Shit hits the fan in Fort Hood, Texas. 50 casualties.

[Emre]

To answer the first question, let's say within the last 100 years.

Two of the three examples I listed happened in the 20th century. In the case of Kosovo, the Christian majority killed 200,000 people, raped 50,000 women, and chased over 2million people from their homes. All for being Muslim. This isn't ancient history...it happened in the 1990s. How much more recent do you want?

I specifically reject the argument that Christianity is more violent than Islam so therefore Islam is not violent.

No one is making such an argument. No one says Christians are worse. I just think it's funny when Christians try to argue that Islam is a religion of hate and Christianity is a religion of tolerance. Modern Islam might have it's Wahhabi wackos, but Christians also have blood on their hands. It's not fair to condemn the peaceful majority for the actions of the lunatic fringe.

Still, I grant you that Christian history is replete with horrible atrocities, just as with almost every single history of any large group of people is. But that isn't a valid argument as to whether or not Islam is a violent religion.

The whole argument is ridiculous to me. If you call Islam "a religion of hate" based on the actions of a small group of fanatic Wahhabi terrorists, then you should consider Christians mass murderers. Be consistent.

However, I am not so sure that Islam does not preach violence on a relatively large scale.

Just read the Quran and you can answer that for yourself. The Quran doesn't "preach violence" any more than the Bible does.

So, intrinsically, Islam is not a religion of violence. It is simply used as a tool by very bad people to inflict the damage for the advantage of whoever is their leader.

In that way, it is just like every other religion: it basically means well, but it can be corrupted by evil men. Again, what's the difference?

Islam my not be a religion of violence, but it certainly seems to be a religion that is easily corrupted into violence. And the whole of Sharia, which you haven't comment on at all, seems to support a certain level of barbarism in Islam. Or is Sharia not a real thing and is it not actually practiced by Muslims?

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the modern world do NOT live under Sharia and absolutely do not WANT to live under Sharia. Sharia is only practiced in a handful of places and most Muslims would never want to live in those places.

[E30 Cabrio]

Lefty's will attack Christians and Christianity, yet they will make a million and one excuses for Muslims who fly airplanes into tall buildings, blow up crowds of people and shoot up military bases.

Nothing but enablers...

[E30 Cabrio]

I regard on what Muslims brought us in terms of knoweldge, the amount is huge. And interestingly, this was brought by religious guidance.

Medecine, mathematics, geometry, astronomy. Without them, the world would still be in the dark ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_in_medieval_Islam

As for DVS909, I wonder how old is that dude, and what type of life experience he has to be able to even mention such stupid blank statements as he did. BTW What private school and public college did you attend?

Add crazy fuckin' suicide bomber to your list...

[chadthestampede]

Lefty's will attack Christians and Christianity, yet they will make a million and one excuses for Muslims...

Though I really don't want to get involved with this argument, you kind of have to admit this is true. Look at when South Park was mocking Family Guy and Comedy Central made them sensor the Mohammad scene.

[Hallen]

Two of the three examples I listed happened in the 20th century. In the case of Kosovo, the Christian majority killed 200,000 people, raped 50,000 women, and chased over 2million people from their homes. All for being Muslim. This isn't ancient history...it happened in the 1990s. How much more recent do you want?

No one is making such an argument. No one says Christians are worse. I just think it's funny when Christians try to argue that Islam is a religion of hate and Christianity is a religion of tolerance. Modern Islam might have it's Wahhabi wackos, but Christians also have blood on their hands. It's not fair to condemn the peaceful majority for the actions of the lunatic fringe.

The whole argument is ridiculous to me. If you call Islam "a religion of hate" based on the actions of a small group of fanatic Wahhabi terrorists, then you should consider Christians mass murderers. Be consistent.

Just read the Quran and you can answer that for yourself. The Quran doesn't "preach violence" any more than the Bible does.

In that way, it is just like every other religion: it basically means well, but it can be corrupted by evil men. Again, what's the difference?

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the modern world do NOT live under Sharia and absolutely do not WANT to live under Sharia. Sharia is only practiced in a handful of places and most Muslims would never want to live in those places.

I won't argue that Christianity is a religion of tolerance. People are tolerant, religion isn't.

Look, I'm trying to get you to make logical arguments.

You make very good points, but are arguing from a position of passion rather than logic. I think you have the right arguments to prove the point. You just have to stop reacting to the invalid accusations.

I am not a fan of organized religion. Through it, we have found the greatest horrors on this earth. There is a very fine line between being pious and being a bigot. Religion has been used as a tool by evil men for as long as there has been religion. Yet in the end, it is man that does the horrors, who perpetrates the act. Who is to blame? The religion or the man?

Your main point is that only a small number of Muslim radicals are the problem and you are pointing out that Christians also produce a radical element. It's all down to the person and how they react to the religious teachings. I do agree with this.

The reason, in my mind, why Islam is frightening is because it is an accepted and required element in Muslim government and society. Church leaders hold more power than elected officials. Church leaders think nothing of usurping the power of the government. There is now in this world government sponsored radical Islamic elements training to fight us with the express mission of killing us. They say they won't stop until the entire world is dead or Muslim. This kind of thinking does hearken to the dark ages.

I don't know the history on Kosovo, but that's more of a situation of two disparate groups of people who were suddenly cut loose from external control with a wealth of hatred and a culture that hadn't gotten anywhere near the 20th century yet. What would you expect to happen? It can't be condoned one way or another, and it cannot be forgiven. But was that a case of a radical element planning to destroy others, or was that a case of an all out war? Two groups of people who hate each other were being forced into a situation that was destined for bloodshed.

I think that my point is this: There seems to be a heck of a lot more radical Muslims in this world than there are radical Christians. Yes, there are more Muslims overall, but the disparity seems greater than that difference. The question is why? If it isn't the teachings of Islam, what is it that drives so many people to this movement? Is there that many wacko's in the Muslim community? Even if the number is less than 100,000, which is less than 1% of the population, why does Christianity not have a similar number? I think we would have noticed a radical Christian element that large.

I do not and will not condemn the peaceful majority of Muslims for the actions of some radicals. However, they have to know that that radical element is pouring blood all over the Quran. Why do we not hear them speak out more against it? Why do we not hear the Khomeini speak out against violence perpetrated on non-Muslims? 1 billion people would be hard to ignore. The suspicion, and therefore the distrust, comes from the idea that we hear so few Muslims speak out against the violence that somehow that violence must be condoned by Islam. It may not be a true situation, but it is the implication. What we end up with is organizations like CAIR who seem to be more of a front for radical Islam than they are a representative of the majority of Muslims. How can that happen if the majority of Muslims do not support a Muslim state and by extension, the radical element of Islam?

You have valid points and I do actually agree with most of them. However, I still see a troubling situation here and Islam is in the mix. How it all actually works is the question and if we really understood all of that, then we might have the fix. Unfortunately, there is simply too much hate out there to make anything easy. The first, best step would be for the moderate Muslims to declare war on their own radical element and fight to stop it. And it doesn't have to be with guns. Simply funding Mosques in the susceptible areas with Imam's that teach the true path of Islam and not the radical one. That would be one huge step forward, I would think.

[joshh]

Every time I'm about to post Hallen is already there.

This is the same shit that goes on with our Presidents. Bush was terrible so that makes Obama great right!

You can't point at Christianity and say they are violent and murderers and take the heat off of the Muslims.

The shit that's going on in Africa is much to do with Muslims attacking Christians.
Hitler wasn't a Christian. He used "GOD" to justify why the assasination attempts didn't work. That doesn't make him a Christian.

[Emre]

I think that my point is this: There seems to be a heck of a lot more radical Muslims in this world than there are radical Christians. Yes, there are more Muslims overall, but the disparity seems greater than that difference. The question is why? If it isn't the teachings of Islam, what is it that drives so many people to this movement? Is there that many wacko's in the Muslim community? Even if the number is less than 100,000, which is less than 1% of the population, why does Christianity not have a similar number? I think we would have noticed a radical Christian element that large.

The point I'm making is that, yes, today there are more radical Muslms than there are radical Christians. Just like in the Dark Ages there were far more radical Christians than there were radial Muslims. After all, during the Spanish Inquisition, it was the Ottomans (who were the undisputed leaders of the Islamic world...the Sultan was Caliph, after all) who welcomed all the Jews into western Anatolia. At a time when every Christian state in Europe turned them away, the Ottomans accepted them, allowed them to become land-owning citizens, and gave them unrestricted religious freedom.

Not too long ago, it was the Islamic world that was far more tolerant than the Christian world. Today, the situation is the opposite. Fine.

The problem I have is with people looking at the situation today and saying Islam preaches violence and intolerance. That somehow terrorism and fundamentaism were inevitable.

See what I'm saying?

[ACMF74]

Yet the Ottoman empire is guilty of systematically killing off all the Armenians (Christians), simply because of their religion...

[Emre]

Yet the Ottoman empire is guilty of systematically killing off all the Armenians (Christians), simply because of their religion...

If you are suggesting that the Ottoman genocide against the Armenians was motivated solely (or even primarily) by religion, then practically every historian in the world would disagree. While the Armenian genocide was a disgrace, it had to do with politics and nationalism, not Islamic fervor. In fact, the vast majority of Ottoman Christians were left alone and one subset was singled out. That alone should tell you that there's a lot more to that story that you don't know or are purposely not mentioning.

Again, you're looking at examples of intolerance by Muslims and judging it to be a "religion of hate." But when you're faced with abuses by Christians (often on an even grander scale), you start making excuses. 2 million Armenians chased from their homes in the early 20th century was a Jihad that represents the evils of Islam; but 2 million Muslims chased from their homes in the late 20th century was no big deal. Hey, it's the Balkans...what do you expect? Don't you see a problem with that? Why not treat them the same?

The only point I'm making is that it's all the same shit. Both religions preach peace and tolerance, but the history of both religions is rife with examples where that message was distorted. Condemn them both or celebrate them both. But it's pretty damned hypocritical to defend one and vilify the other.

[ACMF74]

If you are suggesting that the Ottoman genocide against the Armenians was motivated solely (or even primarily) by religion, then practically every historian in the world would disagree. While the Armenian genocide was a disgrace, it had to do with politics and nationalism, not Islamic fervor. In fact, the vast majority of Ottoman Christians were left alone and one subset was singled out. That alone should tell you that there's a lot more to that story that you don't know or are purposely not mentioning.

Again, you're looking at examples of intolerance by Muslims and judging it to be a "religion of hate." But when you're faced with abuses by Christians (often on an even grander scale), you start making excuses. 2 million Armenians chased from their homes in the early 20th century was a Jihad that represents the evils of Islam; but 2 million Muslims chased from their homes in the late 20th century was no big deal. Hey, it's the Balkans...what do you expect? Don't you see a problem with that? Why not treat them the same?

The only point I'm making is that it's all the same shit. Both religions preach peace and tolerance, but the history of both religions is rife with examples where that message was distorted. Condemn them both or celebrate them both. But it's pretty damned hypocritical to defend one and vilify the other.

I'm not arguing that religion was the only motivator for the ottomans. There were many reasons but religion was a major factor. What historians say and Armenian people I know tell me is different. I'm going with people that lived in Turkey that happen to be Christian Armenians.

[dvs909]

the key thing all you are forgetting is the religious teaching, not the actions.

The Bible does not Ever condone killing.
The Quran Encourages it.

simple as that.

people have used christianity as a cover for violence, but it in no way was a christian action.

you need to seperate teaching from action. the actions of christians who hurt others, arn't christian, they are SECULAR.

The actions of Muslims who hurt others, in specific cases, ARE Islamic.

simple as that. if all christians followed the bibles teachings there would be no violent actions by christians.

obviously we know what happens when muslims follow islamic teachings.

[dvs909]

The answer is simple: some people who follow Islam are loony. That doesn't mean they're all loony. And it certainly doesn't mean that the religion is about being loony.

So far, we haven't seen Muslims conducting the large-scale murder of non-Muslim people. But we have seen Christians commit genocide against non-Christians on a truly staggering scale. Just three examples are:

• the Spanish Inquisition
• the Holocaust
• the "ethinic cleansing" in Bosnia

I can also think of a few examples in Africa. On a smaller sclae, you've got the "God Hates Fags" crazies and people who kill gynecologists for doing therapeutic abortions. Does all that make Christianity a religion of hatred, bigotry, and mass murder? Is intolerance and ethnic violence what Christianity is "all about?"

Answer that before throwing stones at other religions.

The Holocaust was not committed under the guise of "God told me too"
the Holocaust was one mans atrocity against people he hated.

anyone who commits violence in the name of Christianity or hate isn't following the bible. Jesus didn't hang out with the priests, he hung out with prostitutes, thieves and tax collectors. obviously he didn't hate the sinners, only the sin. there is no biblical precedence for violence against anyone.

[Pinepig]

Lot's of good arguments in here about the difference between Muslims and religious extremists ( even if DVS doesn't get it ).

Back to the main issue,

[blunttech]

Lot's of good arguments in here about the difference between Muslims and religious extremists ( even if DVS doesn't get it ).

Back to the main issue,

awesome example of why the usa is in the shitter.political correctness will be the death of the USA

[dvs909]

Lot's of good arguments in here about the difference between Muslims and religious extremists ( even if DVS doesn't get it ).

oh i get it.
they're arguing that because a christian does something, it defines their relegion.
im arguing that if a christian does something, and it doesnt fit with biblical teaching, its not a christian action, its a secular action.

likewise,
when a muslim kills non-muslims because of "persecution" it is sanctioned by the Quran.

(which by the way i can claim i'm being persecuted for being a christian. Calling me a Zealot is persecution and if i was a muslim i would kill you)