When Rick stated that there are some...ahhh....nasty people who are Mohammedans, he wasn't speculating.
Thousands of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot.
Mrs Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was jailed by a court on Thursday after children in her class named a teddy bear Muhammad.
She was sentenced to 15 days for insulting religion, and she will then be deported.
The marchers took to the streets after Friday prayers to denounce the leniency of the sentence.
The protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks.
Marchers chanted "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance - execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad".
I'm sure that some will assert that this reaction is identical to the reaction of the Catholic League to Miller Brewing's support of a smear of Christ and the Apostles.
But I don't see any AK-47's outside Miller's HQ on Highland Boulevard...
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Heck, I didn't even see any pea-shooters outside Miller's HQ.
Wikipedia says "Sudan has an authoritarian government in which all effective political power is in the hands of President Omar al-Bashir" and that its government has an "aggressively Islamic stance".
So if we were to make a fair comparison, let's imagine if the USA was controlled by hard-line Catholics. What would laws be added, what new punishments? Would taking the Lord's name in vain be considered a misdemeanor or a felony?
John:
Your ignorance of Catholic teaching is appalling. Despite your wish for ammunition - no new laws would be added, taking the Lord's name in vain would not be a civil crime.
Before you spout off on something you clearly know so little about, try reading and understanding the history of the Catholic church and Western civilization. Christianity has done more to advance the rights of persons and the dignity of the human race than you will ever acknowledge.
Comparing Catholicism to Islam is just ignorant. Please show me where Catholics rioted after Sunday mass, called for the execution of Dan Brown, had Amanda Marcotte imprisoned for her oh-so-witty insights on the Virgin Mary, or beheaded their Protestant neighbors.
Then you'll have a point. Otherwise, hit the library and talk to me when you know more about Catholicism.
"I'm sure that some will assert that this reaction is identical to the reaction of the Catholic League to Miller Brewing's support of a smear of Christ and the Apostles."
I'm sure some will. But I don't think such comparisons are helpful. Christianity and Islam are equally unlikly to be true, but I think people that think they're equally dangerous aren't paying attention. Foust, nowadays, even the most extreme Christians aren't crusading (when Christianity was the same age as Islam is now, they were). However, being "less violent than militant Islam" isn't a very strict criteria for chosing your belief system. In other words, it's still just as unreasonable to believe the thing about the zombie as it is to believe the thing about the flying horsey, but there really is a higher probability that someone in the latter group wants to kill you.
Actually, let me clarify that last bit. There is a higher probability that someone in the latter group wants to kill you because of his religious conviction.
Well, John, If I Were the King, I'd start by executing you...no trial, no bother, no fuss, no muss.
Your choice: bullet or bonfire.
(That's why I'm not the King, and why I spend some time every day praying for patience...)
More seriously, of course, there's this:
“Outright hostility” has indeed existed between Muslims and Christians, for the simple reason that for 13 centuries Islam grew and spread by war, plunder, rapine, and enslavement throughout the Christian Middle East. Allah’s armies destroyed regions that were culturally Christian for centuries, variously slaughtering, enslaving, and converting their inhabitants, or allowing them to live as oppressed dhimmi, their lives and property dependent on a temporary “truce” that Muslim overlords could abrogate at any time.
And let’s not forget the seven-century-long Islamic occupation of Spain, the centuries of raids into southern Italy and southern France, the near-sack of Rome in 846, the occupation of Sicily and Greece, the four-century-long occupation of the Balkans, the destruction of Constantinople, the two sieges of Vienna, the kidnapping of Christian youths to serve as janissaries from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the continual raiding of the northern Mediterranean littoral for slaves from 1500 to 1800, and the current jihadist terrorist attacks against the West.
These historical crimes dwarf those committed during the few centuries of the Crusades, which, for all of their excesses and mixed motives, were fought to liberate from Muslim hegemony the lands that had been Christian for six and a half centuries before Islam burst forth from the Arabian Peninsula.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2007/11/onward-and-upward-with-the-rop.html
Huh, who would have thought that beliefnet.com would have had such an objective assessment of the historical relationship between Christians and Muslims? eyes rolling
Amy, I was a heck of a lot closer to becoming a Catholic priest than you ever could have been.
foust,
In which case, given the breathtaking ignorance of your postings here and the, um, interesting content of your blog, many of us are glad you weren't ordained.
Sadly, Anony, a lot of folks just like John WERE ordained. Some of them left the priesthood. Others....
JIJ you test my patience. But let's look at the burden of the quote I posted, which is largely centered around Islamic invasions of territory.
It makes no difference if one is Christian, or Jewish, or Communist; the Mohammedans INVADED lotsa places, including Spain, Greece, Bulgaria (etc.)
That's a simple historical fact. The Saracens were not "regaining their homeland"; they were not "avenging" prior Christian crusades; they were simply taking what was not theirs.
Were they to do the same today, you might call that "aggression." I certainly would.
So the source of the historical FACTS is irrelevant. It's the FACTS that make the case I made.
Please concentrate on facts, not on silly yappaflappa about "sources."
And, by the way, John: that Sudanese Islamist Gummint is heavily supported by PRChina.
But my overall point remains valid: the Islamists ARE a threat to civilization insofar as Islamists do NOT recognize natural law as a foundation of governance, whether here or hereafter.
Belloc opined that their particular heresy is that they do not believe in the Trinity--as a consequence, "communitas" means nothing to them, either in theory or practice.
Of course, your theology may differ--but you can't argue with the resultant facts.
I think the idea of crusading to "take back your holy land" is totally irrational. Holy land? Gimme a break. But you think it justified the crusades. You also think whatever reasons the Mohammedans had for invading Christian occupied lands were irrational. Many Muslims probably disagree. All you're saying is that you think the Christians had better reasons for attacking Muslims than Muslims had for attacking Christians. Although I basically agree, I still think all fo their attacks on eachother were stupid.
Umnnnhhh...you don't have a problem, of course, when the Jews and Christians are forcibly dislocated from Jerusalem, as they were by the Muslims.
Maybe you'd have a different opinion if you were one of them.
Just my guess.
"you don't have a problem, of course, when the Jews and Christians are forcibly dislocated from Jerusalem, as they were by the Muslims."
Of course I do. I think they're just as bad as the Christians. In fact, I think they might even be a little worse (as I've noted several times).
"Maybe you'd have a different opinion if you were one of them."
Maybe you would too.
In the middle of the first millenium A.D. the Romans, under the sign of the Cross, invaded and stole the land, people, culture and everyhting else of most of Europe. Is that better or worse than the Muslims?
Capper:
Where the heck did you learn your history?
In the middle of the first millenium, the Western Roman Empire was no more, and the Eastern Empire was too busy defending their established borders.
Dave, when you're a certain age (like Capper and I) things kinda run together.
However, I DO recall clearly that Julius Caesar was killed in the 40's BC.
He still owes me a few denarii from a sheepshead game he lost...
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