Bombing in Egypt, Beheading in Iraq

Great Debates
21

“When the LORD, your God, brings you into the land which you are to enter and occupy, and dislodges great nations before you-the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites: seven nations more numerous and powerful than you-and when the LORD, your God, delivers them upt to you and you defeat them, you shall doom them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.”
-Deuteronomy 7:1-2

“If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nation, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join you.
You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of it, shall fear and never again do such evil as this in your midst.
If, in any of the cities which the LORD, your God, gives you to dwell in, you hear it said that certain scoundrels have sprung up among you and have led astray the inhabitants of their city to serve other gods whom you have not known, you must inquire carefully into the matter and investigate it thoroughly. If you find that it is true and an established fact that this abomination has been committed in your midst, you shall put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, dooming the city and all life that is in it, even its cattle, to the sword. Having heaped up all its spoils in the middle of its square, you shall burn the city with all its spoils as a whole burnt offering to the LORD, your God. Let it be a heap of ruins forever, never to be rebuilt.”
-Deuteronomy 13:7-17

Oh, and it goes on to say that if a girl is found not to be a virgin, “they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her father’s house and there her townsmen shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father’s house.”

Oh, and if a girl is being raped in a city, and hasn’t cried for help, she gets stoned, but only if she’s betrothed. If it’s in an open field and she’s betrothed and raped, she’s okay. But if she’s NOT betrothed, but is raped in an open field, she has to marry her rapist.

:dubious:

Gee, what kind of religion has a book like that!

22

Brutus: You wouldn’t happen to have any relevant and timely examples, would you?

Brutus, are you suggesting that there’s some kind of statute of limitation on religiously-inspired violence? That if a religion goes a certain amount of time without a major violent crusade or jihad or genocide, its intrinsic nature is somehow changed and its scriptural exhortations to violence don’t count?

Paul is trying to argue that Islam is somehow essentially, intrinsically violent because there are violent passages in its scriptures written nearly 1400 years ago, and there are violent acts being committed in its name today.

Well, nearly 1400 years after the New Testament was written, there were tons of violent acts being committed in the name of Christianity. By this reasoning, Christianity is therefore just as bad as Islam. If you’re saying that that doesn’t count nowadays, then you’re saying that Christianity is no longer essentially the same religion as it used to be.

(And if you really want modern examples of violence still being urged and committed explicitly in the name of Christianity, you need look no further than the Army of God:

23

Yes, it’s yet another one of those. I’m beginning to see why some have wondered whether or not Paulfitzroy is somesort of a plant.

24

Exactly! That’s why I said in this thread that Christianity should jettison the OT.

The core of Christianity would stay the same, and it wouldn’t have any of the hideous stuff above.

And people wouldn’t be able to say “look, Christianity advocates horrible things too!”

I don’t see how any religion (Christianity, Islam, etc) that considers itself a relgion of love and/or peace, can continue to have in its holy texts passages that advocate hideous violence. Just purge those passages out of the holy texts to show that you truly are a religion of love/peace and that you have moved into the 21st century.

25

Completely irrelevant, unless you can come up with recent examples of people carrying out acts based on those excerpts.

That is precisely what I am suggesting. Western civiliization, and by extension, Christendom, has undergone centuries of liberalization. (Bet you never thought I would say the L word in a positive context, huh?) What was acceptable in 1000AD is not what was acceptable in 1500AD is not what was acceptable in 1800AD or 1900AD or 2000AD. It is obvious that Christendom has advanced quite a bit over the past thousand or so years. The history is neat, perhaps, from an academic perspective, but doesn’t have much to do with the situation in the world today. Christian suicide bomber or beheaderizors don’t get much notice in the news, you have to admit.

Islam desperately needs a reformation of some sort. Dancing around the matter and uttering platitudes about what some other religious text says are meaningless and counterproductive. The beheadings and suicide bombings and suicide hijackings are coming from primarily one source: Militant Islam.

26

Polerius: The core of Christianity would stay the same, and it wouldn’t have any of the hideous stuff above.

Well, besides the fact that the theology would in fact have some pretty gaping holes in it (e.g., Jesus being the Messiah prophesied in Isaiah, the redemption of Jesus being required by the sin of Adam and Eve, etc.), you’d still have some hideous stuff here and there to deal with. And let’s not forget that a great deal of the violence exhorted and practiced by Christians was in fact based on the New Testament: e.g., persecution of Jews because “Jews killed Jesus” and so forth.

27

First of all, most Jews discarded the Biblical laws as soon as the Second Temple was destroyed and they were forced to become exiles, therefore having to rely on each other and not attack each other.

The big difference between Judaism and Islam is that Judaism has one repeated, MAJOR theme, spelled out thusly: “do not be cruel to strangers, for you were once strangers in the Land of Egypt.” There is no obsession with the “infidel” and with slaying “nonbelievers” in Judaism.

The law codes, severe as they are, govern how Jews are supposed to treat each other under Jewish-controlled government. And as soon as Jews didn’t have a state of their own anymore (in other words, for almost the past 2000 years,) those codes no longer really apply. Jews living in the “Stetl” (peasant village in Russia) didn’t stone each other to death or kill women for adultery, even though they were devoutly orthodox.

Islam, on the other hand, has relentlessly carried out the harsh policies of its scriptures, for as long as the religion has existed.

28

Well, according to Diogenes’ post in this thread

Like what? Can you cite some examples?

The example you cite is irrelevant, because nowhere (AFAIK) does the New Testament tell people to go out and persecute Jews because “Jews killed Jesus”.

29

Even though I agree with most of the rest of your post, I have to ask: If the U.S. constitution had a passage that allowed or condoned slavery or other hideous acts, and even if no slavery existed for the past 200 years, shouldn’t the parts of the constitution that condone slavery be removed? Why leave them there if they don’t express what we currently believe about slavery?

30

Brutus: Christian suicide bomber or beheaderizors don’t get much notice in the news, you have to admit.

I notice you don’t respond to my point about Christian abortion clinic bombers, though. And it’s not as though Jewish terrorists never make the news either, as the cases of Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, and various acts of the Gush Emunim indicate.

  • It is obvious that Christendom has advanced quite a bit over the past thousand or so years.*

Fine. But then you’re not talking about the same thing the OP appears to be talking about. Paul seems to be claiming that Islam is naturally violent because its holy scriptures support violence. What we’re raking him over the coals for is his refusal to recognize that the same reasoning applies to Christianity or Judaism.

All you’re saying here, on the other hand, is “Christianity has mostly outgrown its cultural and scriptural legacy of horrific violence, and Islam needs to outgrow it too.” That’s still a debatable proposition, as I indicated in my first post, but it’s not a blatantly illogical double standard such as Paul’s OP is asserting.

31

PF: Islam, on the other hand, has relentlessly carried out the harsh policies of its scriptures, for as long as the religion has existed.

I call bullshit. There are many Islamic cultures where such practices aren’t condoned, and where it’s not accepted that Islamic law requires them.

PF: * There is no obsession with the “infidel” and with slaying “nonbelievers” in Judaism.*

Yeah, tell it to the members of the Gush Emunim Underground who considered it their holy duty to cleanse the land of Arabs and blow up the Al-Aqsa mosque. And to those Jewish extremists who put up a shrine at the tomb of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein and gave him this epitaph:

I don’t condone any kind of terrorism, and I’m as opposed as anybody else to all the religious militant fringes that commit and support it. But I’m sick of this cheap trick of comparing the worst elements of one religion to the best elements of another, and then pretending that it constitutes a fair comparison between the essential natures of the two religions. Bullshit, as I said.

32

If a religion has only two statements:

  • “Be nice and love your fellow man”
    and
  • “If anyone pisses you off, kill the bastards and fry their balls and rape their wives”
    And if none of the current believers of this religion practice the second statement, why the hell is it still there?

Wouldn’t it seem bizarre that people don’t want to remove it, and yet say “well, we don’t practice it”?

(Note that I’m not limiting my criticism to Islam. I’m addressing any religion that does this)

33

Polerius, I think the chief issue is that it is ideologically awkward to take a sacred revered text that’s considered divinely revealed and snip bits out of it because they seem obsolete.

A religious scripture isn’t like a set of club by-laws where the members can update and adapt them as they see fit. Its status as the Word of God means a great deal to many people, and they would rather re-interpret or just ignore the embarrassing parts than openly deny the text’s integrity or infallibility.

Although I’m an atheist myself, I really don’t see how anybody could treat what they considered a divinely revealed text in that way.

34

If you “re-interpret or just ignore the embarrassing parts” aren’t you implicitly denying the text’s infallibility and its “status as the Word of God”?

The fact that “the Word of God” would have “embarrassing parts” that need to be ignored is illogical.

35

Polerius: The fact that “the Word of God” would have “embarrassing parts” that need to be ignored is illogical.

Well, there are lots of interpretational workarounds: we don’t get the real meaning of this part with our finite human understanding, this part was designed primarily to speak to the different circumstances of our ancestors, etc. etc.

Saying “this bit is wrong and we’re going to take it out”, though, is much more directly confrontational vis-a-vis the premise that the text is divinely inspired and sacred.

Are you trying to understand why believers in sacred scriptures deal with them as they do, or are you just trying to argue that it’s illogical? 'Cause if it’s the latter, I personally got no god in this fight and I’m not interested in pursuing it.

36

No, it is not, because there is no need for anything to be “ignored” because nothing is “embarrassing” if you know what you read and hence know what it means and hence know what you talk about. (Here must be said that I find one single verse or better said the use of one single verb in Al Qur’an to show itself to be completely in contradiction with the whole message. Hence I have my theories about why it is there and how it ever could be introduced. But that is an other discussion).

The fact that people come up with quotes out of what is considered by many as “he word of God” without adding the context and exegeses of said quotes, and then using the quotes as if they know what these words mean or handle about, is illogical.

The fact that others who read these out-of-context-and-without-any-correct exegeses/explanation quotes and then foolishly decide to follow the interpretation of the ignorant who brings them up, is at the very least illogical.

The fact that I do not take the effort to even start writing the exegeses about the quotes brought up here because this is a thread by someone not interested in being educated in the matter, is completely logical.

The fact that I am most ready to do so if someone has logical questions about no matter which verse or word in AQ, and hence makes a thread about them questioning them, is logical.
I can do the same when it comes to hadith yet that is a much more difficult task for me to write about this language.
The hadith science is at itself already a very complicated matter to get even started with.
Hence even the ordinairy Muslim is warned about for not starting to read and interprete on his own without guidance of a scholar.

Hence posting “quotes” out of hadith compilations or out of no matter what the poster perceives as records about the life,deeds and sayings of the prophet Muhammed, and in the way and with the intentions it is done in this thread, is at the very least illogical.
Salaam. A

37

PaulFitzroy, meet Aldebaran. Aldebaran, PaulFitzroy. I’m sure you two will have much to discuss with each other.

:eek:

38

If this is meant to imply that I must be considered as equal to the bigotted hatelevel the OP spreads around here then I think you should reconsider the use of such personal insults in GD.

If you mean to say anything else, may I then I ask you to write that in understandable English. Thank you.
Salaam. A

39

A, I think that all El-K was getting at was that you obviously would be able to give an informed response to the OP’s notions about what Qur’anic passages mean and how Muslims interpret them.

He clearly expects your responses to produce some fireworks, but IMHO you shouldn’t take that as a criticism of you.

40

Jeepers, do try to calm down, Aldebaran. I’m simply observing that from his posting record here, Mr. [BFitzroy** appears never to have met or spoken with an actual muslim. Maybe it would do a bit of good for you and him to discuss things a bit. Maybe not, since you seem to be very nearly as volatile and unreasonably hostile, if not quite as bigoted, as ** is. If not, I was simply observing that the clash of such, shall we say, strong-willed individuals will at least be interesting.