Ah… the old George W. Bush Infatuation Syndrome. You should see someone about that. You should also see someone about building you a time machine.
While I was never a fan of GWB and never voted for him, I think I grossly underestimated his powers. Many of those on the left are simply incapable of turning their gaze from his being. HA!
I’m neither Muslim or Christian, nor am I reverent of Leviticus. What I don’t understand is how some Christians seem to think they have a corner on the market of evolving, nuanced interpretations of their scriptures and that the followers of other religions are incapable of such things.
I don’t think we (I am a Christian) have a corner on nuance at all. However, the Muslim faith has not had the equivalent of a Reformation that Christianity did. There are a few thinkers pushing in Islam, but they do not have the large numbers of followers of a Luther, a Knox, an Augustine, etc.
The “closing of the gate of ijtihad” has kept the majority of Muslims following interpretations and statements of law from centuries ago without any deeper debates or modern movements.
How many progressive scholars are required to be counted as more than “a few”? What is the number/size/shape/duration of reformation movements required of Islam before it will no longer be considered less evolved than Christianity?
As God’s righteous and holy representatives here on earth we are already smiting the shit out of them. I know it’s true because we’re the good guys and God loves us best.
Well, canceling it ruins my master plan. I had a van load of people going with boxes of every so called holy book, and a banner like his saying “International Burn Superstition Day”
We’d greet Jones as a friend and tell him how much we support burning the Koran and then when he was about to light the fire we’d open our boxes, unfurl our banner and start heaving em in the blaze. We’d even have the makings for Smores and some hot dogs on pointy sticks.
Isn’t this true either way, though? I mean, if we go out of our way to not burn Korans, then you can go out of your way to burn Korans. I agree with you that the correct reaction is to basically not allow others to dictate, but deliberately going out of your way to show off your non-dictated-to abilities is still a reaction. I agree with you that the correct response is to not be dicated to, to show that the demands of others don’t affect us; but the response to that is to ignore, or to live our lives as we normally would, not to anti-react.
Nonsense. Off of the top of my head, one might well interpret these as a difference of prophets. What goes for prophets might well not go for the rest of us. I’ve heard people talk about how the words of people long ago aren’t the perfect guide for us living today. You could believe that while some deserve violence, you are not in a person to judge; on the other hand, you could argue that some threats to peace are so terrible that violence is the only option. The exaltation of a philosophy can be counterpointed by the necessary actions taken to protect it. A specific can be generalised to be universal; a universal can be argued that it does not apply in specific cases.
Anything can be interpreted in whatever fashion you so choose. It’s pretty easy. I’m not even religious and I can do it.
Ermm, I’m going to have to reevaluate my opinion of Tennessee. That’s kind of how I imagined religious folks were supposed to be. Do they have unicorns?
At the moment, likely. But that is an accident of history. If the efforts to paint Islam as inherently violent had merit, there would be no “spike”, Islamic violence would have been non-stop. The IRA had quite an impressive run of terrorist violence, for considerable time, and they were as Islamic as Paddy’s pig.