What Islam Isn't

[_JS]

The problem with this entire discussion is that it hinges on the ignorant and the fear of the unknown. Some of the arguments used to attack Islam are drawn from well over a twelve centuries ago. Other arguments come from poor understanding of both history and religion.

The umma is the community of Islam. It is what we Christians would call "the Body of Christ." It is not something to be feared nor attack Muslims over. In more practical terms it was very important for Muslims in the early days to be close communities that followed their religion closely. This was true of early Christian communities as well as Jewish communities.

Yes, Muslims follow a more strict set of lifelong commitments. It is a religion based on law. Guess what? So is Judaism. Christianity is a religion based upon faith, but that does not mean that aren't those who practice a version of it based upon abstract laws as well.

The Caliphate has not existed for centuries and even when it did exist it was beset with family in-fighting and was hardly considered an authority in much of the Islamic community.

It is true that the history of the Islamic world is a mixed bag, but the history of the Christian world is as well.

The solutions for pulling angry young Muslims away from terrorism do not lie in attacking their faith, but improving their lot in life.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I applaud the effort XO and your history of Islam is very good. Yet, one wonders if it falls onto ears that do not care to hear anything of reality.
=====================================
Well, gee, thanks. As a Spanish professor, I have studied Islam from the perspective of the Moorish conquest and the reconquista, and books written in Spanish that have been much less hysterically Catholic since Spain became a modern country in the 1980's and afterward.

I am not a fan of either Catholicism or Islam, as they are both far too dogmatic for me.  Both, if followed in the traditional way, make for a backward civilization and culture, and that is what Spain had, with several intervals when the Church was temporarily thrown out of power under the first Republic, the Generation of 98 and the Second Republic in some aspects. Since Franco died and Spain has joined the European Community, it has been progressing rapidly towards being a modern First World state with intellectual freedom for everyone.

Islam is still stuck in a rut about 40 years behind Spain. The non-Islamic states, like Tunisia, Algeria, Syria and Lebanon are mired in repressive systems that are almost as bad as the traditional Islamic states. Morocco seems to be less repressive than Algeria, though. It is hard to say whether Libya is a more Islamic or non-Islamic, but it is surely repressive, despite being more advanced than Egypt. As I said, the greatest advances seem to have occurred in the Gulf States: Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE.

It simply is not true that the post-Muhammad Caliphate was anything truly unified. Government edicts could travel no farther than the wind could blow them or a horse could carry them. Of course, to Muslims it was sort of a Golden Age, just as the times of Kng Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were to the British at one time. (Those wonderful days when it was Britain, before the Angles and Saxon ruffians came and messed it all up.)

[Christians4LessGvt]

CU4, Your response is typical of someone who won't answer a direct question.

I did answer the question, but you didn't like the answer so you pretend it wasn't answered.

Did you even attempt to answer my question? I responded to yours, did you respond to mine? 


There's no answer for me to dislike. You post an answer and then we'll see if I like it or not.

See above.
Thats what great about message boards.
They dont lie.
You want to change the subject.
And even if I hadn't answered the question, the data remains.
It's nice to try to change the subject.
"Yeah lets make it about CU not answering a question".
Yeah lets take up post after post about "did not" "did so" "did not" "did so"
But it still don't change the data in the article.

No, I suppose you wouldn't. I'm sure Muslims are the "enemy among us"
and other stupid shit to you.

Ewwww now the cursing starts.
Wow.
More assumptions, more pigeon holing people because they arrive at a different conclusion.
Demonize, imply ignorance, ect those that arrive at a different conclusion.
Yeah thats easier than dealing with the data.

[Christians4LessGvt]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaaqQCDdV5o[/youtube]

if video doesn't work, click link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaaqQCDdV5o

[Xavier_Onassis]

Okay, so this is all true. Muslims are supposed to murder non-Muslims, because that is what the Koran tells them to do.

What is your solution?

Rewrite the Koran?

Get all Muslims to swear to ignore this passage?

Nuke then all in a massive pre-emptive strike of over 100 million people?

What do you propose? How are you going to do this with less government? Will Jesus help you?

[Plane]

Okay, so this is all true. Muslims are supposed to murder non-Muslims, because that is what the Koran tells them to do.

What is your solution?

Rewrite the Koran?

Get all Muslims to swear to ignore this passage?

Nuke then all in a massive pre-emptive strike of over 100 million people?

What do you propose? How are you going to do this with less government? Will Jesus help you?

Positive reinforcement .

Where are the Muslims who are good to us?

What do they want , can we give them some?

[Christians4LessGvt]

re: What is your solution?

I don't have the solution.
If it was that easy gvts all over the world would not be spending billions to fight Islamic terrorism.
Plus, for example there aren't always clear cut solutions to all problems.
There isn't really a "solution" to murder.
But that doesn't mean we ignore murder and just accept it.
We fight it tooth and nail.
I do think the first part of any solution is recognizing the threat. Being honest instead of politically correct.
Admitting that Islam has a very serious problem within it today unlike any other religion in the year 2008.
Dismissing it as "well all religions have problems" is living in denial of politcal correctness.
Islam has a very very violent sect within it's midst right now today that is killing people
in the name of the religion. And this is not centuries ago, it's in today's world.
It really is not an accpetable answer to say "well Christians killed tons of people in the name of their religion centuries ago". Thats a cop-out and not really relevant to today. We live in today's world. Attempts to belittle the horror because "so and so did it hundreds of years ago" is baloney.

[_JS]

re: What is your solution?

I don't have the solution.

Finally, an answer.

The problem is not anything inherent in Islam or the people of that faith. There is no solution available when making such large and ill-informed assumptions.

[Christians4LessGvt]

"the problem is not anything inherent in Islam or the people of that faith"

So JS it's just a "total coincidence" that the people carrying out the following
acts and claim it is in the name of Allah are Islamic? How come we dont have headlines on
a weekly/dailly basis all over the world of Catholics, Baptist, Hindus, Jews, Buddhist carrying
out these kind of horrific terror attacks in the name of their religion?

Is it just a total coincidence that it is people doing these things in the name of Islam?

blowing up airliners full of innocent civilians in Russia (2 in one day)
(how many Catholics have blown up airliners recently?)

blowing up night clubs full of innocents
attempting to blow up planes full of innocents with shoe bombs
crashing planes of innocent civilians into the WTC
crashing planes of innocent civilians into the Pentagon
(how many Methodist have purposely crashed planes to kill people anywhere?)

crashing planes of innocent civilians into fields in Penn.
blowing/attacking up schools Russia
blowing up theaters full of people in Russia
blowing up buses full of innocents
attacking trains in London
blowing up commuter trains in Spain
(how many baptist have blown up commuter trains recently?)

blowing up cars at airports in the UK
blowing up weddings with suicide bombers
(how many Buddhist have blown up weddings recently?)
beheading journalist
(how many Mormons have beheaded anyone lately? Sources?)

[fatman]

Wow, your totality of ignorance regarding what the IRA (Catholics) did in Ireland is amazing.  As is your ignorance of Hindu extremism, directed towards Moslems in the Gujarat massacres.  It must be nice to live in your little world where Islamic extremism is the only extremism worth taking note of.

  Burnt Moslems, something that I'm sure you'll be happy to see.

[Plane]

The umma is the community of Islam. It is what we Christians would call "the Body of Christ." It is not something to be feared nor attack Muslims over. In more practical terms it was very important for Muslims in the early days to be close communities that followed their religion closely. This was true of early Christian communities as well as Jewish communities.

................

The Caliphate has not existed for centuries and even when it did exist it was beset with family in-fighting and was hardly considered an authority in much of the Islamic community.

It is true that the history of the Islamic world is a mixed bag, but the history of the Christian world is as well.

The solutions for pulling angry young Muslims away from terrorism do not lie in attacking their faith, but improving their lot in life.

I already knew that  umma was the term for the entire body of beleivers in Islam , but is this entity what we are discussing?

There is not any soultion to be hoped for in buying off the poor of Islam , All 19 of the airline Hyjackers of 9-11 were middle class , we arn't getting as much problem from the desprately poor in the very disadvantaged third world ,Muslim or not .

The history of Islam can be a sorce of clues for the state of things now , mixed bag tho it may be .

[Xavier_Onassis]

Revolutionaries are nearly always middle class young men. This does not mean that a large number of poor and underprivileged are not a factor in their becoming revolutionaries. One sees few revolutionaries in Norway, for example.

The main gripe that the 9-11 bombers had against the US was what they considered to be the profanation of Islam. This is somewhat different from bomb-throwing Marxists in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Their ideal is a vision of an Edenic Caliphate that has never existed, not a 'final struggle', ending in a Marxist utopia.

[_JS]

How many of you support the apartheid state of Israel? How many of you support torture, extraordinary rendition? How many of you read "collateral damage" and move on in the article without a second glance?

Terror can come from a state government just as easily as it can from a small group of dissidents. In fact, it is much easier for a government they have the tools, resources, and democratic governments come with built-in international deference.

People who roll all Muslims into one group and blame Islam as the culprit for all terrorism are bigots.

The various militant groups that fight across the world are not representative of all Muslims or of Islam itself. The Israeli Government is not representative of all Jews, not even of all Israelis.

Does the IRA, PIRA, or RIRA represent all Catholics? Does the UVF, Orange Order, and the others represent all Protestants?

Does the Lord's Resistance Army represent you, they are Christians? (Just because you don't know about it, doesn't mean it does not exist)



Uganda rebels 'kidnapping' in CAR



More than 100 people are being held in Central African Republic, by armed men who local officials say are rebels from Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Most of the villagers abducted were women and girls, and some have been gang-raped, a UN official told the BBC.

The Ugandan government and the LRA are due to sign a peace deal on 5 April.

Earlier this month, the Ugandan authorities said LRA leader Joseph Kony had moved to CAR from his base in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This move violated the terms of a ceasefire agreement.

Humanitarian sources have confirmed that 150 people have been abducted in south-eastern CAR in recent days, the BBC's Arnaud Zajtman reports.

Reports say about 30 elders, who were used to carry looted goods for their abductors, have now been set free.

About half of those were taken are reported to be girls, some as young as six.

Some of those freed said they heard the girls screaming during the night.

Night-time attacks

The newly released elders say they were taken to a camp where the girls were offered to armed men by the rebel commander.

Mboli Nani, MP for Obo in south-eastern CAR, said that some of those who had escaped from the rebels testified they had been beaten by their abductors.

He said the armed men spoke English, Arabic and Lingala.

"The style they used is the style of the LRA," Mr Nani told the BBC.

"They attack in the night slowly and quietly - they take people and they steal goods."

The head of Ocha, the UN's humanitarian affairs agency in CAR, Jean-Sebastien Munier, told the BBC that the area where the kidnappings occurred was extremely remote and difficult to access.

"We cannot confirm it is official LRA - it could be a dissident branch," he said, after the return of UN fact-finding team from the region.

The 22-year conflict between the LRA and the Ugandan government in northern Uganda has left thousands dead and nearly two million displaced.

The LRA insists that the war crimes indictments placed on its leaders at the International Criminal Court are lifted before they sign the deal.

Uganda's government says the LRA leaders should face justice locally, not in The Hague but it does not have the power to get the arrest warrants cancelled.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7318093.stm

[Rich]

>>The problem with this entire discussion is that it hinges on the ignorant and the fear of the unknown. Some of the arguments used to attack Islam are drawn from well over a twelve centuries ago. Other arguments come from poor understanding of both history and religion.<<

Nonsense. The Quran is clear, as are the words coming out of the mouths of the radicals. The problem is people who refuse to admit the threat for political reasons. Like you.

[_JS]

>>The problem with this entire discussion is that it hinges on the ignorant and the fear of the unknown. Some of the arguments used to attack Islam are drawn from well over a twelve centuries ago. Other arguments come from poor understanding of both history and religion.<<

Nonsense. The Quran is clear, as are the words coming out of the mouths of the radicals. The problem is people who refuse to admit the threat for political reasons. Like you.

Really? And what might those political reasons be?