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Then technology has sped up their timeline by a couple of hundred years. Good news!To be fair, from a historical perspective, Islam is about where the church was in the mid 1500's.
Breaking into groups according to subset beliefs, The Church of England and Lutherans splitting off
from the Roman Catholic church.
The next 100 years, would have the great Armada, and the 30 years war, and a decline in the
absolute power of the Church of Rome.
It would take another 200 years before the Pope was not seen as a major player on the Europe stage.
Napoleon, told his Ambassador to Rome, to "treat with the Pope as if he had a 200,000 man Army".
The problem I see, with Islam, is that violence appears to be acceptable Tenant of their Faith.
I know almost nothing about Islam, so mine is an outside observers opinion.
People killing people on a large scale hasn't changed a damn bit. Only the reasons we (Christians) use for killing have changed.It's a stupid comparison that atheists try to use all the time, as if they think it's a "powerful" statement or something. It's just ridiculous. Christians killing in the name of christianity is pretty rare, other than those who suffer from a mental derangement. That is NOT the case with Islamic terrorism. They are NOT all insane. There is the crux of the problem.
And I should add that the comparison is completely invalid with the 1300s because the times were completely different. ALL people were brutal to one another generally. That was the way life was back then. People killing people for stupid superstitious reasons.
People killing people on a large scale hasn't changed a damn bit. Only the reasons we (Christians) use for killing have changed.
We have had christian terrorism recently as well. Adam lanza was a christian and attended catholic school.
When Muslims get to the point where the Christians were in the late 1300's let me know.
I don't think so.
It's similar to people in European countries trying to compare us to them. It doesn't fit because the background is much different and our culture newer, even if we did borrow a lot from them.
People killing people on a large scale hasn't changed a damn bit. Only the reasons we (Christians) use for killing have changed.
I read an interesting opinion piece in one of my Canadian newpapers this morning in which the author noted that some writings of well regarded 20th century Islamists contain doctrinaire teachings about "armed jihad" against non-believers/non-Muslims and these teachings are promoted and spread among Muslim youth. Islamic clerics now may speak against terrorism, but they do not speak against the doctrine of armed jihad and in fact many preach that if you are not actively involved in armed jihad you are not truly Muslim - "this supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims".
It must be very hard for some young Muslims to come to grips with Islamic teachings of a religion of peace and yet be exhorted to prove their faith in that religion through armed jihad.
You'll get no argument from me on that.The only reason for that is that Christianity has been tempered by secular society and effectively neutered, whereas Islam has not yet. There was a time when radical Christians acted just as badly as radical Muslims.
Dismissing them? I'm not sure what you mean by that.So you're basically dismissing these acts, and their relation to religion, based on the acts of Christians from 700 years ago?
Logic seems rather lacking in this, to put it mildly
Dismissing them? I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Unfortunately for you this isn't a formal debate. There's plenty of justification for bringing up past actions of Christians and Christian countries, too, for that matter if they've used their religion as a reason for war. And, yes, it was widely accepted.It certainly is, and is nothing more than an attempt at Tu quoque.
And what would you classify as "terrorism" in the 1300's? Don't be silly. It's a discussion about violence in the name of religion and the Christians certainly have a long and sordid history of it which only ended a couple of centuries ago --- and that's assuming you don't count the Irish-British war as religion, which to some extent it was. If you count that it didn't end until just a few decades ago.What? How does that make sense, in the context of a discussion, where the point of interest is the motivation for terrorist attacks. Also, it's assuming, without evidence, that all religions are the same and will follow the same path of development. When we know ideologies are not the same and do not follow the same path of development
And it was just as ugly and violent when Christians did it as it is now when Muslims do it. That the Western world has eschewed military power and violence (well, to some extent anyway) in favor of economic power doesn't change much since they're not part of our Western world.that you seemed to dismiss the act and their connection to a religion by going "but Christianity"
Unfortunately for you this isn't a formal debate.
There's plenty of justification for bringing up past actions of Christians and Christian countries, too, for that matter if they've used their religion as a reason for war. And, yes, it was widely accepted.
And what would you classify as "terrorism" in the 1300's? Don't be silly
It's a discussion about violence in the name of religion and the Christians certainly have a long and sordid history of it which only ended a couple of centuries ago
and that's assuming you don't count the Irish-British war as religion, which to some extent it was.
And it was just as ugly and violent when Christians did it as it is now when Muslims do it.
That the Western world has eschewed military power and violence (well, to some extent anyway) in favor of economic power doesn't change much since they're not part of our Western world.
You'll get no argument from me on that.
No so. It establishes a pattern of religious violence.Informal or not your logic would still be based on a faulty premise
Of course it's relevant, see above.Was, that hardly works to address an issue in the present, especially in the manner you are presenting it
Writer: "these attacks were motivated by islam"
your response: "but christianity"
Note the fact that the later doesn't address the former, in formal debate or not
I thought we were talking about religious violence? Specifically, we were talking about religious violence leading to terrorism as opposed to conventional war. The question is pertinent and I would guess that raids on villages near borders was somewhat common in most violent disagreements of those times - and even recent times, for that matter. Burning fields and houses was about as close as you can get to "old fashioned" or archaic terrorism.My response didn't concern defining terrorism in the 1300's. It dealt with the fact that your statement doesn't address the thing under discussion, it attempts to shift attention away from the thing being discussed
Islam is not a part of the Western world nor the Christian world. To me, that means we can't judge them by our Western Christian standards.Right, but citing it doesn't address the fact that there is a high level of violence in Islam today
If you say so. But there was certainly religious discrimination on both sides of the line. Whether you want to believe it or not I'm sure that played a significant part in the continuation of the war.It's not even comparable, being that religion was heavily tied into national identity, and neither the irish or english viewed themselves as soldiers in their church working to extend the power and influence of such. It was about Irish independence, and English territorial claims
And that addresses the issue how? Right, you're doing nothing more than going "but the christians" Like I said, it's nothing more than a Tu quoque.
So it doesn't matter that they are randomly killing people for shaving beards and shooting grils in the face because they have a different base value system?
What relativist malarkey
Well, thats debatable considering they were "inspired" by Al Qaeda's "Inspire" website.No, not really. I suppose that the only remotely comforting fact here is that they appear to have been working alone and not as part of a larger terrorist plot. We've got homegrown religious crazies too. Joy.
No so. It establishes a pattern of religious violence.
I thought we were talking about religious violence?
Specifically, we were talking about religious violence leading to terrorism as opposed to conventional war. The question is pertinent and I would guess that raids on villages near borders was somewhat common in most violent disagreements of those times - and even recent times, for that matter. Burning fields and houses was about as close as you can get to "old fashioned" or archaic terrorism.
Islam is not a part of the Western world nor the Christian world.
To me, that means we can't judge them by our Western Christian standards.
((PS: We don't treat them as Western Christians so how can we judge them that way?))
If you say so. But there was certainly religious discrimination on both sides of the line. Whether you want to believe it or not I'm sure that played a significant part in the continuation of the war.
Islam is not a part of the Western world nor the Christian world. To me, that means we can't judge them by our Western Christian standards.
((PS: We don't treat them as Western Christians so how can we judge them that way?))
If you say so. But there was certainly religious discrimination on both sides of the line. Whether you want to believe it or not I'm sure that played a significant part in the continuation of the war.
I am sorry, but this is not "about Islam".
Sure, from what we know at this point, Tamerlan Tsarnaev "got Mohammed" recently, and his "motivation" was pretty much supplied by the radical Islamists operating around his ancestral Chechnya.
But what was more important here: Islam per se, or the specific interpretation popular in a given area, among a particular group of people, or the ethnic self-identification (historically connected to Islam)?
Have you ever heard about a Tatar "radical Islamic" terrorist? (They are the largest Muslim group in Russia). Turkish? Indonesian? (Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, period). How about them awful unfriendly Iranians - to stay balanced? Their homeland had been dragged back into the Dark Ages in our living memory, and yet not a single one among the multitude of brainwashed Iranian youths had decided to go and kill a bunch of women and children on the streets of London or Boston.
Ever wondered why not?
Religion does not exist all by itself, hanging in the air. It is a part of the broader culture.
Reading the Koran does not make you a homicidal maniac. Just like reading Marx does not turn you into a Pol Pot automatically, or listening to Wagner does not make you a Nazi. It all depends.
I have read the Koran, and have endured a heroic Teutonic opera or two - as a favor to my better half, mostly. I am ready to admit that the Koran is a poetic masterpiece, and Wagner was a bloody genius (although not to my taste, not even close). Interestingly, neither experience had induced me to kill anyone.
How about we try and treat murderers as murderers, and everyone else (even Muslims) as, like, not murderers?
Too much to ask?
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