Will anyone defend Islam?

so where it is written that we have to fight to kill???fight also means to argue!!!y don't U quote the verse of ch 16 v 125-Allah says invite people to the way of ur lord with beautiful words and preaching and argue with them in best possible peaceful manner.regarding ch 8 v 12,ch 8 starts with the verse that Allah says when they(unbelievers) ask u(prophet Muhammad(pbuh))about the bounties of war,so the initial verses are related to war with those who cause mischief I.e destruction,so I ask U if someone try to attack U would U behave as peaceful and  allow yourself to b attacked??naturally U will fight!!!!!for eg what R v doing in past 4 to 5 months we R arguing with each other or we R fighting!!I m trying to convince U,U R trying to convince me,this is nothing but a form of fight!!!!

Edited by NABA - 18 August 2013 at 3:30am

Servetus wrote: In that case, examine the role of the passively aggressive jihadists, the block of Christian Evangelicals, who vote(d) for the crusading George W. Bush. Their passivity was expressed in the ballot box and became decidedly active. As far as I know, although Johns Hopkins put out some numbers, there is no record of the dead civilians as a result of Bush's crusade, continued by Obama, to make the Middle East safe for no-bid oil contracts and Israeli nuclear hegemony.

Bush himself always gave entirely secular justifications for his Middle East policies and actions.  Whatever his supporters might have said or believed, you can't blame Bush for that.  And coming back to my original point, there is no need and no opportunity for a Christian apologist to dispute Bush's religious views, because he never said anything that discredited the Christian religion.  In fact, as far as I know, he never said much of anything about religion in an official capacity.

Why exclude them from the subject of this discussion? I will quote one: "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is." That was said by Master of Halliburton and ex-Vice President, Dick Cheney, GWBush's fellow crusader in the Middle East. To which "good Lord" do you suppose he is referring? I would suggest that he is referring to Mammon (money). In any case, I would call him an aggressively aggressive jihadist.

And I would suggest that this is a mere figure of speech, something that even I might say.  It's not a religious pronouncement; and even if it were, what exactly ought a Christian apologist to say in response?  Is Christianity being misrepresented in some way?

Ron Webb wrote: I'm not sure that "I think it rather more likely" is a strong enough justification for labeling someone a jihadist.  Has he actually advocated or at least expressed approval for the use of white phosphorus or preemptive strikes? Start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auf-Su-xZVU&feature=player_embedded

Point taken.  But if you read the transcript of the interview, you will see that Bill Moyers is doing exactly what I advocate that Muslims do with their own extremists.  He accuses Hagee of "bigotry towards different faiths".  He quotes Bill Donahue, the President of the Catholic League, expressing the "outrage of many Catholics".  He points out the hypocrisy of McCain in welcoming Hagee's endorsement, when just eight years earlier he had been cautioning against "pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance."

As I see it, your original intent is to get the Muslims to remove the sliver from their eye. I am suggesting, to the point of insistence, that we first remove the beam from our own. I am sometimes more than a vestigial Christian.

Well, not exactly.  My intent is to get Muslims to actually defend their religion, which is under constant assault in the media and in public discussions; and specifically to defend it where it counts, in the same media and public discussions where the assault is taking place.  I see no such assault taking place against Christianity, and where it is occasionally misrepresented by guys like Hagee, there are plenty of Bill Moyers to set the record straight.

I just don't see that on the Jewish side. Mitzvah wars -often stealth- to reclaim Eretz Israel by way of illegal settlements and colonization are denounced by Jews, but this act of jihad is rarely reported upon by the mainstream press.

I'm not so sure about that -- I see plenty of stories in the mainstream press about illegal Jewish settlements -- but that's beside the point.  Quite possibly Jews should take a more active and vocal approach to defending there religion too, but they are not the subject here either.  And by the way, there's nothing "stealth" about Jewish settlements.  They are openly sponsored by the Israeli government.

How many of them are objecting on CARM?

Agreed, there is a double standard, but again that's not what I'm talking about.

Ron Webb wrote: Because it's a fantasy based on a fiction. "Final Countdown Over Jerusalem" isn't and that is the one I referenced.

Then I must have misunderstood you.  I thought it was a fictionalized version of the Books of Daniel and Revelation (which itself is a fantasy).

Ron Webb wrote: I am not so much concerned about "passively aggressive" jihadists.� My main concern is "aggressively aggressive" ones.

In that case, examine the role of the passively aggressive jihadists, the block of Christian Evangelicals, who vote(d) for the crusading George W. Bush. Their passivity was expressed in the ballot box and became decidedly active. As far as I know, although Johns Hopkins put out some numbers, there is no record of the dead civilians as a result of Bush's crusade, continued by Obama, to make the Middle East safe for no-bid oil contracts and Israeli nuclear hegemony.

Ron Webb wrote: As for the "secular worshippers of money", I have them on a list as well, but it's a different list, i.e. not the subject of this discussion.

Why exclude them from the subject of this discussion? I will quote one: "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is." That was said by Master of Halliburton and ex-Vice President, Dick Cheney, GWBush's fellow crusader in the Middle East. To which "good Lord" do you suppose he is referring? I would suggest that he is referring to Mammon (money). In any case, I would call him an aggressively aggressive jihadist.

Ron Webb wrote: I'm not sure that "I think it rather more likely" is a strong enough justification for labeling someone a jihadist.� Has he actually advocated or at least expressed approval for the use of white phosphorus or preemptive strikes?

Start here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auf-Su-xZVU&feature=player_embedded

Ron Webb wrote: I know nothing about Hagee beyond what I've read since joining this discussion, and I am open to being convinced otherwise, of course; but lacking any evidence to the contrary I think it is at least as likely that he is appalled by human suffering just as we all are.

It's quite possible, but he seems considerably less appalled by Palestinian than by Jewish suffering.

Ron Webb wrote: His support in general for a regime or a goal does not imply specific support for every tactic ...

Be that as it may, the fact remains that he is not talking about knitting booties for Jewish orphans when he tells us that God's foreign policy is to "support" Israel.

Ron Webb wrote: Anyway, this is drifting away from my original intent.

As I see it, your original intent is to get the Muslims to remove the sliver from their eye. I am suggesting, to the point of insistence, that we first remove the beam from our own. I am sometimes more than a vestigial Christian.

Ron Webb wrote: I just don't see that on the Muslim side.� Islamist extremism is denounced in formal statements by Muslim organizations, but this denunciation is rarely echoed by mainstream Muslims in public discussions.� The impression is thus created that Muslim leaders are either out of touch with "real" Muslims, or just plain lying.

I just don't see that on the Jewish side. Mitzvah wars -often stealth- to reclaim Eretz Israel by way of illegal settlements and colonization are denounced by Jews, but this act of jihad is rarely reported upon by the mainstream press. The impression is thus created that Jewish leaders -with a battalion of Christian crusaders behind them- are either out of touch with "real" Jews, the ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalists who are squatting on illegal land, or just plain lying and therefore complicit with the ultimate design to take 3/4 of the Middle East to reestablish the Davidic Kingdom.

Ron Webb wrote: That may be your suspicion, and there may be cheerleaders like Hagee who might make that connection, but the ones actually doing the reclamation (armed forces and political leaders) would never say that.

That is because, I would argue, they are often complicit in the stealth mitzvah war. With that said, and again if one knows how to read between the lines of mainstream media, one can see:

"...no rational argument is left to block a withdrawal [from the occupied territories]. Israel's refusal to pull out is rooted in another dimension - the dream of Greater Israel has never disappeared."

Ref: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/don-t-search-for-logic-in-a-dream-1.306646

Greater Israel. Eretz Israel, from the Nile to the Euphrates and beyond, including, in some estimates, Cyprus! Among the many other projects Hagee is said to fund is Gush Etzion, the early realizers of the "dream" referred to above. It's all being done in God's name, according to Biblical precepts. Has the memory of Amelek been wiped clean yet?

Ron Webb wrote: If they did, I would be among the first to object.� (Mind you, I object anyway, FWIW.)� And so would a whole heap of mainstream Christians.

How many of them are objecting on CARM? In all of their denunciations of Islam, have you ever heard one of them talk disapprovingly about the mitzvah wars of Israel and the implications, in realtime death tolls, of wiping the memory of Amelek clean?

Ron Webb wrote: Because it's a fantasy based on a fiction.

"Final Countdown Over Jerusalem" isn't and that is the one I referenced. How would you like to be a Muslim and walk by the book counter at Wal-Mart and see an author on display whose silent ambition, among others, seems to be to destroy the memory of Amelek (especially if you are interpreted as Amelek)?

Ron Webb wrote: People can indulge in whatever gruesome and (to me) disgusting�fantasies they like.� None of my business.

Go ahead. Remain as uninvolved as the rest of your fellow citizens. I am nevertheless starting my non-violent campaign to stop Wal-Mart from distributing jihadist literatre and will, if necessary, go it alone (as soon as I get adequate funding [winkey face]).

Serv

Edited by Servetus - 12 August 2013 at 8:25am

Ron Webb wrote: My first reaction is [shock]. Not so much that Christians might imagine their God like that (I know many of them do), but more that they would find it in any way entertaining or "Glorious".

I am unsure and have not read the books, but I think the word "glorious" is a reference to the "glorious appearing" of what the authors envision, with the help of the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, as their Messiah. The author of the above-linked New York Times article rightly describes theirs as a "martial Messiah, presiding over a sea of blood."

Ron Webb wrote: But let's keep in mind two important differences: one, that this is a work of fiction (I might say fantasy); and two, that God is the jihadist here, not Christians.

Again, it is a fictionalized version of Daniel and Revelation. If the authors of the books have the Christians conveniently "raptured" to the top floor, above the fray, while the Muslims, Jews and others confront each other, in a final showdown, upon the Meggido Plain, it is only yet another indicator that, as I've said, Christians of this type tend to be passively aggressive: that they are, as one of their critics, Nietzsche, put it, emasculated (even if, in this case, their Messiah evidently is not).

Ron Webb wrote: It may be a bit unsettling that some Christians indulge in such fantasies, but it's really none of my business.

You seem to make the jihadists of Islam your business. Why not add the Christian and Jewish (to say nothing of the Mammonist, or secular worshippers of money) jihadists to your list as well? They're certainly on mine.

Ron Webb wrote: Although I don't necessarily agree with Hagee's politics (much less his religion), I'm not sure I would describe him as a jihadist. Why would you call him that?

Thank you for asking. Let me count the ways. For one thing, when he tells us that God's foreign policy is to "support" Israel, he is not talking about knitting booties for Jewish orphans. I think it rather more likely that he has such things as white phosphorus and so called "preemptive" strikes against Iran (Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Persia, Libya and all of the other countries mentioned in Ezekiel 38) in mind. He is a militantly passive jihadist who fights behind soldiers in IDF uniforms and AIPAC executives in Georgio Armani suits.

The Shia's have their Twelfth Imam and John Hagee's is no less a Messianic agenda than Gush Emunim's. Members of the latter, little-known (thanks to the mainstream media), rarely discussed but highly influential, with John Hagee's and Pat Robertson's acquiescence, fight their mitzvah (i.e., "commanded by God") war to "redeem" or reconquer the (never very clearly defined) Biblical "land" of Israel, a greater territory than the current borders of the State of Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza included, to rebuild the Temple, and, not least, to wipe out the memory of Amelek (read: destroy the Palestinians). A significant difference among the three Messianic movements I mention here, however, is this: Hagee's Messianic agenda, expressed in his jihadist books (such as "Final Countdown Over Jerusalem") are distributed by no less an outlet than Wal-Mart. Absit omen.

Ron Webb wrote: No doubt Christians commit atrocities, but they rarely do so explicitly in the name of God.

The reclamation of the Biblical "land" of Israel is being done in the name of God. Anyway, Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity. What were the Christians doing 600 years ago?

Ron Webb wrote: They do not shout the equivalent of "Allah akbar!" as they saw through their enemies' necks.

No. They have better weaponry. Instead, they drop white phosphorus on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and destroy Fallujah, Iraq, with depleted uranium.

Ron Webb wrote: That is the kind of behaviour that demeans Islam, and that is what good Muslims cannot afford to remain silent about.

I have an idea. Why don't you and I try to get Wal-Mart to stop carrying Christian jihadist literature and allow the Muslims to get their own house in order?

Best regards,

Serv

Edited by Servetus - 11 August 2013 at 8:25am