enoch007

Look, Christian terrorism in the United States, alright- Let's just start at the Ku Klux Klan, who, at the height of their popularity in the '20s permeated virtually EVERY state in the continental US, elected JUDGES and CONGRESSMEN and sherrifs and hanged black people and jewish people and adulterers and persucuted any other faith criminals they could think about. They were still very active into the 1960's (Birmingham church bombing, kindap/murder of Goodman, Chaney and...I forgot the third etc) Now they experienced a decline in the late sixties until the 1980s where they were joined by several different organizations of terrorists also related in many ways to Christianity (in their own sick minds) who purpotrated any number of crimes, hold-ups, assasinations (the broadcaster Berg, his crime was being a puppet of the Zionist Occupation Government) etc. And the fringe right to lifers who bombed abortion clinics and assasinated doctors (real progressive there, killing doctors) . Oh yeah and Waco and on and on. Domestic right wing (Christian inspired, in many cases, again subjectively) was a real growing concern until my "isolated (?) incident" at Oklahoma City, which is finally when the Republican Party formally ceased it's flirtation with these elements (consider the difference between the conventions of "92 with Buchanan and Pat Robertson calling lesbians "witches") and '96 when Dole extoled the big tent conservative notion. I don't mean to slam Republicans per se (as I don't mean to indict all Christians in these acts) but c'mon, terrorism in the name, or under the guise, or whispering the praises of Christianity in the US is neither new, isolated or particularly innocuos. Your position of trying to say Islam as a whole is so more heinous than any other number of power systems or rationales for murder in our world belies a bias on your part, I believe. Do you think Islamic terrorism would be such a threat if it was seated primarily in the center of Africa, please note the Congo has just experienced a civil war(S) that has claimed life in the MILLIONS, and who cares???? Perhaps the proximity to oil resources and the strategic interests of Western Powers has something to do with how "dangerous" Jihadists are percieved today. I don't mean to minimize 9-11 (especially as an "isolated incident") but, the tension between the west and Islamic Fundamentalism is now almost thirty years old (ie the assumption of power of Khomeini in Iran, which was facilitated, remember, by the support of the US for the Shah of Iran and his very prenicious intelligence service, the SAVAK). The American people have mostly slept through these last years and kept the Jihadists (or Taliban or Mujahadeen or Republica Guard, take your pick) under their radar screens until the 9-11 disaster. Islam was no better or worse then or now, it just gets more press.

Agnostheist

Exactly. Thats why Christianity is my 2nd. After Islam.


Bias or not, I am able to rationalize it. Eh? If its not unfounded, maybe its not biased.


Surely that plays a role. But let us not forget two important sources of this conflict:

1. Islam's history of conquering christian lands, from Egypt to Greece.

2. The muslim worlds deplorable treatment of non-muslims within their lands.


Agreed. Islam was no better or worse then and now, but its just bad from the very beginning back when its founder massacred an entire tribes. 9/11 served as a wake up call. Which makes more money for the press. but a wake up call none the less. A serious danger to man's progress.

enoch007

.[/QUOTE Islam was no better or worse then and now, but its just bad from the very beginning back when its founder massacred an entire tribes. 9/11 served as a wake up call. Which makes more money for the press. but a wake up call none the less. A serious danger to man's progress.[/QUOTE]

Your rankings are of course your own and your opinion valid as such, but there is not any crime which you can lay on the doorstep of Islam that cannot be laid on many other doorsteps, unfortunatly salvation has many fathers but mass murder is always an orphan.

premjan

It is in the scripture though - at least in the stuff by Manu and also the Purusha Sukta and even the Gita. Fundamentalists will tend to justify it.

Lógos Sokratikós

Pandemonium.

Anyway, we cannot substract religions from their temporal, spatial, philosophical and social contexts.

Lógos Sokratikós

That is quite true. Regardless of our persuasions, we should all reflect on this.

adren@line

the manu texts are obsolete and were resurrected by the British. They were forgetten by Indians and never widely applied.

The texts do mention caste but only in reference to occupation (texts meaning Vedas/Gita/Upanishads). They make no reference to caste being determined by birth, that I know of anyways.

adren@line

it all relates to mob-mentality and group-think behavior. However, not every concept/division/trait has been applied to mob mentality behavior or has contributed to genocide.

But atheism has, or at the very least, the "atheist" label.

The point being that atheists have fucked up just as much as Christians and Muslims in the last century, so they have little to criticize. Whether or not that had anything to do with atheism or any atheistic doctrine is a separate issue, which is along the same lines as the arguments Christians use ("they werent "really" Christians")

premjan

The Gita does not speak of absolute stratification of the caste system, but it does mention it.
http://www.asitis.com/18/42.html

xxx

But religion gives people an excuse to kill.