So do you consider all those Christian monks who used the “X” as an abbreviation for “Christ” to be jerks?
No, I just think that some people who say Xtian have some irrational thingie about saying Christ. I don’t care if they don’t believe in Him, but it’s pretty rude to denigrate those who do.
In other words, you didn’t answer the question AND you abscribed to someone else something that really doesn’t apply to that person.
Now, if this were a spoken conversation and the person said “Exshun,” you’d have a point. As it is, you’re just griping about an abbreviation. Why not gripe about “mister” being abbreviated?
Well, “Mister” refers to a regular ol’ human being. Sister Mary Clementine or some nun with a similar name taught me that abbreviating “Christ” is a bad thing, cuz He died for us, etc., and we can – at the very least – take a few extra seconds to spell out His name.
I’m not debating… just trying to explain another point of view.
[sub] What am I doing in this forum anyway? I don’t belong here! Nice place y’all have here, btw. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I won’t let the door hit me in the butt.[/sub]
Frannie:
Namaste!
My point is that it’s merely a written abbreviation. It’s still pronounced “in full.”
We should also be sure not to ignore human rights violations in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Slovak Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic,
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/regEUR/regEUR?OpenDocument
the USA, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Bahamas, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, Suriname, Belize,
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/regAMR/regAMR?OpenDocument
China, Myanmar, India, the Philippines, Japan, Australia…
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/regASA/regASA?OpenDocument
In particular, violence against women is a problem in most Third World countries. I don’t think Muslim women would thank you for attributing it to their religion.
Well, depends on what sect of Buddhism you’re talking about and when. Nichren Buddhism for a time tended to be pretty intolerant, not just of other religions, but other Buddhist groups.
In the 7th century, when Buddhism became the official religion of Tibet, the king of Tibet made it a crime not to be a Buddhist.
What nobody has mentioned is the fact that prominent Moslem clergy (mullahs) have called on their followers to kill Christians and Jews! Think about it…if the Pope preached a sermon from St. Peters, and called on catholics to murder moslems, other Christian leaders would immediately denounce this as wrong!Yet, we see this every day in the moslem world! Also, look at pakistan-18 innocent Christians murdered by moslem fanatics-presumably because the US is defending itself from terrorists! Say what you will, but islam has a peculiar means of projecting its message…if it were really a religion of mercy and peace, I think we would have seen denunciations of the violent acts of these (moslem) terrorists.
First of all, many Muslims do not believe in the authority of Muslim “clergy”. Muslims are supposed to follow the guidelines set out for them in the Quran, not interpreted for them by self-appointed religious leaders. Secondly, many mullahs call on their followers not to kill Christian and Jews. You cannot compare the most extreme Muslim clerics to the Pope. They do not have the same authority and there are many dissenting voices. Thirdly, the shooting in the Pakistani church has been universally and publicly condemned by religious and political leaders all over Pakistan. There have been shootings in mosques as well over recent years. It is not the religion of the people which leads them to violence, it is their ignorance and poverty.
Following the events of September 11th, there have been hate crimes in the U.S. against Sikhs - people who have nothing in common with the terrorists involved in the World Trade Centre attack. Considering that most Americans have a high school education and there are still some among them who are stupid enough to kill an Indian Sikh as retribution for the crimes committed by Middle Eastern Muslims, is it that surprising to you that there are some uneducated Pakistanis who decide to kill a few Christians in response to what they see as American oppression?
First cast out the beam out of thine own eye…
I am going to take exception to the comment about poverty leading people to violence. That is not a reason, it is an excuse. There are plenty of peaceful people who live in poverty and even those who have come out of poverty without resorting to violence.
Monty
With all due respect, have you ever been to a 3rd world city? Above the slums in the MENA region and the Sub-Continent? Poverty, not even on the same scale as anything one can imagine in the developed world.
I know where Pennylane is coming from. Poverty, lack of hope, a crushing system which will kill like you’re a dog if you are too active, no education, no future.
Lot’s of people of course are peaceful, but the frustrations boil. No good outlets. Extremists come around sowing easy explanations for why your life is shit and why you’ve got little to no hope of changing that. Scapegoats. Explosion.
Monty, poverty is used as an excuse for violence, when in fact you are right that it does not and should not excuse it. However, it is a factor to consider, especially in countries where education is the prerogative of the rich. Most of Pakistan’s population cannot read and write, and are thus cut off from reliable news sources. They form their opinions based on the inflammatory rumours which they hear on the streets and in their villages. They do not have any knowledge of historical and current events with which to put this information in context. Furthermore, their lives often consist of working from dawn to dusk each day, for a pittance. They have no rights - even if they have saved money with which to better their lives, it can be taken away from them for no reason by their landlord, the police, or some corrupt government official. They have little to lose when some extremist comes along inciting reaction. So maybe poverty in itself does not lead to violence, but sometimes it leads to other things which do.
Yes, I have been to more than a few “third world” (developing nations) cities.
My point remains the same: poverty is not the reason for violence; it is an excuse used by violent people. That those people very well may be (and most probably are) the ignorant followers of hatemongers does not excuse the violence nor does it make the poverty the reason for that violence.
And this is especially true when it comes to those who are obstensibly following any religion which preaches peace!
And just to save someone else the trouble of bringing it up, I also feel that the poverty in Northern Ireland is no excuse for the carnage there either.
buddy1, for those looking for Xtian fatwahs try http://www.godhatesfags.com on for size.
Except that no one actually follows what you call “Xtian fatwahs.” GHF.com is met with derision, scorn, and ridicule when it is not simply being ignored. Even those who do evil things against gays and lesbians aren’t doing it cause old Freddie Goat-felcher said to. (my apologies to the goats)
Compare that to OBL and his pal Mullah Omar, who have called for the death of all Americans, everywhere. They got 19 people to fly the planes and kill thousands of Americans.
I think it’s misleading to look at poverty as the cause, for several reasons. First, as Monty pointed out there are lots of impoverished areas that don’t resort to violence. Second, one of the most militant states in the Middle East (and Bin Laden’s home) is Saudi Arabia, and it’s not poor. The per-capita income in Saudi Arabia is $11,000.
Finally, even if poverty were a cause, is this somehow the fault of the U.S.? Couldn’t we more reasonably place the blame on the muslim world and its lack of emphasis on science and business? Muslims make up 20% of the world’s population, and only provide 1% of the world’s scientists. It’s a similar problem to what fundamentalist Christians face, when they elevate religion above science. Many Muslims are taught that the only knowledge they ever need to learn is contained in the Koran. Many Muslim children are only taught to read the Koran, and then their education ends.
And finally, another root cause of poverty is the fact that almost every Islamic nation on the Earth is non-democratic, and many of them are run by either dictators or oppressive monarchies that install thousands of ‘princes’ into positions of power and business that they are not qualified for. These countries get run into the ground.
(a) Not every majority Muslim nation on earth is undemocratic. Senegal, 97% or so is a functioning democracy. Mali, again in the high 90 range as memory serves, is a functioning democracy. All caveats in re problem due to poverty but decent levels of democracy. Just off the top of my head. I don’t know how to characterize either Turkey or Iran, they could be transitioning or not. Ambiguous cases.
If we’re talking about the Arab world, well there you have a fully valid point, although Egypt got better in the last 5 years. However the last year saw a serious retreat.
(b) At least when I repsonded I thought we were refering to the sort of violence like mobbing churches and the like as seen recently.
© Of course extremism per se is not fully explained by poverty, I argued the same elsewhere. Indeed, my experience has suggest to me that while the foot soldiers as it were tend to be from the impoverished masses, the leading cadres and thinkers are not.
But then this is true of most movements. It strikes me that this is shifting the conversation (as I had understood it) which is fine but we need to be clear. There are different phenomena, sporadic violance does not mean extremism a la al-Qaeda and vice-versa. (In fact I hazard the opinion that the hard core that al-Qaeda folks represent largely avoid outburts, their risk is high)
Now as for Xtian fatwas, well some folks just have blinders on. Yeah, god hates fags gets ridiculed in most quarters, but it has a real audience in others. ObL’s type folks, until perhaps recently, attracted much the same kind of response (internal to the community, until recently the appeal of ObL/al-Qaeda type folks appeared to falling dramatically, although the hard-core got harder). Take a look at anti-gay violence in the USA. Double standards and shifting goal posts are not the mark of reasonable analysis. They’re the mark of slanted apologia.
Not surprising of course, but…
Can you give us one example where a Christian religious leader, anywhere from Falwell to Jackson, anywhere in between, or anywhere to either the right or left of them, have issued the equivalent of a fatwa calling for the death of an entire group of people?
Not, “don’t marry them”, not “don’t do business with those heathens”, not “they’re all going to hell”, not even “it’s the gays and feminists fault the WTC got bombed” but an actual religious edict to kill people?
C’mon, show us a fatwa from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Vatican, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Archbishop of Constantinople, or any other Christian leader or denomination.
Rather disingenous request, isn’t that? Trivial but disingenous. Of course, I fully realize you’ve not logically thought this through. Calls for genocide are of course a hate crime in the USA.
Howver, it is relatively trivial to look up the so called Xtian Identity groups or Godhatesfags and a one Fred Phelps and read between the lines. Right up to the line they go.
Then there is fairly clear calls among extremist Anti-Abortion groups, largely Xtian, for death of the abortion doctors.
Not in so many words of course, it’s a crime in the United States to actually call for someone’s murder.
Of course, I’m well-aware you’ll find some way to gerrymander the definitions.
Clear calls? Of course you can back this statement.
Although many Christian groups regard homosexual practice as a sin, the phenomenon of gay bashing (I’m assuming physical violence here) has nothing to do with Christianity. America is a pluralistic nation, but it is still a common misconception to equate Americans with Christianity, so that the sins of America are attributed to Christendom. I get the impression that gay bashers are just young punks.