West saves the best for the end... We need more straight talking politicians like Allen West. Men and women who value truth over political correctness.
Allen West Schools CAIR Guy | MRCTV
So to promote the point that Islam is a violent religion he listed a few battles? What religion is free of that?
This kind of exchange, especially on the part of the people in the audience, is not the way to promote tolerance and peaceful relations between religions or between Americans of different religions. Allen West is not addressing the point being made by the CAIR representative, but of course the CAIR guy doesn't do a good job in making a point himself which inevitably leads to what it become: a shouting match and some meaningless points/information exchanged. Again, the fact that Muslims have fought battles in history doesn't mean Islam is a violent religion, because Muslims have fought battles of conquest does not mean Islam is a violent religion.
There's no schooling going on, there's no owning going on, there's two men arguing through rhetoric without making any substantive points. "Show in the Quran, where it says attack America," like Allen West said of course there is no verse like that, making a point like that is a willful misstating of the arguments of CAIR's opponents obviously in an attempt to paint them as being so dumb they can't understand a timeline or a basic fact about Islam like when it was founded.
Then West responds by mentioning the verse of the sword as evidence that Islam is a violent religion, as if a single verse from a holy text or a religious leader defines a whole religion. Here is the verse of the sword that Allen referenced
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
And here is part of the Book of Deuteronomy as it catalogs the Conquest of Canaan
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
And of course we all know that the Old Testament is full of commands from God to do things like stone adulators, something also found in the Qur'an.
Now lets look at Christianity, in the New Testament Christ is a man nearly totally free of violence with the most notable exception being when he overturned the tables of the merchants at the temple, but that did not include violence against men only property. However there is no denying that Christians have committed acts of violence in the name of their religion almost since its acceptable as the official religion of Rome, ie after it came out of the underground and became "mainstream."
So lets assume that Islam is a violent religion and that it drives its followers to violence, many would argue this to be a true, however you also have Christianity with its non-violent teachings but its followers also commit violence. Both these violent men, whether they are Muslim or Christian, believe what they are doing is right and at the same time of their actions throughout history there have been men who also were Muslims or Christians who advocated for peace and goodwill between the two religions. So what really makes a religion violent?
In my opinion, people make their religion violent, religion does not make men violent. The stoning of adulators may still be found in Jewish Law but is not followed or advocated for except by the most fringe elements, because the Jews have chosen as the times have come into the modern era to abandon those kinds of punishments in spite of their official teachings.
So as we can see regardless of what a holy book says, its the decision of men to act upon it in a violent way, men are beings of freewill and I would never give a book so much influence as to say it can override that freewill.
At least that's my opinion...
