Yes, it’s reckless of him to do it, but still, it seems if they didn’t have a Terry Jones they would have to make up something, ie. cartoons, to get their panties twisted in a knot. Burning the Koran is bad but killing innocent human beings is good…What kind of thought process is this?
Friday’s incident began when three mullahs, addressing worshippers at Friday prayers inside the Blue Mosque here, one of Afghanistan’s holiest places, urged people to take to the streets to agitate for the arrest of Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who oversaw the burning of a Koran on March 20. Otherwise, said the most prominent of them, Mullah Mohammed Shah Adeli, Afghanistan should cut off relations with the United States. “Burning the Koran is an insult to Islam and those who committed it should be punished,” he said.
The crowd — some carrying signs reading “Down with America” and “Death to Obama” — poured into the streets and swelled — the governor of Balkh Province, Atta Mohammad Noor, later put the number at 20,000…
The mob also burned down part of the United Nations compound, toppled guard towers and heaved blocks of cement down from the walls. The victims were killed by weapons that the demonstrators had wrestled away from the United Nations guards, according to Mr. Noor…
A prominent Afghan cleric, Mullah Qyamudin Kashaf, acting head of the Ulema Council of Afghanistan (and a Karzai appointee), also called for American authorities to arrest and try Mr. Jones for the Koran burning.
The Ulema Council recently met to discuss the Koran burning, he said in a telephone interview. “We expressed our deep concerns about this act and we were expecting the violence that we are witnessing now,” Mullah Kashaf said. “Unless they try him and give him the highest possible punishment, we will witness violence and protests not only in Afghanistan but in the entire world.”
The governor of the town blamed the Taliban:
The governor of Balkh province said insurgents had used the march as cover to attack the compound, in a battle that raged for several hours and raises serious questions about plans to make the city a pilot for security transfer to national forces.
“The insurgents have taken advantage of the situation to attack the U.N. compound,” said Governor Ata Mohammad Noor.
But as Allah notes, this doesn’t jive with the report that the compound was overrun by a huge crowd and that they were killed with their own weapons. I’m thinking the Taliban would of brought their own. Overrunning a compound and wresting away the weapons is a sign of a violent riot….not a coordinated attack.
Jones is a moron but no one should defend these fanatics by blaming him. I have a feeling our MSM will do just that tho…as they have done in the past. It is shear lunacy to be held hostage by the followers of Islam. We can burn our flag, a bible, and pretty much anything else but if someone burns a Koran we should shake in fear.
THAT is terrorism and we shouldn’t cave to it.
The killers are responsible for these murders and THEY should be brought trial, not Terry Jones.
Exit quote from the Taliban English language website: (h/t The Jawa Report)
Though the American rulers say, the burning of the Holy Quran falls under the category of freedom of speech but the question arises if a Muslim reacts to the bestial step of Terry Jones in a self-same manner, then would the American rulers and media tolerate it under the rules of the freedom of speech and would they remain silent? Or rather that the Americans including the rulers, politicians, religious followers and media of the West will simultaneously, run a mock and refer the case to the Security Council and the United Nations?
You gotta be kidding me.
More here
This year is the first time in about 10 years that the Arab bloc of the UN has NOT tried to establish worldwide anti-blasphemy laws.
Odd.
IF they had managed to get their monstrosity passed it would mean the whole world would be liable to Sharia.
If anyone expressed even an opinion that Muslims didn’t like charges of slander of Mohammad or of Islam could be brought.
Free speech would be chilled into non-existence.
The mere fact that the Taliban would behead some and murder (in other ways) the others over this act that took place thousands of miles away just proves they are not open to either reason or law.
Remember, we cannot paint ourselves into a small enough corner to please Islam.
Osama bin Laden was STILL holding a grudge about losing Spain from Islam 1000 years ago when he set up the 9-11 attacks.
Curt, was this the same SEIU crowd that was in WI a few weeks ago? Seems like the attitudes are very similar.
Randy, now that you mention it, right, exactly like the WISCONSIN CROWD,
SAME OPEN MOUTH, SAME WIDE BLOODY EYES, WHOES COPYING ON THE OTHER.
BYE
@ilovebeeswarzone: Bees, insanity isn’t restricted to radical Islam!
@Randy, #2:
Actually the crowd up above represents Afghanistan’s conservative element. They’re fervent supporters of their local traditional values–such as they are.
GREG THAT IS NOT THE CONSERVATIVES WE KNOW HERE, THOSE OF AFGHANISTAN ARE FAR FROM THE WORD CONSERVATIVES,
I don’t know what those guys eat but they ingnite like if they have a fuse in the…
in some open area of their body,
Curt, why don’t we find some friendly Obama grant program, get Jones and his group a ticket to Kabul and let them do their little Koran burning ritual over there? I’d say only a one way ticket is necessary for the charter group….
@Greg, you too have joined the “ass” category…. Uncalled for commentary, highly “intolerant” and unPC, and if an attempt at humor, again… stick to your day job and don’t try for any amateur nights at the comedy clubs.
UPDATE:
But I will concede that Randy egged you on with that comment INRE the union thugs/mobs. So I officially recant. You’ve escaped the “ass” class this time.
And much as I despise the unions, socialists, etc, I’d stop short of comparing them with fundamentalists and Islamic jihad groups.
“Jones is a moron but no one should defend these fanatics by blaming him.”
Nor should anyone be using the word “blame” as though this wasn’t the obvious, desired outcome that’s somehow in question as to who is responsible. We don’t “blame” bank robbers for banks getting robbed as though responsibility needs assigning or is some mystery.
Unless this is a 2nd Jones, everyone was already aware what reaction this would get. We even heard from the head of the armed forces that one predictable outcome is that US troops will also be targeted. So when a couple get snatched, strung up and mutilated, you can offer the same rationale. What you don’t get to do though is act surprised.
What is needed is a “Koran desecration news randomizer”, that will take ordinary news stories from around the world and make them into Koran desecration stories, before reposting them to one of a thousand popular Internet forums.
So say, a story about Hillary Clinton giving a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, will be reposted as “Hillary Clinton burning a Koran in front of the UN Human Rights Council”.
The idea is to overwhelm the agitators with so many bogus news stories that they riot over stories like “Chris Matthews puts pages of the Koran on his bacon and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch”, that end up making the agitators look like fools.
yes APRIL FOOLS
In an odd way, we have the same fanatical fools who want to drive God out of the USA and establish aethism as the law of the land here. They turn everything that was good about America into something to be condemned and apologized for to the rest of the socialist world.
Gay lifestyle and act was for centuries viewed as gravely disordered and serious sin. Suddenly in the last 30 years or so queer has become gay and gay is being pushed on our entire society as normal and equal to the relationship of man and woman. Now we see it being force fed into the military in a time of war with our soldiers under maximum stress. We see a direct attack on the chaplins serving our military that they need to watch what they say about gays or they could lose their job. The hate police in some countries are on the attack to punish anyone who disagrees with this queer act being normal and even worthy of special rights. Your freedom of speech and freedom of religion have to be sacrificed on the altar of gay rights which is not even in the constitution. We do not give rights to behaviour choices. We also as a people have been on the march since the fall of man to overcome the weakness each of us has but suddenly, this weakness is seperated and given special status. There is no hesitency to attack the behaviour choice of a glutton who is fat and coming under the eye of the first lady. Greed is attacked with every turn of the liberal screw unless the rich person agrees that their earned income should be attached and given to someone else. But if we are not a country under God or paying attention to what God taught about the gay lifestyle in virtually every religion of the past 2000 plus years, then why is there a standard to take from the rich and give to the poor? By what basis is this decision made and who decides who is rich and poor and the amount to take. Well, the answer is that it is not a moral choice at all, but one set up by the god big government who needs the cash to retain power. By what right does this big government decide that healthcare is a right when it is clearly not in the constitution and also by what right do they have to tell us to purchase any product or service? Is it a moral right given to them by God? And why would God bestow on a party of slavery up to and including a war to protect it, lynching and torture after the war, denial of civil rights in every way possible, and now the party of abortion. Why would we as a people determine we should listen to anything this evil party has to say when they have been on the wrong side of every moral issue in the history of our country? Even in the area they claim gives them the halo, social justice, their big government programs of welfare have destroyed the fabric of the poor by destroying families. They have condemned the poor to schools which have failed them for decades refusing to allow competition in any way. Abortion clinics are clearly focused and serving the black community far in escess of the black population as a whole. With friends like this, who needs enemies.
So I am far more concerned about the democratic party than the taliban because every society has crumbled from within and the democratic party has been at it for over 200 years. Imagine if another country had a party with the same record over 200 years as the democrats and we were watching from outside and judging on results of their policy and belief system. Many were appaled at the Nazi party which existed for less than 2 decades and during that time killed millions. But if we add up slavery, civil war to protect slavery, lynching and torture of blacks systematically for generations, and now abortion, which party has had the most negative impact on moral issues. Abortion alone has killed over 50 million babies in the womb, the place where God thought new creation would be the safest in its most vulnerable state. Why did the party so fresh from the loss of the civil rights battle move in less than a decade to the abortion issue and why the focus on black families? Name any program the democrats have which has brought great things to black families in the last 200 years and how does than compare to the total history. Why do we even allow this party to exist in a country which is said to be One Nation Under God and a country that places In God We Trust on our currency and a country where all our rights come from God, not government? I have never been able to have anyone explain this to me in any way that makes sense.
So yes, the taliban and Islamist are evil, but they need to get in line.
I do believe, that as a symbol of atonement we deliver some Korans to the Mosque, I’m thinking via some Hellfires. It’d be appropriate and only fair to help them achieve the path to their 72 raisins.
Greta, very well said, thank you, hopefully this will get better in 2012 election,
with the new CONSERVATIVES being elected to get rid of those who don’t care about real values,
and giving hope for a better AMERICA returning to the people where it belong, it makes me think
of that song…GOD BLESS AMERICA
Not to blame for UN deaths: Quran-burning pastor
How easily he seems to shrug off any responsibility for the consequences of his actions. It’s depressing.
@Greg:
In an odd way this weird preacher shows a better understanding of how Muslims ”think” than most of us.
Remember Mohammad is the end-all and be-all for Muslims.
He is the perfect example.
Mohammad did NOT use logic.
He taught so many contradictory things that he finally said, look, the last thing I said stands, if I said something the opposite earlier. (Abrogation)
A book filled with such contradictory teachings has led Muslim thinkers to conclude there is NO ”cause and effect” in the world.
Things just happen.
It is the ”will of Allah.”
So, our Western minds are trained to look for a cause.
The Muslim mind just doesn’t work like that.
While we read an average of 11 books every year, the world wide research found that your average Muslim merely reads 6 pages of writing in a year!
Taking an imam’s word for what is ”the will of Allah” is simply par for the course for your average Muslim.
If three of them go around with loudspeakers and then preach in the Mosque that ”Allah has been insulted” and ”the Infidel must die,” guess what will happen?
Just what we saw.
The religion of peace strikes again.
Nan G, we are not accountable to the UN making LAWS, WHAT ever LAW is PUSH by THE ARABS,
and I hope the AMERICANS wont allow them to decide what or where, from them,
the only laws here are the CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHT IN AMERICA , FOR AMERICANS,
the UN STARTED YEARS AGO FOR A GOOD PURPUSE, BUT WENT TOO FAR AS THEY ARE DICTATING NOW INTO THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD, THEY ARE DICTATING THE WARS TO BE FOUGHT BY OUR OWN BRAVES WITH APPROVAL OF THIS PRESIDENT, that is the wrong being done, and should be delt with as soon as now,
Hi, Curt,
Burning Korans is a GREAT idea; and EVERYBODY should do it.
Islam is the direct cause of GRINDING POVERTY not to mention world-wide wholesale VIOLENCE and MURDER.
Wake up.
Terry Jones is a jack-ass, but this is America and a person has the right to be a jack-ass; just look at Congress.
What would happen if everytime a Christian was killed or jailed in a Muslim country, Christians in this country stormed the mosques and killed any Muslims inside? Would it be the fault of the country that killed the Christians or the Christians that stormed the mosque?
I think in response, we should go back to the idea of burn a Koran day with millions of them set to flame. Any book that leads is followers to jihad, flying planes into buildings, sharia law with all its perversions, and has put us into war should be burned. Imagine if there was a statement in the Bible about homosexual priest abusing teenagers and we had a rash of them following the writing and yelling a quote from the book like allah akbhar. I would bet money that the bible would be under attack and maybe even banned. But here you have beheadings, young girls being raped and then charged with a crime and beaten and stoned to death. How does Islam get a pass when they are still stuck in the middle ages and everyone else has long passed into a new age as in the change between the old and new testament. Those who want to point out any comparison to the koran often quote the old testament statements but fail to show where anyone in any Christian country is still using what was written in the old testament like multiple wives. What is it about Islam that demands the followers go back to the writting as written in the middle ages and use it today and why does the west give them a total pass on this evil. I cannot imagine a country that is the most Christian upon hearing a bible is being burned would do anything like this. At most, there might be some line up for a non violent peaceful protest. The look of hatred in these pictures is being taught to the followers at the earlies age and they are placing weapons in their hands and honoring those who blow up innocent people and in the process kill themselves. Have we all gone insane in saying this is a religion of peace. If anyone in this religion is indeed peaceful, they are certainly silent and giving aid and comfort to evil which makes them just as guilty. So count me in as sick of the entire Islam mess, its supposedly sacred religion, and its fanatics. We had more outrage over homosexual priests attacking kids than we had over someone stoning children. And even in the abuse by priests, most wanted to label it anything than what actually was showing it had more to do with hatred of the Catholic Church than protecting kids. If anyone googles homosexual and twinks, you will see that this is huge in the homosexual community and leads to teenage boys being targets of gay men. That was also what the report showed was the abuse issue with homosexual priests going after their prime target, not of young boys as most tried to make it out to be, but after teenage boys they call twinks. So why was it not properly labeled and why did the country not go after the homosexual community that still openly abuses boys if the kids were the concern? I think we should be as upset with anyone who goes after boys under the age of consent and prosecute them as sexual perverts and abusive rapist.
Knowing your enemy and clearly labeling what it is you are strying to stop seems like a very important part of any war or any cause be is islam or saving all kids from abuse…
This defines Islam and the very future the major force within wants for us. Death.
Burning books? And this accomplishes exactly what, save for a 21st century acceptance of Farenheit 451 as a solution.
There’s definitely ugly mugs in that photo. But to make this a blanket judgment of all Muslims, instead of lunatics who need little provocation to prove they are human cockroaches, is absurd.
GRETA Terry Jones is a bigoted red neck fool.
Agree with aqua, its his god given right to burn korans. I’m sure taking away someone’s right to burn a bokk would lead the want-to-be dictators to believe they can do anything.
The violent words in the koran are many (over one hundred) and can be taken to mean any number of things, I’m a religious person and I don’t believe many of the very recent representations of the bible, like the rapture or much of the end time stuff. That stuff is bull s*** that a guy thought up using unusual logic, in my opinion. The different opinions of christians are numerous. Well the same is true of muslims. From the sunis who took the words of Asia(muhamads ONLY virgin wife…) to be the true and created the hadith. Then their is the shia whom believed that Ali, who was muhamads daughters husband, was the true heir to muhamad and of his heirs their was 12 imams the last of whom disappeared at the age of four. Most shites believe he will return (similar to the Christian end times theory). The shia and the suni had wars long before they had thought up names for the sects they were to create.
Perhaps our biggest problem at the moment is not the crazy mosques that go on a rampage, or the pastors that burn books but Iran who has a shia establishment. Shia muslims make up 20% of all muslims but have a government that is structured by a religion similer to the catholic church and is far more corrupt. Iran is 90% shia, iraq is 60% and some of lebanon is shia. Hezbolla is shia. Not all shia muslims are the dogmatic, violent ones but Iran is the major contributor to terrorist groups and is preparing the world for the arrival of the twelfth imam. As you may have noticed in the US and europe, speaking ill of a religion (or religious sect) is considered to be “racist” and its “wrong” to say that certain religions are leading people to do “wrong”. Its hard to fight an ideology when we shy away from discussion, especially when we use insults to discredit those who want to discuss it. Therefore this has become an enemy that is hard to fight. I do however believe that the US is way ahead of the rest of the world in those regards and has taken many steps in the right direction.
99% of the violence in the world today is caused by a lame book.
It may be true that we face a choice: burning KORANS today, or burning muslims tomorrow.
Europe has chosen the later alternative.
Maybe muslims need some help; that means help besides enabling their toxic “religion.”
“But to make this a blanket judgement of all Muslims, instead of lunatics who need little provacation to prove they are human cockroaches, is absurd.”
Yeah, I was taken aback by all the “moderate” Muslims that came out today in opposition to the actions of the lunatics. Protest marches, interveiws on every channel in the western world, hundreds of articles in all the newspapers, all denouncing the actions of the “lunatics.” And then, I woke up. It was only a dream. Those things never happened.
Like so many, you seem to want to discount this as the actions of a few “lunatics.” But you are wrong. These are the actions of those who have never read anything in their lives but the Qu’ran. They have it (the whole ‘holy’ book) memorized by the time they are 12. This IS the religion of “peace” it is truest form. So excuse it all you want, but that doesn’t make you right.
What if Christians decided to go on rampages everytime some Muslim in Palestine desecrates the Bible? How about remembering what respect the Palestinians had for Christianity in 2005 when they took up residence in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and used Bibles for toilet paper? Should Christians have stormed mosques all across the Western world and murdered, and beheaded, as many Muslims as possible?
Accept it; Islam, and its adherents remain in the 7th century and it has nothing to do with poverty or education. Mohammed Atta and Nidal Hassan were hardly poor, or uneducated. Al Alwalki is educated, by us, btw. It has to do with a cult mentality that has been passed off as a religion. Started by a war lording pedophile, who gave followers a way out of their crimes by proclaiming that they really had no control over their own actions as all things are already predetermined by Allah. Free will does not exist in Islam.
We have to face it. We are involved in a holy war that will not get any better until there is a total reformation of Islam, and its holy book is no longer taken literally. I don’t see that happening in my life time.
People who think that ”moderate” Muslims will someday stand up against their so-called extremist brothers haven’t gotten to know many of the people who have been forced to leave Islam because of the overpowering influence of even one ”extreme”’ Muslim in a family.
The book, Leaving Islam, is a compilation of dozens of first-hand accounts.
A common thread thoughout that compilation is that there is no reasoning, nor moderating of the ”extremist,” who marries into a family of quiet and mild Muslims.
The ”extremist” can back up his every action from the Koran.
The ”moderates” cannot.
They eventually fear for their own lives and safety so much they run away, disappear from their families forever.
And why?
Because there is no answer from inside Islam to counter violent jihadists and rioters.
Even the elected Muslims who tried to moderate Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were killed!
retire05, hi, so why do they send our military to help those to depose one leader,
is nt it a proof that it’s wrong, they will continiue to have the same goal to destroy AMERICA,
no matter if you help them, or not, and our troops get blown up in the mean time in afghanistan,
OBAMA CANNOT EVEN FINISH ONE WAR, HOW CAN HE BE CALLED COMMANDER IN CHIEF,
what a shame for our BRAVEST
Zac #24 You must be O.K. with burning The American Flag and The Bible.God given right you say .Surprised you feel that way.
rich wheeler I’m sure that you eat your words before typing
because they always come from your bottom smelly opening
ilovebeeswarzone;
We send out soldiers to die for those who, if given a choice, would kill us with their own hands, because it is the “humanitarian” thing to do, or at least that is what we are told. But if you really understand Islam, you understand that its adherents hold no loyality to any nation when given the choice between a nation and their cultish faith.
And as protests, riots and rebellions spread all across the Middle East, what happens when they get tired of fighting each other? What will be the common bond between Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Libya? One thing; their hatred for Christians and Jews, no matter what nation we live in. It will unite them as one body.
The Shites have been waging war with the Sunni for 1,300 years. That will not end, but the one common bond will be “the enemy of their enemy”.
We are only prolonging the inevitable; a war like none other we have ever seen, in my opinion. With the entrenchment of Muslims in Europe, and the U.S., who will they side with? I do not think it will be the western world that has welcomed them with open arms.
Watch what is happening. We are now learning that the rebels in Libya are being trained by former Gitmo detainees, ones that our government released to a Libyan jail and are now out, and that they are being armed via weapons coming from Egypt, as Egypt is falling to the Muslim Brotherhood.
With Obama in office, who has already said that (and I am paraphrasing here) “if the policital winds change, I will always side with the Muslim” no one asked him WHAT political winds and WHERE, what could possibly go wrong for the U.S.?
Rich, in my opinion it depends on the constitution, not on my opinion. I’m sure bible burning is constitutional and as far as I know flag burning is too. If I’m wrong on that feel free to correct me. I disagree with burning any book. Bible or koran.
r etire05, hi, exactly what I thought, you know what it make me think of a STRATEGY THAT THE RUSSIAN USED WITH NAPOLEON, lure them inside deep in russia and where waiting for them as the harsh winter settle in, and they fell for it, and where slawther by the RUSSAN ARMY,
NOW WE HAVE SEEN THE ARABS GROUPS OF THE UN DEMANDING HELP IN THERE,
THEN WE see OBAMA being lobbyed by those 3 woman to take action, then they refer to the NATO
which are under the UN WORLD ORGANISATION GLOBAL GOAL TO TAKE FULL POWER OF THE GLOBE INCLUDING US, AND WE GULLIBLY OBEYED THAT ORGANISATION, TO PARTICIPATE,
while the ARABS backed up, now we’r in there and they will drag us all around, because we are on their turf surrounded with other governments newly acquire by radical THE BROTHERS,
THAT SPELL DANGER TO DECIMATE OUR OWN BRAVES,
NOW COULD IT HAVE BEEN ORCHESTRATE BY HATER OF AMERICA TO RENDER US VULNERABLE ENOUGH FOR INVADERS TO COME AND IMPOSING THEIR OWN CONSTITUTION,
BACKED UP BY THEIR AGENTS ALREADY IN GOVERNMENT AT ANY LEVEL FROM THE FIRST STEP TO THE TOP,
MataHarley seems concerned about burning the koran and touts the usual line about “to make this a blanket judgment of all Muslims, instead of lunatics who need little provocation to prove they are human cockroaches, is absurd”. I might start to feel this way if muslims showed up in mass numbers in every city around the world protesting against the lunitics and turning in the radicals in their midst. That will not happen because they also agree in their silence. The silent Germans were what allowed Hitler and the Nazi party to gain control and it was also their silence that lead to death camps. How did we stop Hitler? did we sit around and say it is only a few and the german people are not like that? Seems like we said that what the germans were doing was evil and we had to take out the entire country and ban the party from existence forever. The same was true in Japan. We have let Islam hide under a curtain of being a religion of peace even while it has not shown it to be so for its entire existence. Only in the years when it was beat down was it a relgion of peace. The crusades came after hundreds of years of aggression and attack to spread that faith onto the world. Some fools actually think the crusades started Islam on its war like ways. Look at any map of the known world from the time of Islam founding to the first crusade and watch the takeover through war. That is still the goal today and wherever they gain any type of power, they try to push their faith on everyone else by use of force, terror, and violence. Yes, there are muslims in the USA who have fled the other countries poverty, but they set about building mosques and in many of these mosques they support the evil hatreds built into the koran. They remain silent in large numbers about the attacks on our country and our allies. The government now says that the greatest threats are those who are American born muslims to our country. It is spreading around the world and soon they will have full control of a government like Pakistan that has nuclear weapons. It is there dream to have these type of weapons for the ultimate terror threat.
I think the biggest mistake George W. Bush made while standing in the rubble of 9/11 was not to declare war on not only the terrorist, but all who are silent and not against this type of action and put all muslims in the world on notice that they needed to stop it or be declared part of it. You cannot fight a war unless you clearly see and understand the enemy and we now see grandma’s being searched at the airport while muslims who fit the profile are sent through so as to not upset the muslims. It would be like trying to fight only those nazi’s who we can identify agree with Hitler.
I saw burn the korans wherever they are found and force the muslims of peace to get off their butts and get on our side or face the rath of the American people. Make it hard to live here and send money to the terrorists or furnish them shelter. You do not fight wars with both arms tied behind your back and you certainly do not make flying safer by strip searching grandma’s.
rich wheeler, the american flag is not being used as the justification to fly planes into buildings to kill innocent people. We send our troops into war to stop evil and the USA is not evil in any way. The bible is not being used by groups to fly planes into buildings yelling allah akhbar. Over the last decade or so, we have attacked Catholic Priest and named them for the abuse of children. You would think from the number of articles and the open attacks, that all priests were out there doing bad things. it was less than .003% of priests that have served in the last 60 years. And the interesting thing in all those attacks, was that those on the attack to “save our kids” would not acknowledge who was attacking and who was being attacked. Over 80% of the attacks was by priests who were attracted to the same sex and to young men between the ages of 13 and 18 which the homosexual community call twinks. Seems like an important fact to know if saving children from abuse is the goal and not bashing the Catholic Church. Many labeled the problem as Pediphelia which is the attack on children under the age of puberty and while there were some that were, it was not anywhere near the real problem. The problem was ephebophilia. If one searches homosexual and twinks, you will see a massive number of listings for this well known part of the homosexual lifestyle in the attraction to adolescents. This was confirmed in a report called the Jay Report and also in many other studies. But when the Church said they planned to force the seminaries to stop admitting homosexuals, the public put up a cry saying it was not the problem. Of course the reason that they were there in the first place in the priesthood was the liberal wing of the Church starting allowing homosexuals in large numbers to be admitted into a few seminaries and protected them when the acts first occured. All of this is indeed fact. So if we were really interested in saving kids, seems like with this knowledge, we would have an all out effort to seperte those children who are targets of this homosexual community attracted to them and put them all behind bars. But you cannot attack the problem because the gay community and liberals would not allow it even at the expense of children. It is the same crowd that will not allow us to name Islam as the problem despite the ongoing attacks of Islam terrorist around the world for about 40 years. It is why we fight wars with rules of engagment as if war was some panty raid where the objective could be won without really hurting anyone and why the left thought they could handle this by taking the evil ones to court after they acted and after we caught them, gave them their rights, furnished lawers, and made sure if convicted that the jail they went to would be properly equiped with all the latest amenities and of course the Koran and prayer rug. we need a lot of George Pattons, George Marshalls, Omar Bradleys, and commander in cheifs like the war side of FDR (of course he was a socialist domestically). He said only total and unconditional surrender is acceptable and only after we annilate them with everything including firebombing cities, rounding up germans and japs and putting them in camps for the duration, and development and use of an atomic bomb. But we are not mean like that any more. We could have ended the war on terror in about a month if we used the same means and had the same will. Searching grandma makes so much more sense and not naming the enemy and giving aid and comfort to the enemy even in our own cities makes so much more sense. Of course they behead soldiers if they capture our men after giving them real torture. We crings over waterboarding to get info to save lives. Give me a break…
The pastor did nothing wrong. He has every right to express himself.
I see it this way ” A jackass brays in florida and monkies go crazy in whateverstan.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
Perhaps its time to start nuking whateverstan.
Obvious double standard.
Google News:
Who thinks no Korans were damaged in these Mosque bombings?
Me neither.
Greta–
Great lord!
I am a gun totin’, rough enough, 13th generation white son of South Carolina and the old south, veteran of Viet Nam, and amazingly cranky old SOB who doesn’t shock easily but I gotta tell you toots, you got some pretty rigid opinions about things. If by any chance, you have a carry permit for that Desert Eagle you have stuffed in your bra, you might consider that if any ATF read those diatribes and link you, them and your carry permit, it will probably be history and in their righteous indignity, they might throw a net over you when they come to collect the 50 cal intruder persuasion device. Not that during the administration of your First Affirmative Action President there would be anybody like that snooping around on a conservative website but advocating the burning of Korans is enough to give them brown stripes in their skivies at the clench marks!
Thank God for the constitution and the right for you to say what you feel. Just bear with me if I don’t always agree with you.
God bless America, for as long as we can make it last.
You know I have said this to people before..”How many bibles have been burned”? What is the difference between these two religions..One is about love, and the other…you decide.
And yet we have people here and in other countries informing us we should not and will not be allowed to exercise our constitutional freedoms under the guise of hate speech, intolerance or whatever one wants to call it! Burn a Koran, you will be charged with a hate crime. Burn the bible, that’s fine! Criticize Mohamed, you are a hater. Piss Jesus? That’s art!
Why isn’t everyone in this country outraged? LOL! I’m assuming I’ve posted enough here so one can imagine the word outraged doesn’t quite fit what I feel about this nonsense !
One doesn’t have to agree with the Terry Jones (the man is just another self-centered religious bigot) of the world but we sure as hell have to defend his right to do as he did. If I’m supposed to turn the other cheek when some commie bastard burns my flag, I sure as hell need to do the same in this and any other case! As much as I hate to admit it, he is correct on one thing. The idiocy we are now seeing over there does prove one of his points. The intolerance of these religious fanatics is beyond reason.
One other thing here as long as I’m on my soapbox. It is high time the people of this country stand up for their ideals. If I want to draw a satiric cartoon of Mohamed with his virgin harems, that is my right in this country. Yet, we have a rabid element starting with our President that wants to take that and other sacred rights away form us! We have a press who is afraid to offend and as such will not publish the truth about so many things. Personally, I don’t care who worships what! But I sure as hell care when one infringes upon another, especially with violence (Irish take note. Same idiocy there as I’m an equal opportunity disser).
joetote,hi, I have to say, that you can find the right arguments to close a deal
or a dispute among same group of AMERICANS PATRIOTS,
thank you
Dink Newcomb, I must say that the FIRST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PRESIDENT doesn’t live wiT that name, because HE IS THE FIRST NEGATIVES ACTION PRESIDENT EVER TO BE IN HIS JOB.
BYE
Several posters are seriously mistaken about the real and direct cause of 20 deaths now.
Soldiers of Allah caused the deaths, mutilations, beheadings, I think must be absolutely clear to any thoughtful person.
Burning the Damned Koran makes perfect sense, because Islam is the DIRECT CAUSE OF GRINDING POVERTY IN MOST OF THE WORLD, and the DIRECT CAUSE OF UNCOUNTABLE MURDERS, STARVATION, MUTILATIONS, FEMALE CIRCUMCISION, and much more than I can add here.
I plan on having several KORAN BURNINGS MYSELF, as soon as I can find a way to publicize it brilliantly like the previous HERO, Terry Jones, did.
bees,
Thanks!!!!! I try in my own humble way. LOL!
@Dink Newcomb:
Yes, I hold strong beliefs. However, I often seen those who disagree on the attack as opposed to pointing out the errors of what was said. Funny how that works.
Chillguy, great post and I support your effort. You might be disappointed, but certainly not deterred, that CNN will not carry your story, and that the world’s number one Muslim, Barack Hussein Obama, will not approve it. I’m sure you can handle it, however.
It helps to get a better understanding of what we are up against if you just watch the utube video followed by some background on Wikipedia. The pollyanna posters on this board should take a second look and extrapolate for the benefit of our descendants. Folks, Western Civilization is at stake. The wars will start in the streets, as the Frenchman in the video states, and will then escalate to the armies. What could happen if one of the fanatics in a final act of desperation gets to the button before we get to him?
http://www.youtube.com/embed/A3YQANdvvbY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
The UN should have known they would be attacked someday and should have been more prepared. The Germans control that sector and did nothing. If that happened in a U.S. sector, enough Apaches would be overhead that they could be considered their own tribe.
Most Afghans can’t even read the Koran and if you handed them a dictionary and said it was a Koran, they would believe you. They get their information from clerics verbally and the clerics can say anything they want and the people would believe them. Persions and Arabs can be bought to do many things such as show up at funerals as criers, show up at big parties and even protest. Also the Taliban could be members of the protestors and using other protestors as cover.
Terry Jones should be arrested for involuntary manslaughter. He set off a riot that directly caused the deaths of several people. He is Wolf in sheep’s clothing. He does not represent Christianity at all. Quite the opposite.
James Harper, he has the freedom of doing it that is not ban by the CONSTITUTION.
IT’s his way of fighting those radicals, which are the one responsible for their actions,
they cannot control their thoughts or feelings, they will go bazurk on anything they are told to do.this was just one exemple of it, what if we do the same for them burning the FLAG, AND they have burned a lot more . what if we had kill them for it?
villageview3, hi, you know the BIBLE is not allowed in those COUNTRYS,
@ilovebeeswarzone: You are right. He was in fact within his rights to do so but just because a person can do something doesn’t mean they should. In America if you start a riot you are legally responsible. He absolutely knew it would cause rioting and protest. Therefore he is negligent to a degree. That’s the difference between Voluntary and Involuntary manslaughter. The legal definition is simple.
“Most unintentional killings are not murder but involuntary manslaughter. The absence of the element of intent is the key distinguishing factor between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. In most states involuntary manslaughter results from an improper use of reasonable care or skill while performing a legal act, or while committing an act that is unlawful but not felonious”
Therefore he didn’t necessarily have intent to cause another’s death but while doing something that was as you say “legal” it still caused the death of innocent people. Their blood is on his hands.
James harper if a law was made to ban koran burning, it starts riots, then would we also have to make all destruction of religious symbols illegal due to the constitution and its laws against respecting religion? Why not just make media coverage of riot starting, koran burning illegal? That makes just as much sense because the media knew that that would start a riot as much as the pastor. The media is just as responsible as the guy, Should we shut flopping aces down for covering the story?
@Zac: It’s not the coverage of the story that outraged people to the point of violence. It was the act of burning the quran that did it. It would be no difference than if a man were cleared of rape and murder then by his release I angrily started a riot and got people so riled up that someone went and killed him. I could then be held responsible for inciting a riot and also involuntary manslaughter.
As far as I understand he did not intentionally start a riot, that’s like saying that a guy should not speak out as a republican because it gets the democrats all riled up and they trash madison wisconsin. Or maybe black guys should be banned from certain towns because they get the kkk all riled up.
Now if the pastor did it again then maybe…. But I’m not so sure about all this semi-constituional stuff.
@Zac: He knew what the backlash would be. This isn’t the first time for him. He started all this last year. People from all around responded and asked him to reconsider. Even General Petraeus warned that it could jeopardize American troops and asked him to NOT follow through. He absolutely intended to cause an an uprising and now should be held responsible.
It appears to be too late to save Europe.
If we follow the brave leadership of Terry Jones, we may still save North America.
James Harper, those killers alawys justify their killer instinct on some or the other,
look at the muslim who killed at FORT HOOD MANY OF HIS CO GROUPS THAT HE WAS WITH THEM FOR QUITE A WHILE, IT was said that he did not want to be called to go to AFGHANISTAN,
oh ya, what a poor excuse to kill all thoses braves. no sorry but your theory doesn’t work for MUSLIMS.
they cold blood fabricate EID to explode our braves, even some citizen help on it and some bring the family to hide the componants under their clothes, by the way, do you know how many of our own died
with those EIDS WHICH YOU KNOW ARE A CLUSTTER OF BOMBS TIED TOGETHER TO NOT ONLY KILL BUT SHRED TO PIECES, no wonder some of our guys and girls develop THE PSD, in that hell place.
@ilovebeeswarzone: I am not siding with the muslims but I am on the side of the innocent victims.
they start another war, and did not even finish that one, because they dont know how a war should be done, and finish, why then start another one they wont be able to finish, while the BRAVEST
SPILL THEIR BLOOD AND ON TOP OF IT TO SAVE SOME ENNEMIES WHO HATE US, AND WILL COME BACK TO KILL.
James Harper, those victims are on the WARZONE and know it, so how come they had no defences around to protect them. it was a must do,
what isit with the un, are they willingly leave their employees un protected there, they are responsible for their protection.
Muslims maim; muslims kill, and muslims behead if somebody somewhere burns muslim propaganda (and for uncountable other more mysterious reasons).
I am not sure this behaviour can be fixed without some significant intestinal fortitude.
Now is the time for CLEAR THINKING about Islam; else there may be no tomorrow.
These people do not need a real reason to kill. In fact, they are typical of the postmodern world where no one needs to take responsibility for their own actions. Those who embrace postmodern philosophy (primarily the left) enable these murders to kill, “because some ignorant minister burned a book”. These murders get a pass because they were incited! Were they incited to kill innocent people? Maybe the postmodern world has allowed this by excusing the riots following the publication of the Danish Cartoons instead of punishing those who destroyed property and hurt individuals.
Why do civilized people continue to give these people a pass? Why do we not require their governments to punish them or God help us, we may use our power in the world? MAybe we are looking in the wrong place of a scape goat in this incident.
Thanks for telling me that James, to be honest I have never heard of pastor terry before today and usually don’t spend much time focused on such idiots, can you balme me? I looked it up online now. I’m not really aware of that particular law or law in general, so if you have a link I would love to see it, however the incident you described about inciting violence was against a specific individual. A rapist. So its not really the same if no name was mentioned. No actual speech was directed at causing any specific violence so I’m still not sure it hold water. The only sources I can seem to find say it does not.
Randy, I agree. I was pretty uneasy with the talk going around about that cartoon and taking away cartoonist rights. I saw a movie from Iran the other day that was talking about the evil satans from the west and how we don’t wear the hajib. So should all western women wrap themselves in sheets so we don’t offend the muslims? We can’t appease these individuals. Even if we tried.
We are a sovereign nation. Our laws are derived from the Constitution(well, some laws are while others derive from self-serving imbeciles, but that’s another topic). It makes no matter what someone in another country says about actions that our citizens engage in, within U.S. borders.
The burning itself is nothing more than the burning of a book. The fact that it was purposely the Koran is what makes it a freedom of speech issue. Our Constitution guarantees us that right. No other nation, or peoples within other nations, have any business telling our citizens what they can, or cannot do. The fact that muslims in other nations are upset about it, even to the point of killing non-muslims, should show, more than anything, their own disassociation from reality. That is what should be the point of every post here, on other blogs, and every news story in the country on this topic.
I don’t agree with the actions of Pastor Jones. Indeed, he seems to be just as unhinged as the muslim rioters and murderers around the globe who get up in arms over even a simple cartoon. However, I stand behind his right to engage in such acts.
If we, as a country, acquiesce to the demands of muslims around the world, and arrest and try Pastor Jones for his act of burning the Koran, and charge him with crimes committed because of it, then we will have willingly given up ownership of our own rights to free speech and religious freedom.
A quote for those who would wish to acquiesce to muslim demands regarding Pastor Jones:
@Zac: Jones is a jackass! The issue here is that free people have rights. Yes, they are limited. None of us here who hate what Jones did have the right to kill him.
We would be discussing a different issue if those jerks had killed Jones instead of innocent people. We as a country are involved in a military action in Libya because we are supposedly trying to conserve lives. Military action is very costly and sometimes not effective when the effort is not persued to complete the objective.
Wouldn’t it be much better use of our funds to use our political powers to show that we do not support certain behavior in a population and we are willing to enlist the assistance of others to encourage that population to embrace behavior that is acceptable to the rest of the world? They use to know we carried a big stick and we walked and talked softly. All of this radical behavior started when the radical world realized the US was not willing to use their sticks in our bag. Reagan used our sticks to back up his talk. He destroyed the whole USSR. Unfortunately, no one followed up with a world wide strategy to eliminate evil.
I love it when we hear we cannot profile muslims and thus need to strip search grandma at the airport attacking Constitutionally protected free speech of an American citzen becasue Islamist terrorist attack and kill people thousands of miles away. The terrorist Islamist are using this as an excuse to kill which has people wringing their hands. They would not kill innocent people if not provoked in this way. I guess I missed the koran burning before each of the Islamist terror murders over the last 50 years. Yes, I bet the Jewish Olympic team burned Korans in Germany which got them all wee weed up. And the hijacking and murder on airplanes was because of the Koran burners the media must have failed to report. EXCUSE ME. Islamist have not needed a reason for attacking infidels since the damn book was written. I hate it when evil uses the dupes to wring their hands as if it was something else that mad me crazy. Evil people do evil things and those who are fanatics about anything, be it the Japaneses soldiers in WWII on Iwo Jima or the other islands or their kamikaze pilots willing to kill entire ships in suicide missions or the Islamist who flew planes into buildings. Why did Stalin kill millions of people? Did someone make him read the bible which set him off? Hitler used a variety of excuses to do what he wanted to do which was kill Jews. Bet that was the Pope’s fault for not doing more to save people from Hitler when entire countries such as the USA did virtually nothing with all their power to stop Hitler from killing Jews. But why is it not simply there is no excuse for any evil act. When we had riots in our cities, the left went about searching for reasons for the riots. Why not the peole rioting have no morals and what they are doing is evil and no excuse should even be sought? Why can’t we say there is no reason for doing anything except to protect yourself from evil. People screamed at Bush when everyone on the planet thought Iraq had WMD and he would have been insane not to try to hit them after 9/11 before another Islamist was put into the country by the nut to kill Americans?
What they do understand is pain. Hitler got it finally. So did the Japanese after some firebombing and atom bombs. Evil does not stop with UN sanctions which many get around for money or influence or those very nasty wrist slaps the UN is famous for. Barry threats do not get much attention and neither did his apology tour where he trashed the US history as if we were the USSR. We do not seem to be making any headway with Islam is a relgion of peace unless I am missing something. Please enlighten me.
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if the Taliban and anti-American sympathizers propagandized the event to stir up those who are in a perpetual state of thin-skinned rage. I doubt many of the uneducated masses understand the president of the U.S. doesn’t have the authority to simply arrest and stop Terry Jones; nor do they likely receive the news that Obama condemns the burning, or that the U.S. is in the business of mosque-funding and building, or the proportionality of how many actually showed up to participate in the burning vs. how many condemn the act. So they lash out at people serving the UN.
@Nan G #1:
bin Laden and the Taliban are not the same as Islam. They are not the whole representative of the entire faith.
@David Stanley #9: I like it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Koran burnings and desecration takes place regularly all over the world. But with no media to cover it and firebrand imams and Islamists to stir up the masses, the religion of perpetual rage is silent. Like the Danish cartoons that were published before they were propagandized for political objectives.
@Nan G #15:
More specifically, Islamist fundamentalists. Yes, predictable response. Which is why Jones is an ass and I +1 Mata’s earlier opening remark about what to do with Jones.
Should Islamists have more self-control and anger-management than they command? Of course. But knowing that they don’t, knowing that we are fighting insurgencies and battling for hearts and minds in the Islamic world with fellow citizens out on the frontlines, Jones doesn’t have to risk suffering the consequences of his self-serving irresponsibilities. He provides propaganda fodder for the Zawahiris of the world.
The issue of abrogation:
And:
@chillguy33 #18:
Petraeus thanks you for it.
Zawahiri and bin Laden also can’t thank you enough, since they have failed to convince majority Muslims to answer the call to jihad.
@Zac #24:
Yup. And for those Muslims who don’t tow the line of political Islam/radical fundamentalists:
@retire05 #26:
Most “moderate” Muslims are not political activists. And it’s sometimes the case that those who we do wish would speak out, do speak out with insufficient fanfare and coverage.
Nope. I expect Christians to be “better than that”.
The Bible, btw, does not hold the same equivalence of veneration for Christians as the Koran does for Muslims. For Christians, the Holy Bible is not the embodiment of God on earth. That distinction belongs to Christ. For Muslims, it’s their Koran. The living word of God, Himself.
@Nan G #27:
It’s because of “moderates” standing up that so many of them have been slaughtered by their extremist brethren.
I’ve met some Muslims who consider themselves devout; but I’ve never known them to hunt after ex-Muslims for extermination; nor have any ever tried to convert me to their faith. In contrast, I’ve often been invited to Bible studies and preached to by Christians. But let’s not let that ruin the stereotyped caricature of Muslims.
When the vast majority of the 1.5 billion riot over Danish cartoons, celebrate 9/11, lead violent protests over Koran-burnings, then get back to me. In similar fashion, the “huge” demonstrations by the anti-war movement over Iraq and Vietnam never did represent the voice of the silent majority.
I disagree. Groups like Al Qaeda had to resort to the writings of Qutb and Taymiyah to justify their wanton, indiscriminate violence that also narrowly defines who a true Muslim is.
Um….no. It’s because these are the practitioners of the religion of peace. Sheep for the slaughter from the wolves of violent jihadism.
@retire05 #31:
A number of the customs and cultures have more to do with tribalism loyalties and local traditions than religious fanaticism. They pre-date Islam.
@Greta #34:
About a third of all FBI cases that have apprehended a radicalized Muslim has been on account of Muslims turning in radicalized Muslims.
American-born Muslims are less likely to be radicalized; but those who are do pose a greater danger than non-American RADICAL muslims.
So…the same Muslim governments Zawahiri and bin Laden and the global jihad movement oppose…you think it would have been a good idea to alienate? War with not just Iran and Syria, but Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan? Yemen? Jordan? Turkey? Indonesia? Any and all Muslim countries? Not good enough for the Islamists and not good enough for us but you wish to push them into the loving embrace of the Islamists?
I’m not so sure that you do see who the enemy is.
Profiling would be more efficient than a one-size-fits-all nondiscriminatory procedure.
Yeah, burn the book that the “muslims of peace” also revere. That will get on their good side, alright. As if they aren’t already feeling the “wrath of the American people” these days. I used to think that CAIR and the pc police were overexaggerating the Muslim victimization in this country; but these days, I’m not so sure they don’t have a point.
You want to encourage sympathy for the global jihad movement? Play pawn in the hands of bin Laden and Zawahiri’s desire to pitch us into a clash of civilizations and a war of religions? Keep spouting the anti-Islamic rhetoric that doesn’t discriminate but lumps all under one religious roof.
@Greta #35:
No, but from their vantage point, it’s used to justify American foreign policy, of which the anti-American radical extremists believe does kill innocent people and the persecution of Muslims. Much of the rhetoric in bin Laden/Zawahiri statements has as much to do with politics and foreign policy issues, enveloped in the language of religion. The two are intertwined; but it weren’t Islam, there would be something else replacing it to perpetuate all the conflicts that go on between nations and people.
So….what? Nuke Mecca and Medina? When a slim minority are actually global jihadis, a minority are jihadi sympathizers and apologists, and a sizable minority are radical Islamist fundamentalists, militants, and violent extremists?
@Coldwarrior57 #36:
He has the right, but not the wisdom. It’s throwing gasoline onto a fire, knowing predictable results and being able to say, “Hey….those 20 dead aren’t my fault. I’m not the killer. I’m just making a point.”
What a frickin’ dick. Just as useful an idiot to Islamist propaganda as Code Pink protesting our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just as dangerous to our soldiers’ lives as RoE.
@Nan G #37:
Absolutely.
@villageview3 #39:
As I mentioned earlier, how the Bible is perceived is different for Christians than how the Koran is revered by Muslims. Burning one hurts all Muslims and enrages the reactionary radicals.
@chillguy33 #43:
I believe that much of the dysfunction that accounts for 3rd world countries would still be present even had Islam never arisen as a religion.
Yes, I’m sure that will show them! Act on your emotions! Show them your rage and intolerance for hatred! It will teach all of us valuable lessons and make the world a better place to live in.
@atti #46:
Yeah, I’m sure CNN wouldn’t carry the story.
@Gregory_Dittman #48:
Bingo.
@Zac #53:
When I heard Jones was going to go through with the Koran burning, with about 35 attending, I had hopes it would pass in obscurity and not be picked up as news-worthy. Well, since the can is off the lid, the story’s worth covering and offering “counter-propaganda” to the one espoused by Islamists. Much like Abu Ghraib, the der Spiegel photos, alleged Koran flushing, etc, etc.
@Zac #55: I agree with Harper that he knew full well what the results would be. He was looking for it to happen in order to prove his point to the world that the Koran is an evil book of the devil.
As mentioned earlier:
@Cann #8:
That’s the finest post I’ve ever read wordsmith!
@Wordsmith:
I second what Zac says, although I’m feeling left out, lol.
Wordsmith, yes very good comment as you always try to keep us into perspective;
there is one part that bother me, AFGHANISTAN is where the war is being ACTED,
NOW THE GENERAL ,warn AMERICA that the troops would be targetted if so would happen,
that ‘s what is not normal to me,
that is a war, there are our militarys to fight the war, those killers are our ennemies,
the military aren’t they on constant alert for any uprising the ennemies would start?
don’t they have their weapon always in readyness of active combats?
we are separated by a long shot, and they are there to finish that war and come back to their loved one ,
and nothing else for our military to do beside finishing the war,
that is what they suppose to do, to be normalizing the reality of all these last years
of total hells for them to have lived and bleed and brain shocking and disability and death.
Would I be right to beleive that they have been put and left there for any other reason than to be able to come back sane and safe? is there a possibility that the leadership want to eliminate our militarys so to replace them by an civil army dedicated to him alone instead of to THOSE WHO HAVE swear their oath to the CONSTITUTION?
Islam murders and riots over the burning of a Koran ? Then how many muslims should we have killed for the 9/11 attack and 3000 dead AMERICANS ?????????
wordsmith, basically what I got out of your [far too] lengthy post is that since burning a Qu’ran is an insult to ALL Muslims, it must not be done, even though our own laws permit it. Basically, what you are offering is policital correct claptrap.
Burning a Bible is equally insulting to Christians, but we do not go on a killing spree when Muslims burn the Bible, or use it for toilet paper. No one was harmed with the release of PissChrist, or the Madonna in camel dung, yet, I am sure if you questioned every Christian in existance, they would tell you that they were insulted by those “works of art” as well as the burning of the Bible by Muslims and using it for toilet paper. And you also claim that the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden, are not representitive of the Islamic faith. You give them a label (fundalmentalists). Yet, you cannot prove that they misrepresent Islam, as the Qu’ran backs them up.
What you have basically done is provide an excuse to those who murdered others due to their perceived insult. How sad. But then, that is the PC stance that most accept, at least those who want to make excuses for others. I, myself, am sick of it.
Your entry is far too lengthy for me to address every point, but the only thing I can think is that you are willing to accept the rules laid out by those who want to conquer the world for their religion. It is time to stop making excuses and realize that those who live in the 7th century will NEVER see peace or harmony nor will they want to grant it to others.
Salmon Rushdie wrote many books of fiction using Islam for a backdrop.
The Satanic Verses was fiction but based on those verses IN THE KORAN where Mohammad admitted he lied in the Koran and also claimed he allowed demons to affect what he wrote in the Koran.
Mohammad admitted to not being able to tell a demon from ”Allah.”
Rushdie’s book merely spread that fact about Mohammad around to folks who otherwise might never known it.
Quite a while after the book was out Iran’s charismatic Ayatollah issued a fatwa so that killing or trying to kill Rushdie was a ticket straight to Islamic Paradise no matter what other wicked things the killer might have done.
A lot of Muslims look at fulfilling a fatwa as a way to go ahead and be bad in life yet still be rewarded with Paradise.
Over 53 people died because various Muslims tried to kill Rushdie.
All collateral damage, as Rushdie was fairly elusive.
Was it Rushdie’s fault?
Should HE be held responsible for those deaths?
The book publishers?
Should we all give up Freedom of the Press so that it can never happen again?
And those Danish cartoons.
They didn’t cause riots.
There were 12 of them, all fairly tame.
All of them were published in Denmark and months went by with no ill effect.
All 12 were published in Egypt and months went by with no ill effect.
BUT then a couple of charismatic imams added 3 more fake cartoons to the mix and went on a tour of Islamic centers with all 15 cartoons.
Only after that did people run rampant.
Over 200 dead from those so-called ”cartoon riots.”
Who is responsible?
The Danish paper?
The Egyptian paper?
The Danish cartoonists?
The fake cartoonists?
The imams?
The rioters?
Should we really curtail our own freedoms, won with the blood of so many?
Or should we address the real problem.
Charismatic Muslim liars who take leadership roles and who desire riots and rage for their own selfish reasons.
THEY should be held accountable, if anyone other than the actual killers.
Nan, thank you. Let the pollyannas eat cupcakes.
@retire05:
Nope. You have the freedom to do as you will. Just because Muslims revere the Koran, doesn’t mean you’re under the same “obligation”. They have no right to demand it of others.
Somewhere between the political correct pt. of view and the right-wing extremist/anti-Islam pt. of view, there should be some middle ground of reason that doesn’t go off the deep end of hyperbole and exaggeration.
Burning Korans achieves nothing. It saddens the ones who do take the koran seriously but who will not resort to violence; it inflames those you are wanting to inflame and incite; and it plays right into the hands of Zawahiri and bin Laden who want to convince the Muslim world that this is a clash of civilizations and they want all Muslims to rise up and answer their clarion call to jihad- forget that they have no authority to issue fatwas at all. Burning Korans simply gives them propaganda fodder (not that they need excuses for fueling anti-American sentiments amongst those who are already resentful and suspicious of us).
I disagree. Again, for those drawing parallels, moral equivalence, hypocrisy between flag/koran/bible-burning, there is a difference.
Flags are revered by American patriots, symbolizing so much; but we still understand that it is also still just a piece of cloth. The Bible carries with it the message of God, but was not written by God. If copies of it are destroyed, abused, written on, defaced, mishandled, or so much as gets a blemish or a page bent, Christians don’t even bat an eyelash (although the way some are carrying on, you’d think they’d want to behave as the Islamists do, in a perpetual state of rage and indignation).
The Koran is different (in the eyes of a devout Muslim at any rate, and not only because he is religiously partisan). The Koran is elevated in a way that is unique to their faith. When a Koran is desecrated, it is not the same as destroying a Christian Bible; it is not the same as bombing a mosque. Sure, for the religion of perpetual rage, you’ll find those thin-skinned who will riot over the most insignificant slight against Islam (insignificant to us). They will find outrage over any little slight making mountains out of molehills (as Nan points out). But who are “they”? “They” are not majority Muslims carrying on in violent protest (aren’t peaceful protests okay, though?).
This isn’t me saying that one book is superior to another. It’s me restating that for Muslims, the Koran is the embodiment of God himself (at least in the original classic Arabic). For Christians, it’s not the Bible but Jesus Christ who is the embodiment of God on earth.
Now for us, any Koran is simply so much paper and ink and Muslim belief should not be imposed upon any of us. If they choose to believe it is the living word of God, fine. But their beliefs and laws should not infringe upon us. That said, it speaks well of us if we treat others the way we wish to be treated- that is, be respectful of our beliefs and we will respect your beliefs. Give respect to get back respect.
Of course, Islamists and Jihadis are anything but tolerant and respectful of our beliefs. But they aren’t the only ones who revere the Koran. Do you follow? I don’t expect agreement here. Just clarity and understanding of the position that I’m taking.
Yes, because Christians are “more mature” than majority Islamists who are in a perpetual state of rage. We are “better than that”.
Christians do protest, and they do so peaceably. (And we should distinguish between those Muslims who also protest peaceably from those who do so with violence).
The Koran does not give them justification for the killing of innocents and the slaughter of other Muslims. As I said before, they had to justify al Qaeda and takfiri violence by referring to the works of Sayyid Qutb and Taymiyyah. The Koran alone does not condone their brutality and many peaceful Muslims have vociferously condemned al Qaeda and jihadi violence as counter to Islam (at least as how they choose to practice their faith).
Labeling those who disagree with you on this topic as merely towing the pc line is a cop out. Think about the merits of my points rather than knee-jerk the anti-pc party line.
I’ve followed Jihad Watch and Spencer, Andrew McCarthy, FA, and all the anti-Islamic rhetoric on conservative blogs for years, now. I’m still the same guy who pieced this together. So dismissing me as just some pc-crap pusher is rather insulting. I’ve simply evolved away from some of the hard-line, anti-Islam rhetoric so prevalent in the conservative sphere. Not all, but some. I’m hardly a fan of Islam (and I’ve been a strong advocate for the American Judeo-Christian traditions and heritage of our nation- I think that’s how Curt first took notice of me).
If you merely think I’m being a Muslim apologist, then yes, my words are wasted on you.
Hey wordsmith, I’m not particularly a fan of islam ether but there is people on these websites calling for genocide or nuking these people, its crazy!. I think that’s what the coward terrorists do, when they kill innocent people that’s exactly what they do. I left this conversation yesterday, its to much for me. But thanks for your input.
Thanks, Zac (and bees and John Galt for your earlier compliments, even as I know we may disagree on points). We should be vigilante about becoming what we profess to hate. Otherwise, we become predictable pawns in the al Qaeda playbook.
We have soldiers fighting alongside Muslim allies against the common threat posed by al Qaeda and affiliates, the Taliban, and violent Islamist militants. They are not our enemies (the ones who are fighting against jihadis and extremists). Should we alienate them?
If all you ever read is anti-Islam opinions and books, is it any wonder when you find validation and reinforcement for your educated prejudices? Those beliefs and opinions only become further entrenched.
Balance it out, once in a while…
@Greta:
I apologise for any inability to categorically refute everything you say that I take exception to (perhaps you should provoke Wordsmith’s attention- he seems more than adequate to the task). I am not dull witted nor am I an inarticulate man but I have neither the patience nor the concentration to even follow your chain of thought as it leaps from one issue to another trying to create a unified theory of evil.
A small sample:
Somehow you manage to tie lethal attacks by Muslim whackjobs to the people who tried to make the Catholic Church as accountable as you want the Muslims to be. The outrage over this situation in the church was always less for the act itself and vastly more for the CHURCH hiding and protecting the priests involved. In my mind, all you have proven is that the Catholics have lost sight of what Christ was teaching and have devolved into a political mockery of what it started out as.
Christ says:
but these are exactly the people bullied by the church IN CHRIST’S NAME for centuries.
The Catholic church has millenia of momentum and a huge political machine to bend the world to its will and long ago, probably as soon as Christ died and a new “leader” took over, politics became increasingly more important and Christ’s message less so.
Yes, I am directly comparing that church and most others to the evil in Islam, with similar scoundrals and degenerates goading “believers” into doing their will. The main reason that we don’t commit those overt acts is due to the culture, not the church. I have no issues with Christ, merely misdeeds of the organizations who claim to have a pipeline direct to him that absolves them of any responsibility.
The fact of the matter about that distasteful preacher is that while there may be no federal laws he broke, there ARE civil limits to our right to free speech– standing up in the middle of a dark theater and screaming “FIRE! FIRE! SOMEONE CALL 911!” and having people die or get injured in the resulting melee will probably get you arrested. Rightfully so.
@ilovebeeswarzone:
You got that right Bees!!! My point in calling him that, exactly. This country has been getting the ol’ affirmative action enema for way too long and its time we found another way to bring willful savages into reality.
All Muslims, rich or poor, who are going to perform jihad should do it now, please. And we know that all Muslims are called by the holy book which was not written by Mohammed because it is continuously self contradictory so it must have been written directly by Allah.
Many muslims are called to Jihad, and they should do it now. Mohammed and Allah command it. The outrages of the infidels drawing cartoons of Mohammed are unbearable and require all Islam to burn them out – burn their females out, and burn their children out; burn their animals out. Mutilate their corpses again and again.
Muslims, do not wait to perform Jihad; you are shirking the duty given you direct from Allah, through Mohammed but also not through Mohammed.
The call to Jihad is NOW, muslims. The crusader is on the front doorstep; he is on the back doorstep, and he is coming down the chimney.
You have no hope else you carry out jihad now.
Allahu Akhbar.
chillguy33. hi, now what make you say that, If I didn’t know you from your other smarts comments,
I would think that you are the one reciting those awfull words, evil words.
but I know It doesn’t come from you, so why bring it up now?
Thanks for the kind request. To answer briefly, I have female grandchildren, and Islam is rapidly encroaching on the civilized world.
We should encourage them to carry out their jihad now; and I know the cartoons of Mohammed and the burning of the book of the sanctimonious has been a horrible outrage. Do it now, muslims.
Thank you.
wordsmith, excuse it anyway you want, but what you are saying is that the Qu’ran holds more value to Muslims than the Bible holds to Christians so that makes the burning of the Qu’ran a more grievous act than the burning of a Bible. Bullshit. Christians hold the Bible with the same reverance as Muslims hold the Qu’ran.
You also say that the Qu’ran does not justify the killing of innocents. I disagree. As the dictates of the Qu’ran shows, there are no innocents if they do not follow Allah. Mohammed justified the killing of innocents because of their refusal to follow his teachings, which he claimed to be the word of God.
I am not going to dispute everything you said (as you are far too windy), but to claim that the violence we see in Islam is only a small portion of the followers of Islam, is propably the dumbest thing you have said. I suggest you read more of Zuhdi Jasser’s writings. Perhaps he can straighten you out.
By your standards, if I hold a gun to your head, and demand all your money, and you refuse to give it to me and I shoot you, you have basically committed murder against yourself as I had no choice but to shoot you in order to get your money but you did have the choice to give it to me.
@retire05:
Nope. Not what I’m saying.
The Quran holds value to Muslims. The Bible does for Christians. But what it represents is different for each group. They are not equivalent, just because they are both books. For Muslims, the Koran is the embodiment of God on earth; for Christians it is not the Bible, but Christ. That’s not “excusing” the bad behavior. It’s explaining that the level of meaning each holds is different for each group.
There is no consensus view even amongst Islamists and jihadis on what the Koran allows and disallows.
Even referencing Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which is the definitive account of al Qaeda’s geneology, you will find that fundamentalists and members of al Qaeda disagreed with Zawahiri and bin Laden on what is permissible under Islam; on who they could and could not kill. There was disagreement and argument. And you will find “moderates” and different branches of Islam in disagreement with the salafis, the wahhabis, and jihadism. Their “religion of peace” version is no more invalid than allowing the fundamentalists of “the religion of perpetual rage” define Islam, nor the jihadis.
I got to shake hands with the man 4 years ago. I think even Andrew McCarthy has stated that the troublemakers in Islam are a sizable minority, but a minority, nevertheless.
3,000 rioters do not represent 1.5 billion Muslims all across the globe.
And I think you’d do well to read more Jasser, who considers himself a devout Muslim as well as patriotic American who believes in the Constitution and in the separation of Mosque and State.
Your intolerance and personal animosity toward Islam makes you fail to understand anything I’ve said. You are hearing what you have conditioned yourself to hear.
The killers of the UN workers and fellow Afghans, who had nothing to do with Terry Jones, are directly responsible for the murders.
But shouting fire in a crowded theater and then acting shocked should anyone be trampled to death in the predictable ensuing result is just asinine. We all know that Islamists have an anger management problem. We don’t need the throwing of gasoline on the fire to already be aware of it.
Hey, why not encourage der Spiegel to run all 4,000 photos and video footage just to see what the reaction will be in the Muslim world?
bin Laden and Zawahiri thank you for buying into their clash of civilizations narrative. Perhaps you’ll succeed where they have failed in rallying the Islamic world around their banner and calls to jihad.
@Wordsmith:
There is no consistency because so much of the conflicts has to do with geopolitics and political power and activism than with faithfulness to a religion. One of the things Wright mentions in his book is how so few members of al Qaeda actually have extensive religious training. They are zealots, but “theological amateurs”.
@retire05 #75:
You’re welcome
@retire05 #86:
That’s fine.
Just stick to amen choruses and echo chambers. Be selective in choosing only what you wish to hear. Belittle and be dismissive of those with whom you disagree.
@Wordsmith: Very good series of posts. One of the mistakes we in the west often make is looking at situations through our perspectives. Mohammed sought world domination as his legacy. The Quran allows those who wish to achieve that legacy by murdering those who leave Islam and those who refuse to accept Oslam. Fortunately, there are those who do not subscribe to those portions of the Quran.
I have many Moslem friends in Iraq. Some even fought against the radicals. They were ashamed of the atrocities that were being performed in the name of Islam. Some fought side by side with us. Others tried to stay alive by not participating.
retire05, hi, you came in with a very important WORD WHICH IS “EXCUSE’,
THEY WILL USE ANY EXCUSE TO RAMPAGE UNDER THAT COVER IN ORDER TO KILL SOME NON BELEIVERS, THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE between US and THEM,
they where the same as they are today, no change, no evolution of the mind, no
questionning of what is right or wrong maybe some have detach themself from the group but they still belong and protect their other because it’s family, even their roots are lost within their many procreation along the years of rigid force obediance, they have evolved with a killing instinct that make them a dangerous human to trust for many more generations by the FREE WORLD.
“3,000 rioters do not represent 1.5 billion Muslims all across the globe.”
This was wordsmith’s statement to show to me that the opinions of the rioting Afghans is not the same as the rest of the Muslims all across the globe. You see, according to wordsmith, who knows nothing about me, I am illiterate in the ways of Islam so he intends to educate me.
But it is not just the 3,000 rioters in Afghanistan, it is the 3,000 rioters in Egypt that are now willing to accept the “morality” police of the Muslim Brotherhood, the 3,000 rioters in Palestine, who put AK-47s in the hands of their children teaching them to shout “Death to Israel, Death to America”, it is the 3,000 rioters in Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, and all nations across the Middle East that are willing to be driven to violence due to any perceived insult, be it real, or bogus.
Wordsmith’s excuses are exactly the same excuse that other panderers have used in the past (You don’t understand what it is like to be Black because you are not black, you can’t understand what it is like to be an illegal immigrant from Honduras because you are not Hispanic, yada, yada, yada.) Wordsmith then goes on to say that ObL and Zawahiri thank me as I am part of the problem. This is the same excuse the left has used for a decade. You know, how if there was no Gitmo, there would be no new terrorists because Gitmo creates more terrorists.
Sorry, wordsmith, that dog won’t hunt.
There have been Islamic terrorists since the days of the prophet. And it was not due to anything done by the United States, or even the European nations. Terrorism is a tactic, a method to get your enemy to cave to your demands. Nothing more, nothing less. Did Mohammed Atta organize his band of faithful because someone burned a Qu’ran? Did the Islamists blow up the Marine barracks because of a cartoon?
Here is the bottom line, wordsmith. Terry Jones burned a copy of a Qu’ran on his own property that he had paid for with his own money. It was his to do with as he wished. Do I agree with his actions? No. As I said, I would not burn any book, even Bill Clinton’s fairy tale biography. But do I stand by his right to do it? You betcha. And I am NOT going to make excuses for the cretins that were riled up by a bunch of self-serving Imams in Afghanistan who, after Karzi’s speech that told of Jones’ actions, went on to tell the faithful there that “hundreds” of Qu’rans were burned in the U.S.
I understand that Islam is not just a religion. It is a political, social, religious belief system that encompases every aspect of a Muslim’s life. And I also understand that it is NOT the “religion of peace” that so many want us to believe it is. And Jasser is correct that until there is a reformation of Islam, until the political is separated from the religious, there will be no peace within the faithful.
So you can rant all you want about how buring a Qu’ran is so much more insulting than burning a Bible, but you will remain wrong. It only seems that way because Christians don’ become violent when Bibles are burned. And the Qu’ran is no more the word of God than the Bible is as there are those who believe that Jesus was the human form of God, and the words of Jesus are contained, many times, in the New Testament. If they are not the words of God, then what are they? Nor is the Qu’ran the word of God, as God never spoke to Mohammed. Mohammed never even claimed God spoke to him, but rather the words of God were given to him by an angel.
Nan G, yes you got it right to the point, and you say it better than me too.on 75
No understanding of the finer points of how Islam works leads people to minimize the ”only a few jihadists compared with so many nice Muslims,” when there is a simple and Koranic explanation for this.
The Koran teaches adherents two types of commandments.
One (Fard Ayn) is a personal commandment, like ”you do this,” or ”you never do that.”
The other (Fard Kifayah) is a commandment on the congregation, like ”cough up a person to do this for the group.”
Jihadis come out from the 2nd type of commandment.
That’s also why you have read about people giving their sons to al Qaeda or to the Taliban so as to become suicide bombers.
(One boy was given to the Pakistani Taliban and indoctrinated.
By the age of 14 he was so brainwashed that even when his bomb only blew off his own hand he was still screming to be allowed to die killing the people (and police who guard them) at the Dera Ghazi Khan shrine in Pakistan.
That boy, had he died, would, according to the brainwashing he got and words of the Koran, itself, have made Allah happy with his entire family, maybe entire congregation.)
Nan G, hi, your comment lead me to wonder how dangerous INDOCTRINATION IS, AND HOW DEEP IT CAN GET IN A BRAIN, I say looking at their beleifs and behaviors, that INDOCTRINATION ALTER THE BRAIN FONCTIONS AS DEEP AS TO THE CORE OF THE SPIRIT, call it ying yang, call it positive negative that a normal brain function helping to be rational or accusing, the function that protect a person by giving he the gutts feeling to know some danger or to discard an action he see as not threathening.
they have lost those functions over centurys of INDROCTINATION AND WITTNESS TO MURDER BY THEMSELF OR THEIR OWN BROTHERS, THEY ARE DESENSITHYSED AS DEEP AS THEIR CORE SPIRITS,
And I doubt of a possible recovery, as we have witness at FORT HOOD, A MUSLIM RAISE AS AN AMERICAN REDISCOVER HIS KILLING SPIRIT WHEN HE WAS CONFRONTED TO GO IN AFGHANISTAN TO FIGHT FOR AMERICA, THEN HIS CORE BELEIF REEMERGE TO MAKE HIM KILL OUR OWN
WHICH HAD PROVIDE HIM WITH THEIR FRIENDSHIP,
I wonder if there is scientists researching on this factor, so to to find a counter indoctrination
to provide our own citizens mostly young who get taken by their words of false peace goal toward the whole world. because it seems that when they are in, that means already to far to be help.
@Randy – that there exist some OK muslims is not the subject of this discussion, obviously.
Everybody accepts that there are OK muslims.
Unfortunately that does not restore missing feet, heads, and hands to the victims of islam.
@chillguy33:
Every muslim is DAMAGED by Islam, Chillguy.
They can be OK sure. But they and their children are DAMAGED.
@chillguy33:
Not only that, Chillguy, the more islam the muslim is subjected to, than the more damage that is done to the muslim! Muslims should be SUEING Islam, not propagating it.
@chillguy33: The point was that the OK Muslims are as much a victim of radical Islam as non-Moslems.
@ilovebeeswarzone:
What a great comment, bees.
There are a couple of mental health experts with expertise also in Islam who have weighed in on how the Muslim mind works.
One is ex-Muslim and psychiatrist, Dr. Wafa Sultan.
Her book, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam, builds from her background as a psychiatrist to explain how especially what we call extremist Islam gets into the minds of youngsters.
It is probably available at your library.
On February 21, 2006, she took part in Al Jazeera’s weekly 45-minute discussion program The Opposite Direction.
She spoke from Los Angeles, arguing with host Faisal al-Qassem and with Ibrahim Al-Khouli, a professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo (Egypt), about Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory.
A six minute composite video of her remarks was subtitled and widely circulated by MEMRI on blogs and through e-mail;
The New York Times estimated that it has been seen at least one million times.
In this video she criticised Muslims for treating non-Muslims differently, and for not recognizing the accomplishments of Jewish and other members of non-Muslim society while using their wealth and technology.
The video was the most discussed video of all time with over 260,000 comments on the video-sharing website YouTube.
The full transcript of the debate which was made public later, also raised many online discussions.
~~~~~~~~
Another writer is Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psychoanalyst with a Ph.D. in romance and semitic languages, specializing in Aljamía and Old Spanish in Arabic script.
She is an expert on the Minnesota Somali diaspora and a graduate of the Human Terrain System program at Leavenworth Kansas.
Her book is The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing.
She is interviewed here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Starting on this page you can peruse many interviews with others who have some expertise in this same are.
they are killers on a rampage evry time they are called upon, and who call them to action always choose an excuse to blame the AMERICA, and worse of all KARZEI LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT,
Nan G, thank you, I will certainly look into it, and the book also, thank’s
for those link too.
@retire05:
I don’t believe you are illiterate “in the ways of Islam”. What I do assume, based upon your comments, is that you are over-educated in a lopsided manner, partisanly gravitating toward anything and everything that supports what you have already decided in regards to Islam.
And what I am saying is that much of that would still be going on even in the absence of a religion known as “Islam”. That it is more than just “kill infidels” “hate Jews and Christians” over religious differences. The conflicts are magnified and intensified by religious loyalties/identities and those who manipulate using religion. And yes, Islam does have troubling issues inherent within it that “moderates” need to accept and come to terms with rather than ignore/pretend they don’t exist.
Perhaps. But there is also truth in that perspective. You don’t really know what it’s like to be living life outside of your own skin and perspective. That’s what empathy is for. Putting yourself in another’s shoes does not mean in the end you agree with the validity of the other person’s perspective. It just deepens your understanding of where that person is coming from. Of what drives and motivates. Saying it is simply all due to the teachings of the Koran is something I find too simplistic and broad-brushing.
This is where I think you epic fail to understand my point. It’s easier for you to simply dismiss my position (and the insult of implying that you are doing Zawahiri’s bidding) as a leftist position. And your Gitmo comparison supports the fact that you dont’ get the point, since the analogy you’re using is way off the bullseye.
bin Laden and Zawahiri wished to convince the Muslim world that they are at war with the West. Or more specifically, that their problems and dysfunctions are due to western influence, persecution of Muslims, past colonialism, and support of corrupt, non-Islamic (secularized/non-Islamic enough) regimes.
They failed in rallying most Muslims to Jihad. Sure, many Muslims sympathize because they feel the same anger and criticism of American foreign policy as Howard Zinn and Ward Churchill liberals do; and they do so from a perspective of identifying with those who share their religious, ethnic, and/or cultural identity. But anti-Americanism alone is not a crime and does not make Muslims into terrorists. They are no different than European anti-Americans and some liberals in this country.
There are also those Muslims who are fundamentalists, whose lifestyle and beliefs we want no part of. Doesn’t make them terrorists. Some have even publicly rejected jihadism as counter-productive to the spread of Islam. This is why Zawahiri had harsh words for, say, the Muslim Brotherhood, and vice versa. Zawahiri believes that violent jihad is the route to go; someone like Sayyid Imam al-Sharif thinks it’s brought harm to Islam (it has) and rejects it. Neither’s vision is palatable to us. But I can live in a world of religious differences so long as those differences aren’t forced upon me; especially through violence.
The puritanical strain of Islamic fundamentalists (such as wahhabis, salafists, and the Taliban and the Iranian regime) are who we should be worried about, along with those who take up the romanticized notions of jihadism and martyrdom.
This is not the way most Muslims live their lives. They don’t go around trying to convert or kill infidels and kaffirs. And they practice their Islamic faith peacefully.
*woof* *woof*
Islam has a violent past, but I’m thinking your views on its history are partisanly lopsided. Because I’m “so windy”, I’m pretty sure you didn’t even bother to click on this. You’re so entrenched, you are bringing strawman points to the table better reserved to those you’re used to arguing with- pc- liberals and apologists for Islamic terror.
Yes, bin Laden and Zawahiri would find excuses for fueling anti-American resentment even if we were not occupying the Arabian penninsula, supporting Israel, invading Muslim lands, etc. Everything is propagandized to breed anti-American feelings and garner support for their desire to establish and pan-Islamic caliphate. But for some of their foot-soldiers, it really is about Israel-Palestine, protection of their lands and ethnic ties, politics, etc. moreso than because they want to “spread Islam by the sword”.
In a sense, yes. Their political activism into embracing jihadism didn’t begin in a vacuum.
I’m a strong believer in American exceptionalism and an advocate of America exercising her influence abroad and flexing a muscular foreign policy. However, not everyone is going to feel positive vibes and warm fuzzies over our influence and positioning in world affairs.
Mohammed Atta, for example, seethed over perceived slights- the 1st Gulf War, our support of Israel when so many in the Muslim world see the issue as an injustice against Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims. It was a 1996 Israeli attack in Lebanon that “radicalized” him into signing his life away to martyrdom.
What we have from radicalized Muslims is (mis)perceived injuries and attacks against fellow Muslims. I do agree that if it weren’t Israel, however, there’d still be problems arising from the Islamic faith; but it’d come from the same fundamentalists who are wrecking havoc today in the world we live.
So where in anything I’ve written have I shown disagreement with that position? I haven’t. You’ve been projecting onto me the argument you choose to hear and shoot down. A straw man. This is why I’ve stated that I don’t believe you are actually understanding my points and position.
This is part of the deeper point: Jones’ irresponsible act had predictable results. Namely, that such a small, “insignificant” act participated in by 30-5o people, with enough media attention, becomes overblown and propagandized by our enemies. And the readily gullible, many who already are angry at the U.S. over drone attacks killing innocents and carry misperceptions over U.S. and NATO forces killing innocent Afghans (even though 2/3rds are being killed by the Taliban), are whipped up into a frenzy. Mobs turn violent. It is all a predictable pattern. It’s why President Obama and General Petraeus publicly condemned the act; it’s why the U.S. government has tried to prevent the release of photos and stories of atrocities committed by our side. bin Laden has said that 90% of the war is fought on the information front.
Those who practice the religion of perpetual rage don’t need a Terry Jones event to find something to hate us for. But Terry Jones does no favors by throwing gasoline onto the fire.
Agreed. Unfortunately, wahhabism was one form of reformation that Islam underwent. Certainly not the type of reformation it needs to get along with the rest of civilization in the 21st century.
Oh, was I “ranting”?
I thought you were the one sounding awfully huffy and indignant. I’m the one who wanted to engage with you in civil disagreement. You sounded impatient to move along, yet just couldn’t resist following up and replying, could ya? 
I do thank you for your time. Respectfully and honestly, I do.
I’m not saying it is. And for me, personally, both are just material objects.
I said earlier that it’s to the credit of a “more mature” religion that Christians don’t go about rioting and going all violent crusadist over Bible-burning or a Piss Christ, or an irreverent South Park episode poking fun at Christians. Most Christians can laugh at themselves and lighten up; or protest and express their displeasure peaceably.
But I also stand by my earlier point: That the Books are perceived differently by each of the respective faiths. They don’t have the same equivalence.
Yes, the words of God transmitted through Gabriel, revealed to Mohammed, recited to his followers who eventually wrote them down (with majority Muslim view believing they were remembered and written faithfully close to the time they were revealed, although others say a century after Mohammed’s death). For Muslims, the Koran in the original classic Arabic is the very literal word of God, written in 1st person narrative, containing the actual words spoken by God. Not just divinely inspired words, but divine words.
For better or for worse, I just don’t see Christians projecting this same level of reverence and regard over the Bible. And that’s not a put down or to imply Christians don’t take their Holy Book or their faith less seriously.
Wordsmith, the difference is that the MUSLIMS HAVE RADICAL PERSONALITY INGRAINED IN THEM BY CENTURY O F OPRESSION AND HATE SPEECHS AGAINST THE ONES THAT HAS EVOLVED.
they look at their books like it dictate to them and leave no alternative.
on this side is a people without being dictated to read the BIBLE BUT ARE DOING IT FREELY TAKING THE BEST IN IT INTO THEIR EVERYDAY LIFE AND FINDING RESOURCES WORDS TO TEACH LOVE AND BUILDING THEIR CHILDREN’S JUDGEMENT AS A SOLID BASE FOR THEIR FUTURE TESTING TIME,
BUT THE BIBLE is revered by CHRISTIANS AS WELL BUT THEY HAVE THE TOLERANCE
INGRAINED IN THEIR CORE BELIEF THAT THE 10 COMMANDMENTS HAS TEACHED THEM
IN THE BIBLE. WHICH IS; THOU SHALL NOT KILL
LOL!
Christians are dying for their faith, reverence and regard for the Bible all over the world, Wordsmith.
But as to killing because someone burned a book?
No way!
Christians are warned not to fall into any form of idolatry.
In Acts (17:29) we are told that God is not like any creation at the hands of a human.
In 1 Corinthians 10:14 we are warned to flee from idolatry. (Also at 1 John 5:21)
Jesus is quoted by John (at John 4) as teaching that God’s approved form to be worshiped is in spirit and truth, not at a certain mountain, not at a certain place.
~~~~~~~~
I argue, over and over again, that although Muslims claim they worship the same god as the one for the Jews and the Christians, they are wrong in that.
The God of the Bible said, ”Test me out….” (Mal 3:10)
He also said to make sure of all the things his followers are told, to only hold to what is fine. (1 Thess 5:21)
He encouraged adherents to test expressions to see if they originate with god or not. (1 John 4:1)
He wants people to draw close to him. (James 4:8)
The Muslim god (Allah) demands they not get to know him, they never test or question his words, they obey.
Allah as unknowable. In Islam, it is considered blasphemous to “presume” that one can know Allah intimately or claim any sort of close, personal fellowship with him. This theological view developed early in Islam, and became an important feature of Islamic theology, being espoused by Muslim thinkers such as al-Ghazali.
Shehadi summarizes this:
This view is also understood among modern Islamic scholarship, where the statement of al-Faruqi is representative,
@Randy: Thanks; good point!