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Is Islam descructive?

Timequake

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So here’s the question: Is Islam a threat to Christianity, and to the American way of life?

In every culture, religion, etc. you have your extremist, but never have we encountered a group such as the Islamic terrorist, one that can potentially become a threat to our way of life.

What stops us from killing one another, hurting one another? Is it our morals? The mutual respect for another, fear of consequence? Here is a group of people to have no respect for consequence. They have no fear of death and no respect for human life. What they do they do in the name of God, they are proud… unashamed of their horrific acts. They feel that they will be rewarded for their actions instead of persecuted. How do you overcome a group with such distorted beliefs? How can we protect ourselves from these beliefs? How can we protect our morals while do so?? Can we ever stop this radical behavior? These terrorist are not going to stop, they are passing their beliefs to their children and grandchildren. It’s not a matter of getting rid of them it’s a matter of how we can rise above them, use their beliefs against them. If we are fighting men who live by different values of life how is killing them going to solve anything. If we cannot overcome them, when will they stop? When all American are dead? When all Christians are dead?
 
Everything is destructive if used improperly...

Aspirin helps your headache....Go take 300 of them and see what happens.

The object in the war on terrorism is two-fold...

A)Get rid of the ones who have the ideology of radicalizing Islam
B)Change the mindset of the Middle Eastern population so they won't fall under radical Islam in the future.

That is why Iraq is so important...It is the first of what will be many steps into intoducing a way of life where citizens will be represented and their voices could be heard. Every other Middle East nation has oppressive regimes backed by clerics who enforce THEIR way of thinking, and anyone who opposes that way is punished...so they all march in step with what is pushed down their throat...through both the clerics themselves and the government controlled media.

If, and hopefully, when...the Middle Eastern population sees Iraq as a nation where voices can be heard, they will rise against their own governments and demand the same.

Many people here in America see reports come from certain Middle East countries and say, "See?! The people over there hate us for being there!"

What they don't understand is that they hate us purely because of the information that is given to these Middle Eastern populations...If they were given free access to the outside world, they would open their eyes and think otherwise...then turn against their clerics and regimes...

This won't happen overnight...It will be a VERY long process...But we live in a "remore-control" society, where many believe if something takes more than 10 minutes to do, then it is not worth doing.

The KKK used to have over 5 million members in the 1920s, but they have been so maginalized by the general public that they are nothing more than a footnote in society now...That is the overall goal we have with terrorists.
We want it to get to a point where if someone starts to radicalize Islam in the future, they would be stopped by there own people.
 
Timequake said:
So here’s the question: Is Islam a threat to Christianity, and to the American way of life?

In every culture, religion, etc. you have your extremist, but never have we encountered a group such as the Islamic terrorist, one that can potentially become a threat to our way of life.

What stops us from killing one another, hurting one another? Is it our morals? The mutual respect for another, fear of consequence? Here is a group of people to have no respect for consequence. They have no fear of death and no respect for human life. What they do they do in the name of God, they are proud… unashamed of their horrific acts. They feel that they will be rewarded for their actions instead of persecuted. How do you overcome a group with such distorted beliefs? How can we protect ourselves from these beliefs? How can we protect our morals while do so?? Can we ever stop this radical behavior? These terrorist are not going to stop, they are passing their beliefs to their children and grandchildren. It’s not a matter of getting rid of them it’s a matter of how we can rise above them, use their beliefs against them. If we are fighting men who live by different values of life how is killing them going to solve anything. If we cannot overcome them, when will they stop? When all American are dead? When all Christians are dead?

"Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you."

Verse 9:123

"When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly."

Verse 47:3

"Muhammad is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Verse 48:29

"Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal sternly with them. Hell shall be their home, evil their fate."

Verse 66:9

"Unbelievers are those who declare: 'God is the Messiah, the son of Mary.'"

5:17

"Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another."

5:51

"Say: 'People of the Book, is it not that you hate us only because we believe in Allah and in what has been revealed to us and what was formerly revealed, and because most of you are evil-doers?' Say: 'Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from Allah? Those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil."

5:59

"Unbelievers are those that say:'God is the Messiah, the son of Mary."

5:72

"Unbelievers are those that say: 'God is one of three.'"
5:73

"Say to the desert Arabs who stayed behind: 'You shall be called upon to fight a mighty nation, unless they embrace Islam. If you prove obedient, Allah will reward you well. But if you run away, as you have done before this, He will inflict on you a stern chastisement.' It shall be no offense for the blind, the lame, and the sick to stay behind. He that obeys Allah and His apostle shall be admitted to gardens watered by running streams; but he that turns and flees shall be sternly punished by Him."

48:16
 
MiamiFlorida said:
"Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you."

Verse 9:123

"When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and yada,yada,yada."

Words in a book are irrelevant....It's the PEOPLE that manipulate these words to fit into their own ideology that makes the evil....Just like playing Grand Theft Auto doesn't make everyone want to go out and steal a car...except the loonies....Works the same way with Islam(And almost everything else in life).
 
cnredd said:
Words in a book are irrelevant....It's the PEOPLE that manipulate these words to fit into their own ideology that makes the evil....Just like playing Grand Theft Auto doesn't make everyone want to go out and steal a car...except the loonies....Works the same way with Islam(And almost everything else in life).

But when people call words on a book "Holy Scripture" and consider them the words of God they become very relevant.

Somehow "Grand Theft Auto" and religion are two very different concepts. One is a form of entertainment....the other is a way of life.
 
MiamiFlorida said:
But when people call words on a book "Holy Scripture" and consider them the words of God they become very relevant.

Somehow "Grand Theft Auto" and religion are two very different concepts. One is a form of entertainment....the other is a way of life.

And who are the people twisting those words into a literal sense? All of Islmam or just the Radical ones?

In a world with 1.2 billion Muslims, the problems we've been having are onlt with a small percentage of them, and they shouldn't be generalized...

That's like saying Christianity is a perverted religion because a couple of Christians shot an abortion doctor....The problem with Islamic Extremists is much bigger than that, but it's still a small population when considering the whole Ummah(Muslim community).
 
cnredd said:
And who are the people twisting those words into a literal sense? All of Islmam or just the Radical ones?

In a world with 1.2 billion Muslims, the problems we've been having are onlt with a small percentage of them, and they shouldn't be generalized...

That's like saying Christianity is a perverted religion because a couple of Christians shot an abortion doctor....The problem with Islamic Extremists is much bigger than that, but it's still a small population when considering the whole Ummah(Muslim community).


If you raise the issue of Arab or Muslim anti-Semitism, anti-americanism or anti-western values with the average Arab/Muslim leader, you will, with just a few exceptions, get a predictable set of responses. Some of them will shamefacedly acknowledge that the problem exists, and having done so, will then abruptly change the subject to racial profiling, American imperialism, or the evils of Israel. Others will admit the existence of the problem, but insist that it survives only on the "fringes" of Arab/Muslim society, and is therefore an issue of marginal concern. Some will simply fall silent. And others will tell you with disarming candor that the problem of anti-Semitism is no "problem" at all, because the Jews are after all a scheming and diabolical race who deserve all the abuse that can be directed at them, and the Americans want to dominate the world. Multiply such leaders by the hundreds, and do so over the course of decades, and you will get some sense of why the problem of anti-Semitism and anti-americanism has assumed the proportions it currently has in the Arab-Muslim community.

Though anchored in religious creed, fundamentalist Islam is a radical utopian movement closer in spirit to other such movements (communism, fascism) than to traditional religion. By nature anti-democratic and aggressive, anti-Semitic and anti-Western, it has great plans. Indeed, spokesmen for fundamentalist Islam see their movement standing in direct competition to Western civilization and challenging it for global supremacy.

To build a new Muslim society, fundamentalists proclaim their intent to do whatever they must; they openly flaunt an extremist sensibility. There are no such terms as compromise and surrender in the Islamic cultural lexicon.

Seeing Islam as the basis of a political system touching every aspect of life, fundamentalists are totalitarian. Whatever the problem, "Islam is the solution." In their hands, Islam is transformed from a personal faith into a ruling system that knows no constraints. They scrutinize the Koran and other texts for hints about Islamic medicine, Islamic economics, and Islamic statecraft, all with an eye to creating a total system for adherents and corresponding total power for leaders. Fundamentalists are revolutionary in outlook, extremist in behavior, totalitarian in ambition.

Fundamentalist Islam is also aggressive. Like other revolutionaries, very soon after taking power fundamentalists try to expand at the expense of neighbors. The Khomeinists almost immediately sought to overthrow moderate (meaning here, non-fundamentalist) Muslim regimes in Bahrain and Egypt. For six years (1982-88) after Saddam Husayn wanted to quit, they kept the war going against Iraq; and they occupied three small but strategic islands in the Persian Gulf near the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranian terrorist campaign reaches from the Philippines to Argentina. The mullahs are building an arsenal that includes missiles, submarines, and the infrastructure for unconventional weaponry. In like spirit. The Sudanese reignited the civil war against Christians and animists in the south and, for good measure, stirred up trouble at Halayib, a disputed territory on Sudan's border with Egypt.

Fundamentalists discuss Jews with the most violent and crude metaphors. Khalil Kuka, a founder of Hamas, once said that "God brought the Jews together in Palestine not to benefit from a homeland but to dig their grave there and save the world from their pollution.

Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States. Fundamentalists are responding to what they see as a centuries-long conspiracy by the West to destroy Islam. Inspired by a Crusader-style hatred of Islam and an imperialist greed for Muslim resources, the West has for centuries tried to neuter Islam. It has done so by luring Muslims away from Islam through both its vulgar culture (blue jeans, hamburgers, television shows, rock music) and its somewhat higher culture (fashion clothes, French cuisine, universities, classical music). In this spirit, a Pakistani fundamentalist group recently deemed Michael Jackson and Madonna "cultural terrorists" and called for the two Americans to be brought to trial in Pakistan.

Fearful of Western culture's hold over their own people, fundamentalists respond with vitriolic attacks denigrating Western civilization. It is crassly materialist says 'Adil Husayn, a leading Egyptian writer, seeing man is seen "as nothing but an animal whose major concern is to fill his belly." To dissuade Muslims from Westernizing, they portray our way of life as a form of disease. Kalim Saddiqui, the main Iranian polemicist in the West, deems Western civilization "not a civilization but a sickness." And not just any sickness but "a plague and a pestilence" Belhadj of Algeria's FIS ridicules Western civilization as "syphilization."

Hatred against the West inspires a struggle with it for cultural supremacy. Fundamentalists see the rivalry as cultural, not military. Fundamentalists do not restrict their sights to the Muslim quintile of the world's population but aspire to universal dominance.
 
Re:

Is Islam descructive?

I am going to make this short and sweet and concise.

It can be. Just like every other religion if doctrinated the wrong way it can be destructive. And that goes for just about everyhting on this earth. Even food if used the wrong way can be destructive to ones health. I think we all can agree with this
 
cnredd said:
Words in a book are irrelevant.....

I see your point but I disagree that the words are irrelevant.


Qur’an 2:191 “And kill them wherever you find and catch them.


If the word Kill meant "have dinner together" or "fly a kite" then the middle East would be an amiable place indeed.



The words are directly relevant

"Thou Shall not Kill"
vs
"Kill them wherever you find and catch them"

See the difference?
 
Moral of the story: everything in life should be used in moderation, folks. Even religion. :mrgreen:
 
The Middle Eastern Arab's version of Islam is destructive. The world is full of Muslims and you will find a vast majority of them in Indonesia and India. Only in the Middle East will you find such extremists behavior and it is because they use Islam to oppress.
 
...Um. What, so I just imagined the 2002 bombing attacks in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 200 people, including 88 of my fellow Australians? What about the attacks in London less than two months ago, committed by Britons?

I'm glad to see you're so aware of the rest of the world.
 
vergiss said:
...Um. What, so I just imagined the 2002 bombing attacks in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 200 people, including 88 of my fellow Australians? What about the attacks in London less than two months ago, committed by Britons?

I'm glad to see you're so aware of the rest of the world.

And I understand some of the people responsible for that massacre just got their sentences........reduced! In a couple of years they'll be building bombs again.
 
MiamiFlorida said:
"Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you."

Verse 9:123

"When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly."

Verse 47:3

"Muhammad is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Verse 48:29

"Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal sternly with them. Hell shall be their home, evil their fate."

Verse 66:9

"Unbelievers are those who declare: 'God is the Messiah, the son of Mary.'"

5:17

"Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another."

5:51

"Say: 'People of the Book, is it not that you hate us only because we believe in Allah and in what has been revealed to us and what was formerly revealed, and because most of you are evil-doers?' Say: 'Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from Allah? Those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil."

5:59

"Unbelievers are those that say:'God is the Messiah, the son of Mary."

5:72

"Unbelievers are those that say: 'God is one of three.'"
5:73

"Say to the desert Arabs who stayed behind: 'You shall be called upon to fight a mighty nation, unless they embrace Islam. If you prove obedient, Allah will reward you well. But if you run away, as you have done before this, He will inflict on you a stern chastisement.' It shall be no offense for the blind, the lame, and the sick to stay behind. He that obeys Allah and His apostle shall be admitted to gardens watered by running streams; but he that turns and flees shall be sternly punished by Him."

48:16

Sometimes , there is more meanings of words than we can comprehend ... maybe you should ask a muslim scholar about these the meaning of these verses ... isn't that better than just reading them and making assumptions ...
The concept of everyone interpreting things on his own is the very same concept terrorists use to justify their doings in the name of Islam ....
 
Timequake said:
So here’s the question: Is Islam a threat to Christianity, and to the American way of life?
Just to clarify , different doesn't mean threat .... everyone has its own way of life , language , culture and history .. its the nature of life
 
cnredd said:
they hate us purely because of the information that is given to these Middle Eastern populations...If they were given free access to the outside world, they would open their eyes and think otherwise...then turn against their clerics and regimes...
Why do you make it sound like they isolated and know nothing about the world .. and why do u think clerics are preaching them wrong ....clarify plz
 
mustafa said:
Sometimes , there is more meanings of words than we can comprehend ... maybe you should ask a muslim scholar about these the meaning of these verses ... isn't that better than just reading them and making assumptions ...
The concept of everyone interpreting things on his own is the very same concept terrorists use to justify their doings in the name of Islam ....

I've heard what many of those muslim scholars say. Looks like their interpretation is not that different from the words.
 
MiamiFlorida said:
I've heard what many of those muslim scholars say. Looks like their interpretation is not that different from the words.
There is scholars that interpret them so serve terrorism , no dout but there is many more who disagree , why don't you look for the well respected and well known scholars in Saudi and Egypt ... maybe you are not getting both sides opinion ....:2wave:
 
Christian Extremists are as much of a threat to America as Muslim Extremists - ever heard of Eric Rudolph? What about Timothy McVeigh? Last I knew, they werent exactly quoting the Koran as they blew up infidels...

Maybe before we go judging everyone else, we should judge ourselves. Wait, where have I heard that before?
 
cnredd said:
A)Get rid of the ones who have the ideology of radicalizing Islam
B)Change the mindset of the Middle Eastern population so they won't fall under radical Islam in the future.

That is why Iraq is so important.

Are you against the USA here??

We are doing the opposite of both of those.
 
"Um. What, so I just imagined the 2002 bombing attacks in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 200 people, including 88 of my fellow Australians? What about the attacks in London less than two months ago, committed by Britons?

I'm glad to see you're so aware of the rest of the world."


I am very much aware of Bali. Try not to be too condescending - I know more of these things than you think. You speak of isolated events. Events that stem from the perversion of the Middle East. Too long have we looked at Saudi Arabia and other surrounding states as the heartland of Islam.

Despite Afghanistan and Iraq, troubles with Syria and Iran, and the insistent temper tantrums of the Palestinians against Israel, we are not at war with Islam. But the most radical elements within the Muslim world are convinced that they are at war with us and they would have many around the globe believe it too. They have conducted a mission of holocaust against 2 million black Christians in Africa in just under ten years and we have done nothing. Our fight is with the few, but our struggle must be with the many. Driven by the ferocity of events, we have begun to react militarily to the violence in Islam’s borderlands, from the Caucasus to the Philippines, as well as in that eternal frontier state, Afghanistan. We are towards the end of a campaign in Iraq and much more military engagement elsewhere will be necessary in the future. But our military can address only the problems of the moment, problems rooted in yesterday. We must begin to examine the dilemmas and opportunities of each new day with greater interest, so that we may help (to the degree we can) struggling societies discover paths to a more peaceful, cooperative tomorrow.

For decades we have downplayed—or simply ignored—the hate-filled speech directed toward us, the monstrous lessons taught by extremists to children, and the duplicity of so many states we insisted were our friends. But nations do not have friends—at best, they have allies with a confluence of interests. We imagine a will to support our endeavors where there is only a pursuit of advantage. And we deal with cynical, corrupt old men who know which words to say to soothe our diplomats, while the future lies with the discontented young, to whom the poison of blame is always delicious. The futureless masses yearn to excuse their profound individual inadequacies and to explain away the prison walls their beliefs have made of their lives. But it is time to shift our focus and our energies, to recognize, belatedly, that Islam’s center of gravity lies far from the Middle East. The United States will never be the decisive factor in the struggle for the future of Islam. That role is reserved for Muslims themselves. So far, they have not lifted a finger, but we can play a far more constructive role than we have yet done also. The true enemy to Islam is the corrupt Sunni. For proof, one only has to look at Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

While Pakistan has been wracked with phenomenal corruption and suffers from a ravaged education system that opened the door for the expansion of fundamentalist religious schools, and even though its economy is in shambles, that most-endangered state still has not strayed irretrievably into the extremist camp...but is going there fast. India and Indonesia are the two countries with the largest Muslim populations. Each state presents a reason for hope in the world of Islam. Muslims in India mirror Muslims in our own country. They are both faced with living in different cultures and compete for religious identity. The West’s liberation of women is the essential element that renders so many Muslims irreconcilable to us. This particular set of freedoms threatens not only the Muslim male’s religious prejudices, but his central identity. Until it successfully addresses the issue of women’s rights—full rights—Islam will not compete successfully, in any area, with the West. In that regard, Indonesia offers a hopeful example among foreign states.

The longer we do nothing against the true lords of terror in the Middle East, the further their poisenous perversion of Islam will spread. This is why we have seen violence in Bali, and in the U.K. America's blame with these attacks is that we took too long to do anything about their religious war on Christianity and "weaker" Muslims. Europe's blame in this, is that they still do nothing and blame America.
 
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"Is Islam destructive?" A more root question should be addressed by the powers that be - "Are the Sunni destructive to Islam and to their fellow Muslim."

1) The House of Saud is behind the root of hate speech against America and the encouragement of Islamic "martyrs". They are now having to deal with the extremists they have encouraged by chasing them down in their own country. Poetic Justice.

2) Leaders of the Sunni Arab minority, who long dominated Iraq, dug in their heels against Kurdish and majority Shi'ite demands for broad federal autonomy in the oil-rich north and south and urged their community to register to vote in a show of strength. In the battle-scarred former Sunni rebel bastion of Falluja, thousands turned out in a movement that has implications for the armed uprising and for a planned referendum on the constitution. These people do not want peace with anyone but themselves. They want power over all. Here is a quote from Zarqawi......."Killing Muslims who are serving as human shields (for the Americans) is allowed by the sharia," he said, backing his arguments with statements from several Muslim clergymen. - This was in regard to the car bombings of civilians. This is not merely fighting for a religion. This is the statement of a phsycotic that is using his religion to murder. Zarqawi would have the Muslim world believe that American troops place Muslim civilians between combatants (actually their tactics). Unfortunately, there are millions of Middle Eastern Muslims outside of Iraq that believe it. These are the people that the liberals of the world should scream about when speaking of peace.

3) We are witnessing a great historical event in the Gaza strip. Israel (with America's urging support) has made a great leap forward in the interest of peace. They are angering and breaking the hearts of their own people as a strong show of their want for peace with Palistinian Muslims. They are evacuating the Gaza strip and bulldozing homes to make way for the Palestinian move. Their thanks?....The Palestinian leader gloated to the world on the Palestinian victory over there enemies. Even Iran (the Sunni backer) took a jab at Israel's couragious and bold move for peace. "It is interesting to know that this withdrawal was not a choice. This was a defeat sustained by the Zionist regime. It was done out of desperation," said Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. At least the Palestinian leadership spoke of peace between peoples. Iran chose to baske in an imagined victory against infidels.

4) Over two million black Christians were executed in Sudan since the early nineties. The early nineties marked the beginning of a huge push of Islamic fundamentalists for power. Their target was the cleansing of "Muslim" lands and the extermination of another people. Their political views and ethnicity were not what was considered. They were simply Christian and not Muslim.

America has been the strongest push for peace in the Middle East for over fifty years. Even with Iran's recent earthquake, America extended a refused helping hand. Israel has made more than enough attempts to extend a hand towards Palestine. America has financially helped the palestinian people - far more than any Muslim State. Iran, Palestine's strongest supporter, only encouraged violence and supported their will to do it. America led the attack and continues to defend Kuwait for it's very appreciative people. Many people only want to acknowledge "oil" as America's sole purpose, but the full facts of our efforts for peace throughout remain.

What is the common factor among the House of Saud, Saddam's faithful, the Iranian leadership, and Sudan's Islamic fundamentalists?.......the Sunni.


Still, the world's liberals will refuse to acknowledge this growing and spreading menace to world peace and blame America. You see....because we stand up to them - "We drive them to it."
 
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So here’s the question: Is Islam a threat to Christianity, and to the American way of life?

No Islam itself is not a threat to Christianity but terrorism by a radical sect of Islam is..........
 
cnredd said:
And who are the people twisting those words into a literal sense? All of Islmam or just the Radical ones?

In a world with 1.2 billion Muslims, the problems we've been having are onlt with a small percentage of them, and they shouldn't be generalized...

That's like saying Christianity is a perverted religion because a couple of Christians shot an abortion doctor....The problem with Islamic Extremists is much bigger than that, but it's still a small population when considering the whole Ummah(Muslim community).

Definitely right, but not only that, cnredd. The other problem is that they live, as you said previously, in countries where they cannot have the freedoms to do what they want.. but that's mainly because we (the west, not only the US) helped those govts to get and hold the power, as long as they gave us what we needed (mainly oil and other ressources). We pay them, sell them what they need to equip their police and armies, etc..
So, those people just feel hopeless.. and you definitely need someone hopeless or totally revolted to do a suicide bombing. And there come the likes of OBL in the game, those that are to coward to strap a bomb on themselves, and brainwash others to do it.

Spreading democracy could be a lot faster and easier should we stop to support those regimes.. but with a heavy price for the west to pay in terms of ressources.

Just food for thoughts.

Y
 
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