Actually, I don’t think the Black Stone of the Kaaba is itself really an idol, or even an object of veneration, for Muslims. It was part of the Kaaba when it was a pagan temple, and Muhammed left the Kaaba intact except for smashing all the idols in and around it. So the Black Stone is just sort of there, and Muslims could build a new Kaaba without finding a replacement stone.
Maybe a Muslim can correct me on these points.
Of course, even if the Kaaba and all the buildings of Mecca were destroyed, Muslims could and would continue to pray in the direction of the spot where Mecca used to be.
When I read this kind of proposal, I think people like the OP would be typically the kind of people finding themselves totally devoid of moral sense when it comes to fighting the perceived “evil ennemy”. The kind of people who have no issue with killing plenty of innocents as long as they’re somehow related to the “evil ennemy”, and even less if the target is symbolic enough.
In other words, the kind of people who would support a genocide, or who would want to crash aircrafts into major buildings, for instance. Assuming that they would have enough physical courage to do such a thing, which isn’t a given.
The OP is one of the many anonymous faces of Evil.
How would the US respond in this hypothetical situation, one wonders:
Two US cities are simultaneously destroyed by nuclear weapons planted by al Qaeda or a like-minded group.
The terrorist group then announces that it has nuclear bombs planted in five other unnamed cities, and will detonate them forthwith unless the US accedes to its demands.
Now imagine you are the president. Well, Mr. President, what shall we do? Shall we accede to the demands? Or issue a counter-threat?
What would our counter-threat be? “If you detonate those bombs, we will…”
We will what?
This is the only scenario I can imagine in which even a threat against Mecca might be considered. (And I can also imagine that threat being a bluff.)
Note: I am not arguing that such a threat would be the right thing to do. But I am having a hard time imagining possible responses in the described hypothetical scenario. What would be the appropriate response? What else could get the terrorists’ attention?
(For non-US dopers, imagine this scenario playing out in your own country and see if it affects your thinking.)
Or perhaps the OP is trying to get people to understand the difference between the U.S. and the terrorists, something that many people here seem to have a hard time doing.
Evil Captor, and others talking about Saudi support for al Qaida and other terrorist groups, you must bear in mind that the Saudi government in no ways supports al Qaida and its allied groups. One of al Qaida’s central motivations, one of its raisons d’etre, is to bring down the Saudi government and replace it with an Islamist government. Some Saudi citizens might support AQ, including some citizens in minor government positions, but the government, the ruling clique of princes, the high-level officials, the leaders of the army and anyone else in real positions of power would be signing their own death warrants if they supported al Qaida.
Thus the comparison with the Taliban is faulty. The Taliban was supported, in a way, by the US Government through the Pakistani ISI. They were supported by the governments of nation-states, not just by individual US / Pakistani citizens.
I disagree. I will agree there is no overt support for al-qaeda in the Saudi government, but when we talk about the Saudi governbment we’re basically talking about the Saudi princes. Some of the members of the ruling clique undoubtedly have ties to al-qaeda. They are playing both ends against the middle, a very old game. If the House of Saud falls, they have some insurance. And some of them undoubtedly serve as backchannels between the Saudi princes and terrorist groups other than al-qaeda.
Just as there were back channels between the Reagan Republicans and the Iranian revolutionaries that negotiated the hostage release back in the 80s.
Now, as to what extent Saudi Arabia can be blamed for Al-Qaeda’s activities morally, that’s an iffy question. There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Syria constitute huge wellsprings of financial support for Al-Qaeda. If a nuclear weapon were detonated on American soil, it would be rational to tell the leadership: give us everything and everyone you have with Al-Qaeda, without reservation, or you will be determined to be at war with the U.S. and in a short while you will be the leaders of a radioactive pit." After all, if THEY can nuke us …
The people who run things in Third World countries tend to be pragmatists, faced with a thoroughly maddened U.S. with nukes pointed at them, they would undoubtedly find that Al-Qaeda’s people just weren’t all that much of a playing card any more.
That presupposes we have a rational administration, of course. If the present administration is in power and we got nuked by Al-Qaeda, they’d undoubtedly respond by invading Zimbabwe so they can take out Mugabe. Since they hate brutal dictators so much and all…
This explains why Saudi Arabia has received kid glove treatment. And if the Bush family had helped funnel milliions to Al-Qaeda by moving at a snail’s pace to shut off the “Muslim charities” that funded them, you’d be right in your second point. As it is, it’s one thing to say, important members of the House of Saud support terrorism generally, and a few of them probably support Al-Qaeda. But it does not follow that the Bush Admin supports Al-Qaeda directly because it associates with the Saudis.
It does follow that the Saudis can continue to play games with terrorists indefinitely as long as Bush is in power.
Chill out. If the “anything” happened to be an asteroid headed for Earth, I’d say nuke that puppy and then nuke the crumbs, just to be sure.
There are highly unlikely but conceivable nuclear targets right here on Earth, and I could imagine a President going after them under extreme (and I mean extreme circumstances) but taking out Mecca is just… stupid.
Not quite. When we talk about the Saudi government, we’re talking about the ruling clique of Saudi princes and their enablers in the bureaucracy and industry. There are more than 6000 princes in the House of Saud, but the group actually in control is far smaller. While I’m sure quite a few princes have sympathies for various terrorist groups, they’re not the ones in power.
Those who control the government now do not want to play both ends against the middle. They’re one of the ends, so to speak. They already have power and only face losing it, perhaps along with their heads, in any Islamist takeover. The powerful people in government, and the government itself, does not, can not, support al Qaida.
If I understand the point of the OP, what he is looking for is something that would be a deterent to terrorists who happen to be fanatical Muslems. Attacking innocent people would be an act of insanity, but I was thinking about it and had an idea, based upon my understanding of Islam (which may be flawed), which might acomplish the same thing. If this is the course you want to follow, perhaps making it known that any terrorists killed while commiting terrorist acts would be burried with a dead pig might acomplish the same thing. From what I understand (and again, I may be wrong), many Muslems would consider this to be the ultimate humiliation and desecration, and some sects would even suggest that such a burial would be enough to keep the person so burried out of Paradise. In any event, it would be a punishment limited to those guilty of terrorist acts, not a massacre of innocent people who happen to share the same general faith as the terrorist. Does anyone more knowledgeable on Islam know how such a burrial would be viewed?
I also said that nuking Mecca would be an evil thing to do.
Somehow, none of this appears to have made much impact on you. Instead, you focus on my statement that Mecca is a worthless place.
If we are talking simply about old buildings, idols and other relics, including the preserved whiskers of the Muslim prophet Mohammed then, in the larger scheme of things, it is pretty worthless. Is treating buildings with indifference a form of bigotry now? So maybe I’m a buildingist.
Why did you make this blithe assumption that I would be likely to care any more about the buildings of Jerusalem? The buildings of Jerusalem have no intrinsic value higher than the structures of Mecca. The inhabitants populating those places alone are what would make nuking Mecca or Jerusalem an evil thing to do and I thought that could be easily inferred from my opening paragraph.
The only Deity I invoked was Thor who has, as far as I am aware, nothing to do with Jerusalem. That would make me a Thursday person, so I would be pretty safe, insofar as the Saturday and Sunday people are first on the current hit list of the Friday people, which you may or may not be aware about.
I have a confession to make. I don’t really worship Thor. I am a complete atheist.
A point I did try to make was that the elimination of a holy site by a nuclear bomb does not automatically mean the destruction of a cult. The leaders of cults can be very creative in devising new rationalisations at very short notice and the hypothetical miraculous “finding” of a black meteorite rock supposedly preserved by Allah - by an imaginative Imam following the hypothetical nuclear destruction of Mecca was suggested merely as an example.
From #61BrainGlutton
Any physical object that people of a particular religious cult are exhorted to bow towards in their prayers is an idol, whether it has the shape of a human, an animal, or the shape of a building is immaterial.
Incidentally, I would include in the category of idolatory the presence of statuary in Churches and symbolic gestures, such as kissing books of holy writ, etc.
From #66Imran
That’s incredibly big of you. I’m ever so grateful.
I trust the above comments have provided you with sufficient information to enable you to come to the right conclusion.
The right conclusion, of course, being that despite your veneer of supercilious rationality, you bear an unreasoning contempt for Islam and its adherents, as evidenced both by your precious username and by the contents of your posts here and elsewhere.
Mecca is not worthless. The Kaab is not an idol. Islam is not a cult. And your special attitude toward Islam is neither humanitarian nor remotely reasonable.
I’ll focus on just one of your pathetic bleats Left hand of Dorkness:
Islam is a cult.
Momonism is a cult.
Christianity is a cult.
Scientology is a cult.
Judaism is a cult.
Thugees were a cult.
Need I go on? Perhaps you are one of those people who thinks that some cults should be placed above criticism. That’s too bad.
All cults and their adherents are irrational and, to varying degrees, vile.
The only ones that are worth worrying about are those that have a similar membership profile to the defunct Thugee cult. Otherwise, I don’t give a damn about any of them.
You seem to have taken offense at my precious name? As if it’s sillier than yours. There are people on SDMB who name themselves after mass murderers (eg. Tamerlane) and religious prophets (eg. Dead Jesus). It doesn’t worry me in the slightest.
Islam is not a cult, AOB. Neither is Christianity or Judaism. Neither is monism (that’s not even a religion just a particular model of theism).
The word “cult” actually does have a specific definition for people who study religions. To wit, a cult is a new religious movement which arises independently of another established religious group. Cults are often, but not necessarily, characterized by some tension with its greater cultural context.
All religions start off as either cults or sects (including Islam, Christianity and Judaism) but once they attin a certain level of success, age and mainstream acceptability they lose the dsignations of “cult” or “sect” and simply become religions or “churches.”
The dividing line at which a cult becomes an established religion is somewhat subjective (a good example would be LDS which is still classified as a cult by some social scientists but which. for all intents and purposes, has become an established, mainstream church) but suffice it to say that no one who studies this field would call any of the major world religions “cults” any more. Cults and sexts describe models of formation. They are not static, permanant classifications for any and every religious group. LHoD:
No, you needn’t; your list makes it clear that you don’t understand waht a “cult” is.
But you did go on, and confirmed what I said about your unreasoning contempt for Islam; though you list it with a bunch of other religions and claim to have equal contempt for them, your posting history and your username show otherwise.