The two possible reasons for this happening in Montreal.
#1: The Montreal Jewish community is one the strongest international Jewish communities in support of Israel (as a whole). <Please correct me if I am wrong>.
#2: Irwin Cottler attended this school (or so I read) and his is the justice minister of Canada. This is related because he recently became the justice minister and pledged Canadian money and resources to find and prosecute all Nazi war criminals.
I could see how some Canadians would be confused as to why Canadian tax dollars are being spent by a Jewish justice minister to find old men who were involved in atrocities 65 years ago, when there are far more pressing justice issues facing all Canadians, not just a minority of Jewish Canadians.
I have no opinion on the two reasons; I am just listing them as possible reasons why.
That it’s only extremists that want to kill you because of religion or race or whatever is almost a truism or a matter of definition.
However that is no reason to take such threats any lighter or believe they can never fuel a wider audience. In Denmark last autumn an Iranian professor published a book detailing a theory comparing Islamism with Communism, Fascism and Nazism. One thing those three nice ideologies should have taught us good and thoroughly is that when extremists say they’re going to kill us, we damn well better believe them. When Islamists threaten to kill us, destroy our democracies, turn our laws over to Sharia, etc. it’s a good idea to take them deadly serious. And not wave it away as just misdirected youths, an isolated lunatic fringe, faulty Islam reading, differences in culture or whatever. When you see pictures of demonstrations burning American flags and screaming bleeding death over all Americans and Jews, I suggest it’s about time we start to take their word on that, and believe that’s really what they’re lusting and striving for – and deal with them on those terms. And I might add that what constitutes warped interpretation to one person is the only correct interpretation for a lot of others.
Because of the WORLDWIDE JEWISH CONSPIRACY OF DOOM, naturally!
For the same reason that people in my neighborhood smashed up a hookah bar after 9/11. Because people are idiots, and basic human nature is to kill anyone different from you.
[QUOTE=Rune]
Formerly: WinstonSmith.
New name - just as obnoxious
[QUOTE]
Ya know, ya coulda started out with a clean slate if ya’d just kept the name change quiet. Of course, then some folks would’ve said you sounded like Winnie’s sockpuppet. You probably did the right thing telling us about it.
Don’t think that because I assume the perps were high schoolers on a spree means that I don’t take the damage they could do seriously. Out of tiny Brownshirts mighty dangerous Nazis grow.
My first thought is that attacking Jewish communities in other countries, if done often and bloodily enough, would cause those communities to put pressure on their respective countries governments which could lead those governments to put pressure on Israel to free the Palistine.
I hope your second thought was an analysis of how screwed up your first thought was. If Montreal (currently a highly peaceful city averaging about one homicide a week) became a sectarian battleground, the focus would be on locking up the perpetrators and not spending one nanosecond debating the mertis of their cause. I’d like to point out the October Crisis of 1970, during which Quebec nationalists used kidnappings, murder and bombings to try to advance their cause of Quebec secession. A temporary state of martial law was declared and hundreds of people were briefly locked up until the situation calmed down. Civilized as we are in this city, though, nobody was tortured or “disappeared”.
If anything, upsetting the normal calm of the city would make the Palstinian cause less sympathetic.
9.5 “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.”
It also says:
2.191 “And slay them wherever ye find them”
2.192 “Fight against them until idolatory is no more and God’s religion reigns supreme”
2:193 “And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression”
2:216 “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you”
The quote about not taking unbelievers for friends is this one:
3:28 “Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful”
Although note it says “in preference to the faithful” so my interpretation of this is that you can have unbelievers as friends as long as it’s not at the cost of being friends with muslims. ie you can have non-muslim and muslim friends but you can’t have only non-muslim friends.
Or something.
Hmm, maybe. Personally I think they’re just a tad over-excitable myself. Just ignore them and they’ll go away.
One thing about religious fervour is that it’s a short term thing. I’ve known muslims who have been through religious phases but they usually get over it after a while. It’s quite hard to keep up that level of anger over a long period. Humans are basically social creatures and they don’t want to not like other people.
Muslims often get religious when they have just come back from haj in Mecca. This lasts for a while and then fades away, I usually find. The terrorists are people who are caught in this brief period of religiousness - had they waited a coupla years, they would have calmed down a bit and not wanted to be terrorists any more.
This is the problem islam has to overcome, I think. Encouraging it’s followers to be religious but stopping them from getting too carried away.
It might surprise people outside this city, but the Palestine issue comes up a lot here. It’s probably because Montreal has one of Canada’s largest and most established Jewish communities, and a large and growing Arab Muslim community. This city has also always been very political – you can get enormous numbers of people to take to the streets on almost any political issue. There have been dozens of pro-Israel and end-the-occupation marches and demonstrations in the last few years.
Usually, things remain civil. Not always, though. My alma-mater-soon-to-be-grad-school Concordia made national news in 2002 when demonstrators and riot police clashed in school, and the building was filled with tear gas. Not surprisingly, both camps give totally opposite descriptions of what happened leading up to the riot.
This followed years of high emotions. Our student union was accused of being “a training geround for terrorists” by B’nai Brith, and a Muslim member of the student council (Laith Marouf) was suspended for vandalism – he allegedly spray-painted “Free Palestine” grafitti on school grounds. When I was working for the student paper, we were constantly accused of being anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim. Both sides regularly refer to the other as “nazis.”
It’s not just Concordia, either. Letters to the editor pour into our local papers making the same accusations of bias towards the other camp whenever any story appears. And on a local queer listserv that I’m on, there was recent shouting back and forth. Israel was described as having “system of apartheid” by a Muslim man, and Jewish man shot back that Palestine kills people “guilty” of homosexuality.
I hope we can ride this one out. This city has a long history of divisive politics, though, and it’s survived worse than this.
Yes but the quote is a hadith not from the quran. The quran is the word of God, the hadith isn’t. So muslims are free to ignore it if they wish. And in any case, the quoted passage doesn’t establish a legal principle nor a theological principle so it doesn’t really actually mean anything, in practical terms.
Of the muslims I know, many jokingly come out with the usual canard - that jews are a bit tight with money, but none of them are actually seriously anti-semitic.
Islam isn’t a cuddly religion like buddhism, say. Even muslims would admit that. It’s very stern, very strict. Many of the pronouncements in the quran and hadith can seem extremely harsh but a lot of them get interpreted (by mainstream islam) in the least harsh way possible.
My personal opinion is that they are in a bit of a bind. Their religious text was written by a 7th century arab warrior. 7th century arab warriors aren’t noted for being all about peace and love. So, on the one hand, they have to assume it’s the word of God (since it’s their religion) but, on the other hand, the text they are left with (and are forced to venerate) was written by an extremely violent group of people - 7th century arab warriors.
So they get round this by interpreting the text as leniently as possible. It doesn’t occur to them to ditch the text altogether. Any text you have to work at to make it livable probably wasn’t written by God, I would think. But that’s just my opinion.
But as regards anti-semitism, consider the story of King Mohammed of Morocco during the war. When the Germans arrived in Morocco they asked King Mohammed how many jews there were in Morocco. King Mohammed replied “5 million” which was the population of Morocco at the time. In other words, he was saying to the Germans “If you want our jews, you’re going to have fight all of us”. To this day some houses in Israel have a picture of King Mohammed on their wall. Which is an interesting irony that some people in Israel have a picture of a muslim leader in their house - to them he is a great hero because if it wasn’t for King Mohammed, they wouldn’t be alive.
King Mohammed was invited to the ceremony inaugurating the state of Israel. He declined to go (for various geo-political reasons) but it amused him to be invited.
I don’t think anti-semitism is inherent in islam, it’s just the lunatic fringe. And obviously the Palestinians may not be too keen on jews but that’s just a recent thing and nothing to do with islam.
