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Henry, I am confused.

Please don't tell me that you are insinuating that there is equal truth in Christianity and Islam, or that Mohammed is truly a prophet of God and that he is somewhat equal to the Son of God, Jesus Christ? Please don't tell me that you would believe that all things are equal between a pure, sinless Jesus Christ and Mohammed who had many wives? I hope not dear brother!

I realize that in today's world, for the sake of peace, our religious leaders must be politically correct, and respect the fact, (or the hope) that we all believe in the same God of Abraham. I believe that is why His Holiness J.P. II kissed the Koran, despite the chagrin of many Catholics around the world. I understand all of this....

and, I KNOW that Allah is the name for God, but many Muslims do NOT believe that we believe in the ONE God, as we believe in the Trinity.

However, I thought that we were all Christians here, and believed in the TRUTH of Christ as the Son of God. Again, I ask, if we don't believe in the TRUTH of Christ above all others, then why be a Christian?

Have a blessed night!

I am bowing out of the senseless polemic of this thread....
Alice

P.S. Henry, I NEVER said that Islam is evil. As a Christian, I do believe it to be a FALSE religion [i]and I PERSONALLY believe it to have many cult like characteristics. .[/i]

To say that Mohammad is "equal" to Christ...whoa..I better stand back...in case if lightening strikes.

NOBODY is equal or greater than Christ. Because Christ IS G-d...G-d the Son..the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity G-d-head.

Mohammad is a "so called prophet" who supports ANY "necessary" FORCE if one isn't on the path of Islam. Look at the fruits back then, and look at the fruits today. (I still haven't forgotten the story about Syrian Christians just about extinct because of Islamic mass-genocide killings)

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

The Allah of Islam is not a Trinity. Therefore, it is not the same God that we worship. Allah of Islam may be part of God or as much of God as Mohammad understood but He is not the same.

Dan L

Alice:

in reference to "Allah", what Henry is stating is that Arabic-speaking Christians would employ the word "Allah" when speaking of God, much like Jews would use "El" or "Elohim". For our resident Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac brethren is the term "Son of God" translated as "binallah", "ibnallah", or something similar in the Arabic translations of Sacred Scrpture?

Most Christian scholars would view Islam as "Christian" heresy much like Aranism,Docetism, or any of the number of other "-isms" of the first millenium AD. So in a manner of speaking, Allah is the God the Father, but the heresy of Islam misunderstands the revelation of Christ. Mohammed introduced a syncretistic form of monotheism to supplant the polytheism practiced on the 8th century Arabian penisula.

Yahweh of Israel is not Trinity, therefore Judaism and Christianity do not share the same God?

We must not confuse notions of God and those errors (which Jews also have) with which God is being worshiped (Jews do worship the same God, and Muslims do too, which the Catholic Church consistently says).

Alice

Even if one were to say Mohammed is a prophet, that would not make him equal to Jesus who is God the Son. Nor would it say Christianity and Islam are equal. It would only say he is a prophet, for what it is worth and what it means. Historically when a Bishop would say such, and we have several who have done so, it was suggested that he was a prophet with a limited mission: to the pagan Arabs. They said that he was a prophet who called them to monotheism. This was, for example, the position of Paul of Antioch, (Melkite Bishop of Saida, circa 1140) for example.

A good discussion of Paul of Antioch and his views on Islam, and a later Islamic response is here: http://www.sjweb.info/dialogo/documents/doc_show.cfm?Number=5 although it mostly refers to the Muslim response, it brings many of Paul's own statements into the discussion.

But, I mentioned the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. He seems to be following this tradition, and so he has said, "The prophet Mohammed is an apostle. He is a man of God, who worked for the Kingdom of God and created Islam, a religion to which belong one billion people. ..."

PATRIARCH PARTHENIOS OF ALEXANDRIA
(Orthodoxos Typos, Issue Number 854, Athens, Greece; statement made in May, 1982)


Now there is another tradition which accepts Mohammed is a prophet, and this is from the suggestion of Nicholas of Cusa. Nicholas suggested it is perfectly sound to consider Mohammed a prophet, to see that he was inspired and had a mission, but he took it too far, and became a prophet like Balaam...

If Yahweh is not Trinity then Christ is not God. Moreover if this be true then Yahweh is not God for surely Christ is. God excused the former ignorance of many things that the world suffered. But Christ revealed the fulness of God. To deny that after it has been revealed is to deny a reality already revealed. Even if we stretch credulity to accept that in some way Muslims, Christians, and Jews all worship the same God we still are left with the undeniable fact of these hate filled sermons, Chios, Armenia, Sudan, and on and on.

Let us set aside this for the sake of discussion. Let us suppose and I do think this is possible we can forge some kind of alliance with Sufis. Let us suppose that in some way we can get to the point of understanding our solidarity on a mystical level. Even if that were possible, and it may be, how might this get us to the point at which the world would be safe from the hundred of millions of Muslims who believe it is their Godly duty to convert or kill us?

Dan L

[If read objectively it does explain a lot of misconceptions the west has and needs to get over when it tries to deal with Islam in general]

The Centrality of Jihad in Islam
By Lawrence Auster
August 20, 2004


All thoughts of pacifying Islam by assimilating it into the global democratic system must fall down before a simple, terrible fact: Jihad�holy war against all non-Muslims�does not represent a mere excess or defect of Islam, but its timeless core. According to Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi (quoted recently at FrontPage Magazine), "Muslims are religiously obliged to disseminate the Islamic faith throughout the world.... If non-Muslims submit to conversion or subjugation, this call can be pursued peacefully. If they do not, Muslims are obliged to wage war against them." World peace, according to Islamic teaching, "is reached only with the conversion or submission of all mankind to Islam."



Moreover, continues Tibi, when Muslims disseminate Islam through violent means, that is not war (harb), as that word only describes the use of force by non-Muslims. Islamic wars are acts of "opening" the world to Islam. "[T]hose who resist Islam cause wars and are responsible for them."



In other words, simply by the act of existing, the entire non-Islamic world is equated with war. That is why Muslims call it the Dar al-Harb, the Realm of War. Yet when Muslims wage jihad, they are doing it to bring about the peace of universal Islam. So whatever Muslims do, is by definition peace, and whatever infidels do, is by definition war. This explains, by the way, why "moderate" Muslims almost never admit that Muslim terrorists are terrorists. It is because jihad itself is not war, but a way of pursuing peace. By such manipulations of language and such massive double standards, Islam reveals itself as a closed system that precludes any critical thought about itself, as well as any fair and honest dealings with non-Muslims.

Unsustainable excuses for jihad

Though acknowledging the deadly and totalitarian nature of jihad, some observers insist that the Islamic world isn't naturally or inevitably jihadist. They say the jihadist impulse is merely situational, an understandable response to external provocation. This generous view of Islam is reflected in contemporary Western reference works that define jihad as the use of military force in defense of Islam, rather than, as is the actual case, the use of military force to expand Islamic-controlled territory.

The same non-judgmental attitude is seen in the notion that jihadism, after a long period of dormancy, has been reawakened in recent decades by outside threats and irritants, namely the U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf states, and American cultural imperialism. In reality, intrusion by a Western power into a Muslim land has never been needed to set off a jihad. Jihadists in the 19th and early 20th centuries repeatedly engaged in horrendous violence, and not just against colonial occupiers.

In the 1860s a Muslim cleric in the Punjab launched murderous jihad against Sikhs and then against all non-Muslim groups. In the 1820s and '30s the Padri Islamists in West Sumatra waged war against less pure Muslims whom they accused of paganism. In South India in 1921, jihadists carried out massacres, the forcible conversion of Hindus and the desecration of Hindu temples. And today, of course, Islamists are attacking non-Muslims along a vast arc extending from Nigeria to Indonesia. Far from having fallen into permanent remission, jihad remains an ever present threat�it is the default mode of Muslims whenever they find themselves in close and sustained proximity with non-Muslims.

It is clear that a state of powerlessness lasting centuries has failed to remove the jihadist imperative from the souls of Muslims. As the Muslim scholar C. Snouck Hurgronje wrote in 1916, "Even if they admit the improbability [of world conquest] at present, they are comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms."

The reference is to the first stage of Muhammed's career, when he was living in Mecca among non-Muslims who were hostile to his message. Since Muhammed underwent a long period of relative weakness, Muslims, treating the Prophet's life as a model for their own, can with equanimity accept the same. They can hang out for ages, confident that sooner or later will come the hejira, the paradigmatic escape to Medina, whence they will be empowered to start waging jihad in earnest.

To summarize our discussion so far: (1) The command to wage jihad is laid on all Muslims. (2) Jihad must be carried out until the whole world has been brought under the power of the Islamic state. (3) Even when Muslims lack the present ability to wage jihad, the hope of jihad remains alive in their hearts, enabling them to wait for generations for a new chance to spread the faith. And finally, (4) jihad is not a recent revival of the late 20th century but has periodically erupted during long ages of apparent Muslim quiescence.

Despite these considerations, many Americans will find it hard to believe that the Islamic community is ineluctably bound to wage holy war against us. They don't want to think that Islam is so fearsome and implacable that no civilized relationship�let alone a relationship of liberal inclusion and multicultural equality�is possible with it. They figure that if a religion commands a certain behavior, such as jihad, that doesn't necessarily mean that most members of that religion will actually practice that behavior.

So, in much the same way that the Clinton administration saw terrorist attacks as individual crimes rather than as acts of war, many Americans will prefer to picture jihad as a matter of occasional violent outbreaks here and there, rather than as part of a sustained war against all non-Muslim societies. They argue further that if we end our supposed provocation of Muslims (by withdrawing all our forces from Iraq, say, or ending our friendship with Israel) the current jihadist fever will die down.

One of the problems with this hopeful view is that jihad is not just some secondary doctrine of faith, which Muslims can take or leave, which they can affirm formally but ignore in practice. It is the very core of the Muslim identity, embraced not only by Muslim religious leaders, but by every Islamic government in the world.

At a meeting in Cairo in 1990, representatives of all 54 Muslim countries signed the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, a Muslim-style answer to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As Andrew Bostom describes it:

the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam included the triumphal announcement that the Shari'a has primacy over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and included the specific proclamation that God has made the umma (Islamic community) the best nation, whose role is to "guide" humanity. This statement captures the indelible influence of the uniquely Islamic institutions of jihad and dhimmitude on the Shari'a, rendering sacred and permanent the notion of inequality between the community of Allah, and the infidels.

Can the document be as bad as Bostom claims? Let's go to the text (all emphases in the following quotes have been added).

The Cairo Declaration begins by asserting the moral and civilizational supremacy of Islam: "The Member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference ... [r]eaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization ... and the role that this Ummah should play to guide ... humanity ..."

The Cairo Declaration, in pursuing its aim of finessing the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states principles that are common to all civilization, but then qualifies each of those principles in terms of the Shari'ah, the strict law that governs Islamic societies. Thus it affirms "[man's] freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari'ah." It says the laws of Islam are "binding divine commandments ... and that no one as a matter of principle has the right to suspend them in whole or in part or violate or ignore [them] ..." Further, the Declaration says that "it is prohibited to take away life except for a Shari'ah prescribed reason." It says Shari'ah must rule supreme in matters of criminal law as well: "There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Shari'ah."

Freedom of speech is allowed, but�once again�there's a catch: "Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari'ah." The only values that can be spoken or advocated are those of Islam: "Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari'ah." Nothing critical can be said about Islam: "Information is a vital necessity to Society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm Society or weaken its faith."

Political rights are also subject to Shari'ah: "Everyone shall have the right to participate directly or indirectly in the administration of his country's public affairs. He shall also have the right to assume public office in accordance with the provisions of Shari'ah." And in its final article, the Declaration re-affirms the self-enclosed, impermeable-to-criticism nature of the Islamic mind: "The Islamic Shari'ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration."

Playing "Muhammed's Advocate" for a moment, I would like to suggest that the Declaration is perhaps not as bad as it appears. First, can we reasonably object to the Islamic nations' believing that their own laws and standards are superior to those of the UN? As a traditionalist conservative who believes in preserving our historic civilization against the UN and other globalizing forces, I can hardly be alarmed when other peoples seek to preserve their civilizational traditions against the UN.

Second, is the Declaration's insistence that Shari'ah must guide all laws and social practices really so egregious? I myself have written at FrontPage that if liberal individual rights are not to destroy our society, they must operate within the constraints of a moral and cultural order that is not itself liberal.

And third, why should be be offended at the Muslims' belief that it's their mission to guide humanity? Any civilization worth its salt believes it has a leadership role to play in the world. Think of ancient Israel, or ancient Athens, or ancient Rome. Think of the British empire. Think of France, with its "Mission to Civilize." Think of our own United States of America. How can we gainsay the Muslims' touting themselves as a guide to mankind, when our own president constantly makes the same claim for us?

Unfortunately, however, these more benign interpretations of the Cairo Declaration are not sustainable. When we remember the actual content of the Shari'ah,�that it's nothing less than a totalitarian system of oppression that is utterly alien to Western ways, the rule of law, cultural and technical creativity, and the most basic human freedoms�then the Islamic nations' insistence on the primacy of Shari'ah in all matters, combined with their stated mission to guide humanity (guide humanity toward what? toward submission to Shari'ah!), does indeed add up to an endorsement of jihad, even though the word jihad doesn't appear in the document. As Andrew Bostom has pointed out, the flowery language of the Declaration confuses many who do not understand what "Shari'ah" and "Islamic justice" really mean.

The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights is conclusive evidence of the central and defining role of jihad in Islam. In this document all the Islamic countries, acting as a body, have formally endorsed the worldwide dominance of Shari'ah, which in turn implies the necessity of waging jihad to bring that dominance into existence. Thus a shared commitment to jihad constitutes the substance�the very identity�of the Islamic Ummah.

Of course, not all Muslim individuals and societies actively support jihad, and, to their credit, many Muslims have opposed the more extreme crimes committed in the name of jihad. But when we recall the observation of various Muslim and Western scholars that at least 50 percent of all Muslims worldwide sympathize with the jihadist message, we realize once again that jihadism is the activist core of Islam. Which means that we cannot expect any organized force to arise within the Islamic world against jihad. Just as Christians who organized against the belief in Jesus Christ would have ceased to be Christians, Muslims who actively opposed jihad would have ceased to be Muslims.

It is true that Turkey under its Kemalist order has (at least until recently) finessed the problem of Muslim orthodoxy by removing Islam from the state and the public square. Yet Turkey, which so many hold up as the hope of a moderate, secularizing Islam, is also a signatory of the Cairo Declaration.

What to do

I conclude from all of the above that we cannot rely on "moderate" Muslims to oppose jihadism. If the job is to be done, we have to do it. On the domestic front (as I have outlined previously at FrontPage), this means ceasing all mass immigration of Muslims, deporting all Muslim illegal aliens, deporting all Muslims associated with Islamic radicalism, and renouncing the leftist ideology of multiculturalism, which has led Muslims and other non-European immigrants to feel they have the right to remake America in their own image. The totality of these steps would result in a steady net out-migration of Muslims from the United States, much of it voluntary, and thus a steady lessening of their power here, instead of the steady increase of their power that we are now enduring.

But what to do about the forces of jihad emanating from the Muslim lands themselves? I have grave doubts about President Bush's "forward strategy for democracy." As our present horrendous situation in Iraq illustrates, it is most unlikely that we have the ability to engraft Western-style or any style of stable democracy onto Muslim countries. And even if we did have the ability to carry out this incredibly ambitious project, it would require us (in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has already required us) to involve ourselves intimately in the Muslim world for decades and generations to come, with incalculable destabilizing effects on our own society.

As an example of the effects I'm talking about, the democratic reform of Muslim societies requires their partial or complete secularization. But if the secularization of Muslim societies becomes a guiding principle of our foreign policy, that would inevitably lead us to secularize our own society as well, which is the very last thing we need. (Of course, it's the very thing that the left most passionately seeks�which, by the way, exemplifies how universalist neoconservative policies inadvertently advance leftist goals.)

If democratization is too uncertain and too costly an endeavor, what other options do we have? We cannot simply destroy Islam (though some would surely like to do so). Nor, as Ann Coulter once half-jokingly suggested, can we convert all Muslims to Christianity (though we can dream, can't we?). What we can do and must do is put the Muslims back in a situation where they cannot threaten us.

There are two principal steps by which this can be accompished. The first step, already mentioned, is to force and encourage the return of Muslim immigrants from the West and from other non-Muslim countries to their historic homelands, thus radically reducing Muslims' ability to wage jihad against the larger world. The second step, suggested by Andrew Bacevich in February 1993, is to police the Moslem countries without trying to reshape them ideologically or getting directly involved in their internal affairs. Bacevich writes:

[T]he message to the Arab world from American officials needs to be explicit and unambiguous: Respect those red lines [e.g. no WMDs, no harboring of terrorists] and we will respect your existing political arrangements; disregard them and we are coming after you, with or without allies, with or without the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

In sum, what we should demand of Arab leaders is not ideological fealty, but simply responsible behavior. And this demand is not negotiable. We will not insist that the House of Saud declare its adherence to the principles of Jeffersonian democracy. But we will insist�as the Bush administration has yet to do�that those who rule the kingdom will ensure that Saudi Arabia cease serving as an incubator of suicidal terrorists. On that point, we will be adamant and uncompromising. And on that point, with the examples of Afghanistan and Iraq showing that we mean what we say, we can expect compliance. [Andrew J. Bacevich, �Don�t Get Greedy! For sensible, limited war aims in Iraq,� National Review, February 10, 2003.]

One way for the U.S. to carry out this policy would be establishment of a permanent military base in a convenient location in the Mideast/Persian Gulf region (though away from any major population centers), from which we could encourage the Muslim states to keep jihadists and other dangerous elements at bay. By maintaining a threat to topple any regime that allowed extremists and terrorists to get out of line, we would let the Muslim governments themselves do the dirty work of suppressing the jihadis in their midst (which they would have plenty of motivation to do, given our credible threat to overthrow them if they fail to do so), instead of our having to do it ourselves, as in Iraq. This would surely be a more effective and less costly use of our national power�and of our men's lives�than our current, "try-to-build-democracy-while-half-the-country-keeps-shooting-at-us" policy in Iraq. The point is, we don't care what the Muslims do in their countries, just as long as they don't do anything that endangers us.

Moreover, this containment of the Muslim peoples can be accomplished without violating their dignity and essence as Muslims. If we sought literally to suppress and destroy Islam, we could be justly accused of practicing cultural genocide. But if we simply contain the Muslims in their historic lands where they can have no power over us, that would not be harming them, even under the terms of their own religion. As I have mentioned here as well as in a previous article, one of the paradigms of Islamic conduct is Muhammed's earlier life in Mecca, where his message was rejected and he was helpless. When Muslims because of adverse external conditions are unable to wage jihad, they calmly accept the situation because it fits the pattern of Muhammed's own life; indeed, their laws explicitly accommodate them to that exigency. It is no shame for a Muslim to accept defeat, because he views it as temporary, and so he waits patiently for future jihadist opportunities to arise. The wait can be very long�centuries, in fact. And that should be just fine with us.

Thus Islam itself has provided us with a satisfactory solution to the Islamic threat, which is to restore the Muslims to the relatively powerless condition of Muhammed prior to the hejira.

Lawrence Auster

JoeS:

That's a LOT to think about, and I am going to have to think about it for awhile.

Clearly, Islam is not benign, and may never be.

Dan L

Joe,

How can one read a propaganda piece from a websites which is full of slurs -- objectively? It would have been nice if you mentioned that aspect of the article you posted.

For those interested, it is here: http://www.frontpagemag.com/

One can notice the mentality of the website, and also where they link to -- like "Jihad Watch" a hate site against Islam. So much for "objective."

We can once again post how Christians want to convert the whole world to Christianity, and how they say anyone who is not Christian is evil so it is ok to try to get rid of them. Oops -- I think that was what we have here, we don't need to mention it.

But the work itself, constantly misrepresents. For example -- the term jihad really means "struggle." And it reflects the internal struggle MORE than any external within Islam. Christians also use battle language which talking about spirituality -- does that now prove they are evil?

I would really wish that people would listen to the words of the Pope and follow his example. These are the real words to ponder and think about.

http://www.nccbuscc.org/comm/nationaltragedy/textsislam.htm

Having shown some of what the Pope has said about Islam, and Catholic response to Islam (instead of the response by fear and ignorance), I would also like to show some websites from Muslims which run counter to the description given them:

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=1080

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...entId=A13974-2001Sep11&notFound=true

These are only a couple examples one can find -- contrary to the sentiment many people I talk to think, Muslims did and continue to condemn terrorism. Just because the media silences it to help create tension (and one of the websites talk about this as a conspiracy, which of course is wrong -- but one can understand why they think so) just means that we are still no better than Pravda when it comes to Islam in our media.

To quote his holiness, the Patriarch of Rome: "the spiral of hate and violence must not prevail." Please stop adding to it.

I would recommend reading the links and books from this website: http://www.midwestaugustinians.org/justpaxislam.html . Scott Alexander is a professor I studied under when I was an undergraduate, in a class on Sufism. He also is a very devout Catholic who went to daily mass.

Henry,

You are not being honest. People aren't as stupid as you suppose. I've been guided most of my adult life by the kinds of things T S Eliot believed. "The background of the author means nothing when it comes to the critique of what the author said. Either something is true or it is not." Even most uneducated people can eventually and sometimes more quickly than the educated see through mere propaganda for what it is. When you slam the messenger without offering anything of substance to counter what the messenger reports you become unbelievable. When you respond to the evidence of butchering, tyranny, forced conversions, and the like being forced upon the world by one Islamic nation or group after another with "well Christians have done these things as well" you are not really engaged in the conversation. We wonder about your grasp of reality.

If you are a Christian then I suggest you move to Sudan and see how you will be treated. Compare that with how Muslims are treated here. If you protest that Sudan is not typical then I invite you to move to Uzbekistan or Saudi Arabia or Iran.

Talk also to some of the people I've met, whose names I will not offer. I don't trust this public forum. I'm beginning to wonder if I should trust you. One such person is a Muslim from Pakistan who said "Muslims lack character. My religion for the most part is wonderful but many of the people who follow it have no character." Another Muslim from Iran after he and his wife were educated in France returned home to help the Ayatola rebuild the homeland following Sharia. It didn't take long for the Jack Booted thugs (I use the phrase advisedly) who were and the last time I knew are running that country to arrest both them on the charge of being spies. After months of torture he was finally able to bribe his way out of prison. He fled Iran through Turkey. On the journey he pleaded with his rescuers to tell him about his wife. "Where is she?" They answered, "They murdered her." Then he wept as he told me of his sorrow and how his friends had spirited their daughter to a European country for hiding. He had no illusions about his own safety. I could speak of the Muslim community leader from India who spoke of his distaste for Saddam Hussein and his ways. Millions of Muslims hate what is done in their name, just as I hate was is being done in our name in No. Ireland.

But, if you are to be honest, don't you wonder why No. Ireland is almost the only example anyone can give for persons using the name Christian to defend butchery. Don't you wonder why there are so many examples of countries in the name of Allah or Islam who are highjacking planes and killing people with them, who kill other Muslims who don't agree with them, who kill by the millions Christians who have done nothing but try to exist.

I know several Christian missionaries who fear for their lives every day in Muslim dominated countries. Outside of Serbia how many Muslims in Christian dominated nations realistically fear for their lives?

Whether Islam is an honorable religion is another question altogether. I'm not even sure I'd know how to answer that question. In one sense I would imagine all religions are honorable. But millions of followers of Islam are willing by their own testimony and their own actions very willing to kill in order to dominate. Only a fool would want to be killed or dominated.

Dan L

Dan,

Yes, to you the words of the Pope are not substantial.

I responded to the background of the source, because it helps to respond to the text itself. As someone who knows Islam, and not from the "they are evil" perspective, but can see Muslims are human like anyone else, I also know many of the examples you bring are not really reflections of Islam.

Let's take Sudan for example. You keep mentioning it. What is the conflict? It really is a power conflict, similar to what we see in the south american hemisphere. Ooops. Did we forget that the US has helped those brutal dictators continue THEIR genocidal activity? The great Christian US. But again, as with S.A., same with Sudan. You have brutal dictators who liked to use religion as -- Marx said it well in this instance -- an opiate. It is a means to control, not a means of belief (which is why I discussed how so-called Muslim leaders dismiss their very own laws!)

Ireland is not the only example we can provide. Nor is Serbia. Let us look at the brutality that the United States experienced with Manifest Destiny.

I have provided resources people can study if they want to know the truth. I gave websites which list books people can actually _read_. Not websites which misconstrue the whole notion of jihad! The common western misconception - was enhanced -- by the website. That is all it was.

So if I did not take it point by point by point, it is because I provided something better -- resources for people to make up their minds on their own, from credible scholars. Not rants.

Stop the "they hate us, and want us destroyed so we must destroy them first" attitude. The Pope is right. Stop the circle.

PS

I have Christian friends who say "Christians lack character. It is a great religion, but Christians often lie and have no concern with ethics." You know, I too can "poison the well" with "ad hominems" like that if you want.

Henry,

This is supposed to be a peace loving Muslim response to terrorism? This is simply your first link. This sounds like it came off the presses in Nazi Germany, which isn't especially surprising, given the fact that the Nazi's controlled much of the middle East for a time and many of the contemporary leaders took their cue from Nazi propaganda. This does not make Islam look very appealing. I will check your other links. I hope they are better than this one.

Al-Khalil, Sept 15, IRNA -- Muslim scholars all over the globe have strongly condemned the suicidal plane-crashes in the United States,saying that Islam shouldn't be blamed for the actions of a few of its
followers.
"As Christianity can't be blamed for the violent actions of some
of its followers, the religion of Islam likewise shouldn't be blamed
for the actions of some of its misguided followers," said Sheikh
Muhammed Hussein, an Islamic scholar and Imam and speaker of the Aqsa
Mosque in Jerusalem.
Speaking on the Voice of Palestine Saturday, Sheikh Hussein said
attacks on innocent people is absolutely and totally forbidden.
"In our religion, even cutting off a tree or killing an animal is
forbidden, let alone the killing of innocent people." He accused the
Zionist-owned and Zionist-controlled media in the Western world of
"working rabidly to besmirch, vilify and incite against Islam and
Muslims."
Sheikh Muhammed Hussein Fadlullah, a Lebanese Muslim scholar of
universal stature, argued that Muslim opposition to American
oppression of the Palestinian people and other Muslim peoples doesn't
justify attacking and killing innocent people.
"Israel is the main beneficiary of this terrible tragedy," he
said.
Sheikh Yousef Al Qaradawi, the well-known Egyptian scholar, also
condemned the terrorist acts in the United States.
He said the world "must make a distinction between what Islam
says and what some misguided individuals do in its name."
Qaradawi recognized though that there was no easy remedy for the
problem of terrorism.
"Terrorism thrives on oppression and injustice, you can't uproot
terrorism if you don't uproot oppression." He added that the terrible
tragedy should make the US reconsider its wanton backing of Israeli
oppression against the Palestinian people.
On Friday, Muslims around the world held special prayers for the
souls of the victims of the terrorist act in the US.
The prayers were in stark contrast to the image portrayed by
Islamophobic media in the United States which stopped short of issuing
sweeping condemnation of Muslims.
KA/NK/RR