[QUOTE=Alessan]
A billion Muslims in the world, and they don’t have the power to threaten the world, and never will?
Well. If I were Muslim, I’d be insulted.
[/QUOTE]
Only a few thousand of them are violent extremists. It’s like 100th of 1% of all Muslims.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
*But these mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. *
[/QUOTE]
Boy are you ever a megalomaniac.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I don’t think we are under any real threat of that right now, but I do think that all the other elements are in place if the populace is ver subjected to any serious economic pressures.
[/QUOTE]
This is where we do agree, although I think it’s important to consider how much economic pressure it would take. Can you think of any civil society similar to the US that just all of a sudden decided to build death camps for an ethnic group just for the heck of it? There simply is no precedent, and I don’t see that Americans are any different from any other group. So, yeah, if we descended into economic chaos, then we’d descend into civil chaos as well. But even a Depression isn’t economic chaos.
No, I suspect what you heard was a conflation of two different conflicts. Sudan is a very large ( tenth largest in the world by land area, I’m not sure if people always appreciate that - Mercator projections make it look smaller ), quite artificial country with numerous fault lines. For decades a two-stage civil war raged between the Muslim north and Christian/animist south over issues of autonomy. As I noted it is currently fairly quiet after a 2005 peace agreement.
Darfur is geographically in the “north” in that sense and has always ( well for the last several hundred years, anyway ) been Muslim. The people there, both settled and pastoral, supplied soldiers to fight in the south. The fighting there broke out because of resource stress, leading to conflict between largely pastoral “Arabs” and largely agricultural “Africans”, with the more mobile and traditionally raiding-oriented former moving in on the latter. The government, either passively or actively supported the “Arabs”. As time has gone on the conflict has inevitably taken on new political dimensions, but that’s where it started.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Only a few thousand of them are violent extremists. It’s like 100th of 1% of all Muslims.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the religious zealots with political power.
If reactionary theocrats in positions of power in the U.S. are a threat to the world, wouldn’t you say the same thing about reactionary theocrats ruling *other * countries?
[QUOTE=Alessan]
I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the religious zealots with political power.
If reactionary theocrats in positions of power in the U.S. are a threat to the world, wouldn’t you say the same thing about reactionary theocrats ruling *other * countries?
[/QUOTE]
Not without any military power to back it up.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Not without any military power to back it up.
[/QUOTE]
First of all, there’s military power and there’s military power. *Nuclear * military power, for instance, tends to alter the balance of things.
Second of all, things change. Right now, they don’t have the military power to threaten you. If you’re smart you’ll keep things that way. Because the world doesn’t always stay the same. Empires rise, empires fall. If you haven’t noticed, demographics are on thir side.
Besides, you don’t have to have tons of military power to do a lot of damage. Ask the Egyptian gay community.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Only a few thousand of them are violent extremists. It’s like 100th of 1% of all Muslims.
[/QUOTE]
In 2005 there were 296,410,404 Americans committing 1,390,695 violent crimes.
That’s 0.5 %
If the propensity for violence is anywhere near that of the modern civilized prosperous US and given there are 1610 million Muslims in the world, we can assume that 8 million Muslims are capable of being violent next year. Now whatever the motivation might be religious or secular for violence we need only to look at the US for the degree of Christian extremism non violent though it may be that exists within the US population and threatens the country politically.
In short, “a few thousand” is bullshit.
[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
In 2005 there were 296,410,404 Americans committing 1,390,695 violent crimes.
That’s 0.5 %
If the propensity for violence is anywhere near that of the modern civilized prosperous US and given there are 1610 million Muslims in the world, we can assume that 8 million Muslims are capable of being violent next year. Now whatever the motivation might be religious or secular for violence we need only to look at the US for the degree of Christian extremism non violent though it may be that exists within the US population and threatens the country politically.
In short, “a few thousand” is bullshit.
[/QUOTE]
But criminals don’t go around flying planes into buildings. Sure, there are probably millions of “criminal” Muslims out there, but how many are a threat to the US? You can’t compare radical terrorists to common burglers or even rapists-- they’re not politically motivated.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
*But these mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. *
-Luke 19:27
That was Jesus speaking.
[/quote]
And He was quoting a man in a parable, Dio, the sort of metaphor that even the most hardened literalist takes analogically. God, you can be a jerk about this stuff sometimes.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
And He was quoting a man in a parable, Dio, the sort of metaphor that even the most hardened literalist takes analogically. God, you can be a jerk about this stuff sometimes.
[/QUOTE]
That’s the POINT, Lib. I was showing how easy it is to quote somebody else’s sacred texts out of context. My whole point is that it would be ridiculous to make assumptions about what Christians believe based on this one verse, but that’s exactly the kind of thing that people do with the Koran all the time.
But since you mention it, the king in the parable is a symbol for Jesus himself, is he not? So then calling it a parable is a distinction witout a difference.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
God, you can be a jerk about this stuff sometimes.
[/QUOTE]
Why are you speaking so rudely to God?
</even more blatantly out of context>
[QUOTE=Carol Stream]
Children are business/political rivals in Afghanistan? Because that was the original claim, that “innocent children” were being imprisoned in Gitmo.
[/quote]
No, ma’am.
Which is not a claim that that is happening now, but a hypberbolic prophecy of things getting even worse. As has been repeatedly pointed out to you in this thread.
Well, to be fair to Carol Stream, Der Trihs did muddy the waters by unnecessarily attempting to rise to the challenge. So, while yes, she was as wrong as they come in issuing her challenge in the first place, it’s not entirely her fault that the question [of innocent children in Gitmo] stayed alive as long as it did.
So, my ruling follows:
Carol Stream, honey, try reading for comprehension.
Der Trihs, you’re not helping, bro.
The fact is, there are (or were) some teenage boys (well under 18) being held at Gitmo. Whether that counts as “children” or not is debatable, but they are certainly minors. And whether they are innocent or not is hard to say, since the procedure for determining guilt or innocence there is 1) not very transparent and 2) not close to what we’d consider a fair trial in the US.
However, given the sloppy way we picked up people in Afghanistan, and seeing how many who have been returned to their countries of origin are either set free or given very light prison sentences, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if most of the inmates there are basically just innocent guys caught up in the heat of battle. And it kind of seems that Bush is (finally!) trying to clear the place out of all but the hard-core types like KSM. Condi Rice recently made an appeal to several countries to accept repatriation of some of the prisoners, as we’re finding it’s not so easy to set some of these guys free.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
That’s the POINT, Lib. I was showing how easy it is to quote somebody else’s sacred texts out of context. My whole point is that it would be ridiculous to make assumptions about what Christians believe based on this one verse, but that’s exactly the kind of thing that people do with the Koran all the time.
[/quote]
All right, I’m sorry then for misinterpreting you…
…except that I didn’t, apparently. The King in the parable symbolizes the Law.
[QUOTE=Aquila Be]
Tripe. 
[/QUOTE]
Tripe, yourself. You did the same thing that mswas did. You made a big deal about how the Qur’an supported forced conversion (under threat of death or injury), then quoted the Qur’an as saying that it was legitimate to impose a tax on those who chose not to convert. A tax is not a threat of death or injury. There is no place in the Qur’an and no event in the life of Mohammed in which straightforward conversion was demanded at the point of the sword. (A number of people who attacked Mohammed were treated pretty ruthlessly and the survivors were “invited” to join the new faith, but there was no event in which Mohammed set out to make war on anyone with the purpose of gaining converts through battle.)
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Tripe, yourself. You did the same thing that mswas did. You made a big deal about how the Qur’an supported forced conversion (under threat of death or injury), then quoted the Qur’an as saying that it was legitimate to impose a tax on those who chose not to convert. A tax is not a threat of death or injury. There is no place in the Qur’an and no event in the life of Mohammed in which straightforward conversion was demanded at the point of the sword. (A number of people who attacked Mohammed were treated pretty ruthlessly and the survivors were “invited” to join the new faith, but there was no event in which Mohammed set out to make war on anyone with the purpose of gaining converts through battle.)
[/QUOTE]
I dunno, a tax seems corecive to me.
But as I read those quotes, they do seem to by and large exclude christians and jews. It appears to be atheists like me who are in deep Islamic doo.
tomndebb Maybe I was hasty in calling you a moderate. 
Here’s a timeline for you. Islam did a whole lot of defending itself for it’s first 1000 years, from India to Iberia.
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf
Diogenes the Cynic You seem really unwilling to look at this critically. You can find a single quote from Jesus and decontextualize it, while there are many many examples of Sura’s and Hadiths that one doesn’t need to take out of context. Second, if you look at the careers of Jesus vs Muhammed, you see their record on carrying out actual conquest. Third, if you watch the followers who knew them personally and their record of conquest a larger picture emerges.
It wasn’t until the Council of Nicea when the Christian church assimilated Roman Imperial ambitions that it started to carve an empire. Islam’s empire began with Mohammed. Also, Bush is not exactly the sort of Evangelical you think he is, and if he is, he’s the only Evangelical head of state. Those limited number of Islamists are in control of many Islamic countries, like Ahmadinejad in Iran, and the Saudi royal family in Saudi Arabia where Wahabbism, one of the most extreme forms of Islam is the official religion. The situation in Saudi Arabia is basically like if Fred Phelps version of Christianity were the religion of the ruling party.
Gain some perspective before you trendilly hate your own countrymen in true 60s culture war fashion.
Why is it that people are more willing to give Islam the benefit of the doubt than Christianity? Multiculturalism generally means that we should respect all cultures except Christian culture, regardless of the evidence.
Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist Islamist state. Iran is a fundamentalist Islamist state and is one its way to acquiring nuclear weapons. Pakistan is one bullet away from being a fundamentalist Islamic state and already has Nuclear weapons. How much evidence does one need to realize that Islamism isn’t simply a few radicals. This fantasy that the people of the Middle-East are a bunch of secular liberals just waiting to come out of their shells is cognitive dissonance at its best.*
Mass detention and mass execution are not the same thing. We had mass detention of Japanese in WWII and we didn’t execute them. Yes it’s still wrong, but it’s different from the Nazis. Many countries in history have done such a thing, and it did not end up resembling the Nazis. If any act of fascism makes you think of the holocaust, perhaps you would like to try expanding your horizons and expanding your proportions so that you can describe world history with a greater degree of nuance.
*For the hard of thinking, I do realize that there is a burgeoning feminist/liberal movement in Iran. They do exist, yes I know.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Tripe, yourself. You did the same thing that mswas did. You made a big deal about how the Qur’an supported forced conversion (under threat of death or injury), then quoted the Qur’an as saying that it was legitimate to impose a tax on those who chose not to convert. A tax is not a threat of death or injury. There is no place in the Qur’an and no event in the life of Mohammed in which straightforward conversion was demanded at the point of the sword. (A number of people who attacked Mohammed were treated pretty ruthlessly and the survivors were “invited” to join the new faith, but there was no event in which Mohammed set out to make war on anyone with the purpose of gaining converts through battle.)
[/QUOTE]
Not only that, but originally, only Arabs were commanded to convert. For decades after Muhammad’s death, non-Arab subjects of the Islamic empire were not even encouraged to convert to Islam, and the Arabs outside Arabia lived in separate camp-cities to insulate them from foreign influences and preserve their character as a ruling elite. Muhammad seems (probably) to have thought of Islam, not as the universal faith to which all the world must convert, but merely as the proper mode of worship for Arabs, the children of Abraham through Ishmael, just as Judaism was the proper mode of worship for Jews, the children of Abraham through Isaac. And after his death, when the Arabs, politically united for the first time in their history, conquered an empire, they wanted taxable, exploitable subjects, not co-religionists. It took some time for Islam to evolve into a universalist religion. See this GQ thread, and Islam: A Short History, by Karen Armstrong.