NO. NOT TRUE. Jerusalem is considered a holy site to all three religions. Under no circumstances is it a case of Muslims saying "This is ours, NOT yours." For the most clear-cut example - The Dome of the Rock is a mosque built on top of the ruins of the Jewish Temple. Why is the Dome of the Rock there? Why is that location so important? Because Muslims believe that is where Abraham sacrificed his son Ishmael (Isaac in the case of Christians and Jews) to prove his allegiance to God. Muslims are doing the exact same thing Jews or Christians would likely do - building a monument to God. Note that the Temple was NOT destroyed by Muslims. It was the Romans who destroyed it, I believe. Now, the stuff about land belonging to Muslims. Absolutely false. Palestinian DOES NOT EQUAL Muslim. Arab DOES NOT EQUAL Muslim. Please please please keep this in mind. The reason Arabs (and yes, if you look closely, the greatest anger about the establishment of Israel comes from this group, not Muslims in general) are so angry is because a large number of people were displaced using illegal methods. Furthermore, political leaders in that region use the Palestinian cause to keep the focus off of the terrible treatment of their own people. And, for those who keep referring to that conference of "mainstream" Muslim leaders - they were POLITICAL leaders. Do you consider President Bush a mainstream Christian leader??? If the pope came out and said that, I'd understand. And, before someone references one of the Imams or Mullahs in the Arab world who denounces the United States, keep in mind that there is no central ruling system within Islam. Just because the leader of one church states something doesn't mean that all Christians believe it. The same is true for Islam. (But you'll have a valid point when you say there are a good number of Imams/Mullahs who do say it. They all suck and are looking for political power in the vacuum that is the Middle East.)
Yep. Like you said, "that is the state of things nowadays." But what next? What do we do about it? Attack the symptoms? Merely toppling some regimes around the world will not change much. It will only cause more hatred and extreme groups. There has to be a change of the mind-set of how we deal with violence in cultures (how and why they start in the first place). You can start by eliminating some groups around the world: extreme dictatorships. But that's not far enough. The world as a whole has to change its mindset on how they will view muslim groups and not group them into a nice little ball called "militant extremists" or "terrorist." And I never said, "evil European societies." I said "discriminatory pressures" put on Muslim groups by these countries. There's a difference. It think it was you that blew this out of proportion merely due to me being critical of cultural pressures in Europe. Is your name Bill Oreilly?
The quality of your spelling seems to be directly correlated to the quality of the argument you are trying to make. A 15-year old could do better.
LOL! Please.... Sir Jackie Chiles. You are not allowed to make spelling errors on any of your posts from now on... Because as we both know. The spelling police are lurking. Thanks for pointing that out.
Agree with everything else. But Ibrahim never actually killed his son, God just switched Ishmael with a Goat. That is why we sacrifice goats on one of the Eids Uthman, or Omar, whoever the Caliph was at the time the Muslims arrived in Palestine, was in need of a place to do his prayer. The Jews offered him the Synagouge, but he declined, because he knew that people later on would use this as a reason to tear it down later and build a Mosque. This is why he offered his prayer elsewhere.
Hey, I'm Arab AND Muslim, I know all this. I just didn't want to ouch on the subject that all 5 major religions are from Allah. It's probably too controversial to discuss, because other people feel like they're belittled by this notion somehow. Palestinians and Israelis trace back to the exact same anscestry. Islam believes that God's message was passed down in 5 waves, with each being slightly more strict then than the previous. This was done to get humans slowly used to new ways of doing things, and not forcing them to suddenly start a new way of life. By that logic, Islam would be the final religion, and Qura'an the final book. So techinically, Islam was the religion all along, just in different "levels" supposedly. Jerusalem is, in fact, the holy land for all 5 religions. Two of them I don't know in English, and the other 3 are Juddaism, Islam, and Christianity.
