Should We Launch A World War Against Islam?

Well....you Claim Catholics killed more....but you have no source, no stats, no facts...nothing but your biased opinion...I mean I am sure you value your opinion...but ...do not come to a debate empty handed aka....with nothing to support your claim.

That kind of truth seeking might work well in a 7th grade history class conducted by some pc moron who participated in the governments program of inducting you into political correctness....but ...well I think you get my drift....no one on here is buying what you are selling.

 

Anyone who doesn't realize that not all Christians are bad, and about the same % of Muslims are NOT bad....is a huge reetard, or at the very least, misinformed.

When I lived in the middle east I noticed about the same formula at work in societies that I see here in the western world.........for every 10 people, 6 are just normal people, and try to make it through life in peace, and 1 is a criminal, 1 is a saint, 1 is a loser, and 1 is a leader.

 

I think you are very confused....where in the constitution does it say on what basis laws are to be formulated? Have you ever even read the constitution???...you are citing something you probably heard in a 6th grade civics class taught by a nice pc lady fresh out of some state teacher college.

Now for some Truth.....The basis of the American legal system is the Judeo-Christian values found in the Bible, both the Hebrew and Christian Bible. Christians who founded America saw themselves as heirs to the Hebrew Bible using the Ten Commandments and its moral standards as the basis of the laws serving as a guide for the behavior of a secular society, but recognizing the need for the Christian Bible and the acceptance of Jesus Christ to provide the moral guidance for individuals to live in harmony. Thus, the Spirit of God is the true guiding light of the American culture sustaining our belief in universal, not relative, morality. God is part of our culture. Every individual and America as a nation must answer morally to this God.

 

I don't think you can necessarily tie the terrorists to any one government like Bush tried to do, but maybe if we had completely devastated a couple cities in Afghanistan early on the terrorists would be getting a lot less popular support. I don't buy the 'innocent civilian' line.

 

Although over 100,000 alleged witches were burned alive or hung over a five century interval -- from the 14th to the 18th century -- the vast majority were tried from 1550 to 1650.

 

www.state.gov › ... › Country Reports on Terrorism 2011

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism

 

So, How Many People
has Religion Killed?
or
Death by Atheism / Death by Government?


The notion that the crusades, the Inquisition, and the burning of witches can possibly be the largest events of human slaughter is absurd on the face of it. They were minor events in the flow of human history. That is not excuse for them, but there is far less excuse for charges being made about religion in that way.

This extraordinary article and the website below will raise a storm of controversy. How accurate the figures on the website are, I have no way of knowing, but the general drift of the article below is certainly accurate. R. J. Rummel wrote Death by Government, which documents many of the charges below.

Visit the website listed below. It is not easy perusing -- especially for those of us raised on the myth of eternal progress -- due to the alleged objective and neutral stance of scientific secularism. As with any belief system, one can almost always find noble and good people, but secularism as a system itself is none of those things. It is not objective, neutral, or scientific.

Most starvation in the world could be prevented by (1) honest Godly government, and (2) a genuinely free-market system under God (the two go together...). Apart from the law and grace of God, honest government is all but impossible, and then only for very short periods. That is true because, without God, having no moral foundation, politics is all power struggle.

Most unnatural deaths are caused by the power struggle of the powerful -- those who get control of the levers of government (i.e., levers of coercion) and will do whatever they have to to keep control. I include, emphatically, the United Nations -- a parody of the United States (which, sadly and obliviously is drifting that way) -- because Christians have lost their way and cannot stand up for the culture with which God had blessed them.

The world is not over-populated, not yet by a long shot. It is over-controlled by people who care only for their own power, pride, and pleasure. We, the people (not the government), have the capacity to feed every human being on earth many times over. But that is not the agenda of most present governments. Both our personal and our social and corporate freedom and prosperity will happen only under the lordship of Jesus Christ. All other ground is sinking sand.

There are further replies to this piece -- see below One; Two.

Note: the article below begins with a reference to the Da Vinci Code which, though it was a pretty good who-dunnit, was historically, morally, and spiritually a very irresponsible book.

From an email by someone who read this article - on the Muslim contribution to the disaster of genocide - http://www.politicalislam.com/tears/pages/tears-of-jihad/ Read the other articles on this website also -- to discern why Mohammed decided to adopt the political route -- i.e., to gain control when he found no other way to make converts. E. Fox]

No one should be permitted to get away with making rash, irresponsible, and utterly unsupported statements like this.

On 8/3/05 9:13 PM, "David Upton" <apologeticresponse@rogers.com> wrote:

Ms. Decker added, "The book kind of explains to the world how the Catholic Church demonized women such as Mary Magdalene, and also have killed millions of women during the Crusades.

I recently wrote a short, popular level article responding to this kind of stuff. The article is appended below:

Just How Many People Has Religion Killed?
Kirk Durston, National Director, New Scholars Society

A popular urban legend that I've often heard is that religion has killed more people than anything else, so the world would be a lot more peaceful place were it not for religion. The top three largest examples are thought to be the Crusades of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, and the burning of witches. Scholars estimate that the Crusades of the middle ages cost from 58,000 to 133,000 lives. The most realistic figure for the Spanish Inquisition puts the total killed from AD1480 to AD1808 at up to 31,912. Finally, records indicate that the number of witches killed may be over 30,000. Some argue that records don't tell everything and suggest that maybe even 100,000 were killed. These three events, totaling over 264,000 killed, are thought to be the largest atrocities perpetrated by one or another form of Christendom. As we shall shortly see, however, they pale into insignificance in comparison to the consequences of atheism.

There are two points to make by way of response. The first point can be made by asking the question, "Are these activities consistent with what Jesus taught?" Most people with even an elementary knowledge of Christ will admit that such killing is inconsistent with His teachings. People often try to justify their hatred, actions, and even killing by appealing to whatever is held in high regard by the population. It follows that if Christianity is or was held in high regard by populations, that certain people with the power to carry out atrocities would attempt to justify them in the name of Christianity. It is a simple-minded person indeed who reasons, "Joe claims he is a Christian--Joe committed an atrocity in the name of Christianity--therefore Christianity promotes atrocities." The Bible states that the person who says he loves God, but hates his brother, is a liar. There are many people through history that have done horrible things in the name of Christianity, but Jesus' words, "you will know them by their fruit" tell the real story regarding their love for God and whether they follow the commands of Jesus Christ.

The second point to make is that, yes, people who claim to love God do kill, but nowhere near to the extent that the lack of religion does. According to University of Hawaii political scientist Rudolph J. Rummel,[1] <#_ftn1> the total number killed in all of human history is estimated to be about 284,638,000. Of that number, 151,491,000 were killed during the past 100 years. The single largest killer in all of human history is, by far, atheistic Communism with a total of 110,000,000 … over 1/3 of all people ever killed! If we add to that number just two other regimes where religion of any sort was strongly discouraged, Nazi Germany and Nationalist China, the number rises to 141,160,000. Almost 50% of all the killings in human history were committed in the past 100 years by regimes that either actively promoted atheism or strongly discouraged religion. We have not considered the over one billion abortions, where Christianity seems to be particularly unwelcome. When the murders of history are tallied up, it is very clear that atheism is the most dangerous philosophy ever embraced by humanity. The most effective restraint on mankind's inherently evil tendencies is faith in God through Jesus Christ, a faith that actually follows the teachings and commands of Jesus Christ as a daily way of life.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] <#_ftnref1> http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM (all stats have come from this site)

#One

[COMMENT: Here is additional info on the death-by-government theme. E. Fox]

The best source is The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, by Stephane Courtois, et al. (Harvard University Press, 1999 for the English translation). The book is highly worth owning ($27 at Amazon).

Here is the Publishers Weekly entry from Amazon.com:
In France, this (*)(*)(*)(*)ing reckoning of communism's worldwide legacy was a bestseller that sparked passionate arguments among intellectuals of the Left. Essentially a body count of communism's victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives. The verdict: communism was responsible for between 85 million and 100 million deaths in the century. In France, both sales and controversy were fueled, as Martin Malia notes in the foreword, by editor Courtois's specific comparison of communism's "class genocide" with Nazism's "race genocide." Courtois, the director of research at the prestigious Centre Research National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and editor of the journal Communisme, along with the other distinguished French and European contributors, delivers a fact-based, mostly Russia-centered wallop that will be hard to refute: town burnings, mass deportations, property seizures, family separations, mass murders, planned famines: all chillingly documented from conception to implementation. The book is divided into five sections. The first and largest takes readers from the "Paradoxes of the October Revolution" through "Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System" to "The Exit from Stalinism." Seeing the U.S.S.R. as "the cradle of all modern Communism," the book's other four sections document the horrors of the Iron Curtain countries, Soviet-backed agitation in Asia and the Americas, and the Third World's often violent embrace of the system. A conclusion: "Why?" Aby Courtois, points to a bureaucratic, "purely abstract vision of death, massacre and human catastrophe" rooted in Lenin's compulsion to effect ideals by any means necessary.

#Two

"Add other killings by other atheistic and totalitarian states-as a
result of their atheistic ideology-you come up with a number of more
than 130 million. If we were to add those dead from the wars of the
twentieth century, the number would easily jump to 170 million" (See tagline).

You might add to that the killings being done *today* by the atheistic regimes in Zimbabwe and North Korea.

BTW, see the links debunking "The Da Vinci Code" on my
page http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/dvncdvch.html

 

My apologies .. I generally assume a 5th grade education in relation to history.

How many historical examples would you like ?

I will supply a few just to get started .. Estimates for the "new world" vary .. 1.8 to 100 million. Even going with the low total this numer far exceeds the number killed by the inquisition.

The Cathars:

Thats 22,000 Cathars in just two examples of the Catholic killing spree which spanned 30 years .. all in the name of God.

Already I have blown your rediculously uninformed and ignorant argument away but I will be happy to continue of you would like to discuss more examples of killing by the Church ... after all .. there are hundreds more.

ohhh .. but hold on .. lets give one more recent example.

In WWII there was the Genocide committed against Jewish and Orthadox Serbs . (Catholic Bishops were found guilty of Crimes against humanity after the war)
at least 350,000 by the Catholic Hitler loving Croatians. The Pope helped leader of the Genocide "Pavelic" excape dressed as a priest after the war.

 

If you count the cult that was behind the Tai-Ping rebellion as being vaguely Christian (like Mormons or Moonies), the death toll was a lot higher than that of witch-hunts, the Inquisition, the Crusades and the European religious wars between Protestants and Catholics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

Note that the casualties of the 15 years of the rebellion were 20 to 30 million Chinese.

 

I am not here to defend Catholicism since I am opposed to Catholicism based on the fact it is an un-biblical religion.....yet I do oppose blanket accusations against anyone when they are unsupported by facts. Also.....to blame the Pope for the crimes of Nazism under Hitler is way toooooo far of a stretch....Now I would agree perhaps the Pope could have done more to protect Jewry....but he was under tremendous pressure from the Nazis....so he was forced to walk a tightrope regarding protesting the actions of Hitler.....also there are many examples of Catholics helping Jews. In a nutshell the position and actions of the Pope during that time period are complex and would require much more scholarly analysis than is possible on this board in order to justly condemn the Pope for his alleged complicity with Nazism.

There was a great Reformation in the Christian Faith hundreds of years ago.....Protestants rejected the Catholic system.....and one more thing.....those of you who try to claim Christianity is just as bad as Islam always go back hundreds of years and dredge up Medieval Catholicism as an example.....I am more concerned with what is going on here and now...even if someone agrees that the Medieval Catholic Church was similiar to the Islam of today....you would have to at least concede Catholicsm has advance whereas Islam is still mired in a Mideval Mindset.

Another huge fallacy the secularists make is when they make a blanket accusation of religion in general and accuse 'religion' of being responsible for most of the evil in this world.....as has been shown secular atheistic governments are far more responsible for suffering in this world than all the religions combined.

 

http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-kills.htmhttp://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-kills.htm

 

Are there any Stormfront supporters posting on this thread?

 

http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-koran-bible.htm

 

There's a lot of popular myths out there about the Catholic Church. Just to mention the "dark ages" is to dredge up images of tyrannical reigns of various popes, massecres, persecutions, etc etc. One of the biggest yet little known refutations of this supposed religious intolerance is the Reformation itself. If the Catholic Church were prone to crush dissent, Martin Luther would have been arrested and his followers dispersed. Most people are unaware that during the middle ages, the Catholic Church successfully banned slavery in every Catholic country, the first time a significant portion of the globe was free from this blight. When these accusations are explored, one by one, in the light of accurate historical scrutiny, the Catholic Church isn't nearly the monster people made it out to be. I would compare the record of Christianity IN ANY AGE to that of Islam anytime.

 

In response to the question of whether we should launch a world war against Islam I say no. That would be silly, in addition to arguably being a campaign of cultural genocide on a scale of magnitude almost unheard of since European Americans conquered and systematically assimilated many of the indigenous peoples of the New World. As a believer in and big supporter of preserving human rights, the prospect of trying to purge or subordinate those who practice a particular faith disgusts me. Wage a war on folk who resort to violence to advance social or political causes instead of discriminating against a vast group of people among whose number only a rather modest minority supports extremism.

Ironically, Islamist terror organizations use in their propaganda a message that the States and its allies are already waging a war to destroy Islam, do away with traditional ways of living, and corrupt the youth - replacing the cultures of peoples in predominately Islamic places with Christianity (which is alleged to be subtly snuck into their homelands under benign looking disguises of secular government, enhanced individual freedoms, democracy, and economic globalization). Feeding into that message and giving it truth would only manage to make people feel even more oppressed and persecuted than they already are. Furthermore, bear in mind that whenever fighters for an idealistic cause are killed or defeated it elevates - not depresses - their compatriots' will to fight.

So rather than having Christians and Muslims shoot at and blow up each other for several decades in a vicious, self-feeding cycle I would much prefer we focus on the root causes of violence in political cultures. Promote human development in areas stricken with want. See to it young men have work and hope for someday living in satisfaction with families to call their own, for people with a lot to lose are not going to be the kind of people likely to feel desperate and victimized, become radical, and go off to fight a holy war in the first place. Understand foreign cultures, apply the knowledge to our policies in foreign affairs, and show respect rather than hate and fear toward those who have different views, values, and lifestyles. Nations have plenty of potential for peacefully coexisting.

Personally, I like Muslims. People are not singularly defined by their religious views, nor are their politics. There is tremendous variety in how people opt to interpret their faiths as well, mind you, and I feel comfortable in saying the religion of Islam is no more innately dogmatic, intolerant, hierarchical, or communal than Christianity or Judaism. Islam – just like other religions – can be shaped over time in how its adherents choose to interpret it based upon the environs and experiences in which they are immersed.

I am not a Muslim and the perceptions I have about reality (especially as they pertain to supernatural matters) is vastly different than that promoted by Islamic sacred texts. Still, if there was to be a deliberate campaign by the West or the United States in particular on Islam itself, I would without hesitation sympathize much more strongly with Muslims – who in that event would be sufferers of imperialist aggression and deserve justice so they may live as equals amongst the adherents to other religions in our world.

Well, for whatever it is worth, at least that’s my two cents.

 

Well, isn't this turning truth on its head! We're assaulting Islam by sneaking in Christianity? And freedom and democracy are ploys to establish Christianity as a dominant religion? And here I was laboring under the crazy notion that freedom and democracy was about allowing people to be whatever faith they want.

Sounds like a "spread the wealth" scheme whereby richer nations are taxed for poorer nations, all in mental assent to the absurd notion that poverty forces people to commit violence. Fail.

Right. So if we don't pay up and give these people "hope" (translated: money) then they will be desperate and forced to become radical and commit jihad.

Right. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Islam isn't any more violent than Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduisim, or any other religion. It must be media bias that gives disproportionate coverage to Islamic terror while ignoring all the suicide bombings by Buddhist monks, or planes hijacked by Catholic nuns. If the media didnt' hate Islam so much, they might give equal coverage to all the Hindus burning down embassies and sawing off the heads of reporters.

You know you're full of (*)(*)(*)(*), don't you? Please tell me you know at least that much.

 

With all due respect:

(a.) I never claimed to personally subscribe to the propaganda used by Islamic extremists.

(b.) Poverty does not force people to become violent, but if people are deprived of living conditions and social environs in which they are encouraged - and also possess the tools they need - to pursue happiness and long-term satisfaction in life in a manner respectful of the rights and liberties of others, there will be substantial amounts of human suffering. That suffering, if combined with an ignorant worldview and sense of either victimization or alienation (it is not rare among people who have inadequate access to educational and economic opportunities), can lead to all sorts of things. Some of those can be detrimental to the interests of folks living even thousands of miles away. This is the world we live in.

(c.) It’s not the responsibility of any one country to address such immense challenges but if the United States continues to subvert the interests of other nations to its own whenever it wants around the globe and fails to take into account the values and aspirations of other peoples when crafting its foreign policies in the first place, on occasion those choices are bound to come back and bite us in the ass. It should be no mystery to anyone why certain peoples like us less than others - all the information one needs to find is in history books. I love the U.S. but also realize it’s partly to blame for some international problems today.

(d.) It is not media bias giving Islamic terror disproportionate coverage. You missed my point quite completely. Having a religion does not make one predisposed to commit acts of violence. Islam is not what makes Islamist extremists violent. Too many people in the States seem to want to find a threatening group of “them” to identify as its enemy – with Muslims or Arabs in general fitting the bill so far as many of them are concerned. Rather, it is a combination of ones religion with many other facets of culture and experience that leads a particular individual – but not necessarily others – to become a religious extremist. Drawing a line directly from the faith to extremism is absurdly simplistic, ignorant, and prejudicial.

It is unfortunate you believe I am full of (*)(*)(*)(*), but I am sure from your point of view that somehow makes sense. Instead of mirroring the sentiments, I bid you a good evening.

 

Well done. I tip my hat to you.

 

But of course you'd say that.

 

Most people only think about Nazism in Germany where the links to the vatican are not so direct. Croatia is a completely different story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_clergy_involvement_with_the_Ustaše

Christianity certainly evolved into something more benign. This does not mean that the ideologies that led to the mistakes of the past is not alive and well.

It is these ideologies that I take issue with .. be it Islam or Christianity. One of the key safeguards against "repeating the past" is the separation of Church and state written into the Constitution by the founders for exactly this reason.

The "aethiests" are worse argument is silly. Just because there were people who for reasons of power killed more ( and on a statistical basis/%of the population I do not think your argument has legs) does not make a case for being religious.

What we need to do is identify the root cause ideologies that caused all this killing and rougery in the first place .. and educate the masses so that they are not so easily duped.

 

Problem with Islam is that it is a strict, literal interpretation that advocates violent jihad to establish Islamic Government. If it were some tortured, twisted interpretation, we wouldnt blame Islamic doctrine, we would blame the tortured and twisted interpretation. And CLEARLY, Christianity and Islam are pretty much polar opposites.

Matthew 22:36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Volume 1, Book 2, Number 26: Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle was asked, "What is the best deed?" He replied, "To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, "What is the next (in goodness)? He replied, "To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah's Cause."

 

That's a great contrast there. Good points.

 

A truely Christian nation would have it no other way. "My kingdom is not of this world", "Obey all authorities institutited among men", "Render unto Ceasar, that which is Ceasars" and all of that. Where as in Islam, Church and state are one in the same.
[2.193] And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah...

5.44] ...whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the unbelievers.
[5.45] ...whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the unjust.
[5.47] ...whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the transgressors.

Ruling by Islam is the most frequent issue discussed in Quran after the belief and creed. Therefore, Khilafah was discussed by many Muslim scholars, the following are the definition of some of them to Khilafah.

1: Ibn Khaldoon defined it as: A representation, of the one who has the right to adopt the divine rules, aimed at protecting the Deen and ruling the world (Dunia) with it.

2: Al-Mawirdi defined it as: Succession of the Prophethood aimed at protecting the Deen and ruling the world (Dunia).
http://alkhilafah.net/s1.html

 

Yep, loving your neighbor as opposed to waging war upon him until he accepts the rule of Islam.