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Winston Churchill about Islam

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by AroundTheWorld, Feb 4, 2015.

  1. bnb

    bnb Contributing Member

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    is river the dumb bigot, or the journalist who wrote the article in aljazeera?
     
  2. SamFisher

    SamFisher Contributing Member

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    One thing's for sure, his accomplishments will never measure up to that of Averill Harriman

    #sickburn
     
  3. Rocketman95

    Rocketman95 Hangout Boy

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    Clearly the former if anyone reads the article. Downtheriver took numbers that were mentioned in the article and put them together to make his own incorrect assumption that all 2000 mosques were like that, which is not what the article stated.
     
  4. Nook

    Nook Member

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    First off, it is a fallacy that the tables were turned. There were terrible things done in the name of Jesus.... when terrible things were done in the name of Allah... that is about as close as you are going to get.

    Of course it is.....

    Sure.... lets equate the two... just lump them together.
     
  5. HamJam

    HamJam Contributing Member

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    During the Middle Ages, Europe was much more backwards, irrational, intolerant and tyrannical in their religion than the Muslim world. After the Muslim world was so brutalized by the Mongolians, this changed. Meanwhile, once Europe became more secular during the Renaissance, their side of the equation changed too.

    Things did flip. Christians in the past have been just as terrible as Islam at times is in the present, and the Muslim world was once much more tolerant and rational than Christianity at the same time.

    And yes, we should lump them together. The wretched history of Christianity supports doing so. I do not absolve Islam from things like Daesh, but we should also not ignore facts and history in regards to Christianity.
     
  6. bnb

    bnb Contributing Member

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    possibly both?

    From the article
    I don't necessarily agree with the tone of what's said, but the editorializing seems to come from the article....
     
  7. Ottomaton

    Ottomaton Contributing Member
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    Churchill, especially in 1899, was very much a product of imperial England, and all that entailed. Read an early history of him and the Boer war.

    I just Google the following article. I don't agree with the conclusion, but the unsavory facts are true, though again, the need to be taken in context.
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...e-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

    An excerpt:

    [rquoter]

    Churchill was born in 1874 into a Britain that was washing the map pink, at the cost of washing distant nations blood red. Victoria had just been crowned Empress of India, and the scramble for Africa was only a few years away. At Harrow School and then Sandhurst, he was told a simple story: the superior white man was conquering the primitive, dark-skinned natives, and bringing them the benefits of civilisation. As soon as he could, Churchill charged off to take his part in "a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples". In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, he experienced, fleetingly, a crack of doubt. He realised that the local population was fighting back because of "the presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own," just as Britain would if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding instead they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a "strong aboriginal propensity to kill".

    He gladly took part in raids that laid waste to whole valleys, destroying houses and burning crops. He then sped off to help reconquer the Sudan, where he bragged that he personally shot at least three "savages".

    The young Churchill charged through imperial atrocities, defending each in turn. When concentration camps were built in South Africa, for white Boers, he said they produced "the minimum of suffering". The death toll was almost 28,000, and when at least 115,000 black Africans were likewise swept into British camps, where 14,000 died, he wrote only of his "irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men". Later, he boasted of his experiences there: "That was before war degenerated. It was great fun galloping about."

    Then as an MP he demanded a rolling programme of more conquests, based on his belief that "the Aryan stock is bound to triumph". There seems to have been an odd cognitive dissonance in his view of the "natives". In some of his private correspondence, he appears to really believe they are helpless children who will "willingly, naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient crown".

    But when they defied this script, Churchill demanded they be crushed with extreme force. As Colonial Secretary in the 1920s, he unleashed the notorious Black and Tan thugs on Ireland's Catholic civilians, and when the Kurds rebelled against British rule, he said: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It] would spread a lively terror."


    [/rquoter]

    But to try to leverage his comments in a modern context is like arguing we should legalize slavery because Thomas Jefferson owned a **** ton of slaves. Winston Churchill did great stuff, but I guarantee things that everybody believed at the time have been refined and discarded in a better understanding of the world. Running around and thinking of people as "savages" today would be offensive, but it was par for the course in 1899.

    History progresses, and in 100 years, something you believe will be a hopeless embarrassment to the modern understanding of the people of the future. Consensus reality is only our best approximation of true reality at any point in time. It is an abstraction layer on top of reality.
     
    #27 Ottomaton, Feb 4, 2015
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2015
  8. Nook

    Nook Member

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    Nope, that isn't true. During the Middle Ages Europe had many issues, religion and otherwise... but Islam dominated nations were every bit as backwards and intolerant as the dark days of Christianity. You can write your own narrative but it isn't historically accurate.

    Concerning the history of Christianity, I don't think anyone is claiming that terrible things have not been done in the name of Christ (and still are to a lesser degree).
     
  9. downbytheriver

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    Read the article.

    Read the quotes from educated muslim women in that article.

    Then continue your phony tirade as if your experiences are all that matter
     
  10. AroundTheWorld

    AroundTheWorld Insufferable 98er
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    That's a complete myth. Just like it's a myth that the crusades were all the Christians' fault, and Muslims were only poor victims. Not true at all.
     
  11. HamJam

    HamJam Contributing Member

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    It is not a myth and it is true. While the Christians were destroying the works of antiquity (burning them as sacrilegious or copying Christian texts over them for want of parchment) , the Muslims were cataloging and expanding on it. In fact, if not for the Islamic centers of knowledge during that era, there are many works of antiquity (pre-Roman era Greek philosophers and scientists) that no one would have today.

    Also, again, I am not saying Islam is some shining beacon on a hill. I am actually not defending it at all. I am just saying Christianity is just as bad when looked at from an historical perspective.
     
  12. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    That is a really lazy simplification. You do know that a large part of the Caliphate was spread by coercion right?
     
  13. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    And when looked at on a purely theological perspective they do not relate. One religion has a glorified hippie as it's most important infallible figure and another religion has a traveling merchant turned into war lord who ordered the execution of Jewish poets, kept sex slaves and had sex with a child as it's most important infallible figure.

    Christianity has some bad ideas. Islam has more and one of it's biggest bad ideas is making a rather morally reprehensible individual into an infallible "perfect" man.
     
    #33 fchowd0311, Feb 4, 2015
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2015
  14. HamJam

    HamJam Contributing Member

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    I didn't say they were non-violent, I said they were less "irrational, intolerant and tyrannical in their religion" than Europe.

    Also, there were 100's of years between the rise of the Caliphate and the era I am referring to. The Caliphate rose in the 7th century, it took them a while to gain the territory, wealth, and stability a society needs in order to realize that this life is worth living, and to calm the hell down with all that tedious afterlife point scoring nonsense.
     
  15. HamJam

    HamJam Contributing Member

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    I am not looking at it from a purely theological level, I am looking at it from a historical perspective.

    Also, as is often said, the last true Christian died on the cross. Jesus's religion was completely taken over by the violent, organized, power hungry, moralistic, judgemental, politically savvy Paul of Tarsus. The Christian church is as much his as it is Jesus's -- much more so I would argue based on how it has and does manifest in the real world.
     
  16. Kwame

    Kwame Contributing Member

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    Nothing to see here other than another case of the ESL student embarrassing himself.
     
  17. SamFisher

    SamFisher Contributing Member

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    Even when you're right you're wrong, as usual; it's Jackies 3rd language (which he speaks well, it's the nuance that proves troublesome)
     
  18. AroundTheWorld

    AroundTheWorld Insufferable 98er
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    And you are completely wrong. You are propagating a myth you have been told by interested parties to relativize the terror and intolerance that's being spread by Islam today. The truth is that Islam has, since its inception, always been more violent and discriminatory than Christianity, both towards its own followers and towards followers of other beliefs.
     
  19. AroundTheWorld

    AroundTheWorld Insufferable 98er
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    I don't actually speak any Korean, maybe a few words (and can read Hangul, but don't know what it means for 90 % of the words), but yes, English is the 3rd language I learned, except that the 2nd language I learned is extinct.

    So you are both wrong - as usual.
     
  20. da1

    da1 Member

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    Atw hates Muslims. Shocker
     

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