At this point, I can’t take any protest in any Muslim country seriously, with a few very rare exceptions such as recent anti-government actions in Iran. It simply smacks too much of “organized spontaneity”.
How can anyone even claim to understand how a Christian, from a religion that preaches turning the other cheek and peace, can use religion to defend killing anyone?
Islam is very clear about what to do, how to do it and what to do to those who don’t and violence is a big part of it.
I find it easier to understand how a Muslim gets worked up to a state of Jihad than a Christian gets worked up to a state of Crusade.
Islam was founded in a state of war, basically in a state of Martial Law. Their rules reflect this. There’s no trick to understanding why they do what they do.
As Argent Towers said:
Lack of education + religious fanaticism = very dangerous.
What we need is to fund groups of Hari-Krishna’s to go into the most impoverished, uneducated parts of the world and start spreading their religion.
It was implemented on January 1st. 
Oh, please. The alleged peacefulness of Christianity has never gone beyond empty claims. It has enthusiastically called for and indulged in slaughter.
Just like Christianity has always been.
Ruthlessness, intolerance, willful ignorance, aggression and brutality are intrinsic to the worldview of both religions; I see little to choose between them. By nature, both will always be a plague upon the world; an all consuming, all destroying cancer.
Well, they’re certainly much better educated on average than the typical poor Third World person. However, their educational system is largely separate from Israeli secular education, is heavily weighted toward study of Jewish scriptures, and apparently isn’t working well for a significant minority of their students:
Some of the (admittedly most extreme) cases sound like kind of a Hebrew equivalent of a radical madrasa system: about 30% basic academic skills and about 70% militant fundamentalist religious indoctrination. I don’t know how strong a correlation there is between lack of secular education in particular and tendencies toward violent overreaction on mundane religious matters, but if it exists, it wouldn’t surprise me that it appears among ultra-Orthodox Israelis.
The 9-11 hijackers included engineers and doctors. It is possible to build a nuclear bomb while simultaneously believing martyrs will go straight to heaven. The human mind’s ability to compartmentalize is well documented. Hasn’t anyone ever met a logical thinking person who nonetheless takes horoscopes seriously?
The best way to combat Islam is to attenuate it, to make it less virulent, to make it into a dull pablum. This took Christianity hundreds of years. I’m not sure what the solution is for Islam but I don’t think it’s bombing or euphemistic nation building. My guess? Westernize them. Everyone loves jeans, coke, rock and roll, and sex. Ruin them from within. Get the young ones.
Hehehe. So let me rephrase this : these guys chose not to observe Shabbat in order to protest against people not observing Shabbat. Did they end up stoning themselves ?
Actually, it appears that their consciences did trouble them about that aspect of the protests, and some have switched to throwing rocks at policemen on Sundays instead:
After reading the story in the OP and then following up with a few others, it seems to me that it is hardly a “religious” issue, at all. It would appear that the government has been stirring up rather small numbers of people to raise hell about a non-issue in order to keep attention diverted away from the failures of the government. The whole “Allah” issue was totally ignored by all groups for the last many decades and only recently became an issue when the government created a rule to make it an issue.
I don’t think we should ever give irresponsible governemnts any slack, regardless whether they are artificially creating “religious” issues or responding to attacks by getting the populace to approve invading uninvolved countries.
Is there anyone else who thinks that co-opting the use of the term Allah by the Catholics is just a ill thought out marketing ploy?
Islam is the fastest growing religion on the planet. Christianity is shrinking. To combat the losses to Islam in Africa the Catholic church, I understand, has recently changed a long held doctrine that unbaptised still borns will not actually get into heaven. No coincidence that with child mortality rates in Africa grieving parents turned to Islam who offered them some comfort by insisting that there was a place for their stillborns in their God’s heaven. I see attempting importing bibles using the word Allah instead of what they usually use as a new marketing technique to get a foot in the door.
Can’t see it working in Malaysia as I believe its illegal for a muslim to convert to some other faith. I need to ask my Malaysian friends about this and get their take on it.
Is there no native word for “god” in Malay? Not that I exactly disagree with this analysis, except that borrowing an Arabic word makes sense for Muslims, not so much for anyone else.
Oh boy, now I have to do a little rioting myself. Death to the ignorance! Death to the ignorance!
The Arabic name “Allah” IS what Arabic-speaking Christians, as well as Arabic-speaking Muslims, usually use as the word for “God” in Arabic.
It is also what Malay-speaking Christians in Malaysia traditionally use as the word for “God” in Malay; in fact, Malaysian Catholics were using “Allah” to mean “God” in the Malay language right up to 2007, when a court said they couldn’t:
So your WAG that the Christian use of the Arabic term “Allah” for “God” in Malay publications is some kind of “new marketing technique” is totally inaccurate. Rather, it’s a practice that has been around for a long time and was prohibited only recently, as tomndebb noted, apparently as a ploy by the Malaysian government throwing a little red meat to its base.
Am always willing to have my ignorance’s ass spanked. ( as opposed to my ignorant ass )
Most of my Malay friends in KL are to a greater or lesser degree muslim. The xtian friends I have there are TEFL teachers and from Canada. I am atheist and really don’t have a dog in this fight. My understanding of the background to the current situation is that the bibles which were seized had newly used the term Allah. I have to admit that I don’t I don’t know whether these were printed in Malay ( although I would expect so ). I will need to research more and return to the debate at that time.
Der Trihs, it has been my experience that most Muslims, Christians, and atheists are generally peaceful. There are always exceptions. It’s a mistake to dwell on the exceptions to the point that we miss the less noticeable majority.
And that’s not the first time something like this has happened. These governments do little for their citizens and then try to get the people to blame Westerners and blasphemers for their problems.
Personal violence is hardly the only reason I condemn religion. I doubt that most of the people who voted Hitler into power personally attacked any Jews; million of Jews were still killed. Religious violence in action ( despite the fact that many people like to pretend that Christianity was not a factor ).
For what it’s worth, here’s one page (John 1) from a Malay language Bible in 1818, using Allah for God. (Yeah, it’s from a blog, but I think the point is clear.)
All the news stories I’ve seen about it seem to agree that the confiscated Bibles are indeed in the Malay language, and that the usage of “Allah” to mean “God” is traditional and normal among Malaysian Christians and in Malay-language Bibles. For instance,
Maybe this happens to be the first you personally have heard of “Allah” being used to refer to the Christian God in the Malay language, but AFAICT it’s by no means a new thing.
Oh, and in addition to Polycarp’s very apposite cite, here’s a link to an entire Malay New Testament from 1853 on Googlebooks. Its text of Matthew 2:12 begins
Elsewhere in the news on the subject of violent religious intolerance for mundane actions, I found a 2007 report of enraged Hindu-extremist protests in Jharkhand, India, on a decision by the state government to reverse their recently-established policy of including religious affiliation on tribal caste certificates for individuals. They’re concerned that this measure is part of a sinister plot for a massive campaign of conversion of tribal and Hindu villagers to Christianity. (The reasoning seems to be that because a tribal caste certificate is a necessary document for benefiting from Indian affirmative-action policies directed toward traditionally disadvantaged groups, and Christian converts are sometimes denied tribal caste certificates on the grounds that they’ve forfeited their tribal identity, then if the certificates require a declaration of religious affiliation the churches will have a harder time converting people.)
Of course, there are also many much more extreme and violent Hindu-Christian clashes in India these days, but they seem to be motivated more by anger over real or alleged acts of actual aggression, from forced conversion to destruction of property to rioting, arson and outright murder. So they don’t fit the OP’s condition of intolerant responses to “mundane actions”.
Well, some of the religious pro-lifers here in Minnesota are not all that educated, either.
They once bombed a public library in St. Paul. Not because of any objection to the boos in the library, but because they got the address wrong – they were trying to bomb the Planned Parenthood clinic across the street.
P.S. Maybe they should have gone to the library first, and checked out a book on bomb-making – their bomb was rather a dud, doing only minor damage to the building.