I’ve got a question for President Obama
And I wish someone would ask it of him. For real.
Please read my new essay in The Weekly Standard, and pass it on to anyone you know who could ask Obama or who knows someone who could ask him or who knows someone who—well, you get the idea.
Here’s an excerpt:
President Obama has repeatedly denied that terrorists have anything to do with the real Islam. But what would Obama say about the fatwa that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s leading political and religious authority from 1979 to 1989, issued condemning author Salman Rushdie to death for writing a book deemed blasphemous to Islam? Khomeini was about as “real Islam” as it gets…
The fatwa Khomeini issued makes chilling reading even today. Here’s a translation:
“I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book entitled ”˜Satanic Verses’. . . as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, are hereby sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Moslems to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islamic sanctity. Whoever is killed doing this will be regarded as a martyr and will go directly to heaven.”
Nothing to do with Islam? I would remind Obama, as he ponders that question, that at the time of the Rushdie fatwa Khomeini had not only been “Supreme Leader” of Iran — a country that has the seventh-largest Muslim population in the world — for almost a decade, but he also had long been considered an expert in Islamic law and had written many books on the subject.
Khomeini was no fringe figure who did not understand the religion he’d spent most of his life studying. What’s more (as you will see if you read the entire essay), the present religious-day leaders of Iran fully support the Rushdie fatwa to this day, despite a common misconception that it has been withdrawn. Not only is it still in force, but current Supreme Leader Khamenei (Khomeini’s successor) reaffirmed the fatwa in 2005, and the bounty on Rushdie’s head was increased to 3.3 million in 2012.
So President Obama, what’s that about terrorism having nothing to do with Islam?
Neo said:
Khomeini was about as “real Islam” as it gets………Khomeini was no fringe figure who did not understand the religion he’d spent most of his life studying.
Looks you making judgment or judging a complete religion on basis of lunatic man very unwise and absurd Neo.
Not every religious claims man should been taken by a complete faith.
How many religious figures with Christian faith or Jewish faith are nuts and lunatics, dose that make both faiths looks bad or judging all the faith by their acts in your view?
Question to Barack Obama?
Why not start by asking Jimmy Carter that question?
Only if you get some semblance of a mature answer—–then ask it of Obama.
Ray,
I’m not making the assertion. Iran is making it. Iran, the seventh largest Muslim country in the world. And Islamic scholars made that assertion when they gave Khomeini respect as a Muslim scholar. Of course not every Muslim will agree. But of course Khomeini was part of a respected and bona fide wing of Islam, plus a bona fide Muslim leader of a Muslim country, who had long been considered a Muslim scholar. Did you read any of the links in the article?
If you can just choose the Muslims you want and like, and call them the real Muslims, then it’s you (or others who do the same) who are making such judgments, not me.
If a Christian or a Jew were the respected and powerful head of a Christian or Jewish theocracy (which Iran is—a Muslim theocracy), I would say that person would be a member of that religion and what they did in the name of that religion would be owned by that religion, which doesn’t mean every member of that religion agrees with it.
How else could a Muslim leader be defined, if not that way? Are the only Muslim leaders the ones you approve of? Plenty of other Muslims accepted and approved of Khomeini’s fatwa, as well.
Off topic but Ace has decided to hasten the burning by voting Democrat, I think I’m with him on this one.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=355301
jmc:
Hey, I’ve got an idea—if my boyfriend is saying mean things to me, I’m going to go out and get a new boyfriend who’s an ax murderer. Sounds like a great idea, no?
I’ve written about that sort of thing—“I’m mad at the Republicans, so I’m going to vote Democratic and hasten the demise of the republic because something better will be coming” before. I think it’s one of the most suicidal and destructive acts possible for a conservative. I’m planning to write about it again.
One can make the argument, as does Ray, that “Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s leading political and religious authority from 1979 to 1989” was a “lunatic man”. Since the “current Supreme Leader Khamenei (Khomeini’s successor) reaffirmed the fatwa in 2005, and the bounty on Rushdie’s head was increased to 3.3 million in 2012” and “the present religious-day leaders of Iran fully support the Rushdie fatwa to this day… Ray’s argument must of logical necessity posit that ALL of Iran’s leadership are ‘lunatic men’. Which btw, confirms Netanyahu’s point.
Since 9/11 there have been over 25,000 jihadist terrorist attacks around the world, many not in Western nations. That many attacks cannot honestly be dismissed as the activities of some ‘fringe groups’.
But the most damning evidence of Islam being the source of violent Islamic jihad is the Qur’an itself, which explicitly and unequivocally calls for jihad against the entire world, until all are Muslim.
Predictably, Ray will deny this and in doing so demonstrate himself to either be profoundly ignorant or a liar.
The world does not falsely condemn Islam, Islam unashamedly declares itself to be mankind’s enemy.
Neo: what would Obama say about the fatwa
Probably the same as this:
Obama Praises Muslim Cleric Who Backed Fatwa on Killing of U.S. Soldiers
Controversial cleric gets nod in Obama’s speech at the United Nations
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-praises-muslim-cleric-who-backed-fatwa-on-killing-of-u-s-soldiers/
Artfldgr:
Oh, it’s a rhetorical question. I know Obama wouldn’t give a proper answer.
Given Mahdi Obama sees himself as one of the twelve imams, its whatever he says it is… (sarcasm)
Ayatullah Khamenei mentioned the 12th or “hidden” imam
He is referred to as the hidden imam because he is said to live among us in anonymity, which brings a great significance to the Qur’an’s command to treat one’s fellow man with kindness and forgiveness. You never know, you might be talking to the Mahdi himself!
Neo,
No need to get another boyfriend who is an ax murderer, the one you got is one too, he just hasn’t told you yet.
Obama gets some backup help, and from someone many respect — King Abdullah of Jordan said on CNN on Sunday that Obama is right not to call ISIS ‘Islamic extremists’:
As counter-intuitive as it may sound, I think that the real source of the problem is not in the (text of the) Qur’an. Emphasizing that layer of analysis – what Qur’an explicitly states – opens doors for all sorts of false analogies with Judaism and Christianity, if one does not possess sufficient knowledge of the interpretative and the historical contexts.
I read the Qur’an, from cover to cover, somewhere about 10th grade. Paradoxically, I have never read _the Bible_ in its entirety (shame on me), but I was curious enough to read all of the Qur’an as I was working on a school project, well past 9/11.
Reading Qur’an without much additional context and guidance had two effects on my underdeveloped (and thus insufficiently protected) intellect. One, I severely underestimated the civilizational difference between the world which inherited the Qur’an and the world which inherited the Bible; two, it set me up for years of false theological analogies with Judaism and Christianity, as the text alone (severed from its interpretation, the way it is angled and the way it is “locked” in Islam) did not sound _that_ different, on the level of “stories”, from other things I had read.
It was much later (as I learned of the political doctrine to which much of the Islam can be reduced, of the chronological mess that the text was and of the doctrine of abrogation of the earlier verses, of the mechanisms which “locked” the interpretation of some things etc.) that I _began_ to see the problem. Reading the Qur’an alone, if anything, had set me on the wrong path.
If these “folks” aren’t real Muslims, then if we capture them we don’t have to feed them halal food, point them towards Mecca to pray, or supply them with Korans, right?
I would say that person would be a member of that religion and what they did in the name of that religion would be owned by that religion
I think what we’re skipping here is that if the same had happened with a Christian theocracy (if one existed) many many Christians would be immediately on record as saying they do NOT agree and reject that entirely. That doesn’t happen with Islam, which is why people are sideeyeing the hell out of many muslims. Even if they didn’t call for Rushdi’s death, did they denounce it? there seems to be a lot of deflection going on when you point that sort of thing out, too. Which just makes people think they support it. What else should you think?
I think it’s one of the most suicidal and destructive acts possible for a conservative. I’m planning to write about it again.
I hope you do because I got so irritated about it yesterday I had to go away and do other things for a while.
neo concludes, “So President Obama, what’s that about terrorism having nothing to do with Islam?”
M J R says, neo, your rhetoric is as though you’re arguing with this president, as though you’re rhetorically cornering him, pressing for an answer that he cannot provide. (I know you don’t expect an answer, even if someone was in the position to put the question to him.)
When my children were younger, they would bicker, as children will be wont to do, especially when they’re bored. I would point out to them that anyone who argues with a fool *is* *one* — often to little avail. (Was I being the greater fool by trying to engage them at a higher level, when they weren’t ready for it?)
I found out eventually that my advice had already been appropriated by none other than George Carlin . . .
“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
neo, you’re baying at the moon, tilting at windmills, [supply your very own time-worn cliche here]. The president is either irrational or playing a shell game or both. You and I know that all too well. I mean, it’s what he *does*. You and I operate at a higher level.
Anna:
I’m not referencing the Koran. I’m saying that Iran is a Muslim theocracy and both of its supreme religious leaders have approved the Rushdie fatwa. That’s an objective fact.
Paradoxically, I have never read _the Bible_ in its entirety
I think what you have to understand about Christianity in particular is that a lot of the wrath of god stuff is in the old testament (I’m not sure how judiasm deals with it). The new testament wipes some of the harsh law parts away. The way I learned it and I am certainly no theologian, but before the new testament we were under law, and now we are under grace. Which is why nobody keeps kosher. This is greatly simplified, obviously! Anyway, it’s kind of important to at least get a sense of the flow. And then there were all those councils and reformations that dealt with things further to get christianity where it is today.
And interestingly, christianity started with a huge number of martyrs. Almost all of the apostles were murdered and christians were fed to the lions in rome…Contrast that with what was going on in mohammeds day. There is definately a different historical culture, aside from the text.
I haven’t read the Quran, but I did read that it got more violent in later parts (chronologically). I’m curious if that was your impression.
MJR:
You misunderstand. I wrote the piece and asked the questions as a rhetorical device to highlight the utter absurdity of Obama’s position. I do not for a single moment expect him to answer, much less answer logically and thoughtfully.
A whole flock of pigs would be winging their way across the sky.
Very nicely done, Neo, as always. You deserve an ever-widening audience.
Anna has a good point. Part of the problem with Islamic theology is that there is no real authority–no one to declare that this is an authentic interpretation of the Koran, and that isn’t, end of discussion. Anyone can take a simple-minded reading of the Koran and run with it. I don’t believe the training to be an imam is especially rigorous either. It simply means someone who leads a group in prayer.
Anna:
I want to clarify that my comment to you above does not imply any disagreement with you. You make good points about the text being only part of the story. The use made of the text is most important, and how it’s interpreted in practice.
Obama on Terrorism and Obama on Islam is the same as Obama on Anything; it all comes down to Obama on Obama. Here’s how things are in Obama’s Head so that’s how things must be. Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, sez the guy who’s not Muslim and takes offense when Western leaders bumble about in foreign cultures. (Arab Spring, y’all.) It’s not logical or even ideological so logic does not penetrate and ideological hypocrisy does not matter. The court stenographers in the press (and Congress, and the judiciary, and the GOP, and the comments sections) will see to that. Semantic gymnastics and double talk and deflection will be deployed to fend off reality. (A bad deal is GOOD!) When your role in making Obama look cool is over you will be let go. Obama sez: You’ve been very helpful, Jews/blacks/illegal immigrants/etc./etc., f*ck you.
The “how dare you” deflection in the first comment is classic. Attention Obamabots: Keep “hope” alive as long as you can but that brittle candy shell cannot protect you all from reality indefinitely. Brace for the change part.
I think what we’re skipping here is that if the same had happened with a Christian theocracy (if one existed) many many Christians would be immediately on record as saying they do NOT agree and reject that entirely. That doesn’t happen with Islam, which is why people are sideeyeing the hell out of many muslims.
Maybe that’s changing. Last August, UK Muslim leaders issued a fatwa condemning Britons who join jihadi extremists, for example.
The Old Testament’s bloody stuff contains nothing like commands to smite all non-believers ad infinitum. There were massacres, but they were for specific cases and circumstances, not prescriptions for how Jews should treat everybody.
One fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam is that initially Christianity had to be spread by conversion and word of mouth; Islam spread by the sword. Later Christians did the same, but it’s in no way intrinsic to the Gospel. (I could blame the most aggressive Iberian Christians who adopted such tactics on their close proximity to Islam but I don’t have a well-developed enough thesis to back it up.)
Also, there’s nothing in the New Testament that directs Christians to make controlling governments their aim. Christianity developed as an underground persecuted religion; Islam was taking over land and cutting off heads from the get-go.
neo (2:50 pm),
Note that I wrote “neo, your rhetoric is *as* *though* you’re arguing with this president,” emphasis added this time by moi. And so I do believe I understood (and do understand) that you were using “a rhetorical device to highlight the utter absurdity of Obama’s position.”
Now, as for that flying flock of pigs, . . . .
Lea
The lessons of the Torah were summarized by Rabbi Hillel as “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” (He lived in the time of King Herod and Caesar Augustus.)
There are of course positive rules like the Ten Commandments and the numerous rules that follow in Exodus such as leaving a tenth of a field unharvested to be left to the widow and her children. Slavery was a dead letter among Jews by Roman times because of all the restrictions on it.
But there are also a lot of stories of bad behavior by many people, which is what Hillel referred to. Read Samuel and Kings for many examples. The people come to the Prophet Samuel and ask him to anoint a king, against his warnings that in the end a king would bring nothing but misery. They insist, he does, and misery follows. Read it, it could be written today as a description of big government.
Jmc:
False equivalence.
The current boyfriend’s no ax murderer. More like an alcoholic parent who is easily tempted and unreliable, given to making false promises.
Instead of helping the Democrats achieve their dream of permanent power, why not work to elect up-and-coming conservatives?
M J R:
Okay.
I’m the Ray that often comments and not the one that made the first comment.
I guess that Obama has never heard of the assassins, an Islamic group that used to murder other Muslims who were not the right type of Muslims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins
I wouldn’t ask Obama, I’d ask his puppeteer:
Obama poses for Paparazzi at Bootsy Bellows in West Hollywood
Who are the puppeteers?
the real Ray,
The word “assassin” originates from this Islamic group. That is where it came from.
Well said.
(Please say hello to the other Ray)
Not to pick nits, but it would be a flying sounder of swine.
I look at Islam as a cult that was allowed to get too big. But still a cult, to be treated as a cult at every opportunity. And to Obama, who said that the Muslim call to prayer is one of “prettiest sounds on Earth,” that’s heresy. And so would your question be, neo.
Neo,
Just so you know, I have never voted Dem nor will I ever vote Dem. Also, I doubt Ace would vote Dem either.
I think the knee jerk reaction here shows the level of frustration Ace and this particular conservative, have with
the GOP right now.
We conservatives are Charlie Brown and the GOP is Lucy holding the football, at what point do we wise up?
The koran by itself is not complete, one has to also read the Hadith
Hadith
in Islamic religious use is often translated as “prophetic traditions”, meaning the corpus of the reports of the teachings, deeds and sayings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The hadith literature was compiled from oral reports that were in circulation in society around the time of their compilation long after the death of Muhammad. Bukhari’s collection is considered the most reliable by many traditional religious scholars who are Sunnis. The Shi’as believe in an entirely separate body of hadith. Still other Muslims reject the authority of the Hadith, citing numerous verses of the Quran
and on another note
They Thought They Were Free
But Then It Was Too Late
“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
– Milton Mayer University of Chicago
i sent neo the rest…
dont want to be cut down…
I just wished to point out that even reading the very primary source can be highly misleading if not accompanied with the understanding of other aspects of the Islamic civilization and with a proper rooting in _one’s own_ tradition. An immature intellect without these defenses _may_ fall into the trap into which I fell: getting a general impression that Islam is not all that much different from Judaism or Christianity.
As regards the OT, think of the commandment to destroy Amalek, or the last verse of the “By the rivers of Babylon” psalm, or Numbers 31:17-18. So if you come across something like that in “your” holy book, and then you come across similar verses in “their” holy book – but essentially know nothing of the way either text is properly interpreted in relation to other texts and in the context of the whole tradition – it is VERY tempting to conclude how “we” and “they” are very much the same. In my case this was probably exacerbated as I was a teenager when I read the Qur’an, so my defenses were weaker.
Lea – Qur’an is not chronologically arranged, I remember every chapter had an introduction which specified what scholars think to be its chronological context, and there was this whole division of the books into a number of chronological periods. I honestly do not remember if it got progressively more violent as I read, but it does seem to be a common impression that the chronologically later verses are more violent than the chronologically earlier ones – keeping in mind that what is chronologically later does not necessarily always come later in the text. There is also such a thing as the doctrine of abrogation: in some cases some chronologically later things abrogate the chronologically earlier things, so careful when somebody cites from the Qur’an: they may cite what has been abrogated. I am not sure how exactly those mechanisms work, my studies of Islam were very generalist.
And then there is the hadith, which I never read, but which is apparently crucial to understanding Islam.
If I recall correctly, Khomeini did not even read Satanic Verses. Why *not* issue a death warrant on someone for his writing, without even reading it?? Maybe it was an otherwise slow day for the Ayatollah.
“They think only of subjecting mankind to the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions. Like Rousseau, they desire to force mankind docilely to bear this yoke of the public welfare that they have dreamed up in their own imaginations.” Frédéric Bastiat
Artfldgr Says:
March 4th, 2015 at 4:29 pm
They Thought They Were Free But Then It Was Too Late…
These:
Anarcho-tyranny
Managerial state
Neo, Congratulations! I didn’t know you’ve been getting published by Weekly Standard. I just donated $175 to you via PayPal. I hope your flawlessly argued question gets traction all the way to Obama. I hope it gets picked up by someone at Fox News. Also, I am subscribing to Weekly Standard today, with a note that you inspired me.
The Hadiths certainly are important to understanding Muhammad’s mind-set and his dictates as to how Muslims are to behave.
But… the Qur’an stands alone. It does so because the entire Qur’an is Islam’s ‘Ten Commandments’. ALL Muslims accept Muhammad’s most basic claim, that Allah is the Qur’an’s direct author, NOT he. They do so because to state that Muhammad got something as basic as the Qur’an’s authorship wrong is to implicitly declare that he was either deluded or a lair. In either case, Islam’s theological foundations collapse.
Acceptance of that claim obligates a faithful interpretation and the Qur’an is very specific as to the infidel and how Islam should regard the Dar al-Harb… the House of War, which is all lands outside the Ummah (both Muslim controlled lands and the collective Muslim community).
There is NO way to faithfully and honestly ‘interpret’ the Qur’an other than as ISIS does because the doctrine of abrogation resolves all conflicting passages in favor of the later passage and the later passages are the violent passages.
Which means that when King Abdullah of Jordan said, When Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, came out with his manifesto, even extremist organizations completely backed away from what he said. So he has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam, which is a religion of tolerance that reaches out to other people.” he was lying, he was engaged in Muruna, the Sunni equivalent of Shia Islam’s taqiyya, Islam’s twin doctrines of religiously approved lying and deceitful behavior. He was not mistaken, taken out of context or ‘misspeaking’, he knows that Muhammad himself would qualify the assertion that Islam “is a religion of tolerance that reaches out to other people” with the caveat that rejection after peacefully offering conversion mandates violent jihad.
By leaving out the caveat, King Abdullah knowingly misled any Westerners who heard or read his statement.
“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all!…Islam says: Kill the [ non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. … Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!
There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.” Ayatollah Khomeini, 1942
“There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun [or] joy in whatever is serious.” Ayatollah Khomeini
These are deeply sick people, at best they are in profound denial as to the core nature of the religion they embrace and in that denial complicit in Islam’s crimes against humanity. Many, many Muslims who proclaim themselves to be against ISIS are engaged in ‘stealth’ jihad, a subversive attack from within. While the truly devout offer only conversion, slavery or death.
Neo,
Re:
“False equivalence.
The current boyfriend’s no ax murderer. More like an alcoholic parent who is easily tempted and unreliable, given to making false promises.”
Actually, the current boyfriend is more like the ax murderers friend and accomplice. He supplies the ax, the getaway car, disposes of the evidence and gives an alibi, but he doesn’t actually commit the murder.
Saying the GOP is drunk, unreliable and lies is giving them way too much credit. However, my post above this one still stands.
Maybe we should have this discussion when the topic is more appropriate.
I apologize for being off topic.
Who will ask Obama any substantial question?
Zero is the answer. Zero. Zero. Zero.
That is the combined moral courage score for Americans these days as well.
Never has it been truer that a people gets what they deserve. He is hell and we voted for it.
There are millions of people asking substantive questions but few in public office. I hear plenty of conservative commentators asking hard questions.
60+ million people voted for Romney. It is many of our family and friends that are willfully blind and deaf and in that willful denial lies their sin.
We shall all reap what they have sown, as it must be in a representative democracy but “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
“Show me what what Mohammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached’.
Manuel II Palaiologos
The Crusades are the Christian problem, yes?
But Islamic Jihad isn’t Islam’s problem. Do you see how it works?
Never has it been truer that a people gets what they deserve. He is hell and we voted for it.
Things like that tend to happen when you give zombies and slaves the vote. Many of them just vote for a more lovable and harsher master.
Citizens should be independent of foreign or domestic dominions, principalities, and powers. How can a citizen defend their own soil or their own property, when that citizen owes everything, including their daughters, to the local king pin?
I agree with the comments by Artfldgr, Ann, and Geoffrey Britain. Both the Shia and the Sunni Muslims interpret the Koran with the Hadiths. One difference between the two groups is that their collection of Hadiths is somewhat different. Geoffrey Britain is absolutely correct that the Hadiths are unremittingly violent.
Everyone who tries to equate Islam with Christianity runs to the most violent passages in the Bible which are a small portion of the whole and then make the implausible argument that it is possible to read the Bible in the same way as the Muslims read the Koran and Hadiths which are filled with violence from cover to cover.
There is another way to compare the religions – go to the best texts in each set of authoritative holy books. Here is my challenge to anyone who wishes to equate Islam and Christianity. Please find passages in the Koran and Hadiths which are similar to the following passages:
1 John 4:8New International Version (NIV)
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Matthew 5:43-48New International Version (NIV)
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
God’s unconditional love is completely missing in the Koran. In fact the Koran reproves Christians and Jews who claim that Allah loves them:
Surah 5:18
“But the Jews and the Christians say, “We are the children of Allah and His beloved.” Say, “Then why does He punish you for your sins?” Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills, and He punishes whom He wills….”
The reason given why the Christians and Jews are wrong is not because they are unloved because they are Christians and Jews but because they are humans and Allah is not particularly sentimental about humans.
“The Crusades are the Christian problem, yes?
But Islamic Jihad isn’t Islam’s problem. Do you see how it works?”
Yes.
Hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, double standards, and logical fallacies bother people who believe in and care about objective and absolute truth.
But for people who don’t believe in and care about objective and absolute truth, and care only that their side, that their agenda advances and wins, they couldn’t care less about accusations of hypocrisy and and double standards and logical fallacies.
They just want to win by smearing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and misrepresenting you so that it convinces most people that you are not credible, and therefore, neither is your argument.
And they usually win the rhetorical battle, more often than not when you look at pragmatic results.
One thing I figured out over the decade long wandering around, is that dead things can’t do a lot of war tactics the living take for granted. Propaganda and WMDeceptions are very useful and widely used, but I have yet to see a corpse skeleton do it as well as the living.
3.3 million what?
Nolanimrod:
3.3 million dollars. See this.
I think this makes the point.
“I would like to inform all the intrepid Christians in the world that the author of the book entitled ‘Satanic Verses’. . . as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, are hereby sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Christians to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Christian sanctity. Whoever is killed doing this will be regarded as a martyr and will go directly to heaven.”
– no regard for free speech
– no regard for fair trial
– essentially making anyone; therefore, everyone an assassin
– based on “insulting comments”… Now there is a case for the death penalty…
Q
I just looked in Wikipedia and did you know the Crusades ended 700 years ago? Just saying Mr. Obama.
I know Islam is anchored in the past, way to substantiate it Mr. President.
By the way Mr. O. I’m Baptist and we have our kooks but we didn’t exist until Circa 1850 so be specific and call out the Catholic church – what, oh, yeah that would not be politically wise you say, I understand.
Q
The Old and New Testaments are collections of histories by several authors. Most do not make any explicit claim that their words are from God. The 10 commandments being the only exception that I can think of. We are told the Koran was dictated to Mohammed by Gabriel or Allah. Mohammed as prophet, claimed to be just repeating what Allah told him.
My opinion is that anyone who claims to be a prophet is either deluded, demented or deliberately lying. Probably Mohammed was all three. Jim Jones was another self-styled prophet, who most people would now agree was misleading and taking advantage of his followers. I think the same was true with Mohammed, and it is unfortunate for the world that he managed to create a cult that thrived and expanded after his death.
I have taken to calling the ISIS terrorists ISassins.
The crusades were a response to the radical Islam of the day. The original war on terror.
Ah, there’s your problem.
What’s this about President Obama having anything to do with national security?
The reason the Crusades were called in the first pace is because 11th century Islamists were doing much much much worse than what ISIS is doing today.
Compared to those,/i> guys, ISIS is a walk in the park
There is no moderate Islam.
There is no extreme Islam.
There is no fundamentalist Islam.
There is no fascist Islam.
There is no religion of peace.
There is only Islam.
Islam’s core beliefs as expressed in the Koran, Hadith, and Sunna support; Sharia, Jihad Holy war, misogyny, Jew hatred, the killing, enslavement (dhimmi status) and conversion of non-Muslims.
Read the al-Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrihim. Everything the “terrorists” cite come from official, classic Muslim scripture. What ISIS, Iran, Saudi Arabia do is mandated by their religion.
They don’t say Allahu Akbar when killling for nothing.
I have a lot of questions for Barack Obama.
I have scant confidence that they would be answered, honestly. Period.
The Old and New Testaments are collections of histories by several authors. Most do not make any explicit claim that their words are from God. The 10 commandments being the only exception that I can think of.
actually the err in the logic is one of separation..
that is, you create a robot, and program it to write sonnets, now it writes a sonnet… was that written by the robot or by you with the robot just putting out what you intended for it to?
the liberals and atheists want to see themselves apart from reality and god… they even see themselves apart from their own bodies, feeling the ghost in the machine IS the only real thing…
this is why they think that a person who has their morphology reshaped becomes what the shape creates when their mind is what wanted the morphological difference then has to delude itself that such a reformation of material is the same as original material.
this is why they will say, the bible was written by men.. was it? were those men created or spontanously appear out of nothing apart from the universe they live in? remember, they also beleive that reality imposes its will on you and shapes the ghost, but not if that reality is god made and so the reality then gets a mind that writes the word.
so did men write the bible or did the spirit inspire them and in them to write the bible?
what about those that selected what books to include or not include?
its easy to pick an arbitrary division to support an argument and then ignore that you did that so no one notices and argues the invalid…
this is also how you get their idea that all religious people are literal, and make silly things that are said in the bible… the point is not to actually have a cogent theological argument, but to denounce what they see as an alternative power to be crushed so their power increases by its absence.
take the noah flood thing… nothing in the bible says that world means the whole globe… (meanwhie, the lefties with their greeny global warming are running around pretending to be noah claiming a flood of biblical proportions is coming and we have to prepare!!)
what if the flood was his world? a local world.
the way that my world is a lot smaller than the whnole world we know beyond our personal worlds..
and what if the animals he gathered was every domesticated animal, and not every literal animal?
suddenly he goes from a tall tale of global flooding, and tardis constructed shipping of animals and the lack of its history in the fossiles…
to a older man who noticed conditions in his world, prepared a ship, and insured that the work of domestication which moved the jews and man from wandering in the dessert to farmers in one place, would be saved, conserved and available after the catastrophe.
it would make him no more amazing than a man who saw that the levy in lousiana will break and then put a boat in his yard and insured his pets were on it…
in the cartoon leftist liberal story, we lose nothing if we lose the celebration of noah… in the more reasoned version, we are only celebrating the man who saved the future of farming based societies…
the former is nothing to celebrate
the latter is something to be remembered.
and when pilate said change my water into wine, he was not asking that a mirical like a magic trick in los vegas be done… he was inviting jesus to sit and talk and make him a beleiver… wine is symbolic of belief..
once you understand the symbolism, you understand that the vessels in the story of ruth are not clay pots but people and that she was not asked to pour wesson oil endlessly, but to pour forth her faith, which is endless and would convert the empty faithless vessels, and they would then help her.
but if all you have is ridicule in your heart, why would you accept a more reasonsed explanation that puts you in a bind when you could stretch it out of proportion and appear to win your argument among the ignorant who would accept your twisting as valid?
“Looks you making judgment or judging a complete religion on basis of lunatic man very unwise and absurd Neo.”
This is typical answer. I’ve asked many times who would you think no more or more accurately portray real Islam.
Obama … or
Not only Iran’s mullahs but almost ALL of the leading clerics in the middle east and around the world.
Many of the ME leaders will hem and haw about islam but go the the horses mouth (Islamic clerics that have studied islam their whole life) and you’ll get the real deal.
Reding and re-reading this piece on traitors:
What would be powerful enough to exert this influence over the American economy? What entity could be thatpervasive as to reach into big business across the nation?
In February 2010, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce established their first legal Chamber in Doha, Qatar. Qatar, the reader should be reminded, is a prolific financier of terror. Qatar is also home to the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now an Interpol fugitive. The Chamber represents American business and also has an explicitly political and diplomatic mission. In the words of the Chamber’s Executive Vice President and COO, David Chavern, AmCham Qatar is “another concrete example of positive U.S. Engagement with the Muslim world.”
Among the companies and organizations which are premier sponsors of AmCham Qatar are ExxonMobil, The Boeing Corporation, Carnegie Mellon Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar, and Fluor. Moreover, the following companies have significant involvement with the State of Qatar: Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Bank of America, Miramax, among many more.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with its close ties to Qatar, is by far the largest lobbying spender in Washington ($136.3 million in 2012). Business is a bipartisan pursuit, which means that money from Qatar — which is arguably today’s most prolific financial sponsor of Islamic terror — carries great weight in both Republican and Democrat circles:
Betrayal Papers
Sobering. It makes old Joe Mc concerns look trite in comparison … This Orcs infiltration is worse than the commies ….
God save this Republic!
I blame the TWANLOC voters …
the illegals, labeled “seedlings,” would eventually “take over the host.” She continued, “And the immigrants will come out of the shadows, and what I got from the meetings was that they would be pushing the citizens into the shadows. They would be taking over the country; in fact, one of the members of the task force actually said that we would be developing a country within a country.”
You beat me to it artfldgr ,
all in plain sight, the digging doesn’t need be artful in the least.
Meanwhile the, mostly overweight, sheeple is at the mall ….
Follow Ann Corcoran’s blog “refugee resettlement watch” on wordpress for daily updates to the importation of thousands of third world muslim et al “refugees” from Africa, Middle East, Central America, etc.
Btw, please look up “180 preferred communities, state department” for the list of towns as well as the name of “charity”, mostly godamn “Christian” organizations that have set up shop there:
Refugee Resettlement Watch
Do gooding will do us in …
Artfldgr, I wasn’t trying to twist The Bible, and I am aware of what you were trying to say. I was actually trying to contrast the provenance of the Bible with that of the Koran. The Koran was supposedly written by one man, who CLAIMED that it was all given to him by Allah.
That is the essence of the difference between Mohammed’s cult and Christianity and Judaism, both of which are real religions.
You got distracted by defending what it seems you perceived as a criticism of the Bible, while I was only trying to make a point about Mohammad, who in my opinion was not divinely inspired, nor did he repeat what was told him by Gabriel or Allah. He made it all up all by himself.
Obama, if he was honest, would not be trying to say what is not Islam, just as neo has written above.
Ray Says:
March 5th, 2015 at 1:52 pm
“As for the Hadith for some here you need to understand there are many falls one in them, surly Hadith not written during early days of the Prophet time it was written 30-40 after his death during Umayyad time, most those wort the Hadith are not from Jazzearh or Arab but the Muslim.”
At this point, what difference does it make?
In the eyes of Los Angeles-based religious scholar Reza Aslan, Khomeini’s rise is a metaphor for the hijacking of his faith by power-hungry demagogues, self-serving clergy and the radical fundamentalists behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In Aslan’s new book, “No god but God,” he has become the latest of an emerging group of scholars who are turning to the Koran and the origins of Islam to oppose what they see as its misuse.
Articles of faith
Reza Aslan is crusading for a more modern interpretation of Islam.
July 02, 2005|Anne-Marie O’Connor
LAT
Steve2 Says:
“Reza Aslan is crusading for a more modern interpretation of Islam.”
Unfortunately Reza Aslan has perfected the art of taqiyya.
In Aslan’s new book, “No god but God,” he has become the latest of an emerging group of scholars who are turning to the Koran and the origins of Islam to oppose what they see as its misuse.
Too bad they can’t turn to Zoroastrianism, because that’s the True Persia, everything else is basically Iran or Islamic conquered territory.
What does Ray know about religion? Is he basing his views on his own personal faith in Global Warming kult? What else is there, Leftist dogma, NKVD theory?
What does an enemy of God and an enemy of humanity, know about religion and why is he here lecturing us about a religion he is allied with?