France to protest their own inability to assimilate, and riot all over the Earth in revenge for a political cartoon. Christians have their own reasons for calling Islamic militancy "Islamofascism," but their phrase is not far from the truth. It is not the devilish work of terrorists who corrupt Islam for their own gains; it is Islam itself which gives form to these terrorists in the first place.
How could you deny it? Israel is a small, mostly arid country with few natural resources and no oil. There is no geographical reason for it to be so enormously despised. And the "Zionism" that you and many secular liberals vilify so ignorantly is just the cultural movement that led to Israel's creation in the first place, and the politics of its subsequent self-preservation. Zionism and Israel are inseparable; you cannot support one and not the other. Those who rail against Zionism are attacking Israel. And what is the only prize of any worth in Israel? Sacred land. Sacred land, as in "holy," or "reflecting religious values." And who controls Israel? The Jews! The fact that this thread exists at all, and has evolved into a repugnant "Where should Israel be relocated to?" game is just another piece of evidence supporting the overwhelmingly obvious truth that religion in general and Islam in particular are immensely rooted in this entire morass.
You must realize that not all Palestinians are Muslim. Many are Christian, and quite a lot are actually Jewish.
This is a red herring. The CIA World Factbook reports the Muslim population of the Gaza strip to be 98.7 percent, and 75 percent in the West Bank. It is not Christians and Jews who represent the prevailing character of the Palestinian people as a whole. Your attempts to mislead are rebuffed.
None of you would believe me, but no Muslims want war. Period. Except in the "Final Days" context...
Oh, I believe you. I have some familiarity with Islam, and I know that it on the whole advocates peace and tolerance. Judging Islam by those terrorists is like judging Christianity by the Ku Klux Klan.
Why should the observances of these religious people over here somehow overrule the observances of those religious people over there? On whose mortal authority are the peaceniks of Islam judged to be “truer” Muslims than those who believe in bringing war to their enemies?
Why you ask? The whole goal of Islam was to make the Muslim people, or ummah one. It is basically forbidden to split the Ummah into sects. That is why so many sheiks and imams and what have you say.
"Boy...if anyone asks you whether you are Shi'ite or Sunni...say you are a Muslim"
Leebot is simply wrong on this point; call it a misguided attempt to separate terrorism from its benefactor religion--and see my previous post.
As for you, Burning Z, I contest any number of your claims. I don't care if it is "forbidden" to split the Muslim people into sects; that is what has happened. By your logic, every Muslim in the world who affiliates with any sect is in violation of religious doctrine and is therefore somehow less of a Muslim. Poppycock! Shi'ite, Sunni...are these factions just a delusion? Is the civil war in Iraq just a bad dream? Will we wake up tomorrow and find that every Muslim alive has renounced all sectarianism? No. The divisions between Muslim sects, however ridiculous they may seem to nonreligious people like me (I like the way Jon Stewart described it), are sincere points of contention that many religious devouts believe to be irreconcilable.
The point of that was is that Josh said that why are peaceful muslims deemed truer Muslims than warmongers. Whose authority you say? Well, most Muslims believe in God...so I would say...wait...umm...possibly...God.
Let me try again to explain my point. Why are peaceful Muslims deemed truer to their god's will than warmonger Muslims? Because warmongers and pacifists alike claim to be of the same religion, and you--you, Burning Z--have no authority to say whether one party's claims are superior.
By appealing to the authority of God, you failed to understand the very crucial idea I have been describing in this post and in my last: You are not God. You have no authority to say what God thinks of the religious faith of others. Warmongers believe in God too, and they might say you are the one who is not a true Muslim. Are they wrong? Yes, they are as wrong as you are. No human being--and no religious order--has the divine authority to decide whether other people are sincere in their faith. God commands some to be tolerant; God commands others to shed blood. Only God can say whose deeds are good and whose are bad. This is the price of faith: Believers renounce their authority to eliminate the sincerity of the faith of others. If one person in the whole world is allowed to take a belief on faith, then everyone is allowed to believe whatever they like, on faith. When we read the Holy Book, we have only our own human faculties to interpret it.
So don't tell me that because Muslims believe in God, this somehow translates into a blessing from God on your version of Islam and not someone else's. You may fool many people with that kind of spurious logic, but you won't fool me.
Seriously, you may think that war is a giant part of Islam, but it is not. I don't see war in the things that make you a Muslim. I however see giving to the poor a necessity. How 'bout the fact that patience and cleansliness are some of the giant parts in being a Muslim?
Islam is the bloodiest religion in modern times. Believe it or don't, but the truth is still the same. Islam in this century is like Christianity of centuries past: The scourge of all that is decent, and the enabler of all that is profane. Islam is insanity. When one person believes in illusions, we call this person disturbed. But when one billion believe in the same illusions, we call it a religion. I can tolerate benign religions; we all have some eccentricities, after all. But militant religions I will not suffer. Islam, in its current form, is even worse an evil than the Christianity that threatens my own country with tyrannical theocratic rule. Islam has positioned itself--through the voices of its followers--as the enemy of the entire West, and is so violent that it even turns on itself from day to day. Fanatical Muslims want blood, and yet they are still Muslims. This is not the Earth of your childhood or of your daydreams. It is time for you to grow up and understand that religion is a dangerous thing, whether or not the religion itself is "good" or "bad." Dangerous.
Deny this at the peril of us all.
This is definetely not a racial conflict (I hate when people call this a war -.- ) and quite possibly not a religious one. This is Land, plain and simple. It is not because it is holy. It is the land. Land. The most precious, most fought over, most loved possession.
The Palestinian people are as new to the region as the Israelis. This is not about land. Ireland and Irish terrorism against Britain--that was about land. (But, of course, there was also a Christian sectarian conflict to puff everything up to even more insane proportions. See a trend?) As I said before, Israel is an unremarkable piece of land, and the Palestinian people who claim it were not even a people until the mid-twentieth century. Only religion can explain the motive for, and continuation of, this pointless war. Israel is the capital of the four-way religious war between Islam and Judaism, Islam and Christianity, Islam and the West, and Christianity and Judaism.
Josh will almost definetely take this the wrong way, but hey, I've grown to love him, and put up with his oh so cute antics.
It is a slow day at work, and I am glad to have something to write about. It is always a pleasure to bring reality and enlightenment to the great Burning Zeppelin.
And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. [2:191]
I think you should sit down and actually read that book of yours sometime. Fortunately for you, there are those who have already done so, and can guide your reading with helpful commentary as to the grounds on which militants might base their militancy, or justify the strife between Islam and other religions, or between the sects of Islam. Here is a sample:
2: The Cow
# Don't bother to warn the disbelievers. Allah has blinded them. Theirs will be an awful doom. 2:6
# Allah has sickened their hearts. A painful doom is theirs because they lie. 2:10
# A fire has been prepared for the disbelievers, whose fuel is men and stones. 2:24
# Disbelievers will be burned with fire. 2:39, 90
# Allah stamped wretchedness upon the Jews because they killed the prophets and disbelieved Allah's revelations. 2:61
# For disbelievers is a painful doom. 2:104
# For unbelievers: ignominy in this world, an awful doom in the next. 2:114
# Allah will leave the disbelievers alone for a while, but then he will compel them to the doom of Fire. 2:126
# The doom of the disbelievers will not be lightened. 2:162
# They will not emerge from the Fire. 2:167
# Those who hide the Scripture will have their bellies eaten with fire. Theirs will be a painful doom. 2:174
# How constant are they in their strife to reach the Fire! 2:175
# Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. (But if they desist in their unbelief, then don't kill them.) 2:191-2
# War is ordained by Allah, and all Muslims must be willing to fight, whether they like it or not. 2:216
# Those who die in their disbelief will burn forever in the Fire. 2:217
# Disbelievers worship false gods. The will burn forever in the Fire. 2:257
3: The Family of 'Imran
# Those who disbelieve the revelations of Allah, theirs will be a heavy doom. 3:4
# Those who disbelieve will be fuel for the Fire. 3:10
# Those who disbelieve shall be overcome and gathered unto Hell. 3:12
# Those who disbelieve, promise them a painful doom. 3:21
# Theirs will be a painful doom. 3:77
# All non-Muslims will be rejected by Allah after they die. 3:85
# Disbelievers will be cursed by Allah, angels, and men. They will have a painful doom. 3:87-88
# Disbelievers will have a painful doom. And they will have no helpers. 3:91
# Disbelievers will have their faces blackened on the last day. They will face an awful doom. 3:105-6
# Those who disbelieve will be burnt in the Fire. 3:116
# The Fire is prepared for disbelievers. 3:131
# We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Their habitation is the Fire 3:151
# Theirs will be an awful doom. 3:176
# Disbelievers do not harm Allah, but will have a painful doom. 3:177
# Disbelievers will have a shamful doom. 3:178
# Disbelievers will go to Hell. 3:196
4: The Women
# Those who disobey Allah and his messenger will be burnt with fire and suffer a painful doom. 4:14
# For the disbelievers and those who make a last-minute conversion, Allah has prepared a painful doom. :18
# For disbelievers, We prepare a shameful doom. 4:37
# Hell is sufficient for their burning. 4:55
# Unbelievers will be tormented forever with fire. When their skin is burned off, a fresh skin will be provided. 4:56
# Allah will bestow a vast reward on those who fight in religious wars. 4:74
# Believers fight for Allah; disbelievers fight for the devil. So fight the minions of the devil. 4:76
# Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. 4:89
# If the unbelievers do not offer you peace, kill them wherever you find them. Against such you are given clear warrant. 4:91
# Those who oppose the messenger and become unbelievers will go to hell. 4:115
# Those who believe, then disbelieve, then believe and disbelieve again will never be forgiven by Allah. 4:137
# For the hypocrites there will be a painful doom. 4:138
# Allah will gather hypocrites and disbelievers into hell. 4:140
# The hypocrites will be in the lowest part of hell and no one will help them there. 4:145
# You must believe everything Allah and his messengers tell you. Those who don't are disbelievers and will face a painful doom. 4:150-151
# For the wrongdoing Jews, Allah has prepared a painful doom. 4:160-1
# God will guide disbelievers down a road that leads to everlasting hell. 4:168-169
5: The Table Spread
# Those who deny Islam will be losers in the Hereafter. 5:5
# Disbelievers are the rightful owners of Hell. 5:10
# Those who make war with Allah and his messenger will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. That is how they will be treated in this world, and in the next they will have an awful doom. 5:33
# Disbelievers will have a painful doom. 5:36
# Disbelievers will want to come out of the Fire, but will not. Their will be a lasting doom. 5:37
# Cut off the hands of thieves. It is an exemplary punishment from Allah. 5:38
# Allah makes some people sin. He will not cleanse their hearts. They will have ignominy in this world, and in the Hereafter an awful doom. 5:41
# Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, and tooth for tooth. Non-muslims are wrong doers. 5:45
# Christians will be burned in the Fire. 5:72
# Christians are wrong about the Trinity. For that they will have a painful doom. 5:73
# Disbelievers will be owners of hell-fire. 5:86
6: The Cattle
# Many generations have been destroyed by Allah. 6:6
# Allah will torment those how deny his revelations. 6:49
# Those who disbelieve will be forced to drink boiling water, and will face a painful doom. 6:70
# When nonbelievers die, the angels will deliver to them doom and degradation. 6:93
# Allah allows some to disbelieve in the afterlife, and to take pleasure in their disbelief, so that he can torment them forever after they die. 6:113
# Allah chooses to lead some astray, and he lays ignominy on those who disbelieve. 6:125
# Allah will send everyone the Fire, except those he chooses to deliver. 6:128
# Let the idolaters kill their children. It is Allah's will. 6:137
7: The Heights
# How many a township have We destroyed! As a raid by night, or while they slept at noon, Our terror came unto them. 7:4-5
# Disbelievers are the rightful owners of the Fire. 7:36
# Entire nations have entered the Fire. Some get a double torment. 7:38
# Disbelievers will be excluded from heaven. Theirs will be a bed of hell. 7:40-41
# Those in the Fire will cry out to those in heaven, saying: "Pour water on us." But Allah has forbidden that to disbelievers. 7:50
8: Spoils of War
# Allah will throw fear into the hearts of the disbelievers, and smite their necks and fingers. 8:12
# Disbelievers will be tormented in the Fire. 8:14
# When you fight with disbelievers, do not retreat. Those who do will go to hell. 8:15-16
# Those that the Muslims killed were not really killed by them. It was Allah who did the killing. 8:17
# Those who disbelieve will be gathered into hell. 8:36
# The angels smite the face and backs of disbelievers, saying: "Taste the punishment of burning!" 8:50
# The worst beasts in Allah's sight are the disbelievers. 8:55
# Don't let the disbelievers think they can escape. They are your enemy and the enemy of Allah. 8:59-60
9: Repentance
# Give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom to those who disbelieve. 9:3
# Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. 9:5
# Don't let idolaters tend the sanctuaries. Their works are in vain and they will be burned in the Fire. 9:17
# Give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom to the rich and greedy Christian monks and Jewish rabbis. 9:34
# Those who are tormented in the Fire will have their foreheads and backs branded. 9:35
# If you refuse to fight, Allah will afflict you with a painful doom. 9:39
# Disbelievers go to hell. 9:49
# Those who vex the Prophet, for them there is a painful doom. 9:60
# Those who oppose Allah and His messenger will burn in the fire of hell. 9:63
# Allah promises hypocrites and disbelievers the fire of hell. Allah curses them. They will have a lasting torment. 9:68
# Fight the disbelievers and hypocrites. Be harsh with them. They are all going to hell anyway. 9:73
# Allah will afflict disbelievers with a painful doom in this world and the Hereafter. 9:74
# Those who refuse to give their wealth and lives to Allah will face the fire of hell. 9:81-83
# For disbelievers there will be a painful doom. 9:90
# The unbelieving Arabs will be punished by Allah with an evil fortune. 9:97-98, 101
# Believers must fight for Allah. They must kill and be killed , and are bound to do so by the Torah, Gospel, and Quran. But Allah will reward them for it. 9:111
# Don't pray for idolaters (not even for your family) after it is clear they are people of hell-fire. 9:113
# Fight disbelievers who are near you, and let them see the harshness in you. 9:123
10: Jonah
# Disbelievers will have a boiling drink and a painful doom. 10:4
# Those who neglect Allah's revelations will make their home in the Fire. 10:7-8
# Allah has destroyed entire generations. 10:13
# On the last day Allah will kill all the disbelievers (and then he will torture them forever in hell). 10:45
# Those who disbelieved will face a dreadful doom. 10:70
# Allah drowned those who disbelieved his revelations. 10:73
# Moses asked Allah to harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they would not believe until they saw the painful doom. 10:88
11: Hud
# Those in the Fire will suffer as long as the heavens and earth endure. 11:106-7
# Allah will fill hell with humans and jinn. 11:119
13: The Thunder
# Disbelievers are the rightful owners of the Fire 13:5
# Those who do not answer Allah's call will go to hell. 13:18
# Disbelievers will be tormented in this life, and suffer even more pain in the Hereafter. 13:33-34
# The reward for disbelievers is the Fire. 13:35
14: Abraham
# Woe unto the disbelievers. Theirs will be an awful doom. 14:2
# Those who are in hell will be forced to drink festering water which they can hardly swallow. They will want to die, but they will not be able to. Theirs is a harsh doom. 14:16-17
# Those in hell will be chained together. Their clothing will be made of pitch and fire will cover their faces. 14:49-50
16: The Bee
# Disbelievers are evil and will dwell in hell forever. 16:27-29
# Allah will add doom to doom for those who disbelieve. 16:88
# Those who oppose Islam will face an awful doom. 16:94
17: The Children of Israel
# Allah made hell to be a dungeon for disbelievers. 17:8
# Allah has prepared a painful doom for those who disbelieve in the Hereafter. 17:10
# Allah destroyed entire towns. 17:16
# How many generations Allah has destroyed since Noah! 17:17
# Allah intends to burn people in hell. 17:18
# Allah will destroy every town before the Day of Resurrection. 17:58
# Allah will send disbelievers astray. Then he'll burn them in hell, increasing the flames from time to time. 17:97-98
18: The Cave
# Allah has prepared a Fire for the disbelievers. When they want a shower, Allah will give them a shower of molten lead to burn their faces. 18:29
# Those who are condemned to the Fire know they will have no way to escape. 18:53
# There is an appointed time in which the doomed will find no escape. 18:58
# Allah has destroyed many towns. 18:59
# On a certain day, Allah will present hell, in plain view, to the disbelievers. 18:100
# Allah will welcome the disbelievers into hell. 18:102
# The good works of disbelievers are all in vain. They will go to hell anyway. 18:104-105
# Hell is the reward for disbelievers because they made a jest of Allah's revelations and messengers. 18:106
19: Mary
# Allah will pluck out from every sect those who should burn in hell. 19:69-70
# Allah will record what disbelievers say and then prolong their torment. 19:77-79
# Allah has sent the devils on the disbelievers to confuse them. 19:83
# Allah has destroyed many generations. 19:98
20: Ta Ha
# Allah destroyed entire towns, yet the people still disbelieved. 20:6
# The people cried out for mercy, but Allah killed them anyway. 20:15
21: The Prophets
# Allah destroyed entire towns, yet the people still disbelieved. 21:6
# Disbelievers will not be able to put out the fire on their faces and backs. They will be stupefied and no one will help them. 21:39-40
# Every person alive at the time of the flood was evil. So Allah drowned them all. 21:77
# The disbelievers will stare in terror at what Allah has in store for them. 21:97-99
22: The Pilgrimage
# When the doom of Allah comes, pregnant women will suffer miscarriages, and men will act like they are drunk. 22:1-2
# The devil will guide some to the punishment of the Flame. 22:3-4
# Those who turn from the way of Allah will face ignominy in this world and burning in the next. 22:9
# Whoever thinks that Allah will not give Muhammad victory should go hang himself. 22:15
# Disbelievers will wear garments of fire, boiling fluid will be poured on their heads, their bellies and skin will be melted, they will be tormented with iron hooks, and when they try to escape they will be driven back with the taunt: Taste the doom of burning. 22:19-22
# Allah will provide the disbelievers with a painful doom. 22:25
# How many towns Allah has destroyed! 22:45
# Those who disregard Allah's revelations are the owners of the Fire. 22:51
# Those who disbelieve Allah's revelations will have a shameful doom. 22:57
# Those who disbelieve Allah's revelations will burn in the Fire. 22:72
23: The Believers
# Allah told Noah not to bother pleading for the people he was about to drown. 23:27
# Those who don't believe in the Hereafter will receive extreme punishment from Allah. 23:74-77
# When fire burns their faces, they will be glum. 23:104
24: Light
# Scourge adulterers and adulteresses with 100 stripes. Do not show them any pity. Have a party of believers watch the punishment. 24:2
# Disbelievers will never escape the Fire that will be their home. 24:57
25: Criterion
# Those who deny the coming of the Hour will be chained together and burned with fire. They will pray for their own destruction. 25:11-13
# Allah will force the evil-doers to taste great torment. 25:19
# It will be a hard day for disbelievers and wrong-doers. They will gnaw on their hands and wish they had chosen Islam. 25:26-27
# Those who deny Muhammad's revelations will be destroyed. 25:36
# Allah drowned everyone in the flood of Noah, and has prepared a painful doom for evil-doers. 25:37
26: The Poets
# Allah destroyed the people in Lot's town with a dreadful rain. 26:172-3
# Many will not believe until they see the painful doom. 26:201
# Those who believe in another god are doomed. 26:213
27: The Ant
# Allah leads those who do not believe in the Hereafter astray by making things work out OK in this life, so that he can torment them forever in the next. They will get the worst punishment and will be the greatest losers. 27:4-5
# "Allah destroyed them and their people, every one." 27:51
# Allah sent a dreadful rain on "those who stayed behind." 27:58
# Whoever does something wrong will be thrown into the Fire. 27:90
28: The Story
# Allah has completely destroyed many communities. 28:58
# Allah will taunt Christians on the day of their doom, saying: Where are My partners whom ye imagined? 28:62-64
# Allah caused the earth to swallow Korah. 28:79-81
29: The Spider
# Those who disbelieve in the revelations of Allah have no hope of mercy. For such there is a painful doom. 29:23
# The doom of hell will come upon disbelievers suddenly, when they least expect it. 29:53-55
# The worst thing you can do is tell a lie about Allah. Hell is the home of disbelievers. 29:68
30: The Romans
# Allah seals the heart of disbelievers. (And then he burns them in the Fire.) 30:59
31: Luqman
# Those who mislead others from Allah's way and mock Islam will have a painful doom. 31:6-7
# Allah will give disbelievers a little comfort for a little while, and then he'll torment them forever with a heavy doom. 31:23-24
32: The Prostration
# Allah will fill hell with the jinn and mankind together. 32:13
# Allah: Taste the doom of immortality because of what ye used to do. 32:14
# Those who used to deny the Fire will be tormented in it forever. 32:20
# The worst thing you can do is to deny the revelations of Allah. 32:22
33: The Clans
# Allah cast panic into the hearts of the disbelievers. He killed some, and enslaved others. 33:25-26
# Those who oppose Islam will be slain with a fierce slaughter. 33:60-61
# Allah has cursed the disbelievers, and has prepared for them a flaming fire, wherein they will abide forever. 33:64-65
# The disbelievers will be burned in the Fire with a double torment. 33:66-68
34: Saba
# Those who challenge the revelations of Muhammad will have a painful doom. 34:5
# Those who disbelieve in the Hereafter will be tormented. 34:8
# But some of the jinn Allah burned with flaming Fire. 34:12
# Those who strive against Allah's revelations will be brought to the doom. 34:38
# Those who worshipped the jinn will taste the doom of the Fire. 34:41
# Those who are cast into hell be terrified when they see that they have no escape. Then they will believe. But it will be too late. 34:51-52
35: The Angels
# Those who disbelieve will have an awful doom. 35:7
# Disbelievers will burn forever in the fire of hell. Allah will keep them alive so that he can torture them forever. When they repent and ask for mercy, he will ignore them. 35:36-7
36: Ya Sin
# Allah has blinded the disbelievers so that they cannot see the truth. So it don't bother warning them. They will go to hell anyway. 36:8-10
# Allah has destroyed many entire generations. 36:31
# If Allah feels like it, he will drown everyone. 36:43
# Allah will burn the disbelievers in hell. 36:63-4
37: Those Who Set the Ranks
# Those who "did wrong" will go to hell, and their wives will go to hell with them (no matter how they behaved). 37:22-23
# Those who refuse to believe in Muhammad's revelations will face a painful doom. 37:31-38
# Those in hell must eat from a tree with the heads of devils, and then drink boiling water. After that they return to hell. 37:62-68
# Allah drowned everyone except Noah and his family in the flood. 37:82
# Allah tells Abraham in a dream to sacrifice his son. (But is the son Ishmael or Isaac?) 37:102
# Allah killed everyone in Sodom except for Lot and his family. 37:136
# No one is against Allah, except those who burn in hell. 37:162-3
38: Sad
# Allah has destroyed many generations. 38:3
# Those who doubt will soon taste Allah's doom. 38:8
# Those who deny the messengers deserve doom. 38:14
# Those who wander from the way of Allah will have an awful doom. 38:26
# Those who disbelieve will burn in the Fire. 38:27
# David slashed their legs and necks (with Allah's approval). 38:33
# The transgressors will roast in the Fire and be forced to drink boiling liquids followed by ice cold drinks. 38:55-9
# Iblis asks Allah to let him hang around and mislead humans. Allah allows him to do so, and Iblis leads all humans to hell except for the single-minded slaves. Allah agrees, and plans to fill hell with Iblis and his followers. 38:79-85
39: The Troops
# Tell the disbelievers to enjoy themselves now, because later they will be owners of the Fire. 39:8
# The losers will be those who lose themselves and their families on the Day of Resurrection. They will be surrounded by fire. 39:15-16
# No one will be able to help those that Allah torments in the Fire. 39:19
# The worst thing you can do is tell a lie against Allah. The home of disbelievers is hell. 39:32
# Those who lie about Allah will be sent to hell and will have their faces blackened. 39:60
# Those who disbelieve will be driven into hell. 39:71-72
40: The Believer
# Allah sent an awful punishment at the time of Noah. 40:5
# Those who disbelieve are the owners of the Fire. 40:6
# When the doom comes, the hearts of the doomed will choke in their throats, and no one will help them. 40:18
# Those who ignore Allah's "clear proofs" will be seized and punished severely. 40:22
# The prodigals will be owners of the Fire. 40:43
# The doomed will be exposed to the Fire morning and evening. 40:46
# Those in hell will beg to be relieved from the Fire's torment for just a day. But the prayer of a disbeliever is in vain. 40:49-50
# Those who bicker about Allah's revelations are filled with pride. 40:56
# Those who scorn Allah will go to hell. 40:60
# Those who deny the revelations of Allah are perverted. 40:63
# Those who deny the Scripture and Allah's messengers will be dragged through boiling water and thrust into the Fire. 40:70-72
# Allah will taunt the Christians in hell, saying: Where are all my parnters that you used to believe in? 40:73
# Thus does Allah send astray the disbelievers (in his guidance). 40:74
# Those who scorn will go to hell. 40:76
# When they see Allah's doom they will believe in Allah. But their faith will not save them. The disbelievers will be ruined. 40:84-85
41: Fusilat
# Allah will make life miserable for those who deny his revelations and then he will torment them forever in the Hereafter. And they will not be helped. 41:15-16
# The enemies of Allah will be gathered into the Fire where their skin, ears, and eyes will testify against them. 41:19-20
# Allah will make those who disbelieve taste an awful doom. Their immortal home will be the Fire, since they denied Allah's revelations. 41:27-28
# Those who disbelieve will taste hard punishment. 41:50
42: Counsel
# While some lounge in the Garden, others will roast in the Flame. 42:7
# Those who argue about Allah will have his wrath upon them. Theirs will be an awful doom. 42:16
# For wrong-doers there is a painful doom. 42:21
# Allah sometimes kills people for misbehaving. 42:34
# Allah sends some people astray and then punishes them for it by burning them in the Fire. 42:44-46
43: Ornaments of Gold
# When the Egyptians angered Allah, he drowned them all. 43:55
# Those who argue and do wrong will have a painful doom that will come upon them suddenly. 43:65-66
# The guilty are tormented forever in hell. Allah will not relax their punishment. 43:74-75
# "But they will come to know."
Allah will torment disbelievers forever in hell. 43:88-89
44: Smoke
# Those in torment will claim to believe and ask Allah for relief. But he will refuse since they will return to their disbelief. 44:11-16
# Those in hell must eat from a tree like molten brass that burns their bellies. Then boiling water will be poured on their heads. 44:43-48
45: Crouching
# Those who hear and reject Allah's revelations are sinful liars. Give them tidings of a painful doom. 45:7-8
# Those who joke about Allah's revelations will go to hell. Theirs will be an awful doom. 45:9-10
# Those who disbelieve in Allah's revelations will have a painful doom of wrath. 45:11
46: The Wind-Curved Sandals
# Disbelievers will be rewarded with the ignominious doom of the Fire. 46:20
# The guilty will face a wind with a painful torment. 46:25
# Allah has destroyed entire towns. 46:27
# Allah will taunt the disbelievers that he torments in the fire, saying: "Taste the doom for that ye disbelieved." 46:34
47: Muhammad
# Smite the necks of the disbelievers whenever you fight against them. Those who die fighting for Allah will be rewarded. 47:4
# Allah will damn the disbelievers and make all their actions fruitless. 47:8-9
# Disbelievers may eat and be happy now, but the Fire will be their final home. 47:12
# Those in the Garden will drink delicious wine, while those in the Fire will drink boiling water that will tear apart their intestines. 47:15
# Allah curses people by making them deaf and blind. 47:23
# Angels will gather them together and smite their faces and backs. 47:27
48: Victory
# Those who think an evil thought concerning Allah will be cursed and sent to hell by him. 48:6
# Allah has prepared a flame for the disbelievers. 48:13
# If you refuse to fight for Allah, he will punish you with a painful doom. 48:16-17
# But if you're willing to fight for Allah, he will provide you with lots of booty. 48:19-20
# Allah punished those who disbelieved with a painful punishment. 48:25
# Those with Muhammad are ruthless toward disbelievers and merciful toward themselves. 48:29
50: Oaf
# Allah has destroyed many entire generations. 50:36
51: The Winnowing Winds
# Accursed are the conjecturers who ask: When is the Day of Judgment? It is the day they will be tormented by the Fire. 51:10-14
52: The Mount
# Those who deny the existence of hell will be thrust into its Fire. 52:11-16
54: The Moon
# Allah sent a storm of stones on Lot's folk, killing all but Lot's family. 54:34
# The suffering in hell will be more wretched and bitter than anything experienced on earth. 54:46-48
# Allah destroyed many people, but does anyone remember anymore? 54:51
55: The Beneficent
# The guilty deny hell. But after they die they go circling between it and fierce, boiling water. 55:43-44
56: The Event
# But those on his left hand will face scorching wind, scalding water, and black smoke. 57:56:42-43
# Those who deny Allah and the Hereafter will eat from the Zaqqum tree and drink boiling water. 57:56:51-54
# Allah will welcome the rejecters and erring with boiling water and a roasting in the hell fire. 57:56:92-94
57: Iron
# The home of disbelievers is the Fire, a hapless journey's end. 57:15
# Those who disbelieve and deny Allah's revelations are the owners of the fire. 57:19
58: She That Disputeth
# For disbelievers is a painful doom. 58:4
# Don't make friends with Allah's enemies. For those who do so, Allah has prepared a dreadful doom. 58:14-15
# Those who turn others away from the way of Allah will have a shameful doom. They are rightful owners of the Fire. 58:16-17
59: Exile
# Allah cast fear into the hearts of the disbelieving People of the Scripture. Their home in the Hereafter will be the Fire. 59:2-3
# The disbelievers fear the believers more than Allah. 59:13
# The devil and disbelievers will be in the Fire. 59:16-17
61: The Ranks
# Allah loves those who fight for him. 61:4
64: Mutual Disillusion
# Those who disbelieve will have a painful doom. 64:5
# Those who disbelieve are the owners of the Fire. 64:10
66: Banning
# The fuel of the Fire is men and stones. 66:6
# Be stern with disbelievers. They are going to Hell anyway. 66:9
67: The Sovereignty
# Allah has prepared for the devils a doom of flame. 67:5
# Disbelievers will go to hell where they will hear its roaring and boiling. 67:6-7
# Who will protect the disbelievers from a painful doom? (Nobody) 67:28
68: The Pen
# Those who consider the Quran to be "mere fables" will be branded on the nose.68:15-16
69: The Reality
# Those who do not believe in Allah will be chained up and cast into hell-fire where they will eat filth. 69:30-35
70: The Ascending Stairways
# Doom is about to fall on all disbelievers. Only worshippers (Muslims) and those who preserve their chastity (except with their wives and slave girls) will be spared from "the fires of hell" that are "eagar to roast." 70:1-30
# Disbelievers will enter hell with frantic with fear, knowing they will be tortured forever by Allah. 70:36, 44
71: Noah
# Those that Allah drowned in Noah's flood were then tortured forever in the Fire. 71:25
# Noah asked Allah to drown all the disbelievers. 71:26
72: The Jinn
# The fires of hell will be fueled with the bodies of idolators and unbelievers. They will experience an ever-greater torment. 72:15-17
# Those who disobey Allah and his messenger will dwell forever in the fire of hell. 72:23
73: The Enshrouded One
# The fires of hell will be fueled with the bodies of idolators and unbelievers. They will experience an ever-greater torment. 72:15-17
# Those who disobey Allah and his messenger will dwell forever in the fire of hell. 72:23
74: The Cloaked One
# The last day will be a day of anguish for disbelievers. 74:9-10
# Those who are stubborn to Allah's revelations will face a fearful doom. 74:16-17
# The fire of hell shrivels humans and spares nothing. 74:27-29
# Allah has appointed angels to tend the Fire and has prepared stumbling blocks for those who disbelieve. He sends some people (whoever he wants) astray. 74:31
75: The Rising of the Dead
# Those who pay attention to this life and ignore the Hereafter will suffer forever in hell. 75:20-29
76: "Time" or "Man"
# Allah has prepared chains, manacles, and a raging fire for the disbelievers. 76:4
# Allah has prepared a painful doom for evil-doers. 76:31
77: The Emissaries
# Allah destroyed "the former folk." 77:16
# Woe unto the repudiators on that day! 77:19, 77:24, 77:28, 77:34, 77:40, 77:45, 77:49
79: "Those Who Drag Forth"
# Those who rebel by choosing this life over the next will go to hell. 79:37-39
82: The Cleaving
# The wicked will burn in hell forever. 82:14-16
83: The Defrauding
# Those who reject Allah's revelations will burn in hell. 83:10-17
# The disbelievers used to laugh at the believers. But the final laugh will be on them. 83:29-36
84: The Sundering
# Some folks will be thrown into a scorching fire. 84:11-12
# Disbelievers will be given a painful doom. 84:22-24
85: The Mansions of the Stars
# Those who persecute Muslims, without repenting, will burn in hell. 85:10
87: The Most High
# Those who are flung into the great Fire will neither live nor die. 87:12-13
88: The Overwhelming
# On that day many will be sad and weary. Scorched by the fire, drinking boiling water, with only bitter thorn-fruit to eat. 88:2-7
# Allah will punish disbelievers with the direst punishment. 88:23-24
89: The Dawn
# Allah poured the disaster of His punishment upon those who rebelled against him. 89:11-13
90: The City
# Those who disbelieve Allah's revelations will have the Fire placed over them like an awning. 90:19-20
91: The Sign
# "Allah doomed them for their sin" and burned their houses. 91:14
92: The Night
# Those who deny Allah's revelations must endure the flaming fire. 92:14-16
96: The Clot
# Allah will grab those who deny His guidance by the forelock and call the guards of hell. 96:13-18
98: The Clear Proof
# Those who disbelieve will abide in the fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings. 98:6
101: The Calamity
# What is the Calamity? It is a day when dead people's bodies will be scattered like moths, consumed in a raging fire. 101:1-11
102: Rivalry in Worldly Increase
# Allah will show humans hellfire and then he will ask them about pleasure. 102:5-7
104: The Traducer
# Some rich folks will be flung into the Consuming One, the fire of Allah. 104:4-6
111: Palm Fibre
# Abu Lahab will die and be plunged in flaming Fire. His wife will have on her neck a halter of palm fiber. 111:1-5
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I looked up Uganda on Wikipedia, and I'm genuinely curious how that would have turned out.
Fascinating little fact, no? Britain offered it as a replacement for Israel when Hertzel struggled to get Turky to give us a charter over Israel. That was before WWI, between the 1880's and the first decade of the 20th century.
Explain. I'll counter you afterwards Razz and say how during his time, the Jewish tribes broke the promises too.
Listen, you learned your stuff from Muslims. If that's a lie, it woulden't be the first on the planet that did. Like the Christians saying we were plotting to take over the world.
Now for the explanation. Muhammad broke his promise to El-Medina, that he will have a truce with them for ten years in reward for safe passage. Arafat broke EVERY promise for peace he's EVER made to Israel. There isn't a SINGLE promise he's kept. A Muslim leader looks up to Muhammad, Muhammad breaks promises, so does the leader.
Besides, what promise did WE break?
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Okay, I'm out of this one. Obviously I had no clue what I was talking about when I said that religion wasn't a major factor in this. Yesterday was not one of my better thinking days.
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None of you would believe me, but no Muslims want war. Period. Except in the "Final Days" context...
Oh, I believe you. I have some familiarity with Islam, and I know that it on the whole advocates peace and tolerance. Judging Islam by those terrorists is like judging Christianity by the Ku Klux Klan.
Why should the observances of these religious people over here somehow overrule the observances of those religious people over there? On whose mortal authority are the peaceniks of Islam judged to be “truer” Muslims than those who believe in bringing war to their enemies? Join me below as I reply to Daniel Krispin’s post…
Well, you kinda missed my meaning there, but perhaps I should have been more specific.
First of all, I did make a mistake in my response. I responded as if it were an "on average" statement rather than the blanket "No Muslims want war." My point is that I don't judge the people who belong to a religion just because others who share the same allegiance commit heinous acts.
Men have two levers: fear and self-interest.
Your list of quotes from the Quran (I believe it was) brought this to my mind. This quote does a very good job of explaining why most religions work in convincing people: They pull both levers at the same time. They threaten you with eternal torment if you disbelieve, and offer you eternal rewards if you believe.
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First of all, I did make a mistake in my response. I responded as if it were an "on average" statement rather than the blanket "No Muslims want war." My point is that I don't judge the people who belong to a religion just because others who share the same allegiance commit heinous acts.
Men have two levers: fear and self-interest.
Your list of quotes from the Quran (I believe it was) brought this to my mind. This quote does a very good job of explaining why most religions work in convincing people: They pull both levers at the same time. They threaten you with eternal torment if you disbelieve, and offer you eternal rewards if you believe.
Once again your wisdom is manifest and I find myself in unqualified agreement.
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Well, you kinda missed my meaning there, but perhaps I should have been more specific.
First of all, I did make a mistake in my response. I responded as if it were an "on average" statement rather than the blanket "No Muslims want war." My point is that I don't judge the people who belong to a religion just because others who share the same allegiance commit heinous acts.
And you shoulden't judge an entire religion for that. All I say about Islam being a violent religion by nature isn't about my dislike for the Palestinians, it's my view over historical acts and the bit of the Quran I do know. Of course, I could very well be wrong, but for all of BZ's attempts to show me (In an MSN session where we shared religious stories) I STILL haven't seen anything to change that opinion. Muslims look at Islam as a role model-that's something quiet natural. But the guy broke promises, married a six-year old (Or was it four year-old?), and basically created a religion that's got it's anti-jewish ideas in it. (That's based of what YOU told me, BZ).
I can get along with Muslims, BZ and myself got along just great. But when he started telling me about how my Messiah is in fact the anti-christ and how Hebrew words translated to arabic have very negative sides... I was angry. Not on BZ, of course. He believes in this for the same reason I get angry at it, we're all effected by religion.
But sometimes I gotta wonder. Wether if Muhammad was or was not a messenger of God, WHY did ANY group of people believe a guy who just popped and said 'Hey, everyone, God spoke to me!'. Really, regardless of my religous beliefs or national views, I'll always see it as weird: A group of Arabs actually believed Muhammad that just like that, he's God's messenger.
And, no offense to any Christians here, but I always somewhat disliked how you place a living, breathing person in the same caliber as God, be it Muhammad or Jesus. We've had no such person, no divine guy who's God's child or prophet. And no, Moses was NOT such a person.
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As much as Josh has... irritated me recently, I found myself agreeing with a good portion of his post. I think he just won the arguement. When Josh debates rather than rants, few people on this board can stand up to him.
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As much as Josh has... irriated me recently, I found myself agreeing with a good portion of his post. I think he just won the arguement. When Josh debates rather than rants, few people on this board can stand up to him.
He's no mean rhetorician, that's for certain.
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As much as Josh has... irriated me recently, I found myself agreeing with a good portion of his post. I think he just won the arguement. When Josh debates rather than rants, few people on this board can stand up to him.
I appreciate the warm praise, but this is as much a "rant" as anything else I write here on General. The only difference is that, this time, you more or less agree with me. =)
As a child I was raised in the reform Jewish faith. I remember seeing Schindler's List in the front row of the movie theater with my youth group, and visiting (with those same friends) the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, which details the gruesome particulars of the Nazi Holocaust. When you go into the Museum, you get a ticket representing a child who went to the Death Camps. After seeing everything, as you are leaving the exhibits you turn in the ticket and find out what happened to your child. Mine was a little girl who lost her entire family, but she herself lived. Among my friends, every other child died. So it was that I learned the important of religious Tolerance.
As I grew up I started to understand that the real world isn't like fairytales or Disney Masterpieces. There is no shortage of problems; no end of obstacles to a paradise of human civilization. In learning history as a kid, I naively thought that the modern world had overcome all of this, but awareness proved me wrong. Prejudice of every stripe is alive and well. Backward political ideologies want to drag us in the wrong direction. Poverty and sickness are abundant still, even in the wealthy United States. Ignorance festers in every neighborhood; priorities are misplaced; institutions are out of whack; children are cruel and adults are vapid; potholes litter the streets. And more than anything else, there is this menace called Religion. In God's name the triumph of the Enlightenment and Industrialization is turned against itself; secular institutions of modern society are overruled, and the most egregious acts are committed by people of faith in service of their god. Crimes to sicken any healthy human mind. Crimes like this (http://www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/001958.html). As a young adult I came to understand that powerful evangelical religions are either directly or indirectly the cause of most modern suffering. The West brims with religious insurgency. The Third World blazes with outright war. The Middle East simmers at the heart of it all, the birthplace of the two most evil religions ever devised. Coming into this less-than-perfect world, I realized that religious fundamentalists hate the sort of future I want to build; hate the social institutions I treasure most; hate everything I thought humanity had finally grown up to accept as decent. But I was absolutely wrong. And I learned that fundamentalism exists everywhere, and thrives. By long, hard experience I learned that religious fanatics do not, and will never, be swayed to reason. They want the Earth, and they are not going to be talked out of it. If we abide them, we lose.
Never forgetting that little girl who lived through the Holocaust, I thus learned religious Intolerance.
Therefore, the great dilemma. We cannot fail to tolerate religious people, lest destruction and genocide ensue, and yet we cannot allow these same people to have their way with society, lest the modern world come to an end and the dark ages arise reborn--and destruction and genocide ensue. Religion itself is the disease; if only we could cure people of it. But that is unlikely to happen today, and our problems will not wait for tomorrow. Nor, for that matter, will the zealots. The only solution is to deprive religion of its power, and permanently erect inviolable separations of church and state in every country in the world. I cannot see how this feat might easily be achieved. And that makes for a cold truth: Between not slaughtering the devout and not being slaughtered by them, it is the sad duty of everyone who wants a better future to fight the power of religion--by whatever means necessary...or possible.
So take care, Sentenal. I am against Islam as much as you are, and more so, but I am just as much against Christianity, too. All I want is a world where humanity rules and God stays home. If you do not agree--and you do not--then we are not allies here, or anywhere else, and will never be. But at least I will not trick you into thinking I have your back. Like I said at the beginning: I appreciate your warm praise, but my aim in this thread is no different than my aim in any other. You're just out of the line of fire, for the moment.
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I love cheese.
You fail to understand me Josh. Just believing doesn't make you a Muslim. You have to abide by the laws. They may be Muslims, but are they good ones? Are they fighting for the right reasons? Before the land of Israel was created, when it was still just Palestine, why did both parties live in relative peace? Maybe the whole thing is just being based off the fact that Britain just took land and gave it to the Jews. Is that not wrong?
But of course, Islam has been brought into this, and I must concede, is a major factor now. But neither of us can argue in this way, as I believe in a "Great Plan" and you don't. We believe that Zionism is evil, and is part of the plan. Obviously you don't. We believe that the Anti Christ will be the leader of Israel. Again, you don't. You can argue that this is obvious anti-Judaism. I like to think of it as anti-Zionism. This Zionism movement is actually prophecised to bring on the destruction of the world.
I am not going to argue with you Josh about how bloodthirsty and violent Islam supposedly is. Even though almost all ideological movements have caused in death, you still point the finger at Christianity and Islam. Islam is no longer a together religion. You can see this from the sectarian violence in Iraq. God says, and possibly one of the many in your collection of burn-in-hell lines, that those who kill believers intentionally will burn in hell. Then why is it that Muslims are...killing Muslims!? The ummah is broken, and Muslims, in a Zionistic way, believe that one day we will become one again. There is no Muslim Caliphate. Even the Ayatollahphate in Iran isn't 100% correct. Correct meaning in the proper ways according to Sharia. How you can judge the actions of the Hamas version of Islam, with the ways of say, Islam R' Us, is beyond me. They are in hardly any way connected, only connected in the way of "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Final Messenger." Faith wise, yes, they are all correct. But each have their own ideas. The Islamic society in my school doesn't wish to bomb the school because it is secular. It is not like they don't talk to Jewish people; heck, some of my friends are Jewish! Yet of course they wish to be united. Of course they wish the best for the Muslims. They might not necessarily support Hamas, or the Algerian Islamic Party, or the Nigerian Government, or what ever. However they wish for the best of the INNOCENT Muslims. Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, China; all of it. That is part of the reason I support Palestine. The other part is from true, objective views. My sister did Modern History; such as Ireland, and of course Palestine, and from her comments, I say Palestine is right. But she is also part of a feminist association. She does not like Iran. Wow, is she looking at Palestine from a...objective point of view!
As for 99% of your quotes about burning in hell...what are you trying to prove? That God will send the disbelievers into Hell? Um...ok...thanks Josh, I knew that already! It's a great thing to have you here to teach me things I would obviously forget after hearing it for ten years :roll:
And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
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I must say, Burning Z, this is one of your best posts yet. You are showing real improvement in your critical thinking, and I think you should put this measure of thought into your arguments more often. People might take you more seriously! Of course, this is not to say that you are not still wrong on almost every point. =P
But let’s take that as it comes…
You fail to understand me Josh. Just believing doesn't make you a Muslim. You have to abide by the laws. They may be Muslims, but are they good ones? Are they fighting for the right reasons?
It’s not that I fail to understand you. I do think I understand you. I just happen to not agree with a word of it. You are saying, in contravention of the main point I have exhaustively tried to make here over the past two days, that you are qualified to interpret Islam for everybody else. You are not; you simply are not. There is not enough paper on Earth to write a human code of law so computer-language exact that every possible human behavior would be unmistakably lawful or unlawful or illegal—or moral or immoral. If other people want to interpret the Koran differently from you, that is tough luck for you, Zeppy. If they interpret the laws differently than you do, you cannot stop them. You are not God, your intellect is not supreme, and you cannot think for other people.
Before the land of Israel was created, when it was still just Palestine, why did both parties live in relative peace? Maybe the whole thing is just being based off the fact that Britain just took land and gave it to the Jews. Is that not wrong?
Before Israel was created, the region was (comparatively) more peaceful than it later became because Arab nationalism was still in its infancy, and also because there was no organized Israeli enemy to unite against.
Arab nationalism is a virulent partner to militant Islam. What the collapse of the British Empire did to Africa, so did the collapse of the Ottoman Empire do to this Middle Eastern region. The Arab states that emerged from the imperial wreckage of the past were immature, warlike, and greedy. The swells running these countries had heads full of steam, and their regional leadership was very poor. And Islam, lest you forget, was the common vein that ran beneath every border.
And then there was Israel. The Palestinian Jews lived beneath the Ottomans, and when that empire crumbled the whole region became a British mandate. Most of that land became Transjordan; what remained was tentatively divided between a Jewish state and a second Arab state. The Jews were content with their lot, but the pre-Palestinian Muslims were not. The rest is history; Israel declared its independence, was recognized by most of the world’s governments, and subsequently reinforced its sovereignty on the field of battle.
Together with these countries’ unintelligent nationalism and their irrational hatred of Israel, where once there was relative stability, now there was religious war. So it went. Is this the fault of Israel or the Jews? Only if the culpability for a rape lies with the victim, for having provided a body for the rapist to ravage. What Islam seeks to dominate, is not necessarily Islam’s to dominate.
But of course, Islam has been brought into this, and I must concede, is a major factor now. But neither of us can argue in this way, as I believe in a "Great Plan" and you don't. We believe that Zionism is evil, and is part of the plan. Obviously you don't. We believe that the Anti Christ will be the leader of Israel. Again, you don't. You can argue that this is obvious anti-Judaism. I like to think of it as anti-Zionism. This Zionism movement is actually prophecised to bring on the destruction of the world.
Do you have any idea how many people on this board believe I am going to Hell? It’s probably the only thing you religious types can all agree on. I’ll bet you guys even have cocktail parties!
“I know we can’t agree on much, chaps, but at least we can gather here tonight and toast our fantastic consensus that this Josh character is quite going to Hell…”
I bring this up because, from where I’m sitting, you guys are seriously fucking nuts. Nuts and fucked up, aye. Look at you, arguing that Islam hasn’t played a role in the wars of the Middle East! And when confronted with the fact that in fact Islam has been up to its bloody neck in these wars? Blame Israel! Come on; what does Israel have to do with Islam being a bloody religion? What does Israel have to do with your claim that warmongering Muslims are not true Muslims? This entire thread is a testament to the neuroticism of Islamic apologists and the irrationality of Israel-haters. Israel is there, it isn’t going anywhere; it doesn’t belong in Australia and it certainly doesn’t belong in Antarctica. Israel has no place in this discussion other than that it is a victim of a powerful, aggressive religion—Islam.
Your “Great Plan” is not something that rational people ought to believe in. Have you ever read Time Cube theory (http://www.timecube.com/)? When you rail against Israel, it’s the same brand of WHAT THE FUCK?!
On the subject of the modern Palestinian people, there can be no doubt that suffering abounds and the Palestinian Territories should become the sovereign nation of Palestine without delay. The would-be permanent borders are obvious. The people are tired of violence and poverty; so are the Israelis. Only the scourge of religion can explain why the dispute continues, and your religion—Islam—has been the one sustaining this whole debacle. I can imagine how ordinary Palestinians feel; they feel the same way Americans felt about Iraq when President Bush promised us that Saddam Hussein was planning to nuke our cities. Most Americans got caught up in a fervor that had nothing to do with the truth. So it is for the Palestinians: In a society where hating Israel is taught at a younger age than the alphabet, all under the auspices of Islamic doctrine, you can understand why these people are so fucking insane. Your religion has been the enabler of that. And you give your explicit approval to this continued insanity by interjecting the Israeli Bogeyman into your colorful apology for, and denial of, the motives for Islamic radicals who monger war in the name of their god. Islam is not an Israeli problem. Islam is an Islamic problem.
I am not going to argue with you Josh about how bloodthirsty and violent Islam supposedly is. Even though almost all ideological movements have caused in death, you still point the finger at Christianity and Islam.
I point the finger because Christianity and Islam have been the biggest sponsors of murder and oppression in the history of the world, and in any case they are by far the biggest sponsors of these crimes in the year 2006. (Say what you will about President Bush; it’s all true. But at least he’ll be gone in 2008. Religion won’t.)
I could point my finger in many other directions; for instance I might wag my finger at the communist guerilla insurgencies wreaking havoc in a number of countries at this very moment. But I am not interested in wasting my time. This is a matter of scale and proximity. The monotheistic religions of Tweedledee and Tweedledum are giants whose shadows cover the whole world I know and most of the world I don’t. They threaten civilization itself; they are the secular person’s Satan. The believe in enslaving women, killing disbelievers, destroying countries, renouncing science, and would probably make their belief in the end of the world a self-fulfilling prophecy. Communist guerillas, however sick their crimes, are not a threat to humanity in general, and certainly not to the United States.
My finger is like a malice magnet; it points at the strongest forces of evil in our world. I am not denying other injustices that live around us today; I am highlighting the most egregious of them.
Islam is no longer a together religion. You can see this from the sectarian violence in Iraq. God says, and possibly one of the many in your collection of burn-in-hell lines, that those who kill believers intentionally will burn in hell. Then why is it that Muslims are...killing Muslims!? The ummah is broken, and Muslims, in a Zionistic way, believe that one day we will become one again. There is no Muslim Caliphate. Even the Ayatollahphate in Iran isn't 100% correct.
It is certainly true that Islam is a beast with no head, each of its thousand oozing limbs running amok in its own particular way, some doing great harm and others slithering along benignly. You are correct in this much. But if a person wants to call himself or herself a Muslim, then that is how it must be, for devotion to God answers to no earthly authority. (As I have said ad nauseam, to little effect.) As surely as the followers of Southern Baptism and Greek Orthodoxy both call themselves a Christian people, so too are the sects of Islam diverse. You ask why it is that Muslims would kill Muslims if the Koran says the punishment for this is Hell, but the answer should be obvious even to you, because you persist in making the same mistake in logic that they make: When one Muslim perceives that another Muslim stands in the way of God’s will, the former will be inclined to allege that the latter is somehow not a true Muslim. “Peaceful” Muslims like yourself may be content simply to denounce these “untrue” Muslims, but terrorist Muslims may resort to bloodshed. This is yet another way of understanding why your refusal to accept that Islamic militancy has everything to do with Islam is such a dangerous denial of the truth.
Correct meaning in the proper ways according to Sharia.
Same problem as before: People will interpret this code differently. (Also, I cannot let slip a reference to Sharia without reiterating that it is the most despicable instrument of pure flagitious cruelty that our world has seen in centuries. It is a testament to the very worst fabric within human nature. Anyone who tries to impose this sick little scheme of mis-ethics onto other people, should be dragged out into the street and shot.)
How you can judge the actions of the Hamas version of Islam, with the ways of say, Islam R' Us, is beyond me. They are in hardly any way connected, only connected in the way of "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Final Messenger." Faith wise, yes, they are all correct. But each have their own ideas.
Different limbs, same beast. The proposition that Hamas Islam and Teddy Bear Islam are so different that neither are actually Islam is a nonstarter. This claim makes as little sense to me as the claim by some in the Religious Right that Catholics are not true Christians.
The Islamic society in my school doesn't wish to bomb the school because it is secular. It is not like they don't talk to Jewish people; heck, some of my friends are Jewish! Yet of course they wish to be united. Of course they wish the best for the Muslims. They might not necessarily support Hamas, or the Algerian Islamic Party, or the Nigerian Government, or what ever. However they wish for the best of the INNOCENT Muslims. Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, China; all of it.
Uh huh. This is a contradiction of your last quote. Here you describe a common theme that unites them into a common religion. There are many other customs, traditions, and beliefs which also unite disparate Muslim sects into a relative state of like-mindedness.
That is part of the reason I support Palestine. The other part is from true, objective views. My sister did Modern History; such as Ireland, and of course Palestine, and from her comments, I say Palestine is right. But she is also part of a feminist association. She does not like Iran. Wow, is she looking at Palestine from a...objective point of view!
Not having read them, I cannot speak to your sister’s remarks. However, an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. If you are unable to prove your arguments yourself, it is not enough to invoke somebody else’s name as though their authority by itself will do the job for you.
As for 99% of your quotes about burning in hell...what are you trying to prove? That God will send the disbelievers into Hell? Um...ok...thanks Josh, I knew that already! It's a great thing to have you here to teach me things I would obviously forget after hearing it for ten years :roll:
Remember how you were denying that Islam is a militant, cruel, and bloodthirsty religion? I just thought a few hundred supporting examples from your own holy text would help persuade you to abandon your denials. I can find a few hundred more, if you like. Somehow I doubt it will change your mind.
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I must say, Burning Z, this is one of your best posts yet. You are showing real improvement in your critical thinking, and I think you should put this measure of thought into your arguments more often. People might take you more seriously!
Hey!
But let’s take that as it comes…
You fail to understand me Josh. Just believing doesn't make you a Muslim. You have to abide by the laws. They may be Muslims, but are they good ones? Are they fighting for the right reasons?
It’s not that I fail to understand you. I do think I understand you. I just happen to not agree with a word of it. You are saying, in contravention of the main point I have exhaustively tried to make here over the past two days, that you are qualified to interpret Islam for everybody else. You are not; you simply are not. There is not enough paper on Earth to write a human code of law so computer-language exact that every possible human behavior would be unmistakably lawful or unlawful or illegal—or moral or immoral. If other people want to interpret the Koran differently from you, that is tough luck for you, Zeppy. If they interpret the laws differently than you do, you cannot stop them. You are not God, your intellect is not supreme, and you cannot think for other people.
That is true. I can not put my word as the word of Islam, just like how you can't define Islam on what your beliefs are:
The monotheistic religions of Tweedledee and Tweedledum are giants whose shadows cover the whole world I know and most of the world I don’t. They threaten civilization itself; they are the secular person’s Satan. They believe in enslaving women, killing disbelievers, destroying countries, renouncing science, and would probably make their belief in the end of the world a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don't see how we believe in enslaving women. Or how we have. We united most of the world in 700-1300 AD. We killed the disbelievers who fought us. Renoucing science!? That made me laugh. You might think I am naive, a byproduct of Muslim propaganda. You realize that nothing I was taught except maybe how to read arabic I have kept with me! I have learnt all this from learning. I don't give a fuck what others tell me. I'm my own man. Tell me Josh, was there not bloodshed before the Birth of Christ? Religion has played a part in many a war. But not only religion. Land, possession, betrayal, lust, all. Until you some how destroy the root of all evil, otherwise known as humanity, war will not cease to exist. Blame religion. I don't care. I can just go blaming America. Or Israel. Patriotism. Fuck, I could go as far as blaming left handers! There will always be someone to blame. You can blame Islam. Muslims can blame Israel. People can blame God. It will never end.
Before the land of Israel was created, when it was still just Palestine, why did both parties live in relative peace? Maybe the whole thing is just being based off the fact that Britain just took land and gave it to the Jews. Is that not wrong?
Before Israel was created, the region was (comparatively) more peaceful than it later became because Arab nationalism was still in its infancy, and also because there was no organized Israeli enemy to unite against.
Arab nationalism is a virulent partner to militant Islam. What the collapse of the British Empire did to Africa, so did the collapse of the Ottoman Empire do to this Middle Eastern region. The Arab states that emerged from the imperial wreckage of the past were immature, warlike, and greedy. The swells running these countries had heads full of steam, and their regional leadership was very poor. And Islam, lest you forget, was the common vein that ran beneath every border.
I can see where you are going again Josh. I hate nationalism as much as you. But as you know, they are proud people. This came before Islam. Islam taught to destroy the idea of nationalism, only the idea of being under God. Islam isn't necessarily the catalyst of the war, though it does play part. Can you not understand! Israel came and took land from the Arabs! Their giant empire, having a spot in the middle! And most likely, their love for Islam, and their blind following probably resulted in them thinking that "OMG! These dirty Jews took it!". I am not making sense, I know, but I have this giant headace that won't go away.
But of course, Islam has been brought into this, and I must concede, is a major factor now. But neither of us can argue in this way, as I believe in a "Great Plan" and you don't. We believe that Zionism is evil, and is part of the plan. Obviously you don't. We believe that the Anti Christ will be the leader of Israel. Again, you don't. You can argue that this is obvious anti-Judaism. I like to think of it as anti-Zionism. This Zionism movement is actually prophecised to bring on the destruction of the world.
Do you have any idea how many people on this board believe I am going to Hell? It’s probably the only thing you religious types can all agree on. I’ll bet you guys even have cocktail parties!
“I know we can’t agree on much, chaps, but at least we can gather here tonight and toast our fantastic consensus that this Josh character is quite going to Hell…”
I bring this up because, from where I’m sitting, you guys are seriously fucking nuts. Nuts and fucked up, aye. Look at you, arguing that Islam hasn’t played a role in the wars of the Middle East! And when confronted with the fact that in fact Islam has been up to its bloody neck in these wars? Blame Israel! Come on; what does Israel have to do with Islam being a bloody religion? What does Israel have to do with your claim that warmongering Muslims are not true Muslims? This entire thread is a testament to the neuroticism of Islamic apologists and the irrationality of Israel-haters. Israel is there, it isn’t going anywhere; it doesn’t belong in Australia and it certainly doesn’t belong in Antarctica. Israel has no place in this discussion other than that it is a victim of a powerful, aggressive religion—Islam.
Your “Great Plan” is not something that rational people ought to believe in. Have you ever read Time Cube theory (http://www.timecube.com/)? When you rail against Israel, it’s the same brand of WHAT THE FUCK?!
On the subject of the modern Palestinian people, there can be no doubt that suffering abounds and the Palestinian Territories should become the sovereign nation of Palestine without delay. The would-be permanent borders are obvious. The people are tired of violence and poverty; so are the Israelis. Only the scourge of religion can explain why the dispute continues, and your religion—Islam—has been the one sustaining this whole debacle. I can imagine how ordinary Palestinians feel; they feel the same way Americans felt about Iraq when President Bush promised us that Saddam Hussein was planning to nuke our cities. Most Americans got caught up in a fervor that had nothing to do with the truth. So it is for the Palestinians: In a society where hating Israel is taught at a younger age than the alphabet, all under the auspices of Islamic doctrine, you can understand why these people are so fucking insane. Your religion has been the enabler of that. And you give your explicit approval to this continued insanity by interjecting the Israeli Bogeyman into your colorful apology for, and denial of, the motives for Islamic radicals who monger war in the name of their god. Islam is not an Israeli problem. Islam is an Islamic problem.
How bout this. What if Palestine just became a state. The entire Israel would be Palestine. It would be secular, just like one of its neighbours, Egypt. Then how would you feel? The only reason the Israeli state was formed was because of THEIR religion. THEY wanted a land, a State of God. What would Palestine of been like after the fall of the Ottoman Empire?
You can't avoid going into religion here. Religion is the reason the Jews insisted on setteling here (It's a well known fact we could have been at Oganda, but chose not to because Israel is our religious home).
See? The Jews insisted on settling there. Who cares about the current owners. They (The Brits) just took half of it, and the Israeli-Supporters support this movement with "Hey! We used to own it AGES ago!". Ok, you used to own it. But AGES ago. A very long time ago. Get over it. Pretty much, if Israel has a right to exist, so do the rest of the Islamic Nations.
Islam is no longer a together religion. You can see this from the sectarian violence in Iraq. God says, and possibly one of the many in your collection of burn-in-hell lines, that those who kill believers intentionally will burn in hell. Then why is it that Muslims are...killing Muslims!? The ummah is broken, and Muslims, in a Zionistic way, believe that one day we will become one again. There is no Muslim Caliphate. Even the Ayatollahphate in Iran isn't 100% correct.
It is certainly true that Islam is a beast with no head, each of its thousand oozing limbs running amok in its own particular way, some doing great harm and others slithering along benignly. You are correct in this much. But if a person wants to call himself or herself a Muslim, then that is how it must be, for devotion to God answers to no earthly authority. (As I have said ad nauseam, to little effect.) As surely as the followers of Southern Baptism and Greek Orthodoxy both call themselves a Christian people, so too are the sects of Islam diverse. You ask why it is that Muslims would kill Muslims if the Koran says the punishment for this is Hell, but the answer should be obvious even to you, because you persist in making the same mistake in logic that they make: When one Muslim perceives that another Muslim stands in the way of God’s will, the former will be inclined to allege that the latter is somehow not a true Muslim. “Peaceful” Muslims like yourself may be content simply to denounce these “untrue” Muslims, but terrorist Muslims may resort to bloodshed. This is yet another way of understanding why your refusal to accept that Islamic militancy has everything to do with Islam is such a dangerous denial of the truth.
But the thing is, Shi'ites and Sunnis are both confirmed sects of Islam! Some from each view each other as heretics, but each know that the others are Muslims. This isn't entirely Americas fault with the invasion of Iraq, as it is moslty the fault of Saddam and his oppressive regime. And Islam believes oppressors will burn in Hell. Why you have the image that Islam condones oppression is beyond me. It is true that Muslims kill apostates, I know, and if you find the cruel, so be it. I will not argue with you on that point. But I must ask, what DO you know of Islam? I don't mean the history, and the carnage and shit. I mean what it means to be a Muslim? Islam isn't as flexible as Christianity, there aren't a billion ways to be a Muslim. I could say right now that the 5%s (http://www.allahsnation.net/) were not Muslims, and no Muslim would argue with me. Yet you most likely would, saying that I have no authority to say who is a Muslim, and who isn't. But they aren't. They believe God had manifested himself, which denies them being Muslim.
Correct meaning in the proper ways according to Sharia.
Same problem as before: People will interpret this code differently. (Also, I cannot let slip a reference to Sharia without reiterating that it is the most despicable instrument of pure flagitious cruelty that our world has seen in centuries. It is a testament to the very worst fabric within human nature. Anyone who tries to impose this sick little scheme of mis-ethics onto other people, should be dragged out into the street and shot.)
Tell me, what is so bad about Sharia? Do you know how bad Arabia was before Sharia came into practice? You think Islam is oppressive, see what it was like before then. Arabia used to be this cespool of corruption. Slavery, burying daughters, oppression of women. Islam was a COMPLETE revolution. What is so bad about Sharia, the fact that it tries to control the people? Make life better? Sharia had almost rid slavery, whereas your country only did 200 years ago. Democracy has so many flaws its not funny. Even the monarchy system is better. Of course my view on Sharia is different, I believe that Sharia is the whim of God, not of Man. But you have to realize one thing: no country follows Sharia perfectly. There is no Caliph. The closest you can get is Iran, and even Iran is fucked up. Killing the raped? What the fuck!? And there is another factor in Sharia, the idea that there is a hereafter, one that you can see as a fallacy. Like, in the Quran it says if the Four Witnesses lie, God will be the 5th witness, and will give the liars punishment.
Anyways, on to why you think Sharia is bad. Because it supports the death penalty? It doesn't necessarily demote the rank of women. It does not make man and women one. It is because they are different. An Islamic state would rather want men to be in, say, the engineering industry, and want women to be in the nursing industry. Because they are not the same. It depends on where you stand. Just like how I can't judge the worlds muslims, who are you to judge what is right and what is wrong? What is ethical and what is not? You can't call something sick and wrong. However I can, because I believe in a God. And that God tells me what is right and what is wrong. You may not belive in God, yet I do. Therefore I believe I have that right, while you don't (in my opinion)
How you can judge the actions of the Hamas version of Islam, with the ways of say, Islam R' Us, is beyond me. They are in hardly any way connected, only connected in the way of "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Final Messenger." Faith wise, yes, they are all correct. But each have their own ideas.
Different limbs, same beast. The proposition that Hamas Islam and Teddy Bear Islam are so different that neither are actually Islam is a nonstarter. This claim makes as little sense to me as the claim by some in the Religious Right that Catholics are not true Christians.
No, I meant how can you say that the Islamic Code condones violence on certain groups? Therefore you can say Islam allows homosexuality based on the Homosexual Islamic Group. The Religious Right could accept the Catholics as Christians, but say their laws are fucked.
The Islamic society in my school doesn't wish to bomb the school because it is secular. It is not like they don't talk to Jewish people; heck, some of my friends are Jewish! Yet of course they wish to be united. Of course they wish the best for the Muslims. They might not necessarily support Hamas, or the Algerian Islamic Party, or the Nigerian Government, or what ever. However they wish for the best of the INNOCENT Muslims. Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, China; all of it.
Uh huh. This is a contradiction of your last quote. Here you describe a common theme that unites them into a common religion. There are many other customs, traditions, and beliefs which also unite disparate Muslim sects into a relative state of like-mindedness.
No, I am just saying that it is another version of Islam, the more common version, the version that most scholars, sheiks, Imams and the like follow. Apart from Sunni~Shi'ite, there aren't many differences in customs. Law, maybe, but not customs. But hey, there are differences in laws in communism and democracy.
That is part of the reason I support Palestine. The other part is from true, objective views. My sister did Modern History; such as Ireland, and of course Palestine, and from her comments, I say Palestine is right. But she is also part of a feminist association. She does not like Iran. Wow, is she looking at Palestine from a...objective point of view!
Not having read them, I cannot speak to your sister’s remarks. However, an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. If you are unable to prove your arguments yourself, it is not enough to invoke somebody else’s name as though their authority by itself will do the job for you.
I am just saying how it is not just people like me who support Palestine. Palestine can be seen as 'right' from a multiple number of perspectives.
As for 99% of your quotes about burning in hell...what are you trying to prove? That God will send the disbelievers into Hell? Um...ok...thanks Josh, I knew that already! It's a great thing to have you here to teach me things I would obviously forget after hearing it for ten years :roll:
Remember how you were denying that Islam is a militant, cruel, and bloodthirsty religion? I just thought a few hundred supporting examples from your own holy text would help persuade you to abandon your denials. I can find a few hundred more, if you like. Somehow I doubt it will change your mind.
Oh no! Islam is so militant because God will make disbelievers burn in Hell! Seriously, Josh, this is one of the stupidest things you have ever said. Try and look more deeper into it. Islam believes that almost all of the rewards and the wraths will come after the Day of Judgement. I am not sure if you are Nihilistic or not, but obviously, Islam isn't. Just because God will make disbelievers burn in Hell, doesn't support any of your "Islamismilitant" views.
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I point the finger because Christianity and Islam have been the biggest sponsors of murder and oppression in the history of the world, and in any case they are by far the biggest sponsors of these crimes in the year 2006. (Say what you will about President Bush; it’s all true. But at least he’ll be gone in 2008. Religion won’t.)
Not to discount the atrocities motivated by those religions, are you certain that this is true? I mean, many of the worst democides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide) in history do not appear to be based on religious doctrine, or at least that of Abrahamic religions.
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And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
How can the Jews break a treaty they never signed or agreed upon...? Muhammad said he won't attack them for ten minutes, the Jews aren't Muhammad. See, this is pointless, Muhammad needed a scapegoat, and when the Jews refused to join, he decided to revise Islam. First he says God sent him the Quran and makes all those cool holidays, AND THEN CHANGES THEM.
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I point the finger because Christianity and Islam have been the biggest sponsors of murder and oppression in the history of the world, and in any case they are by far the biggest sponsors of these crimes in the year 2006. (Say what you will about President Bush; it’s all true. But at least he’ll be gone in 2008. Religion won’t.)
Not to discount the atrocities motivated by those religions, are you certain that this is true? I mean, many of the worst democides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide) in history do not appear to be based on religious doctrine, or at least that of Abrahamic religions.
These religions are centuries old each, and counting. While lacking the stupendous headlines of certain notorious genocides in the 20th century, religious warfare has persisted throughout the generations--taking a thousand bodies here, a thousand there...until sooner or later it all adds up to real death. Moreover, do not forget that a lot of third-world genocide in modern times is the product of a global clash between Islam and Christianity. Darfur is a particularly horrid (and ongoing) example that burns fresh in the world's memory.
Also, it'd just be a hunch, but if we were to factor in the Earth's then-current population with respect to the dates of genocides of the past, I hypothesize that the relative size of past religious slaughters would be much higher than all but the most profound modern bloodshed. And to make the numbers even worse, back then there were fewer social nets to help the stricken, and without modern medicine and engineering, it is a fact that surviving disease, famine, torture, ransacking, and other calamities was much harder.
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And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
How can the Jews break a treaty they never signed or agreed upon...? Muhammad said he won't attack them for ten minutes, the Jews aren't Muhammad. See, this is pointless, Muhammad needed a scapegoat, and when the Jews refused to join, he decided to revise Islam. First he says God sent him the Quran and makes all those cool holidays, AND THEN CHANGES THEM.
Um...what?
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None of this would be a problem if we were immortal and invincible. Then we could blast ourselves into space and float forever until we find planets of our own.
Humans have been making me angrier and angrier the past few weeks.
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And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
How can the Jews break a treaty they never signed or agreed upon...? Muhammad said he won't attack them for ten minutes, the Jews aren't Muhammad. See, this is pointless, Muhammad needed a scapegoat, and when the Jews refused to join, he decided to revise Islam. First he says God sent him the Quran and makes all those cool holidays, AND THEN CHANGES THEM.
Um...what?
Well, here's a case in point against religious interaction, eh?
Seriously, religion and politics don't mix. They never have. When they do, things get messy, almost all the time. The one thing, some might say, that religion lends is morality but, as my father would say, there isn't exactly such a thing as (for example) Christian morality. Morality is really a seperate issue as well, as religion has to do with certain tradition and dogma. Anyway, the point is, as Luther put it, he'd rather have a good Turk rule him than a bad Christian (in context: the Turks were a great threat at that point in time.) And it's true. It's best if somehow we can divorce religion from politics. But, somehow, I don't think that's about to happen any time soon.
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The problem is is that Islam aims to govern, rather than be a supplement.
Oh yeah, great plan Mystik.
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Why must the religion govern, though?
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Because that is what Islam is. Not a religion, but a way of life.
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And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
How can the Jews break a treaty they never signed or agreed upon...? Muhammad said he won't attack them for ten minutes, the Jews aren't Muhammad. See, this is pointless, Muhammad needed a scapegoat, and when the Jews refused to join, he decided to revise Islam. First he says God sent him the Quran and makes all those cool holidays, AND THEN CHANGES THEM.
Um...what?
Okay, first he comes by, and says: "Hey everyone, God told me to make a new religion! You're all invited!" Those people lived nearby Jews and saw their religion. Muhammad made customs and holidays which are terribly reminiscent of the Jewish ones. So far it's all good and nice. I'd even say that makes sense-We all serve under the same God, so it makes sense that he'd give Muhammad similar instructions.
But when the Jews refused to join Islam, Muhammad changed all those things he said. How can you change something God told you, what, did God say: 'Oh, wait, wrong religion, here's the REAL things you should do!'? That's utter bullshit.
Muhammad wanted everyone to love him. He was a very talented person, I'll give you that: He could unite all those people under a single religion. But come on, if I were to come and say: 'Hey, BZ, God told me to make a new religion! Join me!', would you HONESTLY believe me?
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And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
How can the Jews break a treaty they never signed or agreed upon...? Muhammad said he won't attack them for ten minutes, the Jews aren't Muhammad. See, this is pointless, Muhammad needed a scapegoat, and when the Jews refused to join, he decided to revise Islam. First he says God sent him the Quran and makes all those cool holidays, AND THEN CHANGES THEM.
Um...what?
Okay, first he comes by, and says: "Hey everyone, God told me to make a new religion! You're all invited!" Those people lived nearby Jews and saw their religion. Muhammad made customs and holidays which are terribly reminiscent of the Jewish ones. So far it's all good and nice. I'd even say that makes sense-We all serve under the same God, so it makes sense that he'd give Muhammad similar instructions.
But when the Jews refused to join Islam, Muhammad changed all those things he said. How can you change something God told you, what, did God say: 'Oh, wait, wrong religion, here's the REAL things you should do!'? That's utter bullshit.
Muhammad wanted everyone to love him. He was a very talented person, I'll give you that: He could unite all those people under a single religion. But come on, if I were to come and say: 'Hey, BZ, God told me to make a new religion! Join me!', would you HONESTLY believe me?
Seriously, religion and politics don't mix. They never have.
They have here.
When they do, things get messy, almost all the time.
Messy like that certain area filled with Jews and Arabs around the Mediterrainian?
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Seriously, religion and politics don't mix. They never have.
They have here.
They may seem to mix for a Jew living in Israel, but what about someone who grows up there and turns atheist (or agnostic or Christian or Muslim...)? Religion might not seem to mix so well.
This does make one wonder what would happen to Israel if the Muslim attacks suddenly ceased. In many parts of the world, Jews are quite peaceful, but over there they've been engaged in a non-stop war. A warlike society doesn't suddenly turn peaceful; they'll just find new wars. Look at America after World War II, they kept finding foreign war after foreign war to get involved in. I doubt Israel would be any different. They might even return to the military-messianic society of thousands of years ago.
Right now, Israel looks like the victim, as America did in World War II (remember, they did get attacked before entering the war--though no one would blame them if they got involved in that particular conflict earlier). Remove the war, and, like America, they could easily turn into the aggressor.
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Israel is war-torn. We don't enjoy wars. That's why we constantly struggle to get peace with our neigbhors, to make sure that if the Palestinians would stop their assaults, we could stay in peace.
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And, well, Legend, I don't think we can argue about this at all, because we believe the Jews broke the treaty of Al Medina. So...case closed on that matter.
How can the Jews break a treaty they never signed or agreed upon...? Muhammad said he won't attack them for ten minutes, the Jews aren't Muhammad. See, this is pointless, Muhammad needed a scapegoat, and when the Jews refused to join, he decided to revise Islam. First he says God sent him the Quran and makes all those cool holidays, AND THEN CHANGES THEM.
Um...what?
Okay, first he comes by, and says: "Hey everyone, God told me to make a new religion! You're all invited!" Those people lived nearby Jews and saw their religion. Muhammad made customs and holidays which are terribly reminiscent of the Jewish ones. So far it's all good and nice. I'd even say that makes sense-We all serve under the same God, so it makes sense that he'd give Muhammad similar instructions.
But when the Jews refused to join Islam, Muhammad changed all those things he said. How can you change something God told you, what, did God say: 'Oh, wait, wrong religion, here's the REAL things you should do!'? That's utter bullshit.
Muhammad wanted everyone to love him. He was a very talented person, I'll give you that: He could unite all those people under a single religion. But come on, if I were to come and say: 'Hey, BZ, God told me to make a new religion! Join me!', would you HONESTLY believe me?
Again...what?
The holidays are the same because it is generally the same religion. Such as Ashurah~Yom Kippur. The date didn't change. And he never said he made the same religion, he said he came and is saying what the previous prophets said. And his main audience weren't the Jews, it was the entire world, and therefore he wouldn't just change stuff for the minority.
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Previous Prophet. Prophet. The Jews never had a Prophet. Moses was not a Prophet, he just lead the Jews to Israel.
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According to wikipedia he is your prophet.
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I don't see how we believe in enslaving women. Or how we have.
Then you are blind to the greatest evil humanity has ever performed. You not only know nothing of women's status in history, but you even know nothing of women's status in the here and now. Whatever sick belief you have regarding the "place" of women must be sick indeed for you to overlook the plight of women in every nation on Earth that adheres to Sharia, and many others that do not. There is not a country on Earth today where women's rights are equal, let alone superior, to men's rights.
I remember in a past thread you told me that it is okay for husbands to beat their wives "a little." No comment you have made before or since captures your inherent sexism quite so well as that one, but everything you have ever said on the subject has reinforced, to those who are sane of mind that indeed your sexism is so deeply rooted in you that you truly are completely blind to it. Every defense you have ever erected on your own behalf has only gone to show just how odious sexism truly is.
Of all your personal failings, Zeppelin, this one is by far the worst.
We united most of the world in 700-1300 AD. We killed the disbelievers who fought us.
Yes, truly, this proves Islam is a religion of peace. What was I thinking?
I don't give a fuck what others tell me. I'm my own man. Tell me Josh, was there not bloodshed before the Birth of Christ? Religion has played a part in many a war. But not only religion. Land, possession, betrayal, lust, all. Until you some how destroy the root of all evil, otherwise known as humanity, war will not cease to exist.
Yes, there was bloodshed before Christ. No, this does not excuse the ample bloodshed carried out in the name of tribal god images, including Islam.
The root of all evil is not humanity. The root of all evil is ignorance. Ignorance, be it unknowing or willful. Religion is a kind of willful ignorance: A rejection of objective reality for a reassuring fantasy that helps people find meaning in their lives, but whose execution has been a disaster to the entire human race. Nearly all of the things you mentioned as pretexts for war--land, possession, betrayal, lust--were justified in religious terms, and holy wars, "blessed" by a god, account for much of the warfare waged since the dawn of civilization. From the Palestinians today, to the Crusaders of the Middle Ages, to the classical Greeks, to the ancient Sumerians, war and religion have been so intimate with one another as to make us wonder if they are not indeed the same thing.
Blame religion. I don't care. I can just go blaming America. Or Israel. Patriotism. Fuck, I could go as far as blaming left handers! There will always be someone to blame. You can blame Islam. Muslims can blame Israel. People can blame God. It will never end.
It isn't enough to blame whatever you like. If there is no merit to your blame, then the blame itself is unjust. America has its share of blame in mongering war; patriotism certainly does. Are these the ultimate enemies of peace? No, they are the supporting cast. God is the ultimate enemy to peace. God is the ultimate excuse for people to indulge their basest desires with no regard for life, limb, livelihood, and land. God, be it an individual person's private spirituality or an organized religion's official dogma, is the little voice in our heads that tells us to do what should not be done. There's an old saying: "God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world." So true!
I can see where you are going again Josh. I hate nationalism as much as you. But as you know, they are proud people. This came before Islam. Islam taught to destroy the idea of nationalism, only the idea of being under God. Islam isn't necessarily the catalyst of the war, though it does play part. Can you not understand! Israel came and took land from the Arabs! Their giant empire, having a spot in the middle! And most likely, their love for Islam, and their blind following probably resulted in them thinking that "OMG! These dirty Jews took it!". I am not making sense, I know, but I have this giant headace that won't go away.
This "headache" is probably the truth pounding on your temples. Here you are as close to acknowledging the truth as you have been in our entire debate.
How bout this. What if Palestine just became a state. The entire Israel would be Palestine. It would be secular, just like one of its neighbours, Egypt. Then how would you feel? The only reason the Israeli state was formed was because of THEIR religion. THEY wanted a land, a State of God.
If Israel had been established as a secular state, with Jews in the minority, there would have been another Holocaust. How fortunate for the Jews, to be so despised by their Muslim neighbors that only a Jewish state would give them a chance to survive. Islamic fervor shot itself in the foot, here.
Why you have the image that Islam condones oppression is beyond me. It is true that Muslims kill apostates, I know, and if you find the cruel, so be it. I will not argue with you on that point.
This rubbish speaks for itself. What was it I said earlier, about how one delusional person is considered insane, but a billion are considered devout?
But I must ask, what DO you know of Islam? I don't mean the history, and the carnage and shit. I mean what it means to be a Muslim?
At this point, you may not realize it, but you are setting yourself up as the butt of a joke. No, Burning Z, if we are not talking about "the history, and the carnage and shit," I do not know what it means to be a Muslim--other than that it might be a fancy word for criminal insanity.
Tell me, what is so bad about Sharia?
I would like you to list for us every country and territory that adheres to Sharia. You will answer your own question for me.
The closest you can get [to an example of correct adherence to Sharia] is Iran, and even Iran is fucked up. Killing the raped? What the fuck!?
Yep, Iran is one. Keep going. Oh, and don't forget Iran's policy of killing sexually independent women, socially independent women, gays, children, nonbelievers, little kittens...well, I don't know about the little kittens. It wouldn't surprise me. Then of course there is the slavery of women, the fact that their lives are valued just slightly above that of rancid trash. Even their testimony in court is inferior to a man's! Sharia treats women as not human. And, women aside, the entire free population is oppressed by a severe theocratic tyranny!
Yes, Iran is one country that aspires to impose "perfect" Sharia. Go on and tell us the rest.
Anyways, on to why you think Sharia is bad. Because it supports the death penalty? It doesn't necessarily demote the rank of women. It does not make man and women one. It is because they are different. An Islamic state would rather want men to be in, say, the engineering industry, and want women to be in the nursing industry. Because they are not the same. It depends on where you stand.
Men and women are not different. Men and women are human beings. They are exactly the same thing. The differences between them are cosmetic.
Just like how I can't judge the worlds muslims, who are you to judge what is right and what is wrong? What is ethical and what is not?
The reason I am entitled to judge what is right and wrong is because my system of ethics is based upon reason. In other words, good and evil can be measured! You, in contrast, base your ethics on a system of morality taken on faith to be the will of God. Your ethics are inherently untestable, unfalsifiable, and cannot be codified by a mortal being or corporeal institution. You cannot speak for anyone but yourself, whereas I can speak for every human being. Your implicit acceptance of faith when you show faith in God forbids you from questioning other people's faith, which in turn forbids you from passing worldly judgment on them. In this way, all religious strife is based upon a fallacious pretext.
Ironically, your next quote is exactly contrary to the truth:
You can't call something sick and wrong. However I can, because I believe in a God. And that God tells me what is right and what is wrong. You may not belive in God, yet I do. Therefore I believe I have that right, while you don't (in my opinion)
The delusion to which you subscribe has turned your world inside-out. I cannot imagine the terror you would experience to consider, even for a moment--to truly consider it--that your entire world is wrong, and your greatest beliefs false.
You asked me once how I would feel if I died and found myself confronting your god. I answered, truthfully, that it'd prolly scare the shit out of me. As a rational person, objectively-minded, I can consider hypothetical scenarios. You, however, cannot, and this is why it is so difficult for you to conceive of a world where your religion is simply the shared delusion of billions of people.
Much of what you have said in your last post, as well as many of your others, is an awful bore for me to reply to. For the most part, the resolution of the points on which you force the debate is so painfully obvious that it seems almost a waste of time to argue on behalf of what most people would plainly see. If only you could step outside of your religion and into the real world for a while, you would save me a lot of trouble. Likewise, if only religious people everywhere could do the same thing, the world would be far better a place.
Oh no! Islam is so militant because God will make disbelievers burn in Hell! Seriously, Josh, this is one of the stupidest things you have ever said. Try and look more deeper into it. Islam believes that almost all of the rewards and the wraths will come after the Day of Judgement. I am not sure if you are Nihilistic or not, but obviously, Islam isn't. Just because God will make disbelievers burn in Hell, doesn't support any of your "Islamismilitant" views.
Islam is militant because Islamic militants are so abundant. These are people whose religion gives them the language, the imagery, and the justification to commit murder, rape, terrorism, violence, and injustice in general.
I am not a nihilist. Do you even know what that word means? In any case, nihilism is one of the Three Deplorable Isms in my personal philosophy. (Yeah, I've got my own philosophy.) It isn't nihilistic to conclude that Islamic militants base their militancy on Islam. You end your post on a note of gibberish.
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Josh...wow. You are henceforth known as the "most intelligent person of all time." Of course, just because you are intelligent doesn't make you right. You view certain events, certain laws, in a different perspective. Of course, every human has a different perspective on these. It just so happens that I believe I am right, and I believe you are wrong, just like how you believe I am an evil, dastardly villianous fourteen year old, and that you are the ruler of the world.
I remember in a past thread you told me that it is okay for husbands to beat their wives "a little." No comment you have made before or since captures your inherent sexism quite so well as that one, but everything you have ever said on the subject has reinforced, to those who are sane of mind that indeed your sexism is so deeply rooted in you that you truly are completely blind to it. Every defense you have ever erected on your own behalf has only gone to show just how odious sexism truly is.
I never said that. In fact, calling me sexist is total proof that you believe that everything is right from your perspective. A woman could believe that a guy wanting to have sex with her is sexist. Another might believe that a state making her cover modestly is sexist. Another man might believe that a state making him pay for all expenses is sexist.
Women and men are not the same. One has the balance of hormones tipped in a way, and the other, the other way. One is better in the "right" brain side, while the other, the "left."
My comment on whether you know Islam or not was to see whether you know what makes a Muslim. Obviously you don't know.
About the last point, I mean why are you saying Islam is militant just because God makes disbelievers go to Hell?
And that pounding headache came after a day of playing Rugby -.-
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I remember in a past thread you told me that it is okay for husbands to beat their wives "a little." No comment you have made before or since captures your inherent sexism quite so well as that one, but everything you have ever said on the subject has reinforced, to those who are sane of mind that indeed your sexism is so deeply rooted in you that you truly are completely blind to it. Every defense you have ever erected on your own behalf has only gone to show just how odious sexism truly is.
I never said that.
You said that on Nov. 19 in this post (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=34847#34847) in the topic "Evolution, it's not just a theory":
Ah, sorry for making assumptions, but that is what your entire...style of talking implied.
Believe what you wish, women aren't oppressed by the doctrine. They are oppressed by the people. Not by the Holy Teachings(now I know that you don't believe that the Qu'ran (also, when I said the Holy Book I mean't Qu'ran) is holy, but just bear with my point of view). God recognises men and women as different. Let's look at lions, shall we? The male protects the clan. The male is stronger. The female gets the food. The female is stealthier. This is like humanity. This is like Islam. Islam teaches that the female should look after the family, cook and clean, listen to her husband. The husband has an obligatory stance to provide for the ENTIRE family, no matter how rich his wife is. He must look after her, and care for her, and sexually please her. Ok, the husband is allowed to beat her, but very, very lightly. In fact, if the man beats her hard, the woman can go to court about it, and she can beat him as hard as he beat her. And of course, she is allowed to divorce. No dishonour to her, not chasing after her, plotting to kill her. No evil deadly curses and giant mechs. Just simple. Then people say that they aren't allowed to do anything. Lets go back to the lion analogy. The lion is the leader. In humanity, the man does all the financial stuff, so there is no need for the women to do such things. AND YES, they are allowed friends! SHOCK! HORROR! Islam bases itself on dignity, and therefore it despises promiscosity. Thats why they aren't allowed to look good in front of other men. Men are more lustful then women. Period. But in this society, it seems that women are being lured into pornography, prostitution and other things to please men.
Of course, this is not my crusade to topple democracy. I have no problem with democracy. In Sharia, people vote for the leader. Yes! Vote! But while Islam bases itself on the speakings of God, Democracy bases itself on the whims of man. Here in Australia, there are new, very unfair industrial reforms, that I have posted previously in some thread. How has this been done? Well, the Liberals won the senate. Full majority. Nothing to stop them. Not even the giant protest some days ago. Whereas in Islam you can oppose them any time, you can't here.
Now, I detest Saudia Arabia, Iran and the Taliban as much as you Lord J. This is not Islam. Anyways, I don't care if you don't like Islam, even the original. It's your life.
As for the question, I think your first answer was more of what I was thinking. And God hasn't predetermined anything. He just knows when everything will happen.
And Zeality, I'm not sure of the others, but I have noe resentment at all, not even Lord J who opposes my views in almost every single way.
It took me a few minutes, but I found it. And besides your remarks in that thread, I also found something you said (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=27021#27021) on the subject of adultery:
One supposed paragraph said the prophet condoned a man for killing his slave, who was also a pregnant. This is probably untrue because in the Quran the woman who adultered went up to the prophet and said kill me because i have done this sin. But the prophet waited a while before killing, after she gave birth.
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I'm gonna nitpick here, and say in Norway men occupy a position (in the law) superior to men. I assert that this is the case because Norway has laws requiring that a certain proportion of executives of companies be female.
This is brazenly sexist, and the fact that it favors women does not change nor does it justify this fact.
BZ, what you are failing to realize when Josh says that men and women are the same is that he is operating at a higher level of abstraction than you. Are men and women identical? No, of course not. Their are physiological differences, including several in the brain*. But that is beneath the scope of what Josh is talking about. Men and women are equally capable of most tasks, and certainly any political or buisneuss task. The fact that more men are engineers than women does not imply that men make better engineers than women. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Men and women are different, but these differences are trivial when one considers issues of political and social standing.
*For example, women have a much larger corups collosum than men. That's the bridge of neurons between the two hemispheres of the brain.
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Yeah, Josh, that is allowed in my religion. But I didn't create that religion, now did I? Take that comment in any way you should. And the punishment for adultery is the same for both sexes. Say it is barbaric, but it isn't sexist.
And why make both sexes strive to be exactly the same when they can both excel in what they're good at! :D Why do you think almost all the time the woman wins at taking custody of the children? And yes, that is why most Muslim scholars agree that women can be clerics and leaders...:roll:
Something on Wikipedia gained my attention...
...He [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] also called for Israel to be relocated to Germany, or Austria, arguing it was these nations that persecuted the Jews, so they should carry the responsibility, not Palestinians forsaking their land to form a state of Israel...
Well then, obviously the war started due to Zionism.
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Islam initally was a very feministic religion, according to my Islam class. Muhammad demanded that men 'respect their women and be good to them', and the whole one men-four women marriage part was said to have been because many men died in wars, and Muhammad said so that women don't stay helpless, they would have to share a man. Intrestingly enough, that happaned around the same time Muhammad started marrying more then one woman.
The problem is that Muslims act terribly towards women, but they aren't ordered to do so by religion. I can't say I remember (Or maybe ever knew) their excuse for the terrible behavior men have towards women.
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Listen guys, Men and Women are not equal. I'll give you two great reasons why:
1.) Speed of Restroom usage.
Tonight, I went to the Atlanta Symphony Orcastra (got to get some culture for my music class). During the intermission, when I was walking past the women's (and men's) restroom, there was a very long line. There was no line for the mens. If there ever is, something is very, very wrong. You see, men can go into a restroom, take a piss, and leave. For women, it takes much longer. Therefore, Men are superior to Women in the area of speed of restroom usage.
2.) Women can bleed for a day and be fine.
"If it bleeds for a day, and doesn't die, I don't trust it. Not human!" Thus said my teacher of Manliness. I hope I don't need to explain this anymore.
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Islam initally was a very feministic religion, according to my Islam class. Muhammad demanded that men 'respect their women and be good to them', and the whole one men-four women marriage part was said to have been because many men died in wars, and Muhammad said so that women don't stay helpless, they would have to share a man. Intrestingly enough, that happaned around the same time Muhammad started marrying more then one woman.
The problem is that Muslims act terribly towards women, but they aren't ordered to do so by religion. I can't say I remember (Or maybe ever knew) their excuse for the terrible behavior men have towards women.
Sadly you are right. Islam was never meant to be a religion that could meld in with your culture (take this any way you will). It was meant to be the only law to govern your personal life (of course you are still meant to obey your nations law). But yeah, shit happens. Arabia was *ahem* the greates nation before Islam, and Arabic nationalism has brought many traditions back. Like belly dancing :D
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Islam initally was a very feministic religion, according to my Islam class. Muhammad demanded that men 'respect their women and be good to them', and the whole one men-four women marriage part was said to have been because many men died in wars, and Muhammad said so that women don't stay helpless, they would have to share a man. Intrestingly enough, that happaned around the same time Muhammad started marrying more then one woman.
The problem is that Muslims act terribly towards women, but they aren't ordered to do so by religion. I can't say I remember (Or maybe ever knew) their excuse for the terrible behavior men have towards women.
Sadly you are right. Islam was never meant to be a religion that could meld in with your culture (take this any way you will). It was meant to be the only law to govern your personal life (of course you are still meant to obey your nations law). But yeah, shit happens. Arabia was *ahem* the greates nation before Islam, and Arabic nationalism has brought many traditions back. Like belly dancing :D
This whole post sort of shows how brainwashed you are.
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Islam initally was a very feministic religion, according to my Islam class. Muhammad demanded that men 'respect their women and be good to them', and the whole one men-four women marriage part was said to have been because many men died in wars, and Muhammad said so that women don't stay helpless, they would have to share a man. Intrestingly enough, that happaned around the same time Muhammad started marrying more then one woman.
The problem is that Muslims act terribly towards women, but they aren't ordered to do so by religion. I can't say I remember (Or maybe ever knew) their excuse for the terrible behavior men have towards women.
Sadly you are right. Islam was never meant to be a religion that could meld in with your culture (take this any way you will). It was meant to be the only law to govern your personal life (of course you are still meant to obey your nations law). But yeah, shit happens. Arabia was *ahem* the greates nation before Islam, and Arabic nationalism has brought many traditions back. Like belly dancing :D
This whole post sort of shows how brainwashed you are.
How so? If its the "Arabia was *ahem* the greates nation before Islam, and Arabic nationalism has brought many traditions back." then whoops, I mean "wasn't" :oops:
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Ah. I beg your pardon then, it just seemed a bit bad. ^^
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Pardon that was in begging is now pardoned.
Or something.
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Yeeeaaah, necro'ing this for the new crowd, baby!
What's been really interesting about this thread so far is that it didn't really break down into conservative-leaning-Israel and liberal-leaning-Palestine camps. Plus, it's been so long that previously stated positions might have evolved. So further discussion should prove interesting.
It seems like the Israeli/Palestinian crisis is this alien, slow-burning wick that has nothing to do with us Chrono fans, but in truth this issue concerns each and every one of us. What's happening in Israel and the Palestinian territories is part of why people fly planes into buildings, and why everyone here runs some risk of somebody around them exploding randomly. We have no choice but to care because it's not just the lives of Israelis and Palestinians at stake, but our own.
One thing everyone should do if they get a chance is speak at length with someone who's actually lived in Israel or the Palestinian territories, so you can identify with what each side is experiencing on a personal level. When I get some more time I'll relate the insight I felt I gained by speaking with a Palestinian native studying abroad last year. I think at least a few others here have had similar conversations with either side.
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At least one of our posters--Legend of the Past, I think--was an Israeli citizen living in Israel.
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Both of them suffer from religious delusions and have committed atrocities against humanity and war crime conventions. They need to be secularized, fast.
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“We didn’t expect him to come back like this. However, we were not sorry to hear that he fell like a martyr.”
~ Mustafa Dogan, brother of the lone American citizen killed in the aid flotilla during a confrontation with Israeli commandos
Article Link (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/business/04lawsuit.html?hp=&pagewanted=all)
This tells you something about the mindset of the anti-Israel activist. After initially murky reports of the assault had solidified to reveal that Israel's commandos acted with professionalism and had only fired live weapons in self-defense after being overrun by the "peace activists" onboard that flotilla, the only legitimate criticism remaining for Israel is that its government would be stupid enough to send its soldiers into an obvious propaganda trap staged by Islamic radicals.
That whole aid flotilla was a farce. Was that truly so invisible ahead of the fact, or is the Israeli government even dumber than I give it credit for? These "peace activists," who would later be found to be armed with knives and clubs, claimed to the world that they wanted to deliver vital supplies to Gaza in defiance of what they considered an illegal blockade. But in addition to those supplies they brought along all the accoutrement of emotional propaganda. One of the activists even brought their infant child with them. It wasn't about delivering aid. It was about causing an event. They intended a confrontation with the Israelis. They intended to have their noses bloodied so that they could "prove" to the world more Israeli barbarism. And they deliberately rigged that confrontation to be as emotionally charged toward their cause as possible. Israel's two mistakes were to board those ships at all, in international waters.
Apparently, most of the activists on that flotilla were simply dupes, or "tools" as we call it nowadays. Maybe some of them actually believed they were on an aid mission. That much is speculation. One of the facts is that only a handful of these activists actually attacked the Israeli soldiers. So I'm not suggesting that the entire flotilla, despite being duplicitous, was manned by Islamic radicals. Nevertheless it is certain that some of the people in that flotilla were Islamic radicals, which almost guarantees ties to terrorist organizations, and lays bare the true purpose of the mission. And that brings me back to Mustafa Dogan's quote, clearly implying his dead brother's motives.
We have a problem here. Forget the flotilla. This debacle is just the most recent provocation in a much larger conflict...and it's not the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict." It's the conflict between secular humanism and religious dominionism. Pity the Palestinians. They've always been pawns, pawns of their Arab sponsors and now pawns of their Western sympathizers. Over the past decade, the very premise of "pro-Palestinian" activism has become a farce. There may be some naive people out there who still believe that all of this antagonism is about liberating Palestinians from an unjust oppressor, but by and large the movement has become an anti-Israel campaign, not a pro-Palestinian one. It's specifically about undermining Israel, not about helping the Palestinians. You can see that in their actions, and, if you know what to look for, you can see it in their words. There are clearer ways to help the Palestinians, not least of which would include delivering aid by not running a blockade and not attacking an enemy military force.
It's hard to separate everything clearly, but I think what we're looking at is similar to the anti-choice movement's view on abortion. Anti-choice activists aren't really campaigning for unborn babies, even though that's what they claim they're for, and even though some of them actually do believe it. The true origin of anti-choice activism is sexism, the domination of femalekind, whether or not individual anti-choice activists realize it for themselves. I think the same thing applies here to the anti-Israel movement. They're not really for the Palestinians, even though they claim to be and, on some less fundamental level, certainly do sympathize with the Palestinians. No, the true origin of their anti-Israel activism is...well...that's the thing. That's the problem we have here. What is the true origin? The Islamic radicals in the anti-Israel movement can be taken at face value: They're out to dominate the world with fundamentalist Islam. The people on the flotilla who ended up dead were probably all Islamic radicals, and as far as I'm concerned every one of them deserved their fate. But what about all those Western liberal anti-Israel activists? What the heck are they doing on a ship side-by-side with their worst ideological enemies? What are they thinking that would cause them to abandon their ideology of social justice and collaborate with one of the greatest sources of evil in the world?
The simplest possibility is that they are classic fools. There's a difference between the truth and what people believe to be the truth. Conservatives are fools on just about every issue where they open their mouths: What they believe to be true is comically far removed from the actual truth. Liberals aren't immune to this; in fact they're almost as bad as the conservatives. The fact that they're usually on the just side of the issues often seems like pure coincidence more than any demonstration of philosophical integrity. And I've been at odds with liberalism whenever mainstream thought happens to land on the unjust side of the issues. So, that might be what's happened here. Indeed, mainstream conservative thought happens to be strongly in support of Israel, and, since we know that the view of one side of the ideological divide is a strong predictor of the view of the other side, it could simply be that left and right have somehow switched roles on this. That's a chilling reminder of how tenuous the general public's grasp of true critical analysis is.
But I don't actually think this is the root of what's going on here. It does seem to be in operation--that liberals are simply demonstrating their fallibility by following the wrong piper on this particular issue--but I just don't see this explanation as having the substance to account for the full breadth of lunacy here. Sure, some liberals are fool enough to believe that Israel is the bogeyman it has been made out to be, purely because Israel is vastly more powerful than the Palestinian people. Some, but surely not all. Too many liberals are too smart for that.
Another possibility is anti-Semitism, but quite honestly, for all its relevance, I think it's a red herring in this case.
No, my hypothesis focuses on a very different possibility...one that is more elaborate and more unsettling. I think the true origin in all this, the reason that Westerners could possible be so staunchly anti-Israel in defiance of fact and good sense, is cynicism. And not just any cynicism. I'm talking about probably the most potent form of cynicism there is: self-doubt, applied to civilization itself.
To preface: There's a double standard here, and it's not got anything to do with the anti-Israeli claim that Israel has free rein to commit crimes that no one else would dare be permitted to commit. It's that the anti-Israel faction completely ignores the context of Israel's actions, jades the objective facts, and spreads irrelevancies and outright lies, all in the furtherance of validating itself and discrediting a nation. I've seen more than enough of it to know that it's real and pervasive. That's why I don't call them the "pro-Palestinian" faction anymore; at some point they lost sight of lifting up the Palestinians and became totally bent on attacking Israel.
My working hypothesis is that there is some phenomenon of Western guilt at work here, that the sight of a stable, militaristic, Western-style democracy defending itself with deadly force against a vastly militarily inferior, non-Western, non-Christian enemy is simply too much for some liberals to bear. Above the customary din of the political pandemonium of the day, a few controversies become a vessel for more than their own internal stew of disagreements. Abortion, gay marriage, nuclear power, Israel...to name four. These special controversies come to stand for broad cultural conflict, social tension, dis-ease between strong movements, the changing of ways, self-doubt, self-loathing, and the continuance of life in an imperfect world. In a way they even become representative of cultures, a source of cultural identity. A good conservative protects the unborn, blah blah blah.
My hypothesis can explain why true national evil in the world--North Korea's concentration camps, Saudi Arabia's enslavement of half the human race, and the genocide in Sudan--is regarded with such lesser urgency and passion by the anti-Israel folks. Israel, to these people, is a symbol, a scion or side effect of something that began in the 20th century. It represents that liberal-seated opposition to all this power and technological sophistication we've built up for ourselves, as yet with no severe consequences. Israel is an impossibility in the minds of those who truly believe human civilization is destined to fail.
What's worse is that, if I'm right, this weakness of character transcends simple intelligence. I have a close friend who is staunchly, almost comically anti-Israel, and has no self-awareness of the extremeness of her position. She's also dazzlingly intelligent. For such a bag of notions to enthrall a person as intelligent as her, requires some special agent of villainy. One of the few agencies up to the task...is cynicism. Cynicism can dominate a person of any intelligence level.
But that's not all; there's more. This isn't just a Western self-therapy session run amok. The exponents of Islamic radicalism exert an influence in the anti-Israel movement, fanning the flames of hatred, dogma, and insularity. This part isn't a hypothesis at all; I know it firsthand. I've met such people while working at my university's newspaper, and elsewhere in Seattle. They're playing the anti-Israel Westerners for fools. Islamic radicals are like any religious radicals: They don't want social justice, egalitarianism and civil liberties, except as means to empower themselves to impose their way of life on others. They're civilization's recidivism. Never mind that we helped create it ourselves when we chose Islam over Arab nationalism decades ago; the Islamic fundamentalist movement is not our lackey anymore. It's our enemy, and we're not doing anything to solve the problem.
I'm not even talking about foreign policy. I'm talking about what's in the minds of the people. The right is ready for a good old-fashioned religious tribal war between Jesus and Muhammad. Ever dependable, the right! And us? The left? We're tripping over ourselves to show hospitality, inclusiveness, acceptance, and encouragement to a brand of religion that wants to conquer the world. One of my most spectacular frustrations with the prevailing liberalism of our day is that it has chosen multiculturalism over secularism, and in so doing it has become faux pas for a person to defend liberal democracy from a liberal standpoint. This is how cultures rot. The left as a whole is either going to have to retreat from the disastrous choice of an ignorant majority, or our contemporary experiment in secular humanism is going to come to an ignominious end. I mean to try and reform the left so that people have a viable secular choice that eschews Christian xenophobia and Islamic conquest alike without compromising the ideals of justice and diversity.
That's my hypothesis. Now, let me step back and point something out: None of this tells you anything about what I personally think of Israel. You know that I'm pro-Israel, and you could probably infer that I supported Israel's efforts to enforce its blockade, regardless of whether I personally agree with the blockade. I point this out to express to you how little Israel itself actually has to do with all of this. If my hypothesis is right, Israel itself is, aside from its symbolic value, insignificant. Here's something I wrote in a recent letter to my highly intelligent friend, after we got into an argument over the assault on the aid flotilla:
I stand by my choice not to discuss Israel with you further. I hope you will appreciate my discomfort at showing disrespect toward you when I say that mature debate requires mature debate partners. In your zeal to justify yourself, you've taken me for someone I'm not and condemned my position without my ever having articulated it. You've used your authority of experiences to try and insulate yourself from criticism. You've told me to read Chomsky as if I've never heard of the guy or as if I consider him as definitive a voice as you do. You've touted Democracy Now when more objective news media have described the ambiguities that Democracy Now in its partisanship wouldn't. You've talked to me about white phosphorous with the same emotional gravity as if you'd been telling me about the napalming of civilian villages in the Vietnam War. I have to put aside my respect for your judgment in other affairs and acknowledge that here you are being dogmatic to the exclusion of reason. I've seen it before; I know it for what it is. You've made up your mind, and any new facts are pressed to the service of your preexisting conclusions, or disregarded. Ergo, I won't involve myself in a discussion with you on Israel. The whole thing would be futile for both of us...
I don't get to say it very often, but I'm not an Israeli apologist. I'm not Jewish and I'm not conservative. I have plenty to say about the hardships and needs of the Palestinian people, the dangers of right-wing governance in Israel, and the alarming growth of the ultra-orthodox population there. From those beginnings, many constructive conversations are possible. But, in the anti-Israel movement, there are precious few people to have those conversations with me. They don't want to treat Israel as a legitimate belligerent in a cultural conflict. They want to treat Israel as an apartheid Nazi regime. What productive conversations can follow from that ludicrous of a starting point?
If I'm right, there's no way to reason with the anti-Israel people on the subject of Israel, because their snit comes from a higher place...that biting cynicism, that self-doubt, that resentment toward all civilization. I'm not sure such people can be reasoned with at all, but there are so damn many of them in the anti-Israel movement that I have to wonder: How many people in the Western side of the movement are just the usual tagalongs who take sides simply for the cognitive tranquilizer of conformity, and how many are truly in the grip of Nihilism?
One more thing. I am disturbed by the ease with which Western anti-Israel activists end up supporting the cause of Islamic radicalism. If you consider yourself a secular humanist, and are also anti-Israel, you need to think long and hard about whether your positions support your ideals.
Edit: Israel made two mistakes, not one. Some how the international waters part had gotten left out of my publication draft.
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It seems like the Israeli/Palestinian crisis is this alien, slow-burning wick that has nothing to do with us Chrono fans, but in truth this issue concerns each and every one of us. What's happening in Israel and the Palestinian territories is part of why people fly planes into buildings, and why everyone here runs some risk of somebody around them exploding randomly. We have no choice but to care because it's not just the lives of Israelis and Palestinians at stake, but our own.
Lol, Idk this one thing made me laugh because I myself actually am Palestinian. I won't get involved because let's face it this isn't a matter of who is right or wrong. Or justice in anyway. 99.99% of people with an opinion on the matter base it off of prejudice. This really even isn't debatable because most of you will just be making elaborate excuses for "It's because they are _____." But oh well, my opinion doesn't matter therefore I will not share. Although this entire thread was a laugh and quite offensive.
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ZealKnight, I didn't realize! Are you living there now, or are you currently living abroad?
I think we'd all benefit from your opinion regardless of any feathers that might be ruffled. I've only had a few conversations with Palestinian Americans who travel back and forth (to deliver supplies and stuff to relatives) and found those exchanges highly insightful. It's difficult for those of us outside the situation to really appreciate what life is like there on a daily basis, and the challenges each side has to deal with.
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tl;dr
Bitches don't know bout my WALL OF TEXT
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Yeah, this forum isn't for you.
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tl;dr
Bitches don't know bout my WALL OF TEXT
LOL. PLease, post more.
It's interesting when you go to universities and at the quad there is a FREE PALESTINE and then a pro-Israel table. Since college, I've been on the Israel side of things. They do the best they can with what they have to work with. The latest situation with the boat, maybe they could have handled it slightly better by not blowing up the entire thing, but if the boat refuses to be checked, then they obviously needed to handle the situation.
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Really, gatotsu? I found it quite an interesting read, and an equally interesting hypothesis on Lord J's part (nice theory, btw). If you honestly found it to be a long read, then let me condense the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict down to the bare facts to help you get started:
- The conflict is over a century old, and mixes everything from nationalism to religion.
- There have been (at least) 5 wars over this tiny strip of land since Israel became an independent nation in 1948, with dozens of battles, raids, and skirmishes between then and now.
- There have been (at least) 9 multi-nation peace talks to resolve the conflict, all of which have failed.
- The Israelis really want the land.
- The Palestinians really want the land.
The Israeli People
The Israelis -- also known as Jews, Hebrews, Israelites, and according to David Duke, the people who are secretly the "real" Russian Mafia and are working to control the banks, the media, the world, and you (especially you) -- are a group of Semitic people who have been inhabiting the Levant area of the Middle East for thousands of years. Sometime in the second millennium B.C., the Israelis had autonomous authority in Israel and ran themselves just fine. Around the first century B.C., the Romans invaded and later forced the Jews out. Over the next two millennia, the Israelis moved to Europe and Russia, while many stayed and continued to live in the Middle East under the rule of whatever empire at the time that decided to wage a war on a whim.
The Palestinian People
The Palestinians are also a group of Semitic people who have been inhabiting the Levant area of the Middle East for thousands of years. The Palestinians have only been called "Palestinians" since the 20th century. Prior to that they were known as Phillistines, Arabs, Muslims or, according to Alan Dershowitz, the people who plotted with Hitler to orchestrate the Holocaust. The Palestinians have lived under numerous governments, and have never been autonomous.
I'm sure you can figure it out from there. I recommend starting with World War I and the Ottoman Empire.
Update: Also, research the PLO and Hamas, two major players in the conflict. The PLO manifesto basically states that the Israeli and Palestinian territories will convert into one Islamic state, and Hamas is a cowardly terrorist organization who targets civilians over 99% of time and uses children as human shields (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Children_as_.22human_shields.22).
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uses children as human shields (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Children_as_.22human_shields.22).
They aren't the only ones. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4333982.stm)
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Well-spotted, ZeaLitY. Clearly the Israeli Defense Forces are every bit as unethical and opportunistic as Palestinian militants. Except for the fact that your news story is five years out of date, and that it explicitly mentions that the Israeli judicial system had outlawed the practice, and that recent news (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010314111649825288.html) suggests the prohibition is still in place, and that the "human shields" used by the IDF were tasked with knocking on doors to demand the enemy's surrender rather than presenting themselves as literal, physical body shields during combat...except for those wee insignificant details of no importance, you're made a very cogent and irrefutable tu quoque argument of such impeccable integrity that I think we're all beside ourselves with surprise.
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Oh, I knew that would trigger L'ego sans action. Your apologism for the flotilla, completely unnecessary and unprovoked, needed some kind of retaliation, even if only symbolic. In a world where several American Jewish liberals are finding themselves criticized as anti-Israel for daring to point out its excesses, we can count on you to stretch logic far enough to justify mass-murder and propaganda. I'm sure you'd be paid well to be part of a Republican think-tank when it comes to this.
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Your earlier potshot about human shields is invalid for all the reasons I mentioned previously. Your more recent outburst doesn't change that. What's more is that you know it. You knew when you wrote that outburst that you weren't writing anything legitimate, that you were just venting your frustration in my general direction. Fair enough; we all have to rant and rave sometimes. But we're both well aware that you're nursing a serious personal grudge against me, which you ought to realize makes crossing my well-drawn lines a bad idea for you. You know we disagree on things like Israel, and you know how ruthless I am when people try to pass shit reasoning as the real McCoy. You're setting yourself up for failure by taking your potshots in a thread like this. Given your track record in recent months, you're probably better off avoiding topics like this altogether.
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Lord J, that article was a bit brief on the discussion of human shields verses the "neighbor procedure." As far as I have been able to tell, formerly the Israeli army did use human shields in the sense of hiding behind Palestinians during a conflict. However, it should be noted that Israelis were the ones to also get this practice officially banned. And when the military switched from conventional human shields to the neighbor procedure, which is what Z's posted article primarily dealt with, it was again Israelis who got that too banned. Here's an article that goes into greater detail (though one will note that it is from 2003): http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/02/israel1
It should also be noted that even at its worst, Israeli use of human shields was of a different caliber than the use of human shields by various Palestinian militant groups. That is, I have been able to find no indication that the Israeli military operates or ever operated out of civilian areas so that their opponents are forced to either risk civilian lives or to not retaliate.
Genesis, something you failed to mention was that the reason Jews were kicked out of Palestine by the Romans was because of constant uprisings. This, however, didn't occur until the Current Era (indeed, the naming of the region as Palestine was also punishment for uprisings). Not terribly important, but one of the crimes lain against pro-Israel individuals is that they are willing to white wash Israel's crimes/mistakes/whatever.
But something that is important to keep in mind, particularly given Helen Thomas's recent comments regarding Israel, is that before the modern state of Israel was founded, Jews were already living in "Palestine" (and, curiously enough, they were able to live is a significant degree of peace with their non-Jewish neighbors). The formation of Israel didn't introduce an entirely foreign element into the region, though it is true that the Jewish population increased as individuals from foreign nations moved in. It is also important to keep in mind that a Palestinian state had been planned right alongside the formation of Israel, but neither Israel nor Palestine were intended to be ethnically exclusive. Unfortunately, Jordan and other neighboring nations prevented the formation of Palestine.
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I suppose I support Israel in this conflict, however I do have sympathy for the millions of Palestinian refugees currently dislocated around the Middle East. Would anyone else here agree that Israel has a moral obligation to assist the lawful, non-violent and destitute Palestinians currently residing within Israel?
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I'm not sure, but at the very least it would behoove them.
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Anyone have recent figures on how much Western aid goes to the Palestinian territories, or is that question so foolish as to elicit sudden bouts of laughter? I'd like to see some serious attempts at economic development there, because nothing radicalizes a person like long-term unemployment, or lack of direction and opportunity.
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Yeah, this forum isn't for you.
Actually I think this is a pretty interesting discussion, it's just kind of ridiculous that it's being had on a Chrono Trigger forum. And, by extension, that you would write something so insanely long just to prove your point. On a Chrono Trigger forum.
I'm not going to even think about entering the shit-flinging ring here, but honestly, I mostly agree with you dude.
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Lord J, that article was a bit brief on the discussion of human shields verses the "neighbor procedure." As far as I have been able to tell, formerly the Israeli army did use human shields in the sense of hiding behind Palestinians during a conflict. However, it should be noted that Israelis were the ones to also get this practice officially banned. And when the military switched from conventional human shields to the neighbor procedure, which is what Z's posted article primarily dealt with, it was again Israelis who got that too banned. Here's an article that goes into greater detail (though one will note that it is from 2003): http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/02/israel1
It should also be noted that even at its worst, Israeli use of human shields was of a different caliber than the use of human shields by various Palestinian militant groups. That is, I have been able to find no indication that the Israeli military operates or ever operated out of civilian areas so that their opponents are forced to either risk civilian lives or to not retaliate.
I'll accept that emendation, since you pointed out that the "human shield" term here is not being applied to the same practices by the Palestinians vis-a-vis the Israelis. Contrary to what my Republican think tank buddies would believe for themselves, I've always been openly critical of Israel where that criticism is due, and there's always some new unpleasant fact just waiting to be unearthed. That's true of any country, and Israel is no exception.
Anyone have recent figures on how much Western aid goes to the Palestinian territories, or is that question so foolish as to elicit sudden bouts of laughter? I'd like to see some serious attempts at economic development there, because nothing radicalizes a person like long-term unemployment, or lack of direction and opportunity.
I looked this up a couple of months ago. I had a hard time finding anything, but eventually I found some very good data. Unfortunately I don't remember the pathway to that information now. The Palestinians are huge recipients of international aid, in the order of either hundreds of millions or low billions of (the equivalent of) dollars every year. (This raw data ignores the fact that much of that aid is diverted by corrupt government officials and Islamic militants.) If memory serves, the European Union and Japan are the key sources of aid, because while the Arab world pledges marginally more, the EU and the Japanese are better at following through on their pledges. The U.S. is also a significant source of aid. Again, if memory serves. The numbers are out there; it's a legitimate question. If you find them again, post them here.
Israel, incidentally, is a not-insignificant source of aid for the Palestinians. The report I read was written by Arabs, and so Israel doesn't appear on the list at all, but Israel provides employment, public infrastructure, food and medical aid, and sometimes education to Palestinians. Much of this is simply a consequence of their being very intimate neighbors, but some of it is also the result of Israel's nature as a liberal democracy.
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Urge to proclaim Idrian10 either a bot or a radical genius RISING
J, I'm glad the stats are out there, and I'll endeavor to look into this too now that I have some hope of finding loads of info. It seems to me that the current level of aid given to the Palestinians, such as it is, is insufficient (or, perhaps, inefficient) in some way. One thing I heard from a Palestinian American is that (as of 2008) Israel exerted some significant control over utilities in the Gaza Strip, and Israel could tug on this string as a "stick" to punish everyone there for terrorist attacks, similar to how an elementary school teacher might deny everyone an ice cream trip for one student's misbehavior. With the exception, of course, that potable water is more important than ice cream.
Unfortunately I'm going on anecdote here but if it can be corroborated, it strikes me as a foolish stick to have in place -- both for Hamas to let the Israelis keep, and the Israelis for using it, as "positive peer pressure through punishment for all" is ridiculous on its face in my opinion. I wanted that ice cream in elementary school and I blamed the teacher for being mean enough to withhold it, after all. Either Hamas is specifically squandering power plants and water desalination facilities in the Gaza Strip, or these facilities aren't reaching the Gaza Strip for whatever reason. The more incisive question, then, is not whether aid is being given to the Palestinians, but rather the composition of the aid, and whether the aid is creating viable national infrastructure. And even more incisive is the question of what politics are getting in the way.
Incidentally, this all reminds me that I'm only on page 115 out of 527 in Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, and I've had that book put down for far too long. Part of the reason for this failure on my part, I think, is the lack of attention the Israeli/Palestinian situation has been given in mainstream media until now, in addition to my own refocusing on economics instead of politics and international politics. Anyway, anyone else here ever read Friedman's articles or watch his documentaries? He's always struck me as something of a fair voice on the matter. Probably because he appeals to my own sense of moderatism.