Obama: "We Will Never Be At War With Islam..."
From his speech on the anniversary of 9/11.
A question: What if Islam is at war with us?
The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.
Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's many calls to violence according to what their own moral preconceptions find justificable. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.
Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad's own martial legacy - and that of his companions - along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.
I guess you're feeling better...
Eric at September 8, 2012 11:03 AM
The advertising banner is islamicmarriage.com!
Eric at September 8, 2012 11:10 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/09/08/obama_we_will_n.html#comment-3324227">comment from EricI am. I have been waking up at 5am every day to write and I think it started to get to me. We were at a monthly gathering we go to last night and all of a sudden, I felt weird (like a fever and dizziness came on instantly) and we went home. Slept for 11 hours. First time I've done that in one whole night for eons!
And I do love the ad algorithms!
Mean to post more -- was just waking up and Andrew Malcolm had emailed that to me.
Amy Alkon at September 8, 2012 11:32 AM
Good read,
I appreciate your writing (like a mo-fo) and this post in particular, reminds us all of our public responsibility to OUR Constitution.
Honor others' beliefs to the degree that it honors all of US in U.S.
We have a Constitution over and above religious beliefs for a VERY GOOD REASON!
S. Alyse Yerby at September 8, 2012 8:26 PM
The problem is that Islam is a government masking itself as a religion. That is reason behind the open ended verses -- they are law. The bible does have the Ten Commandments as open ended verse as well, but they are benign.
There are also open ended rules in our Constitution.
The problem in the Islamic worldview is the priests are also effectively their governors. It is hard for the common person to separate the theocracy from the political. Especially with a literacy rate that is rate that is in the in the low teens.
Those that are educated are so steeped in the dogma that they also have the view that Islam is right.
Jim P. at September 8, 2012 9:55 PM
I listened to an "expert" on the radio discuss Islam. It was very informative, wish I could figure what it was and listen to it again.
The one thing that stuck out was this guy said that in the Christian Bible there are lines about committing violence but they are against specific people...e.g. wipe-out the caanites where Islam says to wipe-out all the non-followers.
quoted expert because I had never heard of the guy and they didn't give any accreditation that I heard but he was treated as an expert.
The Former Banker at September 8, 2012 11:19 PM
Islam is a government masking itself as a religion
So was christianity for 1200 years. The difference between the two is that christianity has had a Reformation that m/l coincided with a cultural Rennaisance in the civilization where christianity predominated. Islam has had nothing close to that yet ... and from the looks of it, is about as far away from it now as it was in the 9th century when Greater Islamia essentially turned its back on knowledge for Knowledge's sake and everything that goes with it.
...such as political rights.
Knowledge has always been the enemy of religion. When humans learn that thunder is caused by electricity passing through the atmosphere at greater than the speed of sound then there is no more use for Thunder Gods, and religion has to give way. The more religion cedes to knowledge, the less there is for it rule over. And at some point, when the masses learn that religion doesn't have the answers it always claimed to have on such things as Thunder and Disease, they begin to question its answers on social constructs, and voila! you have some smartass constructing The Rights of Man under the Pope's nose.
Or, in islam's case, under the Ayatollah's nose.
Christianity, by and large, stopped being literalist 500 years ago. You'll still find certain sects which view certain things rather more literally than others - such as creationists - but they're also giving way. Despite the grand rationalization of "intelligent design", it should be viewed as a step forward. Another few generations and no major christian denomination will hold any theology other than "god used biochem as his means of creating life."
No such progress has been made in islam yet. To them religion and politics are the same thing.
ross williams at September 9, 2012 8:49 AM
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