is that a challange to my statement?
from the washington times…
"The young people should make an effort to look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy ... (which) should be struck, God willing," Osama bin Laden said in a video sent to the Qatar-based al Jazeera television station in December.
from what i have read, osama had a long lost of reasons the world trade center was leveled…our military troops on saudi soil, which he considered sacred land; that the “west,” meaning the usa were “non-believers,” (in his god); that the center was the basis of capitalistic society which he deems sinful; and that the towers were full of jews, his direct religious enemy.
from these statements it appears to me that all of his reason and there were many more, all had to do with his religious beliefs. i think that is fairly “simple” to understand, no great mystery there.
Allah: I’m not impressed.
Hi biker
Hi biker
In order to arrive at these conclusions, OBL has to pervert some core islamic beliefs. The notions that capitalist society is evil or that Jews are the relgious enemies of Islam, for example, would be rejected in strong terms by orthodox muslims.
You’ll note his willingness to pervert facts; the towers were not “full of Jews”, and, far from being a nation of “non-believers” in (the islamic concept of) God, the US is one of the more religious (in terms of formal observance) nations in the Western world. It is true that religious oberservance in the US is predominantly Christian, but muslims consider that Christians (and Jews) worship the same God as they do. If he’s happy to change the facts to suit the position he wants to adopt, what makes you think he doesn’t change his beliefs for the same reason?
OBL says his position is religiously motivated, but I don’t think it is. He distorts both facts and beliefs in order to construct a justification for something which he feels driven to do. He feels the need to distort his beliefs in this way because he is, at some level, a religious man, and he wants his actions to be consistent with this religious beliefs. But his actions are not driven by his beliefs – it is the other way around, in my view – and it is nonsense to suggest that, if he were not religious, he would not behave in this way.
The world is full of examples of people who commit the most dreadful crimes without having any religious belief at all – Stalin springs to mind – and even more full of people who for cultural reasons identify as religious in the context of a conflict, and in that conflict commit horrible acts, but who are not in fact religious in terms of belief or practice. To suggest that for these people their conflict is motivated by religion is, quite frankly, to misunderstand the position at a very basic level.
Of course there are people whose religious beliefs do drive them to violence, but I think these cases are a small minority even of those conflicts conventionally identified as religious conflicts. And in assessing “what religion does for mankind”, you need to take account not only of those cases where religious beliefs have driven people to violence, but of those cases where religious beliefs have restrained people from violence.
from dictionary_________________________________
Main Entry: Al.lah
Pronunciation: 'ä-l&, 'a-l&, 'ä-"lä, ä-'lä
Function: noun
Etymology: Arabic allAh
Date: 1584
: GOD 1a – used in Islam
from osama video transcripts______________________
SHAYKH: At the exact time of the attack on America, precisely at the time. He (Bahrani) gave a very impressive sermon. Thanks be to Allah for his blessings. He (Bahrani) was the first one to write at war time. I visited him twice in Al-Qasim.
BIN LADEN: Thanks be to Allah.
am i drawing a correct conclusion here? shouldn’t the transcripts, correctly translated, have said “thanks be to god?”
uds------ in your way of thinking, which i find particularly distorted, explain the “crusades” to me, in twenty-five words or less.
No, you are not drawing a correct conclusion.
You found the word “Allah” in an English dictionary. Do I really need to say anything else?
Perhaps you’ve misunderstood the essential characteristic of a dictionary. English dictionaries do not give “translations” of foreign words into English, they give “meanings” of accepted English words. That is: if the word appears in the dictionary, it’s OK to use it.
I think your insistence on this point reveals that you have an agenda, not the government.
kg m²/s²
biker, I found UDS to be quite clear.
Before you begin to blame religion for its ills, you have to clear up your confusion between the “justifications” that people use for actions and the “reasons” they actually perform those actions. This is part of UDS’s point: if you remove a justification from a person, they find another justification. If you remove the reason, they don’t perform the action.
kg m²/s²
The crusades were fought so that the Pope could extend his power. It had little to do with converting the “heathens.” Religion was the facade.
Heh, heh. Count the words.
Actually, I would accept the crusades as a good example of a conflict where, at least in the early phase, some of the participants - the crusaders - were to a signficant extent motivated by religion. They were also, of course, motivated by non-religious ideals such as valour and glory, and by material considerations such as wealth and power.
Other participants were motivated largely or entirely by self-defence.
Notwithstanding the admitted religious element, most commentators (including, I think, most Arab commentators) see the crusades as basically an early experiment in colonialism rather than as a religious conflict. We need look no further than the Fourth Crusade for abundant evidence that the crusades had more to do with the acquisition of power and wealth than with anti-islamic or pro-christian sentiment.
biker, even if we grant that the Crusades were motivated purely by religion, this would only demonstrate one such circumstance. It would not reflect the state of religion in general, nor would it say anything about the number of conflicts which ARE religously motivated.
I know a man who abandoned his wife and children in the name of love. Does this mean that love is itself detestable? I also know a man who stole millions of dollars in order to pamper his family. Does this make family affection reprehensible?
No fair! Cheater! You used more than 25 words! 
Yes, but I did that to annoy biker.
(And to make the point that sometimes you have to choose between a short explanation and a correct one.)
What? Are you saying my explanation was incorrect.
Well okay, I guess it was an oversimplification. (What does one expect for 25 words?)
I actually used it to show an example of an opposing viewpoint that is as simplistic as Biker’s implications. (I.e. Biker seems to blame the crusades completely on religion; I was blaming it completely on material wealth and sociopolitical gain.) Neither of us was completely wrong, but we’re not even close to accurately depicting the whole situation.
Newton meter:
it appears to me that you have proven my point regarding the dictionary. it was my statement that the only word our guvmint did not translate into english, from osama’s video, was the word allah.
as i had stated earlier, this would have translated into “god.”
i have been asked here to explain and document my position on many subjects. things are sort of getting out of sequence cause, “pant-pant-pant” i can’t keep up.
Main Entry: 1cru.sade
Pronunciation: krü-'sAd
Function: noun
Etymology: blend of Middle French croisade & Spanish cruzada; both ultimately from Latin cruc-, crux cross
Date: circa 1708
1 capitalized : any of the military expeditions undertaken by Christian powers in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to win the Holy Land from the Muslims
2 : a remedial enterprise undertaken with zeal and enthusiasm
this might seem drastic but my thoughts on the explanation above “win the holy land” basically meant, slaughter everyone in the name of god, that wasn’t christian, .
yes biker gets annoyed when he can’t find the time to discuss all these relevant thoughts. my current research to show how all religions are based on mankind’s inability to deal with death (which everyone knows is true) is taking on doctorate thesis proportions, hahaha…
What? No mention of the attacks on the Greek Orthodox Church and the sacking of Constantinople?
Umm, do I look like I have infinite patience? I have not proven your point, I have proven my point.
You have apparently confused the definition of a word for the translation of a word. Maybe you should look those up.
You said: The guvmint didn’t translate “Allah”.
I said: The Arabic word “Allah” translates to the English word “Allah”.
You said: No it doesn’t. Here, I’ll show you where “Allah” is in the English dictionary.
Dude. If you wanted to demonstrate that “Allah” is not acceptable English, you should have shown me that it was not in an English dictionary.
Do you get it now? Those boldface words on the left side in that dictionary? Those are OK to use in English.
People trot out dictionary definitions in GD too often. Usually, a dictionary definition doesn’t do anything other than indicate that a word has a definition in common usage. In this case, where your argument is that the word does not have a definition in common usage, exhibiting the dictionary definition weakens (not strengthens) your point.
You should have stuck to wild-ass unproven assertions, they were more credible than your attempted explanations.
Ask Jeeves Answer Who is Alla_________________________
Who is Allah?
by Abu Iman 'Abd ar-Rahman Robert Squires
Some of the biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with the word “Allah”. For various reasons, many people have come to believe that Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews. This is totally false, since “Allah” is simply the Arabic word for “God” - and there is only One God
First of all, it is important to note that “Allah” is the same word that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use for God. If you pick up an Arabic Bible, you will see the word “Allah” being used where “God” is used in English.
how much more proof do you want that i am correct?
Nearly two billion Christians believe that Jesus is God. How many Muslims mean “Jesus” when they say “Allah”?