Oh, I see. It's not that they're not speaking out; it's that they haven't succeeded in quelling the extremists. Glad to see the criteria change.

"Easily eradicate terrorism"? How, precisely, is a Danish, Indonesian or American Muslim supposed to eradicate terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Lebanon?

The Islamic extremists, rather unsurprisingly, spring from conservative, tribal areas notable for a lack of economic and political opportunity, where educational opportunities for the poor are generally limited to extremist madrassahs.

It's no surprise that such conditions produce extremists. But that has very little to do with Islam and pretty much everything to do with the longstanding cultural and political landscape in those areas.

Arabs probably wouldn't be welcome in Afghanistan, for tribal and historical reasons. But the Afghan government, which is Muslim, is fighting alongside us. And we have Pakistan's help on the other side of the border.

While it would be nice to think various Arab nations would put troops into the fight, that's a very tenuous situation for them politically -- not for religious reasons, but because of broad antipathy toward the United States. As it is, however, all sorts of Arab nations assist us in all sorts of ways. Kuwait, for example, gives us a 50% discount on oil for our troops in Iraq. The various Gulf states, plus Egypt and Yemen, allow us basing facilities for aircraft and ships.

It's flatly ridiculous to say Muslims haven't spoken out or taken an active part.

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Man up.

Yeah, I don't see much of a chance their ideology is going to spread throughout the world, taking over countries and committing mass genocide ever again. WE pretty much destroyed Nazism.

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"We should Invade Their Countries, Kill Their Leaders, and Convert Them to Christianity." Ann Coulter
Thank You, and God Bless America!
Obsama Bin Laden For President? Are you kidding?

No, the mainstream view is that it was acceptable *then*.

No. At best it's the reality among *some* Muslims. Once again, there is not an epidemic of Western or Asian Muslims, for example, marrying 9 year olds.

Well duh -- as did every military leader of the time -- if you call fighting in battle "cold-blooded murder". They all led from the front, and were in the thick of the fighting. Your Crusader heroes did the same for the most part. It makes zero sense to condemn him for it.

Another ridiculous claim. WWI and WWII combined killed about 92 million people. Even if Muslims had wanted to kill that many over the years, they couldn't have. They simply didn't have the means, and the population of the area simply wasn't that high.

And even if somehow they had -- it would have happened over the course of 1,400 years. We Westerners got the job done in the two wars you mention in about 10 years.

The point, you may remember, is that even though Christians are told to be Christlike, they don't try to imitate him down to the least detail -- because some of those details are a tad rough around the edges. The parallel is that Muhammed is treated similarly by Muslims. He is a model to follow, not a template to be copied exactly.

You are once again confusing tribal and cultural traditions with Islam. I'm pretty sure the Koran says absolutely nothing about genital mutilation. Indeed, one of the reasons Islam spread quickly (it was spread by traders at least as much as it was spread by conquest) was that it was adaptable to local cultures. The Arab-specific aspects of Islamic practice could be left out when those offended local mores.

I'm sure Mohammed liked some foods and disliked others. That does not make some foods required and some banned. Not every detail of his life is a commandment. And Islamic scholarship makes room for changing customs that are not central to Islam. Like abandoning the practice of marrying 9-year-olds.

You're misquoting me. I didn't say Muslims would say he was "only" a prophet of his time. I said he would be expected to be a product of his times, as far as secular social behavior and customs are concerned. That does not mean that Muslims must think that what was acceptable and normal in the 600s is thus acceptable and normal today.

That's an impossible standard for any human, prophet or not. You simply cannot apply modern standards to 1,400-year-old behavior. If you do that, you might as well write off everyone who lived before 1600 as murderers and criminals.

Really.

Um, no I didn't. I said he was a warlord. Living in a time of violence, under attack from superior foes, I consider the fact that he engaged in warfare unremarkable. But Islam emphasizes his restraint in such trying circumstances. It constantly tells Muslims to fight only when attacked, show mercy to beaten foes, be tolerant of other faiths. Be fierce in battle, but do not "transgress limits."

This is true. But one does not have to turn away from Muhammed to be peaceful. One need only follow the interpretations of mainstream, modern Islam.

I have not claimed that.

We've seen a lot of misuse of the word "terrorist" on this board, but that one really takes the cake. 1.5 billion terrorists. I work with a couple of Muslims; guess I better gun them down tomorrow, or at least have them carted off to internment camps. And those Muslims serving in the military? Gitmo for them. My Muslim co-workers have some pretty cute kids; better make sure to take them out, too.

Lordy.

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Man up.

I'm sorry if my posts are long, but I think truth cannot be summed up in one or two witty sentences.

Never said it wasn't, I am just merely pointing out that the cause of the Crusades was not a denial of access to the holy lands by the Arabs since they reopened up those routs soon after the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre. It was a poignant piece of propaganda used by Urban to justify the invasion of the holy lands.

The use of Maps actually serves no merit to your argument. "As anyone can see" as you pointed out, the 500 year old claims of the Eastern Roman Empire to the Levant zone are as relevant as Mexico's claims to half of the United States today. That's not to say those claims didn't exist, but the idea that these regions were sovereign zones of the Byzantine Empire is simply a fallacy.

Since the main initiative for Byzantine Emperors was to quell the very real and growing threat of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia, the call for the crusaders was to regain back Anatolia for the Byzantine Empire. Yet after the Crusaders took back large segments of Anatolia, why did the crusaders continue? Because it was well understood by many of the nobels in the first crusade, especially Godefroy de Bouillon, that they were going to stake claims in the Levant area and claim the Holy Lands for Catholicism and actually tried to take advantage of the weakness of the Byzantine Emperor. So the fallacious claim that it was attempting to stem the Islamic aggression is just propaganda your spewing by Catholic Church, and what was initally a defensive movement soon turned into an offensive attack.

Now if you want to talk about the Islamic Conquests, which is almost an entirely new subject, then we can. We can talk about how the Islamic conquest took over and dominated many Christian areas, such as Iraq, and Northern Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula, but that isn't very relevant since the Byzantine Empire lost its lands in the Levant to the Arab Caliphate established by Mohammed and not the Seljuk Turks which were attacking the Byzantine Empire at the time of the Crusades. Don't simplify Islam into one dominant political force, because soon after the Arab conquest it quickly broke apart. It's as if Catholic Europe always operated in one strategic block and there never existed any political tensions between individual kingdoms.

I am not saying that Mohammed, by modern western standards of ethics, wouldn't be considered "perverse" but by his own time period's standards, the things he did were quite normal. Do I condone the things he did? No, I think they are morally reprehensible, but that doesn't mean anything a 1000 years later. Judging historical figures morally is just a simplistic game that you can have fun doing, but if you are serious about studying history they you should know that casting moral aspersions towards historical figures is baseless.

I have been right here in the United States. Yes, I have seen many indiscriminant massacres at the hands of Islam followers as well, but to assume that Islam is the only reason that these people are acting violently is just absurd. A lack of socio-economic and political issues that influence these people to turn towards radical islam is missing in your overall analysis, and by your assumption, if we just breed people with muslim values in petree dishes, they would automatically kill any non-muslims.

Now, wether you classify Islam as a religion or not, doesn't really matter... its an inane argument because there isn't much of a difference in your analysis of fundamentalist islam. Of course fundamentalist islam looks like a cult, that's because it is. Just as almost any other form of fundamentalist religious sects :Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and what not.

Wether or not you want to look at the broad scope of how religion is distorted to carry out ruthless and violent acts against other people is up to your own personal examination of history. I noticed that you only said in the last 20 to 30 years, because I noticed citing the last 50 years, or the last century would bring you into too much conflict with Christian massacres carried out. That's not to say that Christians are alone, Pol Pot exterminated all those that didn't fit within the ideal of the Khmer Rouge, or Suharto exterminating the East Timorese, or the Hutus (sp?) killing Tutsi in Rwanda, or the extremist Janjaweed muslims in Sudan killing and pushing out Christians, or the Christian Serbs killing Bosnian Muslims or the Russian military killing muslim Chechnyans. Whatever the case, I don't see why your analysis of the past 20-30 years has intended to only focus on muslims when there are plenty examples of indiscriminate killings by religious and non-religious forces throughout the world.

As for protests amongst Muslims, there has been been a lot against the radical fundamentalists. I mean, just look at how Al Qaeda has been basically destroyed in Iraq through a combination of local condemnation as well as military force. Or how the Organization of the Islamic Conference has repeatedly rejected violence and radical fundamentalism.

Well many Islamic states have attacked Israel in the past 60 years, that's true. But at the same time, Israel has attacked many islamic states (and people, since Palestine is not a state) for the past 60 years as well. Taking just one side of an issue doesn't make it right. The relative deprevation of Palestine for the past 60 years has led many muslims to join radical islamic insurgencies in the hopes of creating a free Palestine. When Israel gets bombed by these radical muslims they react harshly and violently because they are being attacked harshly and violently. Thus the system perpetuates itself to the point of creating this black hole where nothing seems to get resolved. However the political situation in Israel is far to complicated to discuss in this thread.

Now, the reason I don't compare Islam to Hitler, is because I don't think there is a giant islamic conspiracy to destroy all jews. Although there is a very real and dangerous threat to Israel by certain Islamic terrorists groups, I have yet to see any real threat to all jews from muslism accross the world. Note, that destroying Israel does not equal destroying all jews, which is a common fallacy, which you seemed to hint at.

But I compared your extremely hateful rhetoric towards Islam as being along the lines of Hitler's speeches, because you are advocating the complete destruction of Islam as a religion/culture (or cult whatever you want to call it) which means killing millions of people. That's why I am comparing you to Hitler.

you proceeded to show me a public execution which is an example of, I am assuming, Saudi Arabia's legal system based on Sharia law. Yes, I will grant that many examples of Sharia law can be found throughout the Islamic world, and much of it has been employed by fundamentalist states. However, I was merely citing the fact that there does not exist a single state where Sharia Law has been applied to the full extent. Saudi Arabia is a good example where Sharia law is a dominant force in the legal system, but by no means is it applied 100%.

Nor am I condoning Sharia law. I think its a hideous example of a medieval legal system that should be completely abolished for it unjustly targets to non-muslims and women as well.

And as for defending Islam, I am not. I am merely attacking your argument that Islam should be destroyed. I find that to be extremely repulsive and genocidal. I do not want to trade one meglomaniac murderer preacher for another.

However, if you want to know my true position, I would like to see the eventual downplay of religions all accross the world for a more rational secular approach that focuses on Human Rights for all rather than beliefs and emotions about what is right and wrong. But that's besides the point, because I am merely pointing out the fallacies in your argument.

I don't think any of the other states on that list support the claim that Islam is inherently violent? Was there a council or meeting held by OIC where Islamic states ratified a declaration that Islam is inherently violent? Now for my own personal beliefs on this matter, I do believe there are aspects of Islam that are violent, but I believe those aspects can be found in a number of other religions such as Christianity/Judaism, buddhism, and hinduism.


Islam isn't synonymous with peace, nor can it be equated with violence and war. It's a religion that has been manipulated by many and followed by many more and it at least needs an in depth exploration of its complexities and not some superficial and baseless attack that seems to gather only one side of the evidence before judging an entire group of people.

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Na, that lady was killed by the Taliban. I don't wanna go over this point by point though. I gets real tiresome. I think if you read my posts from this thread which is quite long as it is, you will see what my position is. All I know is I'm sick and tired of the killing going on in the name of allah. Someone should put a stop to it and it seems the people of the religion of peace are not only doing nothing to stop it, they are encouraging it. I'll let Eleanor take you apart piece by piece.

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"We should Invade Their Countries, Kill Their Leaders, and Convert Them to Christianity." Ann Coulter
Thank You, and God Bless America!
Obsama Bin Laden For President? Are you kidding?

Well I don't think killing to stop killing is a means of solving a problem. As much as it may pain people to hear, we should actually listen to some of the complaints of communities in which terrorist groups are allowed to reside in and address these issues if they aren't too incredibly radical or irrational.

Merely ending the faith of Islam isn't going to solve the problems of the middle east. Violence would most likely continue even if Islam didn't exist and was replaced by some other means of belief. The problems that plague that region go much deeper than the mere spiritual beliefs of individuals. Instead most people face real problems: oppression, lack of food and water, violence and other forms of human rights abuses and they seek a remedy by using religion in cases that seem so hopeless that they believe only a violent redress of the situation can offer an escape. And that goes for almost any situation where you have extreme forms of poverty and oppression, just not the middle east.

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Before, I had just lightly skimmed through this entire thread. Now after reading it pretty thoroughly I have to say I am shocked. The amount of intolerant hate is astounding not to mention facts and statistics that cannot be verified by any source.

What I mean to say is, I will not continue this discussion further, because I thought it was more scholarly than I had initially interpreted. Instead most of it is based on discriminatory racist appeals against muslims and other conspiracy theories.

I must say as a student of world religions, I am shocked at how ignorant and naive some attacks against Islam are, and how they have little or no basis in reality whatsoever.

To elanoirofAquitaine, I have also read the Q'uran, in both original arabic and translated english, and I must say that you most certainly have not read it, and if you have, I pity your lack of memory when referencing it. Instead, it seems as if you pull quotes off certain sites that rail against Islam, and use whatever translation of Arabic most benefits a biased attack against islam. The Hadiths, which I have not read, yet, are as Raytri said, much more complicated than the Q'uran and have no clear consensus amongst muslims in general.

On another note, Raytri, you have continued a long struggle to prove the diversity of the Q'uran and the Hadiths and other sources of Islamic tradition and history but they seem to fall on deaf ears. It's a circular logic argument that you can't penetrate and anything you present will be dismissed as apologetic and/or biased.

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Some excellent posts there Masterproctor

That is just false. he is their perfect man. Everything he did was perfect, the perfect example for muslims to follow, according to muslims.

You are simply wrong. I am not talking about the killing in his conquests though I certainly count him as a murderer for that as well. When I say cold blooded murder, I am talking about the fact that he executed people, helpless prisoners.

If you count all the deaths from muslims in all their wars of aggression starting with muhammed wars of religious conquest, it FAR exceeds WWI and WWII, obviously. Sure, it took them longer since we are stronger militarily by far.

There is no parallel whatsoever. muhammed was an evil, murdering, raping, theiving madmen and Christ was a pacifist that gave his own life rather than just walking away. Christ hurt no one and is a good role model. Muhammed is not. muslims claim he is perfect and set a perfect example for them to follow in ALL times. You are just making this stuff up about them not following him. he is their screwed up profit.

You admitted he conquered, and not in self defense. You admitted he is violent and a bad example to follow. You've pretty much supported my entire thesis. But, you are stuck on this clearly false and provably false nonsense about muslims not believing that muhammed is an example for them to follow. Its the last leg standing and its pretty close to total collapse.

As said all along, it is not necessary to kill all who call themselves muslim to defeat the idelogy, just as we didn't have to kill all Germans or even nazis to defeat naziism. So, your last few sentences are just disappointing drivel.

Sure, fighting back against hitler was totally unnecessary. I am sure he would been totally peaceful if he knew we wouldn't fight back.

So, you admit it is true but since it stopped for a time, you call it propaganda. So, if someone invaded other's territory, burns down their churches, and kills a lot of people but then stop, there was no harm done according to you.

What? So, because the peaceful islam was waging "separate" wars in different areas and different times, you say it doesn't count somehow? Ridiculous. They fought to force islam on people.

What a load of nonsense. You pretty much admit muhammed is evil. He is the prophet of islam, their perfect man. So, his words and actions are relevent today since the muslims follow them. As far as not judging historical figures, that is also absurd. Of course moral judgments should and are made. You just admitted you made them and then say you don't.

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Qur'an:8:39 Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah.
Qur'an:8:67 It is not fitting for any prophet to have prisoners until he has made a great slaughter in the land.
Qur'an 8:12 I will terrorize the unbelievers...Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes.
Qur'an 9:5 Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, torture them, and lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.

Wow! How politically correct can you get? I'd like to know which "attacks" against Islam are ignorant and naive?

I'd like to know if you have noticed all the death and mayhem caused by followers of the "religion of peace"? I don't see Buddhists flying planes into buildings do you? Yet, everytime these nutcases that follow islam are out it the streets protesting if a school child decides to name the class teddy bear Mahammad. Bomb innocents, there they are celebrating.

This is not the behavior of a religion, but a maniacal cult of sociopaths.

Forget what it says in the Koran, explain the behavior of it followers to me.

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"We should Invade Their Countries, Kill Their Leaders, and Convert Them to Christianity." Ann Coulter
Thank You, and God Bless America!
Obsama Bin Laden For President? Are you kidding?