Falwell using tsunami to spread Christianity

DaDa...your use of words are offending...your not making a constructive argument....and have no basis of your argument.... .... the stone is not worshiped…shows me your knowledge level…i don;t even want to mention your other misconceptions on islam......i hate it when people make conclusions on stuff that they might have heard about but have not tried to obtain knowledge about…calling a prophet a 'pig'....your a very classy person

By your use of language you obviously have a problem with muslims….some people will remain ignorant…there are many ways you can obtain knowledge...go out and try to learn some ways..leave the internet and television alone and go to an actual muslim(go to a muslim student association and ask your questions.)...but more than likely you won't cause you want to believe what you believe...

 

Just because I know the stat:

A third of the African-American males in America between the ages of 18 and 28 are under the supervision of the criminal justice system today, either in state or federal jail or on probation/parole.

 

Boy DD, I used to think you are simply a bad poster, now I think so much less of you

A Murderous pig?!! I challenge you to present to me what is the "right" history of Islam, which is something I studied extensively. Tell me the history you read, so I can understand where your hatred is coming from.

Islam was spread by the sword? Really?! The Muslim armies never reached SE Asia, can you tell me why Indonesia has over 200 million Muslims in it? How about Malaysia? Did you know that the Muslim conquests DID NOT START until AFTER the death of Muhammed? Did you know that every war Muhammed fought in was a result of a direct attack from his enemies, that they were all in self-defense?

Did you know that in the Quran (Islam's Holy Book) it is unequivocally stated that "There is no compulsion in religion, for the right way is clearly distinguished from the wrong one. Whoever therefore rejects the forces of evil and believes in God, he has taken hold of a support most unfailing, which shall never give way, for God is All Hearing and Knowing." 2:256?

Here is a website for some quick, short explanations for some of the verses taken out of context by some anti-Islamic figures who wish nothing but distortion of the truth to fit their own agendas:

http://www.themodernreligion.com/terror/terrorism_verses1.htm

Moreover, Did you know that when the Muslims expanded out of the Arabian Peninsula, the treatment they afforded "the people of the book" (Jews and Christians)? Do you know that the average Muslim knows as much, if not more, about Jesus as you do? (He is mentioned extensively in the Quran and given tremendous respect by Muslims as a messenger of God, on equal grounds with Muhammed and Moses and Abraham and other prophets of God).

The level of ignorance you display is truly astounding. I would say that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are probably on the same wavelength as you are, judging by the rhetoric you use.

Muhammed never got into war until he was forced into it by an enemy that fought him and oppressed his followers for decades, who sought to suppress his message and oppress his followers in fear of the change he was advocating, which forced him and his followers to move to Medina from Mecca. Do you prefer that he and his followers should have stood by and took the persecution with a smile and continued to keep the peace?! If so, then you are holding him to a standard no one can be held up to.

The Muslim civilization reached its golden era when the European Christians were still steeped into the age of darkness; the Christian Europeans were learning at Muslim schools in Spain and North Africa, so they could learn the sciences form the Muslims and educate and enlighten themselves, mainly because the Muslims respected the people of the book and lived with them side by side for the majority of their history.

Did you know that Moses and Jesus are mentioned more times in the Koran than Muhammed? And that every mention reasserts the importance Islam attaches to those two prophets and their teachings?

If you are really a man of history, you would know that the greatest destruction in history brought upon humanity has been by self-proclaimed Christians. The names are plenty. This country was built by slaughtering tens (if not hundreds) of millions of Natives. Those same Christians built the entire country on the back of slaves from Africa, and they forcefully Christianized Blacks and used the religion to justify slavery, the non-mixing of races, etc. To them, Blacks and the Natives were less than dogs. This is just pure history, bet you never saw it that way, did you?

What about the brutal Crusades? The Inquisition? What about the slaughtering of the Jews by the Christian Adolf Hitler? (Funny Muslims are labeled anti-Jews, when they were mass slaughtered by Christians and not Muslims. They lived for nearly a millenium amongst Muslims because they feared persecution by the European Christians who blamed them for killing Jesus and wanted to get a hold of them).

Our great-great-great grandparents married incredibly young, and the fashionable thing was to marry very young girls to older men. In fact, in Christian Romania today, as well as many African countries, it is still a tradition and custom for girls in some families to be married as young as 8-10 (or as soon as they reach puberty and are able to reproduce), surely they don't consider that "pedophelia" as you do, because you are simply being a bit too arrogant by applying YOUR standards to them, and insisting others follow your standard, right?

So while opinions do widely differ, I do REALLY encourage you to read the Quran (the Constitution of Islam) with an open mind to see if all the ideas you have about the religion are right or wrong. If Muhammed was such a raping, murderous thug as you claim, then how is it that the Quran is a book that is full of "virtueous" advice to Muslims? How can an evil man tell his followers to "reject Satan" and accept "God"? How can an evil man tell his followers that just by being a "Muslim" you are not guaranteed heaven, and that the only way to get into heaven and avoid the hellfire is to worship the "one God" (the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Adam, and Noah) while doing good deeds throughout life? To be righteous? How could he be an evil man if the Quran states that even Jews and Christians and ALL others who worship the one true God are worthy of heaven, and that God will accept their good deeds and forgive their sins if they are faithful to him? Surely there is an inherent contradiction here, isn't there? I mean, the Quran is the SAME EXACT BOOK written over 1400 years ago, no single word has been changed, no multiple versions (although there are multiple interpretations of the text, just like in Christianity and Judaism) of the Quran, only one for all the different sects within Islam, who read the same book, but yet come out with different interpretations of it.

Jesus is loved by Muslims, and known by Muslims, as much as Christians and anyone else. Do you think Muslims need someone to bring the "word" of Jesus to them?!! Huh, you are then more ignorant than I thought!

You can have your own opinions, but claiming that what you espouse is "factual history" is purely rediculous.

Also, may be you can please explain to me how Islam is by far the fastest growing religion in the world in a time when Muslims are weaker than Christians, donot have a fraction of the "evangelizing" campaigns or funding Christians have, and when Islam is spreading fastest in the "free" societies of Europe and North America. Please explain this to me if Islam is a religion that reeks of such violence and hatred and espouses terrorism, etc.? Are Muslims holding the sword to the necks of people in this country, telling them to convert or else? If anything, the smear campaigns against Islam are unprecedented in recent history. Yet, the religion, according to all accounts, is spreading faster than ever before.

I think you should seek to balance out the rediculous stuff you have in your mind about Islam. At same time, may be you should restudy Western history to reevaluate your thinking about the "peaceful" Christianity that has filled the world with so much love and brotherhood. Also, may be you should tell your local Chruch leaders, while you are at it, to stop distorting history making people believe that Jesus was blonde haired, blue eyed man. Now that is some serious revision of history, but it did come in useful when it was necessary to convince all non-Europeans that Whites were rightfully superior to all other races. Why? Because God is White!! Gotta admit, a work of genius...

History is not exact science, in case you are wondering, and it is very often written to twist the facts and represent them in a favorable/unfavorable manner to get a certain message across and influence your audience. So there is rarely such a thing as a "historical fact". We can't even agree about what REALLY happened during WWII, and that was only a few decades ago, so think how hard it is to really know what happened over a thousand years ago.

It is OK for someone to profess atheism or the rejection of organized religion, but to hand-pick one religion to bash, as if the other is somehow above it, shows that you are bias and ignorant, and that makes it rather hard to take anything you say seriously.

BTW, if a war breaks out among the two civilizations (as you seem to be wishing) then you might want to consider that there are a minimum of 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide, and that Muslims DO possess nuclear weapons and huge stockpiles of WMDs as well. It is really not something to root for, it would spell the demise of humanity.

Just something to think about...

 

Have you heard of WML, WAMY etc?
Saudi Arabia devotes considerable amounts to the the spread of Islam throughout the world.

In regards to the spread of Islam in the "free" societies of Europe and North America.......you answered your own question by noting that they are "free" (people are able to make a choice and the rest of their society - country respects it).

It is a bit difficult to spread Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism etc in some situations........ like these:
<a HREF="http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE230092000?open&of=ENG-SAU">Saudi Arabia: Defying world trends</a>

<i>.......
Sadiq 'Abd al-Karim Mal Allah, a Saudi Arabian Shi'a Muslim, was executed in 1992. Neither he nor his family knew that he was under sentence of death or for what ''crime'' he had been convicted. He was apparently charged with smuggling a copy of the Bible into Saudi Arabia. He denied the charge, but was reportedly requested to convert to Wahabism, an interpretation of Islam favoured by the state. When he refused, the judge was reported to have told him: ''You abandon your rejectionist belief or I will kill you.'' On 3 September 1992 he was publicly beheaded in al-Qatif......</i>

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<a HREF="http://www.hrw.org/press/2000/new-oct.htm">Human Rights Watch</a>

<i>.........Iran: Prosecution of Independent Cleric Condemned
(New York, October 11, 2000) --Human Rights Watch today condemned the Iranian government's prosecution of a leading independent writer and religious scholar, Hojatoleslam Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari. Eshkevari, who has been held in solitary confinement and denied legal counsel since August 5, was tried behind closed doors on October 7 on a variety of charges, including "being corrupt on earth" and apostasy, which carry the death penalty........</a>

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<a HREF="http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990125/pakistan_martyrs1.html">Pakistan's Laws Invite Attacks on Christians </a>
<i>Attacks on Christians in India have provoked expressions of concern from the U.S. State Department, several European ambassadors and from directly across India's border. Two weeks ago the lower house of Pakistan's National Assembly condemned such violence against a small minority. But the gesture rang hollow: Pakistan's own Christian population, tiny even compared with India's, is under a full-scale assault by thugs, greedy neighbors, the court system and laws that may have been designed to keep Christians in jeopardy. "To be a Christian," says Joseph Francis, a legal aid worker in Lahore, "is a crime in Pakistan."

Not technically, but as Pakistan evolves into an ever-more Islamic state, the constitutional rights of minorities are being whittled away. Christians, numbering 2 million, or about 1.5% of the population, have proven the most defenseless--and their vulnerability only grows as more of them are hounded out of their homeland. Father Archie de Souza, vicar-general of the Karachi Archdiocese, says tens of thousands have migrated from the commercial capital alone. "Aggressive Islamization changed the city's ethos, and the blasphemy law created misunderstandings," he says.
<b>
The scourge of Pakistan's Christians is a 1986 blasphemy law that condemns to death anyone found guilty of "speaking against the Koran or the Prophet." All too often, Christians are accused of "blasphemy" by someone trying to settle a personal dispute or drum them off valuable real estate. Cornelius Christopher Dutt, a school headmaster in rural Punjab state, was accused of blasphemy by a colleague who wanted his job in 1988. Dutt was cleared by an official investigation, but was forced to transfer due to continuous death threats.
</b>
Dutt was actually lucky. Most Christians hauled into court on such charges end up in coffins. In the past eight years, five Christians were accused of blasphemy in Punjab: two died in custody, one was murdered during trial and two were killed by mobs before they could be arrested. Last April, Ayub Massih, a former mason, was accused of blasphemy for (among other things) speaking favorably of Salman Rushdie in the Punjab town of Arifwala. Muslim extremists tried, but failed, to murder him during the trial. <b>Last April, Massih was found guilty of the crime, which was hardly surprising: in Pakistan's courts, the testimony of non-Muslims is given only 50% of the weight as that of the faithful.</b> In a chilling protest, the Bishop of Faisalabad, John Joseph, put a gun to his head and killed himself in front of the courthouse. That sparked violence between Christians and Muslims in several cities and a call from Muslim clergymen for Massih to be hanged. To assuage public anger, the local authorities razed 70 houses occupied by Christian families.

Ugly incidents abound, largely in Punjab. Last May, a short-circuit in a hospital storeroom resulted in a burned copy of the Koran, the Islamic holy book. Mobs attacked a nearby dormitory for Christian girls. Another burned Koran in the town of Khanewal prompted a mob to destroy 1,500 houses, damage 13 churches and kidnap several Christian girls. Christians, community leaders allege, can't get university places or government jobs. "It is a religious apartheid," says Father Arnold Heredia, executive secretary of the Institution for Peace and Justice in Karachi. And things are only getting worse: around Christmas, a time bomb went off in the back pews of Karachi's St. Patrick's cathedral. No one was seriously hurt, and in today's Pakistan, that was something of a miracle. </i>

 

Mango....

firstly that last artice:
Pakistan's Laws Invite Attacks on Christians

1)see now i don't think you know the situation there at all.. see there are places in Pakistan which are considered tribal areas....these places create their own laws...the government does not screw with them cause they are usually illiterate-theives-con artists-run by drug dealers(the main cause...since these durggies are powerful and would rquire a war to get rid of them plus the government is corrupt and i guess you can make the connection)....basically the scum of society that the government could care less about....usually a lot of these cases you hear about in the west are stories from these places...they're some crazy stories...well that's why i guess they make the headlines

2) the second reason is that there are some so called muslims who do not even study the religon....see the thing about pakistan is that everbody is corrupt....when you have a shi*ty government that's what happens....so there are so many illiterate people who learn about Islam from illiterate "MULLAH'S" .....funny i just said they are illiterate...so how can they be clerics of Islam???...that's cause they pose as scholors and teach Islam for a fee??so they make money this way...now what are they gonna teach....they are just gonna make up stuff...so when this happens there is a lot of misconseptions that arise.... Islam is not a hard religon...but if you don't do your research things can be taken out of context...just like anything.....usually the poor are mostly effected cause they can't afford to educate themeselves on what's correct in Islam and what's not...they do also have to feed themeselves.... what i'm saying is that there is going to be stories for the sake of stories...its not until you analyse the root of the cause that you get the truth...there is only so much that you can write in a article....PLUS stories with "terrorist" links gets people to read these days....

I have lived in 2 out of the three countries you mentioned...so i guarentee you things are over blown cause its "THE TOPIC" ....so i don't know .....take it for what its worth....all i can say is that things are not always the way they seem as they might appear in a article.


tigermission1 ...nicely said...though those who don't wanna learn will not learn..though you did your part.

 

You read this forum infrequently.
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Tribals in Pakistan? No problem discussing that topic.

When the Subcontinent was still under British control (nominal in many places) there was a <i>boundary </i> created:

<a HREF="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/afghanistan/timeline.html">Afghanistan Timeline</a>
November 1893: Durand Agreement
An agreement was made between the British government in India and Abdur Rahman that set the boundary between Afghanistan and British India. The Durand Line is the present border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.</i>

Some commentary in this article:
<a HREF="http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19991116/iex19059.html"> Why the Durand Line is important (1999)</a>
<i>
Pakistan's close relations with Afghanistan in general and the Taliban in particular are normally seen only in religious fundamentalist terms. The argument is that movements like the Taliban are naturally bound to ally with similar groups, such as the Deobandi groups, in Pakistan. Such an alliance, it is claimed, is driven purely by religious ideology and is, therefore, inherently anti-secular and anti-India.

This assertion, however compelling, does not tell the whole story. While there is no doubt that religious and ideological affinity provides a strong basis for the relationship between the two neighbours, Pakistan was bound to pursue a proactive Afghan policy.

There are two principal reasons for this: first, to preserve Pakistan's western border and, second, to provide `strategic depth' against India. In fact, it is more likely that Pakistan is using the `Islamic' garb to veil the significant national and strategic interests that it has in Afghanistan.

The primary reason for this is the legacy of the Durand Line which was drawn as part of an agreement signed on 12 November 1893 between the then ruler of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Shah, and Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the colonial government of India. This line, which was delineated in 1894-95, marked the boundary between Afghanistan and the British Indian empire.

In 1947, following the partition of India, it became the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. <b>This line, which runs though areas inhabited by the Pashtuns, was never accepted by either Afghanistan (which signed it under duress) or the Pashtuns (who sought to create their own homeland called Pashtunistan). </b> As early as June 1949, Afghanistan's parliament cancelled all the treaties which former Afghan governments has signed with the British-India government including the Durand Treaty and proclaimed that the Afghan government does not recognise the Durand Line as a legal boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan........
</i>

The Pashtuns mentioned above are probably the <i>tribals</i> that you are thinking of.
There was a <i>search</i> for bin Laden and other foreign elements in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province) which is in the region of the Eastern Afghanistan - Western Pakistan border.
<a HREF="http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501040517-634733,00.html">Tribal Tribulations: A campaign to flush out Islamic militants hiding in Pakistan's Wild West tests the will of Islamabad and the U.S.</a>

A few months later, Nek Mohammed was killed:
<a HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/19/walq119.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/06/19/ixnewstop.html">
Bin Laden ally killed in rocket attack</a>

The Baloch also have some tribal tendencies, but are perhaps less hardline in religious terms than the Pashtuns.
Nice reads on the current Baloch struggle against the Pakistani army/government are here:
<a HREF="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GA15Df07.html">
Tribals looking down a barrel in Balochistan</a>

<a HREF="http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1087.html">THE BALOCH RESISTANCE MOVEMENT</a>

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The last time I checked...<i>Mr 10 Percent</i> was out on bail and
Sharif was in the U.A.E.

Musharraf is pretty much in <i>seclusion</i> and the coup I expected to replace him hasn't happened yet.
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That is similar to other responses that I have seen in regards to the study & pratice of Islam. Yet, I am unsure which is the <i>correct branch</i> of Islam.

Shia
Sunni

Even within those two main categories, there are wide variations in the interpretation & practice of Islam.

The poor educational system in Pakistan is something I have read about in the past. The inability of the government (local & national level) to provide a quality educational system is a definite problem and the presence of Saudi funded religious schools only makes matters worse because they are <i>reluctant</i> to provide a well rounded education for their students.
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1) Iran, Pakistan
2) Iran, Saudi Arabia
3) Saudi Arabia, Pakistan


Probably #3 because both have Sunni majorities and there have been good contacts between the two countries.

You didn't say anything to compliment Pakistan earlier in your post, yet you want to close on an upbeat note.

Saudi Arabia:
<i>Overblown?</i>
You can't be serious.

I recently read some background on <i>MIRA</i> and <i>CDLR</i>........if you are interested in discussing that topic area.

 

Calm down. That was tongue in cheek. Although yes, I do also think orthodox jews are nuts for denying themselves the wonderful pleasure of bacon...

 

That’s debatable. The New York Times recently had an article showing that the Pentecostal faith was the fastest growing religion in the world. I guess it depends on whose doing the polling. I do not believe in your religion, but applaud your right to believe and practice as you do.