U.S. Army Islamic chaplain arrested for spying at Gitmo

We'll never know. If our government says he's guilty, he's guilty. No fair trial. No lawyers. Case closed. Welcome to John Ashcroft's America.

 

The origin of Islam was violent. The prophet was violent, a conqueror. What is murder? You point to this passage, but it could easily be countered with one of the many violent passages. How can they coexist? They can coexist because there is a delineation of murder other than you represent. Is it murder to kill in self defense? Do these clerics and terrorists, and the general population that supports them believe it is self defense to attack buses, and pizza parlors, and air bases, and WTCs, and Bali nightclubs, and Indian parliments and villages? Yep, and commit what you and I call murder. And they do it a lot. But they don't call it murder, they call it defense. And they couldn't do any of that without widespread support. Pointing to Hakeem is nice, but c'mon FB, that's hardly representative or something you can generalize back to a huge population. There are plenty of books that talk about the violence of Islam. I pointed to these way back in the 'If we're not at war with Islam, Why not?' thread. All of these things go toward the argument that Islam is violent 'as practiced' the beginning and as practiced now.

Uh, yeah. Its centered on extreme muslim groups because...THOSE are the terrorists we're trying to stop. You can't seriously deny that there is a feeling in the 'muslim world' that we 'got what we deserved' on 9/11. Or that there is support among the general Arab and subcontinental muslim populace for groups like Al Queda? Now you want to probably say that Arabs are only a small % of Muslims. While true, that doesn't explain Muslim violence in China, in Pakistan, in the Phillipines, in India, in Russia. It doesn't explain how there is not only support (material and otherwise) for Al Queda, but also for Hamas, and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM), Hizballah (Party of God), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Al-Jihad, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) (Army of Mohammed), and many others.

If most of Muslims are moderate, and neither participate nor condone violence, why is there so much violence coming out of Islam? This is not one group, with one set of leaders - religious and otherwise. There are large numbers of groups, with different religious leaders, from different countries and continents. And all these religious authorities are not saying what you are saying. They are saying go out and commit violence. Overthrow or destroy the West. They are getting money and information from 'moderate' muslims. If all this violence was from one source, you might have a point. But its not.

 

Since this won't be a civilian trial, Ashcroft won't have anything to do with, nor will the Patriot Act etc.

 

Whoops, he *is* in the military. My mistake.

 

In Saudi, a supposedly "moderate" Arab state, they are raising money to pay Palestinian homicide bombers' families for their martyrdom.

I glad you clear this up for me. I had thought that the money was used to rebuild the "martyr's" house that the Israelis bulldozed.

 

Now, I hate to admit that I am not doing well in reading my Bible but I do know that Deuteronomy is in the first 4 books of the Old Testament. Now considering that fact, how can Christianity even be mentioned let alone in that context when it hadn't even formed yet at that time? Maybe that was a misprint on your part and should have said Judaism.

However, whoever said that all religions are violent is pretty much right. But I wonder about Buddhists. Have they had a history of violence?

 

I believe Buddhism does not have a history of violence, but rather persecution. In India, the Turks invaded and pretty much wiped out the Buddhist. And even in Tibet, Buddhism was persecuted by the Tibetan king before the religion pacified the warrior nation. The Mongols and Chinese dynasties were pretty fair when they ruled over Tibet. The Communist Chinese and the cultural revolution destroyed many of the monasteries. Some Tibetans (assuming all Tibetans are Buddhist) were trained to be guerilla fighters by the CIA years ago, so that's as close to violence as I could think of and that's a stretch.

 

I am hardly authority, but much like islam, Buddhism represents a broad spectrum of belief systems depending on the sect you talk about. In japan, zen buddhism had a large influence on the code of conduct, bushido, of the samurai, which paid alot of attention to self sacrifice, either in service to one's master in battle, or even to the degree of committing ritual suicide after having dishonored oneself (seppeku). I believe these teachings led to the useage of kamikaze tactics in WWII, if not directly, then in a distorted sense. In fact, I would wager american views on the japanese culture 50 years ago were pretty much what we are saying about islam today, that is that they are inherently more violent than westerners, etc. It is human nature to see what is different than us and dehumanize it, typically by painting huge groups of people with the broad brushstrokes of the absolute worst possible examples of an anamolous few.

Ning

 

What exactly is of meaning to Christians from the OT and what is not? Didn't Jesus say to keep the Commandments?

BTW, I don't think I said Christianity, just the Bible.

 

From the first page, it is the 9th one down:



Yes, Jesus said to keep the Commandments, but my point was a picky one and literal one.

If one takes all those listings that you gave at face value, then they would think that if they had a Bible and went to Deuteronomy that it would say something about Christianity.

My point is that 9th statement is impossible as Christianity did not start until after Jesus came to this earth (really it didn't start until after His death followed by His resurrection). How did the people back at the time of Deuteronomy know about Christianity? That was still like hundreds of years away.

So, there is 2 possible explanations for that statement:

1) It is a misprint on your part and should have read "Judaism" which was the prevailing religion of the Old Testament
2) Or it is a liberal interpretation on your part to fit your argument

 

I believe Buddhism does not have a history of violence, but rather persecution.

From my vague recall of the fictional novel Sho-Gun, Budhists can be voilent.

 

I thought I might add that religion does not kill people. People kill people. I suspect that people living in challenging socio-economic environs do not value life as much as the more fortunate rest of us and tend to more violent behavior.

 

A Little of both

Ok I get it now. I thought you were saying my whole original post was dealing exclusively with Christianity, my bad. I just copied and pasted those quotes from some site. Jeez, I don't know the bible that good! I didn't even read them all, I'll admit it. But I kind of like that it was flawed. My point was you can just throw out quotes from religious doctrines out of context, or in context without scholarly interpretation, and they can sound f*cked up.

Looks like Deuteronomy 13 says to kill idol worshippers and destroy their towns. Much better. (Dang violent Jews!!!)

Deuteronomy 13
12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in 13 that wicked men have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. Destroy it completely, [1] both its people and its livestock. 16 Gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. It is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt. 17 None of those condemned things [2] shall be found in your hands, so that the LORD will turn from his fierce anger; he will show you mercy, have compassion on you, and increase your numbers, as he promised on oath to your forefathers, 18 because you obey the LORD your God, keeping all his commands that I am giving you today and doing what is right in his eyes.

 

Cool, thanks for clearing that up, MEOWGI.

 

The origin of Islam was the prophet receiving a message from God. That's not really violent. The origin of Christianity was the son of God being nailed to a cross until he died. That's violent. MacBeth also pointed to exhamples of how the prophet was tolerant and even helped build Christian churches. That's not a violent religion. I don't deny that some have perverted the relgioin to incite violence, but for most I do believe Hakeem is very representative. Do you honestly believe that most Muslims go to Mosques like the ones Hakeem goes to or ones like OBL found his brand of Islam from?

As for the verse I quoted verses others that be quoted, it's one reason why I don't like to quote verses at all. I only did it to show that text of the Koran isn't necessarily violent and that by looking at the stories at large and their intended meaning it really isn't a religion that advocates murder or terrorism. The fact is that looking at the base of the religion again we come to the five pillars. If you want to boil the religion down to it's essence it has to be the pillars, and they don't support terrorism or murder.

Again you mention the general population supporting radical clerics and islamists. That isn't true. The majority of Shiites in Iraq don't want an Islamic govt. in Iraq. The most the Islamists ever got in elections in Pakistan was under 10%, and I mentioned a Pakistani rally that took last October that denounced terrorism and was attended by half a million people. That was just from one country. And that country, supposedly has one of the most fundimental populations. So I disagree that there is general support for terrorism.

Yes for every mosque where the parties you mentioned exist, I bet there are at least 20 mosques that have nothing to do with that brand of Islam.

It doesn't have to be from one source. It can come from 100 sources and still be a small minority of Muslims that form these groups. I think a better question would be if this is how Islam really is, why aren't there 1.5 billion Muslims going to war on the west right now? Or even 1 billion? It's not even close.

 

Saudi Arabia isn't really a moderate Islamic state. They might be our supposed ally, but that doesn't make the brand of Islam practiced there moderate.

As for the money raised for the families of Palestinian bombers, that's only half true. The money goes to the families of martyrs. I do agree that it's wrong to consider suicide bombers martyrs, but that's only where a small portion of the money goes.

Anyone who dies at the hands of Israelis is considered a martyr. So when Israel kills innocent civilians in missle strikes or anywhere else that money goes to their families too. Since Israel kills more civilians than it does suicide bombers or terrorists, then most of the money raised is going to the families of innocent victims. That whole money to the families of suicide bombers only tells a part of the story. Again I'm not defending paying off suicide bomber's families, but it is important to look at the whole truth of the matter.

 

I wouldn't say that the majority of Muslims are violent. Haven't ever said that. But again I'm not sure if you could say that about Christians during the Crusades, although you could say 'Christianity was violent' during that period. Or could you? Would it be more palatable for you if I said 'more violence is coming out of Islam' rather than saying 'Islam is violent?'

 

The Palestinian homicide bombers are causing the neccessary Israeli actions. If they stopped their cowardly attacks on innocents, Israel would cease their attacks on Hamas and PLO leaders.

I doubt it. My bet is that Israel would continue killing Hamas leaders for past grievances (along with peace activists and children). If you just look at their actions verus their words, Israel appears to not want any part of a peace settlement with Palestinians, ever.