tlmorg02
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Hence they both are pushy and filled with many crazies!
Is Islam less violent than Christianity?
Draco:
The claims made in the wikipedia piece are substantiated by links to reliable sources. Is that the best you can do?
Don't really know about Hinduism or Buddhism. Doesn't Buddhism hardly provide scripture at all, but is based much more on active practize, like meditation, matras and other rituals Christians might call "mystic"?
Lets just deal with now, shall we? Or at least the 20th Century on...
And, there's more....
Christian extremism in Africa is a very serious and growing problem. Uganda's laws, encouraged by American fundamentalists, that would make homosexuality punishable by death, are the tip of the iceberg.
AFP: Kenya mob burns 15 women to death over witchcraft
In Africa, at least, there is very little difference between the extremist Islamic and the extremist Christian.
What is it that C. S. Lewis calls this? Chronological chauvinism, I think?
:2razz:
*parties big time*
I would have never imagined we'd come so far that anybody would justify and play apologist for the Crusades, Inquisition and Manifest Destiny. Wow ... just wow.
:shock:
as far as the Crusades; yeah; Muslim forces had spent the past couple of centuries conquering Christian territory; and the Christians' decided to go win some of it back. Charles Martel didn't have to fight at Poitiers because the Islamic raiding force had gotten lost on the Hajj; they (having taken Spain) were thinking of invading France. Christian forces had to invade the Holy Land because it had been conquered from the Christian Byzantine empire.
Correction: The Roman Catholics in the west didn't care a whit for the Byzantine Christians; the crusaders regularly sacked Byzantine cities on the way to the holy land. Any assistance given by the Latins to the Greeks was just a flimsy pretext for a war of conquest.
Correction: The Roman Catholics in the west didn't care a whit for the Byzantine Christians; the crusaders regularly sacked Byzantine cities on the way to the holy land. Any assistance given by the Latins to the Greeks was just a flimsy pretext for a war of conquest.
...and what was the muslim pretext for the initial war of conquest against the byzantines?
.
That the latin Christians had no special love for the Byzantines is beside the point anyway -- they did care that Jerusalem had been taken by muslims;
.
it had been a major pilgrimage site for christians (both latin and eastern orthodox) for many centuries.
. Oh, and the latin christians also attacked other latin christian cities en route to the holy land (ie. Zemun, Hungary), such tactics were common in warfare during the period -- big armies had to eat... they weren't religiously motivated.
To find adequate atrocities that can be laid at Christendom's feet, the critics have to go back 500-900 years.
What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator.
- Adolf Hitler
I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
- Adolf Hitler
To do justice to God and our own conscience, we have turned once more to the German Volk.
- Adolf Hitler
May divine providence bless us with enough courage and enough determination to perceive within ourselves this holy German space.
- Adolf Hitler
We don't ask the Almighty, 'Lord, make us free!" We want to be active, to work, to work together, so that when the hour comes that we appear before the Lord we can say to him: 'Lord, you see that we have changed.' The German people is no longer a people of dishonor and shame, of self-destructiveness and cowardice. No, Lord, the German people is once more strong in spirit, strong in determination, strong in the willingness to bear every sacrifice. Lord, now bless our battle and our freedom, and therefore our German people and fatherland.
- Adolf Hitler
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.
- Adolf Hitler
So here I am doing it to Christianity, in order to make a point about those that so ignorantly do it to Islam.
The Muslim conquest of the Holy Land had occurred over than 400 years before the first crusade. It was in no way a provocation to the Latin powers.
Yes, Jerusalem, a city no Latin had any rightful claim to, had been taken four hundred years ago. Think that one over.
It is also a major pilgrimage site for many Muslims, so that's a wash.
So, more proof the Crusaders were assholes. But to draw from this that the Crusades "weren't religiously motivated" is absurd.
I guess it doesn't dawn on you to attampt to look at the issue from their perspective. Think that one over. Notice I wrote "they did care that Jerusalem had been taken by muslims." The direct provocation was stirred up by accounts of muslim attacks on christian pilgrims, they decided then that the city needed to be back in christian hands.
Yeah, a few Muslim bandits really justified the Crusades :roll:
Why, oh why, would anyone be an apologist for the Crusades? You realize that's what you're doing, right? Think that over.
So, what Noam Chomsky says is important to you, now, is it?
However strangely, either religion in 3rd world countries or areas where the society is extremely backwards when compared to modern western civilization, we see far more violence cropping up from the religions. Very similar to 500 or 900 years ago when the society of the western world was different then it is today with regards to violence as an answer.
Where in this story does it say these are christians?
It mentions a pastor, but his family was victimized by the violence, not perpetrating it. The article even points out that the mobs were followers of "witch-doctors" who kill albinos for good luck. Belief in "witchcraft" or evil spirits and such is a remnant that survives from much older African religions/traditions, and is also common in other cultures, from new guinea to the philippines.
If you're unwilling to learn the actual history that's not my problem. Gaff it off and cry that I'm an apologist, I could care less. Also, read more carefully, this is the second time (in only 2 posts) you've completely misunderstood what I wrote.
Does the fact that Chomsky is quoted make the overall story less viable?
Well unless it's an article about linguistics, it kinda does, yeah...
I've already shared the actual history of the Crusades with you, and you choose to sweep it under the rug and claim that the Crusades were "not religiously motivated" despite all the evidence being to the contrary. Sorry, but you have been soundly defeated in this argument. Have a good one.
The fact is, there had been so serious Muslim threat to Western Europe since the Battle of Tours in 732.
Where in this story does it say these are christians?
It mentions a pastor, but his family was victimized by the violence, not perpetrating it. The article even points out that the mobs were followers of "witch-doctors" who kill albinos for good luck. Belief in "witchcraft" or evil spirits and such is a remnant that survives from much older African religions/traditions, and is also common in other cultures, from new guinea to the philippines.
Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a living by 'deliverances' - exorcisms - for people beset by witchcraft, something seen to cause anything from divorce, disease, accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a competitive market, but by local standards a lucrative one.
But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children - naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush.
Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance - sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street.
This is not just a few cases. This is becoming commonplace. In Esit Eket, up a nameless, puddled-and-potholed path is a concrete shack stuffed to its fetid rafters with roughly made bunk beds. Here, three to a bed like battery chickens, sleep victims of the besuited Christian pastors and their hours-long, late-night services. Ostracised and abandoned, these are the children a whole community believes fervently are witches.
The tensions have only mounted as Evangelical and other religious groups from the United States fly en masse to a ravaged Haiti to feed and preach the Gospel.
Last month, Mario Joseph, a Haitian human rights lawyer, went before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking an investigation of attacks against Vodouists after several were stoned by Evangelical pastors in the Cité Soleil slum.
``In other zones of the country,'' he told the commission, ``particularly in the commune of Verrettes in the Artibonite, literal witch hunts have been launched against priests and practitioners of this religion.''
If you're unwilling to learn the actual history that's not my problem.
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