That is pretty much how the piss-holes are arranged at the bottom of the urinal, yes.
Pfft! When I was a kid, we didn’t need Muslim radicals for that! We had “Contras”, illegally funded by the President of the USA!
Islam don’t have holy symbols. They don’t even allow their prophet to be depicted. From what i’ve heard, the crescent and the star in the middle vaguely represent prophet mohammed (star) being surrounded by his followers (crescent). Thats not specific symbolism at all, and its made up by people, not by the teachings. Perhaps the only way to offend (all of) islam symbolically is by using their holy book. But some liberal/moderate moslem might not consider it that offensive. its just a book, its the verses that are holy.
Representing a religion/religious figure with a symbol is risky i say. We should learn from them muslims
Those examples are exactly why we shouldn’t all convert.
on second thought, perhaps the crescent represents the lunar calendar the moslems use
I was trying to remember what this thread reminded me of. It’s this. (Self)righteous anger at the purely imaginary behaviour of others.
Some of today’s Islamic countries have nuclear weapons, like Pakistan, where Osama is reportedly hiding out. Does al-Queda have them yet? Probably not, but it isn’t unlikely that they are trying, and if they get them, they will probably use them. Osama is definately a “crusader”, a religious zealot.
Other Islamic countries like Iran are supposedly within a few years of having them.
It has been said that ex-Russian weapons or supplies are available on the black market. I have no hard evidence for this, but I don’t think the Vatican is one of the bidders.
Not according to Ibn Warrick in Why I am Not a Muslim. He has an entire chapter on that subject.
Christianity and Islam are today worlds apart in degrees of toleration. How many Christians do you see bombing mosques and large office buildings in Islamic countries?
If you believe that tolerating another’s beliefs represents religious maturity, then that puts Christianity in the best light today.
The Koran is replete with frequent exhortations that require believers to kill non-believers. In the Koran, it is not an option, but a sacred duty. Convert them of kill them and let God sort it out. It is necessary to toss out much of the Koran if you wish to be a Muslim but not follow the Prophet’s commands.
Does the bible have commands that Christians ignore, too? Of course. In my opinion, and that of others such as Sam Harris,Christianity has largely overcome this obstacle, but Islam has not (perhaps due to a lack of reformation). It’s doubtful if anyone could give you a hard cite for this, as it is obviously subjective and mostly opinion.
Zero people died in those riots, if those riots ever took place. A simple Google search revealed that no deaths occurred, and I can’t find evidence of any riots actually happening. Boycotts were threatened. Nike responded with a recall.
Have you done this yet? I’m curious to know how he responds. You should also try it on an evangelical Christian.
I am also strongly in favor of a teddy bear offensive.
Yeah! And let’s send that same message to the religious extremists of the homegrown persuasion!
By the way, Abdul is not an Arabic name.
Is “some” anything like “exactly one”? And Pakistan is a secular state, its gov’t isn’t exactly the best in the world, but its not going to go off on a religious war against anyone.
So then the answer to my question was that Islamic zealots don’t have atomic weapons?
Are “other islamic countries like Iran” anything like “just Iran”? And even then, it appears that Iran stopped its program and most estimates I’ve seen put a weapon considerably further out then a few years even if the program has been restarted.
I’m not sure if it is religious or nationalistic or just saber-rattling, but the Pakastan/India border isn’t much like USA/Canada. Nuclear bombs and missles bristle on both sides.
My comment about “Islam being like the Crusaders, but with nuclear weapons” was intended to be partly rhetorical; don’t take it so literally. The entire subject of this thread is the differences between Islamic and Christian attitudes towards similar things. An interesting (if not valid) comparison can be made with holy war advocates over time – what they believed and how they carried it out.
I simply don’t hear a call for a holy war from the Christian camp today. I frequently see such a call given to the multitudes at Middle Eastern mosques, at least on television news.
If a holy war were carried out today – and some say it already has begun – it will be fought not with swords and horses, but with more lethal weaponry. That is what worries some people. Maybe 50 years from now, we’ll treat this perceived threat much like we treat the Cold War today. Maybe not.
Learn what? How to reduce women to second-class citizens who cannot even show their face outside their homes?
How to demand the murder authors like Salman Rushdie?
How to flog and hang homosexuals?
How to murder people who decide to renounce Islam?
You know what I mean by that. The symbolism of course. We’re way off the OP.
Musicat writes:
> [In reply to my stating, “But in the Middle Ages, Islamic societies tended to be
> more tolerant of Christians and Jews than Christian societies were of Moslems
> and Jews.”]
>
> Not according to Ibn Warrick in Why I am Not a Muslim. He has an entire
> chapter on that subject.
Could you quote the passage from Warraq (whose name you’ve misspelled)? This contradicts everything else I’ve read. I’ve just checked, and some other scholars don’t consider Warraq to be a good source. Do we have any scholars of medieval Islam on the board? Could someone who is very well read in this matter tell us whether medieval Islam was more tolerant than medieval Christendom? Please note that anecdotes are not good enough. Neither medieval Islam nor medieval Christendom was tolerant compared to a most modern societies. There’s no point in expecting them to have been. Neither medieval Islam nor medieval Christendom was the most intolerant society of all time. There’s no point in exaggerating in either direction. The question is whether on average medieval Islam or medieval Christendom was more tolerant.
> [In reply to my stating, “You’re assuming a straight-line theory of development
> of toleration here, which doesn’t seem to be true. It’s seems to me that what
> you’re asserting is that Society A is more tolerant than Society B in year X,
> therefore in year Y (where Y is later than X), Society will be more tolerant than
> Society B. You’re also assuming that it’s possible to make a general statement
> about the level of tolerance over all of Society A and all of Society B. That’s not
> clear. Both “Christian civilization” and “Moslem civilization,” to the extent that
> they exist, are highly diverse and exhibit a wide variety of levels of toleration.”]
>
> Christianity and Islam are today worlds apart in degrees of toleration. How
> many Christians do you see bombing mosques and large office buildings in
> Islamic countries?
Do you understand the term “non sequitor”? Your reply here was a non sequitor. Instead of addressing the argument that I made, you created a completely different one and replied to it. At no point did I ever disagree with the statement that on the average, Christian societies tend to be more tolerant than Moslem societies in the present world. That wasn’t my point. My point was that just because Society A is more tolerant in year X than Society B doesn’t mean that in year Y (where Y is later than X) Society A will be more tolerant than Society B. Toleration doesn’t necessarily follow a staight-line path. A society may become less tolerant over a period of time rather than more tolerant. One society may grow more tolerant faster than another. Societies don’t have to have the same pattern of events happen in them. There’s no reason that Moslem society has to have something roughly like the Reformation in order for it to change just because Christendom had a Reformation in order to change.
To state that “Christianity and Islam are today worlds apart in degrees of toleration” is a wild exaggeration. Yes, on the average Christian societies are more tolerant than Moslem societies. However, both of them are very diverse. There are variations of toleration in them, and it’s not completely true that all Christian societies in the modern world are more tolerant than all Moslem societies in the modern world.
Furthermore, how may Moslems are “bombing mosques and large office buildings”? The percentages of Moslems who did such things are tiny. They were condemned by many other Moslems for this. In some sense, they did those bombings for political reasons rather than religious ones. They killed random people in majority Christian countries not because they opposed their religions but because they considered the countries to be the “oppressors,” and they decided to kill a random group of people in that country. (Yes, that’s an insane reason, but terrorists who kill random members of the society that they oppose all do this on basically insane grounds. Moslem terrorists didn’t invent the insanity of terrorist killings.)
Furthermore, there are members of Christian societies who have killed people for terrorist reasons. To mention just a few, there are Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland who have killed members of the other group. There are bombings of abortion parlors in the U.S. And, on a lower level, there have been hate crimes against Moslems in the U.S.
No, I will not, even though the book is at my left elbow. If you are offended by my misspelling of his name, sue me.
This is not GQ or GD. I made it plain that I was offering personal opinions, not facts. You are free to interpret or misinterpret such. You are free to disagree with anything and everything I say, but it’s unlikely that you will change my opinion or I, yours, so I doubt that any time spent on such a task will be rewarding to either of us. Good day, Sir.
And Merry Christmas! 
Well, that answers my question. Discussing anything with you is a complete waste of time, since you aren’t interested in facts.