Any oppressed group that is predominately Muslim, and seeks political sovereignty is going to be “attempting to create an Islamic state”, depending upon how loosely one wants to use the term.
The Buddhist monks who rebelled against the Vietnamese Catholic elites were not so much trying to establish a Buddhist state as trying to get out from under a Catholic one. In a way, I suppose they were successful but never really got to build that Victory Monastery in Saigon.
Your use of the term “Islamic state” carries more innuendo than substance.
I got the term from the wikipedia article on the history of the group. Hence my “From what little I’ve read” comment. My main point is the timelines. They were radical before they were repressed.
Well, there was a radical group in the 1940s. However, the specific group that carried out the Bali bombing was created in 1993 after being forced to flee Indonesia in the face of persecution. Note, however, that the point I have made on several occasions was not that such groups only form under persecution, (Wahhabism is around 250 years old), but that persecution, corruption, and social disruption tend to provide the impetus for them to become larger and more powerful, drawing new recruits. Without those outside social phenomena, they tend to remain minor cranks with little effect on the regions where they exist. The zealots of Afghanistan were well known in the 1950s and 1960s, while wholly Muslim Afghanistan educated its women in universities and practiced a very progressive attitude toward the world. It was only when the entire country was thrown into turmoil with Soviet intervention and U.S. counter-intervention that the zealots were able to draw enough recruits to become the Taliban and send the country to hell.
it’s illogical to suggest that the most fanatical followers of a prophet will not follow his words and actions. And it’s not my viewpoint, it’s Mohammad’s. It’s my observation.
Why “fanatical”, out of interest? You already know that I disagree with you on the interpretations of followers, but accepting your point for the sake of argument, why would “fanatical” followers in particular follow the actions of a prophet?
The cost of security represents the danger involved. It is an indictment on the seriousness of the problem. Nobody in this thread has suggested a majority of Muslims are to blame.
because a fanatic is: 1. a person whose enthusiasm or zeal for something is extreme or beyond normal limits.
Are you disagreeing that islamo-terrorism exists or that it’s a minority of Muslims involved?
Mohammad created a religion and a political system based on war and conquest. There is a clear history of death and destruction directly related to him. Not his followers, him. Most Muslims find this off-putting and choose the more peaceful side of their prophet as guide to daily living. The more fanatical take his actions and laws to the extreme.
I’m disagreeing that it is illogical to suggest that the most fanatical followers of a prophet will not follow their words and actions. I mean, I would call, let’s say, the Phelps family fanatical Christians. Logically, then, since they are fanatics, and since they espouse hatred and death, Christian prophets stood for those things, right? To say that the most fanatical followers of a prophet will follow their words and actions means that, by judging the behaviour of those followers, we may judge the words and actions of those prophets. So, which Christian prophets is it that the Phelpses follow the words and actions of? Is Jesus himself included under “prophet”, or should we just assume Moses and the like happily endorsed the murder of, well, pretty much most people?
While it could be said that Phelps isn’t following the words of Jesus he hasn’t killed anyone so the argument can be made that he is, in fact, following a peaceful existence. As fanatics go, he’s harmless.
But it isn’t enough, surely, that he follows a “peaceful” existence (which I would strongly disagree with; there is physical violence and there is mental violence; too, speeches endorsing violence and murder may well influence other people to actually perform those acts). The only reason that the Phelpses aren’t actually practicing what they preach is that some of them, at least, are sane enough to realise they wouldn’t get away with it.
Still, the point remains. It isn’t a matter of harmlessness, it’s a matter of following words, as you said. If the Phelpses are fanatics, we can judge their prophets by their words and actions. Ergo, Jesus didn’t kill anyone himself, but he endorsed the murder of most people in the world, he happily sat outside funerals celebrating the people’s deaths and promising God would bring more. That’s correct, isn’t it? When we look at Christians in the world, it is the fanatics, the abortion clinic bombers, the killers, the endorsers of violence, the censors, that truly represent the words and actions of Jesus. Right?
Or perhaps fanatics aren’t particularly known for following their prophets words and actions. Perhaps it isn’t illogical to suggest that.
Most christian churches do not believe all non-christians are automatically hell-bound and so far only a very, very few have written a book naming Islam ‘evil’ without knowing the first thing about it.
Perhaps. but when you start adding up the intolerance, violence and killings from fanatics there is a disparity of numbers. Do you see fanatics rioting in the streets over art depicting Jesus getting a blow job? Certainly the outrage is there. Compare this to 6 people who were murdered halfway around the world over the mention of the burning of a sacred book.
There are no absolutes in anything involving human behavior. Your argument that all fanatics must follow the actions and writings of their prophet or the premise is wrong is illogical.
At this point in time, i’m not making an argument about the preponderance of Christian vs. Islamic violence. Solely that your point upthread is wrong. It doesn’t matter as to the proportion of violence, or the proportion of fanatics; so long as there are fanatics who follow prophets their words and actions should follow those prophets, per your point. If your argument is that Jesus was, merely, a commander of violence rather than a killer by his own hands, or that his displays of intolerance, violence, and killings were fewer in number, then I can understand your point. But I don’t think that’s what you’re saying.
It isn’t my argument. It’s your argument;
You’ve qualified it as “most” fanatical, but I don’t think that aids your overall point at all. Your statements contradict one another.
Now, i’m happy to agree with your new point here - suggesting that all fanatics must follow the actions and writings of their prophet is, of course, entirely silly, as I pointed out in the very post you’ve just quoted from. Usually fanaticism can only be an indicator of strength of belief or inability to accept or understand opposing viewpoints. And given that the overall point you were trying to make, I believe, was;
I think you may have accidentally undermined your own argument through overstating.