Radical Islam Rising

[Johnny Yuma]

Radical Islam Rising
One percent of one billion is a lot.
By Arnaud de Borchgrave

In a truly free election in Saudi Arabia with the royal family on the sidelines bereft of the divine right of kings, and Osama Bin Laden as a candidate for prime minister, the world’s most wanted terrorist would win hands down. So spoke, albeit privately, one of the most important non-royals who manages a big chunk of the royal family’s portfolio of financial assets.
Bin Laden, a member of a powerful and rich as Croesus non-royal family, is seen by countless millions of fundamentalist Muslims as the successor of several famous Islamic theologians going back all the way to Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya. Born in AD 1269 , Taymiyya was prolix on jihad (holy war) against transgressors of the word of Allah as conveyed by the Prophet. This contemporary of Dante elevated jihad to the same level as the “five pillars” of Islam—prayer, pilgrimage, alms, faith (“No God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet”), and Ramadan.
The Age of Sacred Terror is a remarkable new book by two of the Clinton White House’s counter-terrorist directors that delves into the roots of militant Islam and its jihad duties. Anyone who opposes jihad is an enemy of God.
“By asserting that jihad against apostates within the realm of Islam is justified—by turning jihad inward and reforging it into a weapon for use against Muslims as well as infidels—- [Taymiyya] planted a seed of revolutionary violence in the heart of Islamic thought,” wrote co-authors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon.
These two experts argue correctly it was precisely the weapon of jihad that heavily armed Muslim extremists turned to when they invaded and occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979. The House of Saud was momentarily paralyzed; they could not send security forces into the most sacred site in all of Islam with orders to shoot it out with the jihadists in the tunnels around the mosque. The royals turned to the French for help. The tunnels were flooded and high voltage cables dropped into the water. Most of the jihadis drowned or were electrocuted.
Any leader of a Muslim country who does not rule according to a strict interpretation of the sharia (Islamic law) is fair game for jihadis, as jihadi-in-chief Taymiyya ordained. It was Taymiyya’s fatwa (religious decree) in 1303 against Mongol invaders and occupiers that turned the tide against Mongols who had converted to Islam.
If Taymiyya was Osama’s first role model, the second was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, born in 1703 in Arabia, then a remote, neglected part of the Ottoman Empire. He was steeped in the works of Taymiyya that became religious pillars of back-to-basics Wahhabism. Its creed was that “innovation” was a grave sin against Islam. Takfir was proclaimed, which meant innovators were to be put to death.
Wahhab, allied with a local sheikh, Muhammad ibn Saud, fought to restore a strict interpretation of the faith. By the time he died in 1792, Wahhabism had conquered most of central Arabia.
The descendants of al-Wahbab and Ibn Saud continued this close alliance of religious zeal and territorial conquest—and forced the rest of the Arabian peninsula into zealous compliance.
Key modern-day literary firebrands on the side of Muslim revolutionary fervor included Abu al-Ala Maududi and Rashid Rida. They linked Islam with the rhetoric of communism and fascism, which is one of the keys to the success of Islamist extremists in the Oct. 10 elections in Pakistan.
A similar fusion occurred in Iran in the late 1970s when the ayatollahs and the underground Tudeh (Communist) party merged their efforts to undermine and overthrow the shah.

.....continued

[Johnny Yuma]

On Jan. 26, 1952, the fiery Muslim Brotherhood suddenly exploded on the Cairo scene by burning down some 300 buildings. King Farouk survived six more months until a military coup of “Free Officers,” led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, abolished the monarchy and allowed the king to sail on his yacht into comfortable exile in Monte Carlo.
The chief theoretician of the Muslim Brothers was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote non-stop during his desert imprisonment by Nasser. Hanged in 1965, his books are still bestsellers throughout the Middle East. His manifesto, Signposts, merged all the essential elements of revolutionary Islamism.
Qutb’s views of America—derived from his stay in Greeley, Colo., while working on a master’s in education—are widely shared today throughout radical Islam, and presumably derived from his works. Repelled by America’s admiration for Israel, as well as the licentiousness and racism that pervaded the country, he decried American culture as foul and empty.
From Yasser Arafat’s attempt to take over Jordan in September 1970 (dubbed Black September) and overthrow King Hussein, to the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, Sayyid Qutb’s outpourings provided the rationale to kill America’s puppets.
The other branch of militant Islam sprang from anti-colonial sentiment in British-ruled India in mid-19th century. Known as Dar ul-Ulum (Realm of Learning), it took root at Deoband, in Uttar Pradesh. Deobandism, dedicated to the salafi conception of Islam, and Wahhabism are the two wings of Islamist fanaticism that continue to vie for influence in present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Ninety-nine percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims are moderate and see jihad as a self-cleansing process to get back on the path of spiritual excellence. Presidents Mubarak, Musharraf, Ben Ali (Tunisia), Kings Abdullah II of Jordan, Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed VI of Morocco, and other moderate Muslim leaders, all have told this reporter in the past two years that Islamist extremists are no more than 1 percent of their population.
When we reminded Musharraf that one percent of 140 million is 1.4 million, he said, “you’re right, but I’d never thought of it that way.” Now he realizes it’s a lot more than one percent as politico-religious extremists won the provincial government in the Northwest Frontier Province adjacent to Afghanistan, a share of the Baluchistan government, and 20 percent of the seats in the new national parliament.
One percent of 1.2 billion is 12 million Muslim fanatics who believe America is the Great Satan, fount of all evil, to be attacked and demolished. Whether al-Qaeda is centralized as it was before 9/11 or decentralized, as it appears to be after Bali and Mombassa, is immaterial. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. From Sweden (660,000 Muslims out of 5.8 million people) to Switzerland (also 10 percent), Senegal and Somalia in Africa, Sumatra and Singapore in Asia, and South America (especially Brazil and Venezuela), there are Wahhabi and Deobandi mosques. And that’s just the countries beginning with the letter S.
Islamist terrorist groups have plenty of places to hide—from the tri-border area of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay where camps have been reported, to Colombia (where FARC terrorists have been hiding for 38 years), to Somalia in Africa, to Sumatra in Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, even remote areas of the United States where radical Muslims were located, ostensibly engaged in peaceful pursuits.
Muslims are a majority in 63 countries. Of the 30 conflicts now under way in the world, 28 concern Muslim governments or communities. Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, says two-thirds of the world’s political prisoners are held in Muslim countries, which also carry out 80 percent of all executions each year.

....continued

[Johnny Yuma]

Most imams in the thousands of mosques in European countries can preach anti-U.S. and anti-Saudi-royal-family sermons with impunity. They carefully refrain from attacking the host country because intelligence services are probably listening. In Washington, D.C.’s principal Saudi-administered mosque, the imam gives politics a wide berth. Many diplomats friendly to the United States usually attend Friday prayers. Vehement anti-U.S. tirades, however, are average Friday fare throughout the Muslim world. Imams do pretty much their own thing. Islam has no pope, no pictures of the Prophet, and no simulated portraits of Allah, who is genderless. Hate-mongers among the radical clergy use western freedoms in order to denounce them.
Many of the imams in America’s 2,000-plus principal mosques (for a population of five million Muslims) are recently naturalized U.S. citizens who were sent over as missionaries from both Iran and Saudi Arabia.
We are spreading the good word of our faith in America,” said the imam at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, who came over from Iran ten years ago, “just as you send Christian missionaries to sub-Sahara Africa.” He also chided his interlocutor for dismissing his contention that 9/11 was a combined operation by the CIA and Mossad.
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh who is now serving a life sentence in the United States for his part in the World Trade Center truck bombing in 1993, is revered by Muslim radicals the world over.
Vatican sources concede they have been steadily losing ground in Africa to “the Muslim penetration” for the past 30 years.
In Pakistan, a friendly allied country at the Musharraf-Bush level, flat-earth clerics who educated the Taliban leaders have refused any reform of the madrassas, the Koranic schools that inculcate the fundamental belief that America and Israel are the new crusaders hell-bent on destroying Islam. They proselytize a great apocalyptic war, the War of Armageddon that will end in the Muslim conquest of Rome and all of Europe, and later America too. Some 750,000 young Pakistanis are presently in 11,000 madrassas where they are taught that jihad is the noblest of human endeavors.
Gen. Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence chief who hates America with a passion, boasted that a greater Islamic caliphate was fast approaching, one that would marry the oil riches of Saudi Arabia with the nuclear weapons of Pakistan, “which could then deal with America on an equal footing.”
In Singapore, long before Gul’s prediction, Lee Kuan Yew, known as Asia’s Henry Kissinger, told UPI that the “greatest threat facing civilization over the next 10 years was an Islamist bomb and, mark my words, it will travel.”

....continued

[Johnny Yuma]

It is hard to escape the conclusion that a U.S. invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam and replace him with a pro-American government will be seen throughout radical Islam, and large segments of moderate Islam as well, as yet another defeat that must be avenged with acts of terrorism. As the extremists read history, the defeat of the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in 1683 triggered a reversal of Islam’s fortunes that has continued ever since.
Is Islam, as President Bush keeps repeating, “a faith based upon peace and love and compassion” committed to “morality and learning and tolerance”? Yes and no. Radical Islam is committed to jihad against the United States and Israel, or a war of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the impoverished Muslim world. The Wahhabis and Deobandis hate all things American, and are intolerant vis-à-vis all religions outside their own warped view of Islam.
Moderate Islam is yet to find a voice that will roll back the extremists, a sort of Islamic Martin Luther, or at least a Martin Luther King.

[L@mplighterM]

A long read but I believe that the 1% is to low a figure, still some 13,000,000 psychotic radical Muslims is an impressive figure. When you factor in the supporters (could be anywhere from 2% to 100%) a picture emerges that should grab anyone’s attention.

Considering the growth curve of Radical Islam from say 1950 to the present you’d end up with a graph that has a line that’s almost 90º. This isn’t an issue that’s going to go away it’s bound to grow with leaps and bounds.

[Revkha]

Radical Muslims Killing Muslims

By Zahir Janmohamed
Wednesday, June 25, 2003; Page A23
When Pakistan was created, its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, famously declared, "You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the state." Fifty-six years later, I wonder what Jinnah would tell my family and countless others who lost loved ones because of rising religious intolerance in Pakistan. On April 2, 2000, my uncle, Sibtain Dossa, a doctor, was gunned down at his medical clinic by Islamic radicals seeking to cleanse Pakistan of its minority Shiite Muslims.

Over the past few years, extremist Islamic groups in Pakistan have mounted a unilateral terror campaign. But Americans and Christians have not been the only victims. Women, secular advocates and even Muslims -- Ahmadis, dissenting Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims -- have also come under attack.
Recently two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a truck full of policemen, killing 11 and wounding nine in the Pakistani town of Quetta, near the Afghan border. Nearly all the victims belonged to the minority sect of Shia Islam. The attack on Shiites was the third in Quetta in less than two weeks. Speaking of the attack, Rahmat Ullah, a Pakistani senior police official, accurately noted, "It was sectarian terrorism."

The gruesome cycle of violence against Pakistan's minority citizens could not have occurred without the complicity of the Pakistani government. Consider the example of Azam Tariq, a religious cleric and former leader of the radical, Saudi Arabia-inspired Sipah-i-Sahaba. In an interview with the BBC in 1995, Tariq openly praised the Taliban and endorsed attacks on Shiites in Pakistan. Instead being brought to justice, Tariq was rewarded. Today he is a member of Pakistan's National Assembly.
There is a tendency to view the Muslim population as a monolith, with a uniform agenda and little dissent. This outlook on Islam has prompted a slew of articles with titles like "Why Do They Hate Us."

But in Pakistan, many Islamic radicals hold equal (and sometimes more) animosity toward dissenting Muslims (particularly Shiites) than toward westerners. The Sipah-i-Sahaba have even killed many of their own Sunni clerics, because the clerics rejected their divisive agenda. Often, implementing a skewed understanding of Islamic sharia (religious law) -- and not hatred of the West -- is their prime motivation.

If the United States wishes to gain credibility in Pakistan, it should pressure Pakistan to protect all of its residents who stand threatened by the rise of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan -- not just westerners and Christians.

As Muslims lobby the United States to treat its religious minorities with respect, Muslims themselves have averted their gaze while minority groups -- particularly Ahmadi and Shiite Muslims -- are butchered by their "fellow" Muslims. Indeed, much of the Muslim world looked away when Saddam Husssein was executing Shiites in Iraq and ignored the Taliban's mass beheading of Shiites in Afghanistan. [emphasis added]

This does not absolve Shiite Muslims of guilt. Many Shiite clerics have irresponsibly inflamed sectarian tension by denouncing beloved Sunni icons or, worse, endorsing retaliation. But a Muslim group that condemns violence when Islamic radicals kill Christians, then remains silent when Islamic radicals kill Shiite Muslims, is not a human rights group but a PR firm.

Pakistan can curtail the rise of sectarian violence and prevent the spread of extremist Islam by doing three things: punish (instead of reward) those who commit unprovoked acts of aggression against innocents of other faiths; block Saudi Arabia from flooding Pakistani schools with textbooks that preach draconian interpretations of Islam; and restore civil society in urban centers so that extremist groups cannot exploit Pakistan's woes to promote their divisive agendas.

My last memory of my uncle was sitting with him in the sprawling garden next to the tomb of Jinnah in Karachi. I asked if Pakistanis -- particularly Pakistani Shiites -- still respected Jinnah.
"We do," he told me. "Because at least Jinnah tried to create an open Islamic country where all could flourish."
That seems to summarize the history of Pakistan: It has always tried but never achieved Jinnah's goal.

Zahir Janmohamed is writing a book about the rise of religious violence in South Asia.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28807-2003Jun24.html?nav=hptoc_eo

[Johnny Yuma]

By Bruce A. Miller / Special to The Detroit News

In the effort to gain the support of so-called moderate Muslim and Arab states (they are not necessarily the same), Americans have, from President George W. Bush down, instituted a new form of political correctness. It is now considered off limits to have a frank discussion about the reactionary character of Muslim fundamentalism.
One stands to be branded a religious bigot if he is critical of the extremist form of a legitimate religion. I am reminded about how communists were the unintended beneficiaries of Joseph McCarthy and used "McCarthyism" as a weapon to silence their critics.
It is instructive for the purpose of making this point to contrast the debate about Catholicism and Islam. It is considered mainstream and enlightened in some circles to criticize Catholicism because it requires celibacy of its priests, limits the role of women in the religious service and advocates a culture of life that puts it in opposition to birth control, abortion and assisted suicide. No one taking these positions is accused of being anti-Catholic or bigoted, although some are.
But the Catholic Church, unlike Islam, has no armies. It does not sponsor terrorist activities. It does not undermine and attack democratic institutions.
On the contrary, the church supports democracy and was the main force that brought down, through peaceful means, the Soviet Union. Women are not required to sit separately from men in churches or to cover their faces and endure polygamy. The church defends the rights of women and minorities in secular society. Its members were not among the anti-abortion terrorists who bomb clinics. And the few renegade priests involved in terrorist or quasi-terrorist anti-war activities during the war in Vietnam did not speak for the church, whose members were major victims of the North Vietnamese.
But with Islam, it is different. In countries where Islam is dominant, there is no separation of church and state. What is religiously required is secularly imposed.
These states carry out policies that by any standard of decency are immoral, indecent and reactionary. Moderate Saudi Arabia may treat its women better than the Taliban, but that treatment is better only as a matter of degree. It engages in public beheading, severs body parts as punishment for crimes, stones moral malefactors, prohibits democratic expression and seeks to export its reactionary social system to secular democratic societies.
Polygamy is illegal in the United States, although at one time it was a tenet of an American religious group. The practice of polygamy in Islamic states goes virtually uncriticized, even though this abominable practice, which is dictated by men and sanctified by religion, is a cardinal element in the subjugation of women.
It is not bigoted to say something is wrong. Bigotry is an unreasoned and irrational dislike for others based on innate characteristics. There is nothing more immoral than suspending critical judgment to fill an empty oil can. And it is a mistake to assume that, in these Islamic and Arab secular totalitarian countries, the reactionary medieval ruling elites necessarily speak for the people they ruthlessly suppress. Americans have witnessed in Afghanistan the joy of the liberated people of Kabul and other cities. Those liberated, we must not forget, are like their Taliban oppressors Muslim. They just do not embrace the reactionary, anti-democratic creed preached by the oppressing mullahs. I would venture that upon the demise of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Bashar Asad there will be dancing in the streets in Baghdad and Damascus.
Americans blunt our moral mission when we adopt the cultural relativism that says no criticism of Islam in its radical fundamentalist variant is permitted. It is only by calling a spade a spade that we can hope to create an atmosphere that will allow Muslims victimized by these oppressive regimes to breathe the fresh air of freedom.
Americans must not allow these reactionary states to use the religion of the people against them.

Bruce A. Miller is a Detroit labor attorney.

[Revkha]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
By Bruce A. Miller / Special to The Detroit News

In the effort to gain the support of so-called moderate Muslim and Arab states (they are not necessarily the same), Americans have, from President George W. Bush down, instituted a new form of political correctness.

In the last hundred years how many times has America gone down that slippery slope to appease elements who support tyrannical rule over a country. History definitely repeats itself.

I wonder if Norquist is behind this policy. Nah, it was probably Bush Sr and James Baker. Or maybe all three.

[andak01]

Congratulations Johnny on an interesting, thought provoking thread. Let me try to respond in parts.

[andak01]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Bin Laden, a member of a powerful and rich as Croesus non-royal family, is seen by countless millions of fundamentalist Muslims as the successor of several famous Islamic theologians going back all the way to Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya. Born in AD 1269 , Taymiyya was prolix on jihad (holy war) against transgressors of the word of Allah as conveyed by the Prophet. This contemporary of Dante elevated jihad to the same level as the “five pillars” of Islam—prayer, pilgrimage, alms, faith (“No God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet”), and Ramadan.

IF Bin Laden is who we are told he is, then Ibn Taymiyya and Sheik Wahhab should be our source of information on his influences. This then de facto rules out the possibility of ties from him to Saddam or to Iran as both of these sources would be dispised by him and his followers to a point that they would not be able to hide it. In fact, this is being born out by the captured Al Qaida operatives who say that Bin Laden never took anything from Saddam. Iran, a Shiite regiem is even less likely.

I have read a little of the writings of both Taymiyya and Wahhab and I know several people who have studied in Saudi Arabia. Saying that they are responsible for what is going on today is like blaming the holocaust on Nietsche. It is possible to interpret them in a certain way, but it is a stretch on the original.

The extreme followers of Taymiyyah resemble the Almohads of Morocco and, I believe, the Protestants like the early Lutherans or Cromwell's men. Even their places of worship are limited to white plaster walls with no statues or stained glass. There is also a zenophobic streak that goes back in reaction to the Mongol invasion. The period following Taymiyyah was the time when non-believers began to be forbidden to enter Mecca and Medina.

[andak01]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
It is hard to escape the conclusion that a U.S. invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam and replace him with a pro-American government will be seen throughout radical Islam, and large segments of moderate Islam as well, as yet another defeat that must be avenged with acts of terrorism.

Sad but true, and one of many many reasons that I was against the invasion. If it made us and them safer and freer, it would have been a noble cause. Evidence is it did neither. But I'm still waiting to be proven wrong. It doesn't make me happy to think that my most cynical fears were correct.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
By Bruce A. Miller / Special to The Detroit News

In the effort to gain the support of so-called moderate Muslim and Arab states (they are not necessarily the same), Americans have, from President George W. Bush down, instituted a new form of political correctness. It is now considered off limits to have a frank discussion about the reactionary character of Muslim fundamentalism.
One stands to be branded a religious bigot if he is critical of the extremist form of a legitimate religion. I am reminded about how communists were the unintended beneficiaries of Joseph McCarthy and used "McCarthyism" as a weapon to silence their critics.
It is instructive for the purpose of making this point to contrast the debate about Catholicism and Islam. It is considered mainstream and enlightened in some circles to criticize Catholicism because it requires celibacy of its priests, limits the role of women in the religious service and advocates a culture of life that puts it in opposition to birth control, abortion and assisted suicide. No one taking these positions is accused of being anti-Catholic or bigoted, although some are.
But the Catholic Church, unlike Islam, has no armies. It does not sponsor terrorist activities. It does not undermine and attack democratic institutions.
On the contrary, the church supports democracy and was the main force that brought down, through peaceful means, the Soviet Union. Women are not required to sit separately from men in churches or to cover their faces and endure polygamy. The church defends the rights of women and minorities in secular society. Its members were not among the anti-abortion terrorists who bomb clinics. And the few renegade priests involved in terrorist or quasi-terrorist anti-war activities during the war in Vietnam did not speak for the church, whose members were major victims of the North Vietnamese.
But with Islam, it is different. In countries where Islam is dominant, there is no separation of church and state. What is religiously required is secularly imposed.
These states carry out policies that by any standard of decency are immoral, indecent and reactionary. Moderate Saudi Arabia may treat its women better than the Taliban, but that treatment is better only as a matter of degree. It engages in public beheading, severs body parts as punishment for crimes, stones moral malefactors, prohibits democratic expression and seeks to export its reactionary social system to secular democratic societies.
Polygamy is illegal in the United States, although at one time it was a tenet of an American religious group. The practice of polygamy in Islamic states goes virtually uncriticized, even though this abominable practice, which is dictated by men and sanctified by religion, is a cardinal element in the subjugation of women.
It is not bigoted to say something is wrong. Bigotry is an unreasoned and irrational dislike for others based on innate characteristics. There is nothing more immoral than suspending critical judgment to fill an empty oil can. And it is a mistake to assume that, in these Islamic and Arab secular totalitarian countries, the reactionary medieval ruling elites necessarily speak for the people they ruthlessly suppress. Americans have witnessed in Afghanistan the joy of the liberated people of Kabul and other cities. Those liberated, we must not forget, are like their Taliban oppressors Muslim. They just do not embrace the reactionary, anti-democratic creed preached by the oppressing mullahs. I would venture that upon the demise of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Bashar Asad there will be dancing in the streets in Baghdad and Damascus.
Americans blunt our moral mission when we adopt the cultural relativism that says no criticism of Islam in its radical fundamentalist variant is permitted. It is only by calling a spade a spade that we can hope to create an atmosphere that will allow Muslims victimized by these oppressive regimes to breathe the fresh air of freedom.
Americans must not allow these reactionary states to use the religion of the people against them.

Bruce A. Miller is a Detroit labor attorney.

When a religion allows the honor killing of women, hate to gays, jews, other religions and repress's its people it has reached the point where it either becomes marginilized or it becomes something else. I think radical Islam is that something else. Its manta is hate!!! It sounds a lot like nazism to me. The Idea of love thy neighbor as thy self is beyond Radical Islam.

[andak01]

Originally posted by jewbyc
When a religion allows the honor killing of women, hate to gays, jews, other religions and repress's its people it has reached the point where it either becomes marginilized or it becomes something else. I think radical Islam is that something else. Its manta is hate!!! It sounds a lot like nazism to me. The Idea of love thy neighbor as thy self is beyond Radical Islam.

It may well be like naziism. Which would prove that it isn't just the Lutherans and Catholics than are capable of dehumanizing the Jews and others that don't believe as they do.

[Mil]

IF Bin Laden is who we are told he is, then Ibn Taymiyya and Sheik Wahhab should be our source of information on his influences. This then de facto rules out the possibility of ties from him to Saddam or to Iran as both of these sources would be dispised by him and his followers to a point that they would not be able to hide it. In fact, this is being born out by the captured Al Qaida operatives who say that Bin Laden never took anything from Saddam. Iran, a Shiite regiem is even less likely.

I have read a little of the writings of both Taymiyya and Wahhab and I know several people who have studied in Saudi Arabia. Saying that they are responsible for what is going on today is like blaming the holocaust on Nietsche. It is possible to interpret them in a certain way, but it is a stretch on the original.

The extreme followers of Taymiyyah resemble the Almohads of Morocco and, I believe, the Protestants like the early Lutherans or Cromwell's men. Even their places of worship are limited to white plaster walls with no statues or stained glass. There is also a zenophobic streak that goes back in reaction to the Mongol invasion. The period following Taymiyyah was the time when non-believers began to be forbidden to enter Mecca and Medina.


Ah - common. I can give you tons of examples when even the most secular regimes in the modern Arab World have used religious oppostion against each for terrorist activities. If anything I am 100% convinced that Al Qaida had contacts with Saddam - if only in their mutual dislike of the house of Saud.

[Johnny Yuma]

Can Any Good Come
Of Radical Islam?
A modernizing force? Maybe.

BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA AND NADAV SAMIN
Thursday, September 12, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

What is going on in the Muslim world? Why does it produce suicide hijackers on the one hand and, on the other, lethargic and haphazardly capitalist societies that have delivered neither economic development nor democracy? A good if partial answer to these questions--partial because it is limited to the Arab region of that world--can be found in a United Nations "development report" issued in July. As the U.N. assessment concludes, the entire Arab sector, with all its oil wealth, is "richer than it is developed." Its economies are stagnant, illiteracy is widespread, political freedom is hardly to be found, and its inhabitants, especially its women, are denied the basic "capabilities" and "opportunities" of the modern world.
The U.N. report--written, significantly, by a group of Arab intellectuals--was commissioned well before last fall's attacks on the U.S. But its pertinence to those attacks has seemed clear enough to commentators. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times called it the key to understanding "the milieu that produced bin Ladenism, and will reproduce it if nothing changes." An editorial in The Wallstreet Journal found "little wonder" in the fact that "such an isolated culture became a breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism that spawned September 11."
The Islamism of Osama bin Laden and his followers is indeed inseparable from the developmental failures of the world's Arab societies. All the same, however, it would be a mistake to conceive of the Islamist movement as nothing more than an expression of those failures. The phenomenon of radical Islam is more complicated than that, and in all sorts of surprising ways its long-term effect on the entire orbit of Islamic society may turn out to be more complicated still.

Last September's attacks against the United States were carried out by a group of Muslims led by a gaunt, bearded ascetic sitting in a cave in Afghanistan and spouting unfathomable rhetoric. So all-consuming was the hijackers' hatred of America that they were willing to blow themselves up for their cause--something that set them apart from earlier generations of terrorists. Where did this zeal, so foreign to the modern democratic temperament, come from?
On the part of many observers, the immediate impulse was to attribute it to deep cultural factors, and in particular to the teachings of fundamentalist Islam. And of course there was, and is, much to be said for this view. In particular, the fact that, far from repudiating bin Laden, Muslims and Westerners tended to line up on opposite sides in their interpretation of the events of September 11 gave credence to the paradigm of the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, who predicted a number of years ago that the post-Cold War world would give rise to a "clash of civilizations."
Still, foolish as it would be to downplay the role of religious or "civilizational" factors, it will not do simply to call Osama bin Laden an Islamic fundamentalist. For the Islamism of which he is a symbol and a spokesman is not a movement aimed at restoring some archaic or pristine form of Islamic practice. As several observers have argued, including most recently the Iranian scholars Ladan and Roya Boroumand in the Journal of Democracy, it is best understood not as a traditional movement but as a very modern one.
Groups like al Qaeda, the Boroumands write, owe an explicit debt to 20th-century European doctrines of the extreme right and left. One stream of influence can be traced to Hassan al-Banna, the schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. From Italy's Fascists, al-Banna borrowed the idea of unquestioning loyalty to a charismatic leader, modeling the slogan of his paramilitary organization--"action, obedience, silence"--on Mussolini's injunction to "believe, obey, fight." Taking a cue from the Nazis, he placed great emphasis on the Muslim Brotherhood's youth wing and on the marriage of the physical and the spiritual, of Islam with activism. Unsurprisingly, al-Banna also taught his followers to expect not encouragement but repression from traditional Islamic authorities.
A second European source of Islamism can be traced to Maulana Mawdudi, who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami movement in Pakistan in the early 1940s. A journalist well-versed in Marxist thought, Mawdudi advocated struggle by an Islamic "revolutionary vanguard" against both the West and traditional Islam. As the Boroumands observe, he was perhaps the first to attach "the adjective 'Islamic' to such distinctively Western terms as 'revolution,' 'state,' and 'ideology.' "

[Johnny Yuma]

These strands of the radical right and left eventually came together in the person of Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian who became the Muslim Brotherhood's chief ideologist after World War II. In his most important work, "Signposts Along the Road," Qutb called for a monolithic state led by an Islamic party, advocating the use of every violent means necessary to achieve that end. The society he envisioned would be classless, one in which the "selfish individual" of liberal societies would be abolished and the "exploitation of man by man" would end. This, as the Boroumands point out, was "Leninism in an Islamist dress," and it is the creed embraced by most present-day Islamists.
Though developed among Sunnis, this virulent ideological mix reached the Shiite world as well, most notably through its influence on Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Indeed, the Iranian revolution of 1979 conferred on Islamism a degree of religious respectability that it had never before possessed. But the fact that the movement could so easily bridge the bitter Shiite-Sunni divide also suggests just how sharply divorced it is from Islamic history and custom. As the Boroumands conclude, the key attributes of Islamism--"the aestheticization of death, the glorification of armed force, the worship of martyrdom, and 'faith in the propaganda of the deed' "--have little precedent in Islam but have been defining features of modern totalitarianism. The seeming rigor of Osama bin Laden's theology belies the reality of his highly heterodox beliefs.

So much for the ideological side of things. On the sociological side, there is still another close parallel between Islamism and the rise of European fascism. Though Hitler was a great entrepreneur of ideas, the roots of his movement, as described in classic analyses like Fritz Stern's "The Politics of Cultural Despair" (1974), lay in the rapid industrialization of central Europe. In the course of a single generation, millions of peasants had moved from tightly knit village communities to large, impersonal cities, losing in the process a range of familiar cultural norms and signposts.
This rapid transition--captured in Ferdinand Toennies's famous distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society)--was perhaps the most powerful impetus behind modern nationalism. Deprived of local sources of identity, displaced villagers found new social bonds in language, in ethnicity and--ultimately--in the mythopoetic propaganda of Europe's extreme right. Though the various right-wing parties pretended to revive ancient traditions--pre-Christian Germanic ones in the case of Nazism, Roman ones in the case of the Italian Fascists--their doctrines were really a syncretic mishmash, old symbols and new ideas brought together by the most up-to-date forms of communications technology.
Islamism, as the late Ernest Gellner was among the first to note, has followed a similar path. Over the last several decades, most Muslim societies have undergone a social transformation not unlike that of Europe in the late 19th century. Large numbers of villagers and tribesmen have moved to the vast urban slums of Cairo, Algiers and Amman, leaving behind the variegated, often preliterate Islam of the countryside. Islamism has filled the void, offering a new identity based on a puritanical, homogenized creed. Syncretist in the manner of fascism, it unites traditional religious symbols and rhetoric with the ideology of revolutionary action.
Some observers, especially after September 11, have suggested that the real engine of Islamism's growth is poverty, but this is not the case. According to the recent U.N. report, for example, the Arab world actually compares favorably to other developing regions when it comes to preventing abject want. Rather, like European fascism before it, Islamism is bred by rapid social dislocation. More often than not, its leaders and propagandists are newcomers to the middle or upper classes. Islamism introduces these educated but often lonely and alienated individuals to a larger umma (community) of believers, from Tangier to Jakarta to London. Through the magic of the cassette tape recorder (in Khomeini's case) or video (for bin Laden), they become members of a vibrant, if dangerous and destructive, international community.

[Johnny Yuma]

Seeing Islamism for what it really is goes beyond correct taxonomy. It also points us in the direction of an important, if seemingly perverse, question: Could it, like both fascism and communism before it, serve inadvertently as a modernizing force, preparing the way for Muslim societies that can respond not destructively but constructively to the challenge of the West?
The question is not as absurd as it may sound. Comparisons are especially tricky here, but the Bolsheviks succeeded in creating an industrialized, urbanized Russia, and Hitler managed to get rid of the Junkers and much of the class stratification that had characterized prewar Germany. Through a tortuous and immensely costly path, both of these "isms" cleared away some of the premodern underbrush that had obstructed the growth of liberal democracy. There are, of course, much safer and more peaceful routes toward modernization, such as those taken by countries like South Korea or Britain or the United States, and less expensive paths to modernity were surely available to Russia and Germany. But one has to deal with what one has, and in Islamic cultures, in any case, there is arguably much more underbrush to be cleared away. If Islamism is directed as much against traditional forms of Islam as against the West, could it, too, be a source of such creative destruction?
There are myriad ways in which not only Islamic practice but the rigid legal framework within which it is encased has obstructed change. The economic historian Timur Kuran has documented in painstaking detail a series of traditional Islamic institutions whose inflexibility and legalism have served as immense barriers to development. Interest rates are fixed by religious authorities, schooling focuses on rote learning of religious texts and discourages critical thinking, women are kept out of political and economic life, and so on. Even an institution like the waqf, or traditional Islamic charity, which could serve as a bulwark of civil society in a reformed Islamic order, fixes the bequests of wealthy individuals in perpetuity, with no opportunity for adaptation to changing circumstances.
Many of these same constraints existed historically in the Judeo-Christian West, and were eliminated or ameliorated only after long struggle. All of them continue to exist in the Islamic present, and can only be removed through the exercise of political power. Islamism has already demonstrated the capability of doing this, and even of accommodating Western norms when it has to. Though Khomeini brought back the chador, or veil, for women, he also reluctantly sanctioned women's right to vote in Iranian elections, a practice (won under the shah) that he had once likened to prostitution.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other, even more radical Islamist organizations have created a layer of voluntary associations standing between the family and the state. It was, for example, Islamist charities that stepped into the breach at the time of the 1992 Cairo earthquake, providing important social services unavailable from the inept and corrupt Egyptian state. The Islamists clearly hope to reunite religion and political power one day, which would be a disaster. But they are learning--and inculcating--habits of association and independent action that, if somehow divorced from their radical ideology, might yet help lay the groundwork of a true civil society.

[Johnny Yuma]

There is another area in which the reactionary ideas of the Islamists may play a potentially progressive role, and this has to do with the fundamental sources of authority and legitimacy in the Islamic world.
The traditional system of Islamic jurisprudence--with its rigid rules and hierarchies--has been under attack, in one way or another, since at least the 19th century. The most important early figures in this effort were modernizers, like the Iranian Jamal al-din al-Afghani (1839-97) and his student, the Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). Abduh was among the first to depart from the rigidly textual form of interpretation that had characterized the Sunni world since the earliest caliphates. In his view, human reason was the only appropriate tool for applying the fundamental truths of the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the Prophet). Appointed mufti of Egypt toward the end of his life, Abduh issued rulings reflecting, in the words of one scholar, his desire "to render the religion of Islam entirely adaptable to the requirements of modern civilization."
The implications of this turn were profound. Though the institutional base of orthodox Sunni Islam remained intact, the long-sealed gates of doctrinal explication were unhinged. Like a Muslim Luther, Abduh shook up the clerical establishment by reviving, under the influence of his mentor al-Afghani, the possibility of independent legal interpretation. His example gave unprecedented latitude to all subsequent construers of Islamic tradition, whether saints or demagogues--the latter including anti-Western radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood's Sayyid Qutb and, eventually, Osama bin Laden.
In the battle for interpretative power, it is no coincidence that the primary breeding ground for Islamism has been the brittle oligarchies of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Both regimes have co-opted the traditional clergy, forcing the populist current of Islam into back alleys and storefront mosques and turning it into an ideological guerrilla movement. Detached from the moorings of tradition, the Islamists have proved adept at manipulating the symbols of faith and appropriating them for their own revolutionary purposes.
Osama bin Laden's famous 1998 fatwa, in which he declared jihad on the United States and any American fair game for his followers, is a case in point. Though the content of this declaration is itself contrary to traditional Islamic moral teachings--as the eminent Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis has observed, "At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder"--the most notably radical thing about it is the identity of its author. Osama bin Laden has no credentials as a religious authority and no right, under traditional Islamic practice, to issue a fatwa. It is a bit like Hitler issuing a papal encyclical, or Lenin a decree in the name of the Russian Orthodox church. The mere fact that bin Laden was willing to cross this line shows the extent to which Islamism has undermined traditional Islamic legal authority. But a line crossed in the name of waging all-out war against the West may yet be crossed in the name of healthier purposes.

We should not kid ourselves. The modernization of Islam is hardly imminent, and it will not occur without enormous struggle. There are several deeply imbedded obstacles in Islamic society, not least the often-noted lack of a tradition of secular politics. To many Muslims, what may simply seem more "natural" is a totalizing ideology that seeks to unite society and the state within a single revolutionary whole. Nor is it clear, despite the UN's recent report, that the Muslim world is capable of the realistic self-appraisal necessary for a modernizing shift to occur.
Many non-Western societies, after all, have tried the path of violent resistance to the enormous military, economic and cultural power of the West. It was only when faced with defeat and domination that nations like China and Japan undertook a serious study of what, in Mr. Lewis's phrase, "went wrong." Joining the West when they could not beat it, they adopted a variety of Western institutions while retaining a core of their own culture. This process of social learning has been much slower in Muslim societies; for Arabs in particular, it has been all too convenient to blame Israel and the United States for their own lack of progress.
If the wait for Muslim modernization is likely to be a long one, how, then, should the West respond in the short term as it faces the continued prospect of terrorism, suicide bombings and weapons of mass destruction? The determined application of military power is certainly part of the answer. European fascism did not fall because of the inherent wickedness of its animating ideas; having brought havoc to the societies that embraced its doctrines, it lost legitimacy because it was crushed on the battlefield. Just as Osama bin Laden and his cause gained status and support with the successful attacks of September 11, so the rout of al Qaeda from Afghanistan and continuing U.S. operations against radical Islamic terrorism are absolutely key to dampening Islamist fervor.
But the more important struggle must take place within the Islamic world itself. For too long, genuine Muslim modernizers have sat in the wings while traditionalists and Islamists battled one another on center stage. The great need now is for Western-oriented Muslims to take advantage of the turmoil created by September 11 to promote a more genuinely liberal form of their religion.

[Johnny Yuma]

There is reason to think that such an opening exists. Though many Muslims continue to favor Islamism in the abstract, the movement has left a disastrous record everywhere it has come to power. Saudi Arabia, home of the extremist Wahhabi strain of fundamentalist Islam, is one of the most corrupt and mismanaged regimes in the contemporary world. Even with the country's vast oil wealth, per capita income fell in real terms from $11,500 in 1980 to $6,700 in 1999. As for Afghanistan under the Taliban, ordinary Afghans were overjoyed to be liberated from their yoke, and eagerly returned to such simple modern pleasures as watching cheesy Indian movies on their long-buried VCR's. :D
It is the Iranians, who, having lived under Islamist rule for the past generation, are most likely to lead the Islamic world out of its current impasse. Though Western hopes for the seemingly reform-minded President Khatami have proved misplaced, there is one basic demographic fact working in favor of eventual liberalization: 70 percent of Iran's population is now under the age of 30, and from all reports these young people tend to abhor the Islamic theocracy. Having brought the first Islamist regime to power, Iran would set a powerful example for the rest of the Middle East--and beyond--if it were to move toward liberalization on its own steam.
In the end, it is as important not to overestimate the strength of Islamism as it is fatal to underestimate it. It has little to offer Arabs, much less the rest of the Muslim world. Its glorification of violence has already produced a sharp counterreaction, and--provided it is defeated--its "successes" may yet help pave the way for long-overdue reform. If so, this would certainly not be the first time that the cunning of history has produced so astounding a result.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by andak01
It may well be like naziism. Which would prove that it isn't just the Lutherans and Catholics than are capable of dehumanizing the Jews and others that don't believe as they do.

No!! All it means is that Radical Islam is just a bunch of murdering thugs whose only purpose on this planet is to kill maim and inflict pain on anyone or thing they disagree with. Guess what every group has tried to take down judiasm look where it got them. The Romans extinct, the Babylonians no more . the Phoenician alass gone for good :o. The Greeks dust . The nazi's gone but not forgotten :mad:. The Jews have survived them and a lot more and we will survive Radical Islam

[andak01]

Originally posted by Mil
Ah - common. I can give you tons of examples when even the most secular regimes in the modern Arab World have used religious oppostion against each for terrorist activities. If anything I am 100% convinced that Al Qaida had contacts with Saddam - if only in their mutual dislike of the house of Saud.

The House of Saud, if you will remember, is the one constantly being trumpeted as the purveyor of Wahhabi ideals. They were after all founded with the assistance of Sheik Wahhab's followers. If he is against the House of Saud, he has branched off from Wahhabbism and is something else again, which I rather believe. Otherwise, either he is not what the media portrays or the Sauds are not what the media portrays. One way or another the Islamaphobic myth of Muslims as a monolith starts to break down, just like the Anti-Semitic myth of a world Jewish conspiracy does.

I also believe that Al Qaida tactical methods are the same as those taught at the School of the Americas. The CIA was training Mujahhiddin in Pakistan to fight the Russians. These Mujahhiddin became Taliban and expanded their operations. I'm not saying that CIA trained Al Qaida, but it isn't a stretch to imagine a CIA trained Mujahhiddin supervising an Al Qaida training camp. There are only so many ways to kill people and America has made killing a science. When 3000 civilians are killed, it is said to be one of the greatest acts of evil (and I agree that it was). On the other hand, when Hiroshima (66,000 killed immediately, thousands more died of radiation) or Nagasaki (39,000 killed immediately, thousands more died of radiation) or Dresden. Associated Press used the most conservative means possible to arrive at a civilian death toll in Iraq of over 3500. In Afghanistan, the number of civilians killed was over 6000. Al Qaida should give up and go home. They are terribly inefficient at killing civilians. And the ones that kill the most civilians (by their own accounts), not only win the war, but also claim the moral high ground.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp10.htm
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp09.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm

[Mediocrates]

Before you flew off the handle there you were on the right track, at least theoretically. But its kind of silly, no? to think that modern terrorism is in fact modern at all or that the SOA has anything new to tell us?

Truck bombings have been around for as long as there have been trucks. Neither the goals nor the techniques of terrorism have changed in the last several hundred years. All that's different is the flag, logo or bible people use to recruit new terrorists with. Hell we had a president assassinated by an anarchist terrorist, one of the bomb throwing 'many'. It was even the root cause of the formation of the FBI and not the Mafia as many people think. And you can back further than that if you want.



One way or another the Islamaphobic myth of Muslims as a monolith starts to break down, just like the Anti-Semitic myth of a world Jewish conspiracy does.

Yes and no I think. There are forces and groups and countries that nominally hate each other who are all joined in marriage of convenience in their hatred of America, Israel, Jews (and Muslims too) and others. Certainly there is no monolith just as there is no world Zionist conspiracy. But that matters rather little to the people who believe it.

Muslim Nazis in Croatia and Bosnia.

"Peace Rallies" with the World Workers Party, the Klan and the Nation of Islam shoulder to shoulder screaming about the evil Jews.

An Indian man is mugged and beat up and gets $5,000 from a fund because his attackers thought he was Arab so it's a hate crime.

[Mil]

Posted by Andak:


The House of Saud, if you will remember, is the one constantly being trumpeted as the purveyor of Wahhabi ideals. They were after all founded with the assistance of Sheik Wahhab's followers. If he is against the House of Saud, he has branched off from Wahhabbism and is something else again, which I rather believe. Otherwise, either he is not what the media portrays or the Sauds are not what the media portrays.


I can give you a ton of examples of when Sunnies went against Sunnis. Or Christians against Christians, or Jews against the Jews. Just open up "Judaic Wars" by Flavius.


One way or another the Islamaphobic myth of Muslims as a monolith starts to break down, just like the Anti-Semitic myth of a world Jewish conspiracy does.


OF COURSE!!!!! Actually the Arab world is not very united politically at all - in reality they all hate each other's guts. Saudia Arabia and Iraq, for example, have been at each other's throat since probably the 40s. Each side used islamic-terrorists for hire, as Palestinian Abu Nidal, since probably the fifties. Ben Laden has very big problems with the house of Saud (which is not very popular among the masses in SA either), non-religious problems, making his contact with Saddam quite possible since Saddam was very notorious for such machinations. This has nothing to do with religion but pure and simple politics, but for which religion is used to arouse the masses and to justify the causes and the means. Pretty medieval, if you ask me, given the secular regimes.



I also believe that Al Qaida tactical methods are the same as those taught at the School of the Americas.


Like what would be the example?


The CIA was training Mujahhiddin in Pakistan to fight the Russians.


Russians also taught Palestinian radicals and other "freedom fighters" all over the world. So did Britain, France, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and even Cuba. In Syria in the seventies Assad had established very large Palestinian military training camps, which existed till the mid 90s. What do you think was taught there?



These Mujahhiddin became Taliban and expanded their operations. I'm not saying that CIA trained Al Qaida, but it isn't a stretch to imagine a CIA trained Mujahhiddin supervising an Al Qaida training camp.


US supplied weapons to Afganis fighting against the Soviets and probably did train some in military art. So what? At the time, in the 80s, the enemy was the Soviets and not the terrorists. Actually Russia trained the Vietcong for exactly the same reason.




There are only so many ways to kill people and America has made killing a science.


Andak people were killing people since the beginning of time.... Many countries have proffessional military schools which teach to kill people including all the Arab countries.


When 3000 civilians are killed, it is said to be one of the greatest acts of evil (and I agree that it was). On the other hand, when Hiroshima (66,000 killed immediately, thousands more died of radiation) or Nagasaki (39,000 killed immediately, thousands more died of radiation) or Dresden.


Andak, your moral comparisons are recognized but WWII comparisons are pretty bad for such an observation. For example, the Germans army and the Finish army put an entire city of Leningrad (5 million population) in a blockade for a year and a half from the fall of 1941 to the winter 1943, which resulted in the death of 2 million civilians (60% population of Finland at the time). This means that the death toll for the 500 days was 4000/day or in 10 days it would have reached the proportions of Dresden and in 25 days the death toll of Hiroshima/Nagasaki . Hell in the Soviet Union alone the Germans killed and were responsible for the death of over 19 million civilians. Also, out of 4.5 million Red army soldiers captured only 1.5 came back - some scarry stuff. I think Dresden was very morally justified and was very well within the bounds of WWII. Actually compared to the Nazi and Japanese attrocities the allies were toooooooooooo good.

Lets put it differently - in 1962 Nasser, at the time the president of Egypt and the beacon of Arab Nationalism, entered Yemen to fight a Saudi sponcered insurgency against a pro-Nasser-Egyptian regime . In the 4 years, in Yemen, Nasser has killed the estimates run from 70 to 100 thousand civilians. It was also the first time that poison Gas was used against civilians since WWII making Saddam's Kurd attrocities look very benign. No wander Israel was scared in 1967 - that idiot could have used gas against the Jews. Or Assad of Syria in 1982 following an Islamic revolt in the city of Homs in the three weeks level half the city and killed over 10,000 civlians, mostly Sunnis. Or the French responsible for the death of over a million Algiriens in the 50-60s. Belgium 100% responsible for the Congo civil wars the death toll from which keeps on rising and rising into huge millions probably exceeding Belgium's own population number by now. Go talk to Belgium - they got a court there you can probably file a law-suite.


I can go on and on. However, my general advise to you is - America, given the history of the last century and compared to all else can only be viewed as a very-very-very-very compassionate country.




Associated Press used the most conservative means possible to arrive at a civilian death toll in Iraq of over 3500. In Afghanistan, the number of civilians killed was over 6000. Al Qaida should give up and go home. They are terribly inefficient at killing civilians. And the ones that kill the most civilians (by their own accounts), not only win the war, but also claim the moral high ground.


No country in the world - and certainly no country in the Islamic/Muslim/Arab world - can be put on a moral scale with US. US is just too far up there to be even considered for any comparison. America simply leaves everyone else in the dust. These are not slogans I know my history very well.

[minusthejihad]

If you're a "Blame America Firster", then get the hell out of America.

[minusthejihad]

I just don't get it, when converting to Islam, do you have to sign a waiver that says, I promiss to become a "Blame America Firster"?

[L@mplighterM]

'One day the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street', By Ori Golan


Some of the most radical Islamic groups in the world are using Britain as their strategic base. Why are they allowed to conduct their activities unimpeded?

Anjem Choudray is a man with grand designs. "One day the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street," he says.

As the spokesman for the Al-Muhajiroun ("the immigrants"), a radical Islamic movement in Britain which seeks to establish Islamic supremacy and calls for a jihad against opponents of Islam, he is determined to get his message across.

"Lands will not be liberated by individuals, but by an army. Eventually there'll have to be a Muslim army. It's just a matter of time before it happens."

Last year, on September 11, the group celebrated the attacks on the World Trade Center under the banner "A Towering Day in History." In 1999 it issued a fatwa, calling for the assassination of Russian president Boris Yeltsin and more recently intimated that Prime Minister Tony Blair is a legitimate target for terrorism abroad.

Britain operates as a strategic base for some of the most radical Islamic groups which preach hatred, incite to violence and recruit volunteers for terrorist activities. Last January, British military intelligence working in eastern Afghanistan discovered a list of 1,192 names of British citizens, all Muslims, who trained with the al-Qaida network in Afghanistan.

More recently, Asif Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, one from west London, the other from Derby, became the first British nationals to serve as human bombs in Israel when they carried out the attack at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who masterminded the kidnap and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, was from London, as was Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an American Airlines flight in December 2001 using a bomb planted in his shoe.

It was a British-born Muslim extremist who rammed a lorry packed with explosives into an army barracks in Kashmir, killing 32 people; seven British Muslims captured in Afghanistan are currently held in Guant namo Bay. And according to British security sources, five more British Muslim terrorists are poised to strike as suicide bombers against Israel.

What unites these terrorists is that they attended mosques in Britain where fundamentalist messages are routinely issued and young, impressionable Muslims are exhorted to take up arms against Jews, Hindus and other "infidels."

Across university campuses, Al-Muhajiroun and its affiliate, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, are busy recruiting adherents. According to Michael Phillips from the Union of Jewish Students, they target Jewish students, predominantly in Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull%26cid=1056598259409



The black flag is already flying in the mosques and it’s spewing from the mouth of Muslim religious leaders.

[andak01]

Originally posted by minusthejihad
I just don't get it, when converting to Islam, do you have to sign a waiver that says, I promiss to become a "Blame America Firster"?

The American system was built on self criticism and a structure of checks and balances. To suggest that criticism of America is unAmerican is McCarthyism. I'd like to think we are past that, but recent events are not encouraging.

Read the Declaration of Independance and you will see that it is the duty of a free people to constantly monitor their freedoms. That means protecting Civil liberties as defined in the Bill of Rights by internally as well as externally.

Someone will certainly respond that the Arab world doesn't have such a Bill of Rights. Freedom of Religion was much more honored in the time of Muhammad (SAW) than in most times since. Non-Muslims were allowed in the cities of Mecca and Medina until the 14th century. Given the huge casualties incurred by the Muslims in retribution for 9/11, I suggest that the best form of Jihad would have been to rise up against rulers like Saddam.

As for my relation with our pseudo-secular system (where the President invokes God in his speeches and publicly prays before Cabinet meetings). I don't have any problem with it so long as I am not prohibitted from practicing my religion. It is following the Sunna to support any government that does not prevent us from our religion. Any religious person will tell you that God comes before country. But loving one doesn't mean you have to hate the other.

I was critical of our government prior to my conversion to Islam. I think a lot of this has to do with my exposure to people of many nations. At my daughters recent birthday party, there were people from eight different countries. I have also travelled a fair amount (for an American) and seen how we are perceived by others first hand.

I don't think it is a healthy stance, or for that matter particularly American to want to drive away everyone who is critical of our government to another country. The saddest thought I can think of is for people to arrive at the shores of another nation and say that they are political refugees FROM AMERICA!

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”



http://cyberistan.org/islamic/treaty22.html

[red crabtree]

What I don't get andak though, why only be critical of the American govn't or the American way of life? Why not have the same expectations of Muslim govn't as you have of American govn't?

The British soldiers killed last week in Iraq pulled out pictures of their wives and children as they begged for their lives, they were murdered anyway. 3 were found in a bunker shot execution style, lumped together with their pictures laying on the ground around them. I suppose this is ok since they were not civilians?

Militant Islam is a very real danger not only to the middle east, but to all the world. They get fuel from those of the Muslim faith that refuse to confront the evils they are perpetrating. When I hear people who say the Catholics did it etc... as if past misdeeds by other religions somehow absolves terrorists today, or bringing up Hiroshima etc... done in a time of declared war somehow absolves terrorists that kill and main whoever is in their way, it leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. It is nothing more than excusing behavior that is wrong no matter how you look at it.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by andak01
The American system was built on self criticism and a structure of checks and balances. To suggest that criticism of America is unAmerican is McCarthyism. I'd like to think we are past that, but recent events are not encouraging.

The U.S. government was designed as a system with checks and balances. This was to prevent one branch of government, or one individual, from acquiring a monopoly of power.

Citizens are free to criticize the government. But our government was not built on "self-criticism." In fact, you are misusing the word: "self-criticism" means criticizing oneself.

You have been criticized for what many of us perceive as consistently anti-American comments--comments that often seem sympathetic to America's self-admitted enemies. Yet when we criticize you, you call it McCarthyism.

As the Frito-bandito says: "It is better to give than receive, so give!" Likewise, you are all for "self-criticism" as long as we join you in criticizing ourselves. But some of us can't help but notice that you consider yourself immune; hence, the "McCarthyism" charge.

(If I'm mistaken and we have caused you to lose your job and be blacklisted from future employment, please set me straight. Otherwise, I know of nothing anyone here has done to you other than disagree.)

Read the Declaration of Independance and you will see that it is the duty of a free people to constantly monitor their freedoms. That means protecting Civil liberties as defined in the Bill of Rights by internally as well as externally.

Andak01, you make many small but important errors, and it is amazing how fast they add up. It may seem picayunish, but nowhere in the Declaration of Independence does it say or imply its is "the duty of a free people to constantly monitor their freedoms."

This country's founding documents are not about the people's duties but their rights.

You have the right to criticize the U.S. We have the right to criticize you. Get used to it.

Someone will certainly respond that the Arab world doesn't have such a Bill of Rights. Freedom of Religion was much more honored in the time of Muhammad (SAW) than in most times since. Non-Muslims were allowed in the cities of Mecca and Medina until the 14th century. Given the huge casualties incurred by the Muslims in retribution for 9/11, I suggest that the best form of Jihad would have been to rise up against rulers like Saddam.

Yet you opposed the U.S. deposing Saddam... Nor do I hear you calling for the overthrow of totalitarian governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran.

So what are we to conclude? It seems that in theory you are for overthrowing some or all of these regimes. But in practice, you insist it be accomplished in unrealistic ways. The net effect is that these brutal and oppressive regimes get to stay because the people under their thumbs are generally in no position to overthrow them.

As for my relation with our pseudo-secular system (where the President invokes God in his speeches and publicly prays before Cabinet meetings). I don't have any problem with it so long as I am not prohibitted from practicing my religion. It is following the Sunna to support any government that does not prevent us from our religion. Any religious person will tell you that God comes before country. But loving one doesn't mean you have to hate the other.

You have no more understanding of separation of church and state than the Declaration of Independence.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to prevent the establishment of a state religion. The President invoking God in speeches or praying before cabinet meetings is not establishing a state religion.

It's amazing that you complain about this when Islam opposes separation of mosque and state on principle.

I was critical of our government prior to my conversion to Islam. I think a lot of this has to do with my exposure to people of many nations. At my daughters recent birthday party, there were people from eight different countries. I have also travelled a fair amount (for an American) and seen how we are perceived by others first hand.

That's nice, but none of it means anything about how right or wrong you are. I've traveled extensively (20+ countries), too. I have customers and business colleagues in dozens of countries.

I suspect you travel in narrow circles, because one thing that's obvious to me is that how the U.S. is perceived abroad depends very much on the level of education of the persons doing the perceiving.

I don't think it is a healthy stance, or for that matter particularly American to want to drive away everyone who is critical of our government to another country. The saddest thought I can think of is for people to arrive at the shores of another nation and say that they are political refugees FROM AMERICA!

Nor is it healthy to be blind to the difference between the exercise of free speech on one hand and, on the other, exploiting our institutions and rights in order to undermine our system in support of terrorism.

No, I am not talking about you, but I am talking about the Muslims who immigrate to Western countries and funnel money to phony "charities" while working towards the goal of imposing Sharia on their host countries.

Most Muslims seem totally unwilling to admit this is going on even though some of the people doing these things freely admit it. It has not escaped some of us that there are Islamists who are perfectly willing to use Western "rights" as a cover. They demand "rights" that they secretly disdain simply because they know those rights--if they are clever about it--enable them to conspire against the host government with impunity.

There are some Muslims who are loyal citizens or immigrants and know what is going on and oppose it. You are not one of them, but that is your choice--not mine.

[andak01]

Originally posted by ibrodsky
(If I'm mistaken and we have caused you to lose your job and be blacklisted from future employment, please set me straight. Otherwise, I know of nothing anyone here has done to you other than disagree.)

That remark doesn't even deserve a reply, but I do note it. In brief, I don't blame anyone here for anything that happens in my life. This is after all only a bulletin board.

Andak01, you make many small but important errors, and it is amazing how fast they add up. It may seem picayunish, but nowhere in the Declaration of Independence does it say or imply its is "the duty of a free people to constantly monitor their freedoms."

http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/declaration/declaration_transcription.html
...that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,

And how do we determine if a Government has become distructive of those ends? And how would we establish a long train of abuses without monitoring and recording such things.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This country's founding documents are not about the people's duties but their rights.

The only rights mentioned in the document are life, liberty and persuit of happiness. The greater part of it is spent listing the aforementioned abuses. But the part I find particularly attractive is this:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

In a word, this document gives us a tool towards assuring a just government, but one that must be used prudently. Therein lies the difference between being critical and being combative.

You have the right to criticize the U.S. We have the right to criticize you. Get used to it.

Used to it??? I'm a fish in water!

Yet you opposed the U.S. deposing Saddam... Nor do I hear you calling for the overthrow of totalitarian governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran.

It was the duty of the Iraqi people to depose Saddam. Our intervention is only justified by some real danger he posed to us. If we say that any tyrannical state deserves intervention, then we had better go to war with China, North Korea, Congo, Liberia, Columbia, Myanmar, etc. Further, any other nation has the right to use that justification against us. Why do we alone define who is a tyrant and who is not? Our reason for going to war with Iraq was the perception of a real threat. Yet, as time goes by, rather than establishing the truth of that perception, the opposite is occurring. The WMDs that we were told we already knew about have never shown up. Neither has the evidence for Saddam's ties to Al Qaida.

So what are we to conclude? It seems that in theory you are for overthrowing some or all of these regimes. But in practice, you insist it be accomplished in unrealistic ways. The net effect is that these brutal and oppressive regimes get to stay because the people under their thumbs are generally in no position to overthrow them.

What you are to conclude is that I believe in self determination. If the real upshot of the war in Iraq is that the people of Iraq are pulled from tyranny and allowed to determine their own fate, hen the war was well worth it. If instead, it requires a twenty year occupation for us to force them to our way of thinking, that's not democracy. You can't say: "I support democracy as long as my candidate wins the election." Democracy is accepting the will of the people whether you like it or not.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to prevent the establishment of a state religion. The President invoking God in speeches or praying before cabinet meetings is not establishing a state religion.



It's amazing that you complain about this when Islam opposes separation of mosque and state on principle.

I was pointing out that our system is not purely speaking a secular one. It is easy to make a case that Sharia states are not purely theologic.

I suspect you travel in narrow circles, because one thing that's obvious to me is that how the U.S. is perceived abroad depends very much on the level of education of the persons doing the perceiving.

I suppose that the implication is that anyone with my views is uneducated. At least Bill O'Reilly recently stated that in one of his editorials. Anyone who was against the war in Iraq, is, according to him uneducated.

Nor is it healthy to be blind to the difference between the exercise of free speech on one hand and, on the other, exploiting our institutions and rights in order to undermine our system in support of terrorism.

On the contrary. I don't think it was necessary to completely change the makeup and structure of our government in response to 9/11. It is a natural outcome of our freedoms that we are more prone to such attacks. However, taking away our freedoms in order to protect us is the mantra of every dictatorship ever launched. Arafat is a perfect example of that. While I still feel that we are far from such a dictatorship, my freedom to criticize is a barometer of just how far.

No, I am not talking about you, but I am talking about the Muslims who immigrate to Western countries and funnel money to phony "charities" while working towards the goal of imposing Sharia on their host countries.

Most Muslims seem totally unwilling to admit this is going on even though some of the people doing these things freely admit it. It has not escaped some of us that there are Islamists who are perfectly willing to use Western "rights" as a cover. They demand "rights" that they secretly disdain simply because they know those rights--if they are clever about it--enable them to conspire against the host government with impunity.

There are some Muslims who are loyal citizens or immigrants and know what is going on and oppose it. You are not one of them, but that is your choice--not mine.

Every Muslim organization in the United States has been investigated. Many were shut down before any evidence was presented for ties to terrorism. There is NO operating Muslim organization in America with known ties to terrorism. If you are suggesting that I don't oppose funnelling money to terrorists, that is slander. You don't deserve your position as moderator. You can feel free to ban me from this board for saying so.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by andak01
That remark doesn't even deserve a reply
Now, here is a line that I've come to expect from you when you can't handle the conversation. I guess with you, it is either this or the "ignore function".

I have not bothered to retain the quotes that you made from America's founding document, but would like to make the observation here that the use of them, in my opinion, is certainly illustrative of what Ibrodsky said:
Originally posted by Ibrodsky
Most Muslims seem totally unwilling to admit this is going on even though some of the people doing these things freely admit it. It has not escaped some of us that there are Islamists who are perfectly willing to use Western "rights" as a cover. They demand "rights" that they secretly disdain simply because they know those rights--if they are clever about it--enable them to conspire against the host government with impunity.
Originally posted by andak
It was the duty of the Iraqi people to depose Saddam. Our intervention is only justified by some real danger he posed to us. Your opinion does not represent anything by which anyone is required to live. Your views will allow the death and destruction meted out by adherents of islam to continue abated. Many others feel that it should be handle in the region from which it arises.
Originally posted by andak
Why do we alone define who is a tyrant and who is not?
Well, because your method of allowing the terrorists to define these things does not serve the needs of our national security.
Originally posted by andak
I suppose that the implication is that anyone with my views is uneducated. At least Bill O'Reilly recently stated that in one of his editorials. Anyone who was against the war in Iraq, is, according to him uneducated.
I myself have never thought of you as uneducated, though I do think of you as narrow minded and self serving. When you make comments about how many different nationalities were represented at your daughter's birthday party and how well traveled you are, the language in which you phrase your comments implies that these things somehow raise your own perceptions above the rest of us, as though the rest of us lack such experience, or that we lack vision due to a supposed under-exposure to more than our own ethnicity.

Presumptuous reasoning, in my opinion.
Originally posted by andak
On the contrary. I don't think it was necessary to completely change the makeup and structure of our government in response to 9/11.
A bit of a hyperbolic statement, don't you think. It may be that there are problems that should continue to be discussed concerning how we respond to the clear and present danger of bloodthirsty islamism, but making a few adjustments, however controversial, does not constitute, "a complete change in the makeup and structure of our government."
Originally posted by andak
Every Muslim organization in the United States has been investigated. Many were shut down before any evidence was presented for ties to terrorism. There is NO operating Muslim organization in America with known ties to terrorism. If you are suggesting that I don't oppose funnelling money to terrorists, that is slander. You don't deserve your position as moderator. You can feel free to ban me from this board for saying so.
More hyperbole combined with commentary that is becoming typical in your posts, i.e.- if you don't like what people have to say about your positions, you put them on ignore and/or accuse them of.......whatever.

A little testy, don't you think?

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by andak01
That remark doesn't even deserve a reply, but I do note it. In brief, I don't blame anyone here for anything that happens in my life. This is after all only a bulletin board.

The point was your caviler use of the term "McCarthyism." You said "To suggest that criticism of America is unAmerican is McCarthyism." This is nonsense. Criticism of you is not the same as using a position of power to harass or blacklist you.

If anything, invoking the "McCarthyism" charge is an attempt to intimidate those who criticize you by raising what the Left seems to think was the mother of all political crimes.

...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, [/i]

And how do we determine if a Government has become distructive of those ends? And how would we establish a long train of abuses without monitoring and recording such things.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

You try to pass yourself off as someone who condems and opposes U.S. policy out of a sense of duty. The criticisms against you, however, are that you are always quick to blame America and excuse those in Muslim countries who hate the U.S.

The Declaration of Independence is about why the citizens of America threw off British rule and declared independence. Similar arguments could be used to justify the overthrow of totalitarian Arab governments.

The point is that some of us feel you are more concerned about defending Islam than criticizing the current administration to protect our rights and system of government. You use the latter to excuse the former.

The only rights mentioned in the document are life, liberty and persuit of happiness. The greater part of it is spent listing the aforementioned abuses. But the part I find particularly attractive is this:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The word "rights" is used repeatedly; "duty" is used once. "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" are not just three rights--they are terms denoting entire categories of rights.

In a word, this document gives us a tool towards assuring a just government, but one that must be used prudently. Therein lies the difference between being critical and being combative.

The Declaration was a tool for declaring independence. The Constitution established rights within the new state.

My point is that while you have the right to condemn and oppose U.S. government policy, it is not a duty incumbent upon all of us as you suggest.

It was the duty of the Iraqi people to depose Saddam. Our intervention is only justified by some real danger he posed to us. If we say that any tyrannical state deserves intervention, then we had better go to war with China, North Korea, Congo, Liberia, Columbia, Myanmar, etc. Further, any other nation has the right to use that justification against us. Why do we alone define who is a tyrant and who is not? Our reason for going to war with Iraq was the perception of a real threat. Yet, as time goes by, rather than establishing the truth of that perception, the opposite is occurring. The WMDs that we were told we already knew about have never shown up. Neither has the evidence for Saddam's ties to Al Qaida.

That is your interpretation. I think others can make a very strong case that Iraq's government was aggressive and militaristic, that Saddam Hussein had a motive for supporting terrorists, that he knowingly supported terrorists, and he certainly possessed WMDs (unless you claim the Kurdish and Iranian victims were faked) and refused to destroy them in any verifiable way.

The fact that the WMDs have not been found does not mean they don't exist. Nor do I accept yur assurances that he had no links to Al Qaida. He certainly had links to the likes of Hamas... and another group that had a training base in Iraq. The bottom line is that your claim Saddam posed no threat to the U.S. doesn't hold water. A "threat" is not limited to siezing a beachhead along the east coast.

You admit he was brute that deserved to be deposed, but turn around and act is if we was innocent. You can't have it both ways. Iraq paid the families of Palestinian mass murderers. Iraq harbored known terrorists. I'm not aware of governments in China, North Korea, Congo, Liberia, Columbia, Myanmar doing this.

What you are to conclude is that I believe in self determination. If the real upshot of the war in Iraq is that the people of Iraq are pulled from tyranny and allowed to determine their own fate, hen the war was well worth it. If instead, it requires a twenty year occupation for us to force them to our way of thinking, that's not democracy. You can't say: "I support democracy as long as my candidate wins the election." Democracy is accepting the will of the people whether you like it or not.

I never said anything about democracy. Nor have I heard this offered as a key justification. Saddam Hussein was a threat to his own people and those of neighboring countries. He supported terrorism. The only thing that stopped him from further acts of aggression was military defeat. Your complaints and excuses don't wash.

I was pointing out that our system is not purely speaking a secular one.

It's hard to imagine a more secular one. What do you suggest--that we impeach Presidents who dare to use the word "God" in speeches? Or who practice their religion's rituals?

Somehow, I think if we elected a Muslim President and he was upfront about being a practicing Muslim you would approve.

I suppose that the implication is that anyone with my views is uneducated.

Outrageous: I was referring to the perceptions of people in other countries. I said their perception of the U.S. often depends upon their level of education. To wit, the "street" may chant "Death to America!" because they swallow all of the conspiracy theories and lies, but the better educated are much more likely to admire our freedoms and principles, having studied them.

On the contrary. I don't think it was necessary to completely change the makeup and structure of our government in response to 9/11. It is a natural outcome of our freedoms that we are more prone to such attacks. However, taking away our freedoms in order to protect us is the mantra of every dictatorship ever launched. Arafat is a perfect example of that. While I still feel that we are far from such a dictatorship, my freedom to criticize is a barometer of just how far.

Many excuses are made for taking away freedoms. Only I don't see any freedoms being taken away from U.S. citizens.

Unfortunately, I do see some Islamist apologists (I am not referring to you) who are constantly sounding the alarm. Of course, they are upset that their ability to operate here is being disrupted.

There may be some alien residents who are losing privileges. I admit that. In fact, I applaud it. We have been far too lax. I'm sorry about anyone who is unfairly deported. But we did not ask for Islamists bent on destroying the West...

Every Muslim organization in the United States has been investigated. Many were shut down before any evidence was presented for ties to terrorism. There is NO operating Muslim organization in America with known ties to terrorism. If you are suggesting that I don't oppose funnelling money to terrorists, that is slander. You don't deserve your position as moderator. You can feel free to ban me from this board for saying so.

Many innocent people are investigated. The only thing that matters is whether they are investigated fairly and allowed to continue if found innocent.

I don't know how you can be certain there is "NO operating Muslim organization in America with known ties to terrorism." We know there is widespread support or at least sympathy for terrorists in the Muslim world. We know that many of these people go to great lengths to hide or camouflage their support.

See http://disaffectedmuslim.blogspot.com/

[minusthejihad]

Its one thing to criticize your country or goverment, heck, we all should at times. But when all you hear out of Andak is criticisms and blame, and NEVER hear any positives, he looses his credibility as an objective critic and quickly becomes a "Blame America Firster". That's all I'm sayin'

[minusthejihad]

Originally posted by ibrodsky


See http://disaffectedmuslim.blogspot.com/

Wow, thanks for pointing out this Blog Ibrodsky,

My favorite line was:

"It's the same old I read all the time in Muslim publications and on Muslim websites, but it's always a shock to me to actually hear it said out loud. But what makes it hard to take is that this imam has attended numerous interfaith meetings, and even a Thanksgiving multifaith service in a synagogue, calling for peace between religions. I'll be honest: if I were Jewish and knew what I know about Muslims' attitudes towards Jews, I'd have a hard time trusting Muslims unless I knew for sure that they were not antisemites."

Well, my good Palestinian friend R is coming into Detroit to visit me this weekend, I trust him wholeheartedly as he was like a brother to me when we were roommates, yet I will always remember when his mom said, "I was the best one she ever met". I bet she never met any other Jews but heard an earfull about us monkeys from her Imam. Bummer :(

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by minusthejihad
Wow, thanks for pointing out this Blog Ibrodsky,

My favorite line was:

"It's the same old I read all the time in Muslim publications and on Muslim websites, but it's always a shock to me to actually hear it said out loud. But what makes it hard to take is that this imam has attended numerous interfaith meetings, and even a Thanksgiving multifaith service in a synagogue, calling for peace between religions. I'll be honest: if I were Jewish and knew what I know about Muslims' attitudes towards Jews, I'd have a hard time trusting Muslims unless I knew for sure that they were not antisemites."

Well, my good Palestinian friend R is coming into Detroit to visit me this weekend, I trust him wholeheartedly as he was like a brother to me when we were roommates, yet I will always remember when his mom said, "I was the best one she ever met". I bet she never met any other Jews but heard an earfull about us monkeys from her Imam. Bummer :(

I read this blog!! It makes me sick to my stomach to think anyone can treat women in such away and Muslims have the nerve to say anything bad about jews.

[red crabtree]

Just curious andak, if the President, any President invokes God in a speech is that in your mind, breaching separation of church and state? Is the President not allowed to express his or her(someday God willing) religious beliefs in public? Will we take the clause of separation of church and state so far that public officials, President or otherwise, are not allowed to express their own particular religious beliefs in public at all?
At what point do we draw a line that is common sense too, that people regardless of what they do, have a right to express their religious beliefs? Or are we so afraid of offending someone somewhere that the clause regarding church and state is taken to mean that public utterances by public officials constitute imposing particular religious beliefs on those that may not subscribe to them? Is the President also not simply an American who has the same basic rights as other Americans, including the right to practice his religion as he sees fit? Or is it to be made that he may do so only in the privacy of his own home?

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Just curious andak, if the President, any President invokes God in a speech is that in your mind, breaching separation of church and state? Is the President not allowed to express his or her(someday God willing) religious beliefs in public? Will we take the clause of separation of church and state so far that public officials, President or otherwise, are not allowed to express their own particular religious beliefs in public at all?
At what point do we draw a line that is common sense too, that people regardless of what they do, have a right to express their religious beliefs? Or are we so afraid of offending someone somewhere that the clause regarding church and state is taken to mean that public utterances by public officials constitute imposing particular religious beliefs on those that may not subscribe to them? Is the President also not simply an American who has the same basic rights as other Americans, including the right to practice his religion as he sees fit? Or is it to be made that he may do so only in the privacy of his own home?

You dont know how much it pains me to side with this poor excuse for a human who calls him self 'andak' but
I was offended by Bush's Inauguration. It didnt leave much room for the rest of us where his church guy Basically said if you dont believe in Jesus you are going to Hell that went a little to far.

But you are right he has just as much right as the rest of us to practice his religion as long as he respects mine and everybody else's

[andak01]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Just curious andak, if the President, any President invokes God in a speech is that in your mind, breaching separation of church and state? Is the President not allowed to express his or her(someday God willing) religious beliefs in public? Will we take the clause of separation of church and state so far that public officials, President or otherwise, are not allowed to express their own particular religious beliefs in public at all?

In a truly secular state, such statements do nothing to serve the constituents. It should be assumed that any statement of faith would be found offensive by someone in a multi-cultural nation.

At what point do we draw a line that is common sense too, that people regardless of what they do, have a right to express their religious beliefs? Or are we so afraid of offending someone somewhere that the clause regarding church and state is taken to mean that public utterances by public officials constitute imposing particular religious beliefs on those that may not subscribe to them? Is the President also not simply an American who has the same basic rights as other Americans, including the right to practice his religion as he sees fit? Or is it to be made that he may do so only in the privacy of his own home?

Over the Fourth, I watched part of a Christian religious program on TV devoted to the founding fathers. In fact, the Christian stations were in a frenzy of patriotism that made them indistinguishable from the rest of the celebrations of the fourth, with uncle sams walking on stilts at the front of the chapel.

Anyway, there was a historian talking about the founding fathers and how they were intimately connected with the colonial church. That doesn't mean that there is no separation of church and state. But it does give us an idea of the moral backbone that built this nation. Frankly, I think it was a good thing. I don't think that our modern secularists could have conceived of such a just system of checks and balances.

Having the President express his faith as something heartfelt is acceptable. Cozying up to the far right by playing the religion card is repulsive.

http://www.christianamerica.com/foundingfathers/ben_rush.htm
Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration of Independance)
"The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty- - -"7

On March 28, 1787 when Dr. Benjamin Rush proposed his plan for public education in America he wrote:

"Let the children who are sent to those schools be taught to read and write - - - (and a)bove all, let both sexes be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is the most essential part of education - -"8

Benjamin Franklin
I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing I see of this truth: "that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without
His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his Aid?

George Washington
"I consider it an indespensible duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them into His holy keeping."

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by andak01

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

-Thomas Jefferson
America certainly seems to have done well for itself since Tom uttered those words. Either that, or the Deity still sleeps.

[Mediocrates]

I'm not sure its entirely relevant to dissect 18th century politicans' speech with the tools of the 21st. Jefferson was the closest thing we had to an openly atheist president yet he wrote the Virginia declaration of religious freedom and tolerance. Franklin was a Quaker but deconstructivists love to talk about him as a Libertine.

There is a thread in 18th c. political thought that providence is 'divine' but it's never really explained the nature of that divinity. I doubt there would be much agreement. After all this is shortly after Spinoza and Hume who thought of "God" as a natural force and not a personality. And consider that Hamilton, the bastard son in Jamaica was educated at the local Hebrew school because no one else would take him . He read Hebrew, Torah and Talmud and his conception of diety would have been different from those of say Washington or Madison or John Marshall. Not the least difference is that he would have understood that the Torah is in part a description of the FAILURE of merging spiritual and civic power in the same hands.

My only point is that the 1A is about the limits of governmental force, not about the efficacy of merging spiritual and political thought. I will stop rambling now.

[red crabtree]

I agree cozying up to the religious right is repulsive, but then too is excusing repulsive things in Islam.

The founding father's of this country as you noted in your quotes had a Christian faith, their own faith, they did not hesitate to publicly express that and neither did they hesitate to make the diffference between belief in God and the ideals that Jesus represented and that of organized Christian religion that had brought war and destruction to Europe, as well as the burying of individual rights. Allow me to quote some here, and will you please instead of reading them as thoughts on Christianity but instead as if they were Muslim instead. Think about it.

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes." - John Adams, letter to John Taylor

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." - Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did." - Benjamin Franklin letter to his father, 1738

Now remember that each of these professed a belief in God and did so publicly. There beliefs in separation of church and state did not mean that people should shut their mouths in public for fear of offending someone.

[Johnny Yuma]

Isn't it ironic that, when you talk to G_d, it's considered prayer, but when he talks to you, you're considered insane?

[andak01]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Allow me to quote some here, and will you please instead of reading them as thoughts on Christianity but instead as if they were Muslim instead. Think about it.

Fortunately, I am armed with the experience of both having been a Christian and of being Muslim. Therefore, it is possible to evaluate the statements from both sides.

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

I am interested to know who he is talking about. Presumably the then fairly recent religious wars and Cromwell were much closer to his mind than any eastern example. The King of England was then head of the Church of England as is Queen Elizabeth today.

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes." - John Adams, letter to John Taylor

Here we have ancient nations, and I think, though it may not be PC to mention it here that Mr. Adams is including the Jews in this statement.

http://adlusa.com/fathers.htm
I don't know about Adams, but there was a significant amount of anti-Semitism among some of our other founding fathers.


GEORGE WASHINGTON: They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. (From The Maxims of George Washington by A. A. Appleton & Co.)

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an insidious influence and impenetration. The menace, gentlemen, is the Jews.

THOMAS JEFFERSON: Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in. (From 'THE AMERICANS' by D. Boorstin)


"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." - Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did." - Benjamin Franklin letter to his father, 1738


I love this quote and feel it is a just one. It is a perfect encapsulation of tenets which are shared both by Christianity and by Islam.

BTW, Jefferson was an Arian, which makes him closer to a Muslim or a Jew than his fellow Christians.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by andak01
Fortunately, I am armed with the experience of both having been a Christian and of being Muslim. Therefore, it is possible to evaluate the statements from both sides.

GEORGE WASHINGTON: They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. (From The Maxims of George Washington by A. A. Appleton & Co.)


The Truth About This Quote (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/thejews.htm)

I'm certain it was an error on your part, but it appears as though you may have picked the one most often used by those who like to misquote Washington to make him look anti-semitic.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by andak01
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an insidious influence and impenetration. The menace, gentlemen, is the Jews.


You're right about Franklin. :( He was a pr*ck, when it came to his views of the Jews. About him, I must agree with you, and I won't put in the obligatory quip "as bad as I hate to admit it." This time, you're right on about him. However, the reference to agreeing with Washington is not about the Jews. Don't take it out of context.

And, at first blush, although Jefferson appears to be a flaming anti-semitic, on closer examination, his arguments stopped just slightly short of the people, and seem to be more directed at the religion and as a ethical system, and not the people per se:

Source: "Syllabus Of An Estimate Of The Merit Of The Doctrines Of Jesus, Compared With Those Of Others," written in April 1803
"[The Jews’] system was Deism; that is, the belief of one only God. But their ideas of him & of his attributes were degrading & injurious. Their Ethics were not only imperfect, but often irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason & morality, as they respect intercourse with those around us; & repulsive & anti-social, as respecting other nations. They needed reformation, therefore, in an eminent degree... Jesus corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of his attributes and government."

Source: A letter to Dr. Joseph Priestley, written in Washington on 9 April 1803
"I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation."

Source: A letter to John Adams, written at Monticello on 12 October 1813
"To compare the morals of the old, with those of the new testament, would require an attentive study of the former, a search thro' all it's books for it's precepts, and through all it's history for it's practices, and the principles they prove. As commentaries too on these, the philosophy of the Hebrews must be enquired into, their Mishna, their Gemara, Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri, and their Talmud must be examined and understood, in order to do them full justice. Brucker, it should seem, has gone deeply into these Repositories of their ethics, and Enfield, his epitomiser, concludes in these words. `Ethics were so little studied among the Jews, that, in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there is only one treatise on moral subjects. Their books of Morals chiefly consisted in a minute enumeration of duties. From the law of Moses were deduced 613. precepts, which were divided into two classes, affirmative and negative, 248 in the former, and 365 in the latter. It may serve to give the reader some idea of the low state of moral philosophy among the Jews in the Middle age, to add, that of the 248. affirmative precepts, only 3. were considered as obligatory upon women; and that, in order to obtain salvation, it was judged sufficient to fulfill any one single law in the hour of death; the observance of the rest being deemed necessary, only to increase the felicity of the future life. What a wretched depravity of sentiment and manners must have prevailed before such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit! It is impossible to collect from these writings a consistent series of moral Doctrine.'"

[red crabtree]

No, Thomas Jefferson was not an Arian. Historians identify him as a deist, and he idenified himself as a Uniterian. The specific doctrines of Arius do not enter into it.

Next, you did not either read my question to you or opted to ignore it, not sure which. What I was trying to get across and obviously failed in, was for you to understand the founding fathers of this country meant that when priests and orthodoxy takes over a society they take away liberties and the abiity for people to be free and think for themselves. This is not limited to simply the Christian religion. My post was not intended to be used a vehicle to show the the founding fathers as Jew haters. Just like the fact that many of our founders were slave holders, they were as much a product of their time as we all are. They were learned and brillant men who had did not only have the recent experiences of religious intolerance in Europe to draw on, the vast majority of the founder's of this country were well read in the classics of Greece and Rome, the rights of man by John Locke, and of the man who would be called the father of Capitalism, Adam Smith. These were men of the Enlightenment.
Better educated than most our in our day and age. Yet they were also a product of their times.

To me rather then look at the strongly held beliefs of the founder's that religion allowed to run rampant where priests dictate to the masses removing their freedom of thought and reasoning as something that is a threat to true freedom, you instead brought in how they didn't like Jews, the same could be said in how they thought of Catholics by the way. You skirted the issue in a very poor manner. My point that you so obliquely passed by, was that they could just as easily been talking about how Muslim nations today are run, and not how 18th century Europe was run. By you choose to instead bait those of the Jewish faith on this board by pointing out that even the founder's didn't like the Jews. But guess what? They also believed strongly enough in freedom of religion that they did actively persecute the Jews nor did they prohibit immigration of the Jews to this country. They did not do what Old European countries did, they did not do what Muslim countries did and are still doing. While they may have held personal views on not only those of the Jewish Faith but also those of the Catholic faith, and from Jefferson in particular in his dislike of the Presbyterians and John Calvin, they did not allow their own personal viewpoint to override the belief Jews or Catholics or Presbyterians should not be allowed to practice their faith in the New United States of America. Your argument rings hollow, and your own bigotry slip is showing.

The founder's of this country had a strong spirituality and a belief in God, but by and large they were not Chrisitian in the sense that so many indentify themselves. Most, like Jefferson, could be easily described as Uniterians. A belief in God, but not a belief in the rites and rituals of any specific church, or any specific religion. But and this is a big but, they also believed that all had the right to practice and believe the way they wanted as long as that was not forced upon others, and religion and it's priests were not allowed to run govn't.. I believe that was your original complaint about Bush, feeling that he was pushing his religion. Yet not a word about the extreme melding of church and state in Muslim countries. Apparently they may not be held to the same standard as this country. I believe that is called cultural relativism. I can only imagine what the founder's would say not only about Bush but also about Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Jordon etc... and etc... they would have abhored what the practice as much as they abhored the Christian religion that did the same thing in Europe.

Brrnng, your clue phone is ringing.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by andak01
Fortunately, I am armed with the experience of both having been a Christian and of being Muslim. Therefore, it is possible to evaluate the statements from both sides.



I am interested to know who he is talking about. Presumably the then fairly recent religious wars and Cromwell were much closer to his mind than any eastern example. The King of England was then head of the Church of England as is Queen Elizabeth today.



Here we have ancient nations, and I think, though it may not be PC to mention it here that Mr. Adams is including the Jews in this statement.

http://adlusa.com/fathers.htm
I don't know about Adams, but there was a significant amount of anti-Semitism among some of our other founding fathers.


GEORGE WASHINGTON: They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. (From The Maxims of George Washington by A. A. Appleton & Co.)

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an insidious influence and impenetration. The menace, gentlemen, is the Jews.

THOMAS JEFFERSON: Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in. (From 'THE AMERICANS' by D. Boorstin)






I love this quote and feel it is a just one. It is a perfect encapsulation of tenets which are shared both by Christianity and by Islam.

BTW, Jefferson was an Arian, which makes him closer to a Muslim or a Jew than his fellow Christians.

George Washington did not make such a statement. When other people make statements about islam that are taken out of context you get mad but its ok if you do it what gives.

I have a copy of a letter George Washington wrote to the Rabbi of the jewish temple in Rhode island. In it he thanked the jews of newport for their support during the war.

[red crabtree]

So Johnny's post made me go looking and see what I found!

This is the statement that is ascribed as having been said by Franklin at the constitutional convention, the basis of which is the idea that Franklin was anti-semetic.

There is a great danger for the United State of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

For more than seventeen hundred years they have lamented their sorrowful fate — namely, that they have been driven out of their mother land; but, gentlemen, if the civilized world today should give them back Palestine and their property, they would immediately find pressing reason for not returning there. Why? Because they are vampires and vampires cannot live on other vampires --they cannot live among themselves. They must live among Christians and others who do not belong to their race.

If they are not expelled from the United States by the Constitution within less than one hundred years, they will stream into this country in such numbers that they will rule and destroy us and change our form of Government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our life, property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not excluded within two hundred years, our children will be working in the field to feed Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children’s children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change his spots. The Jews are a danger to this land, and if they are allowed to enter, they will imperil our institutions. They should be excluded by the Constitution.


Now this was published in 1934 in William Dudley Pelley's publication, Liberation.
Now here is the truth.
The fraudulent nature of the Prophecy -- and the fact that anti-Semitism was foreign to Franklin’s behavior — has been substantially documented by eminent historians. The late Charles A. Beard reported, "I cannot find a single original source that gives the slightest justification for believing that the Prophecy is anything more than a barefaced forgery. Not a word have I discovered in Franklin’s letters and papers expressing any such sentiments against the Jews as are ascribed to him by the Nazis — American and German. His well-known liberality in matters of religious opinion would, in fact, have precluded the kind of utterances put in his mouth by this palpable forgery . . . In his writings on immigration, Franklin made no mention of discrimination against Jews."

Beard also noted that "the phraseology of the alleged Prophecy is not that of the 18th century; nor is the language that of Franklin. It contains certain words that belong to contemporary (Nazi) Germany rather than America of Franklin’s period. For example, the word ‘homeland’ was not employed by Jews in Franklin’s time. It was created in connection with the Palestine mandate." Beard also showed "positive evidence" that Franklin held Jews in high regard, citing the instance when the Hebrew Society of Philadelphia sought to raise money for a synagogue in Philadelphia. Franklin signed the petition of appeal for contributions to "citizens of every religious denomination" and gave 5 pounds himself to the fund.

J. Henry Smythe, Jr., compiler of The Amazing Benjamin Franklin, has characterized the Prophecy as "a counterfeit," adding it was a "libel of the Jewish race, unjust both to Jews and to the name and fame of Benjamin Franklin. I have investigated this calumny and find no historical basis." Julian P. Boyd, librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, made the same evaluation, and John Clyde Oswald of the International Benjamin Franklin Society noted that "the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were secret. No official record was kept but a great deal of information has been accumulated and pieced together, giving a fairly good picture of what transpired. Franklin was then 81 years of age and in poor health. He took an active part in the proceedings but made his contributions to the deliberations not orally, but in written memoranda, which he handed to this friend, James Wilson, another member of the Philadelphia delegation, who sat by him and who read them to the Convention. They have been preserved and the collection is believed to be complete..."

The late Carl Van Doren, a biographer of Benjamin Franklin made this report:

The speech against the Jews which Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have made the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is a forgery, produced within the past five years [1933-38]. The forger, whoever he was, claims that the speech was taken down by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and preserved in his Journal. The forger presumably knew that, in a letter to John Quincy Adams dated December 30, 1818, Pinckney said he had kept a Journal of the proceedings at the Convention. But this Journal, if it ever existed, has never been found. The forger claims that Pinckney ‘published’ the Journal ‘for private distribution among his friends’ with the title Chit-Chat Around the Table During Intermissions. No copy of any such printed Journal has come to light. Not content with these two claims, the forger has further asserted that the original manuscript of Franklin’s speech, apparently from Pinckney’s Journal, is in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. The Franklin Institute does not possess the manuscript.

The forger’s authority for his document is nearly as mythical as could be imagined. He cites a manuscript which does not exist, a printed book or pamphlet which nobody has seen, a Journal which has been lost for more than a hundred years. There is no evidence of the slightest value that Franklin ever made the alleged speech or ever said or thought anything of the kind about the Jews.

[red crabtree]

And this regarding the quote from Thomas Jefferson.

CLAIM
Thomas Jefferson

(18th century American statesman)
"Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in. "
Thomas Jefferson (D. Boorstin, THE AMERICANS)

RESPONSE (1)
Firstly, anti-Semites should learn to quote their "sources" correctly and also include the relevant page number. The correct citation for the book is "The Americans – The Colonial Experience", Daniel. J. Boorstin, Vintage Books, 1958. The "quote" above has been changed from the original, which appears on page 64 of the paperback edition. Speaking about the American Quakers and the problems they experienced because, for example, they would not defend themselves against Indian attacks, he speaks of them as "a religious sect…acting with one mind, and that directed from the mother Society in England. Dispersed, as the Jews, they still form, as those do, one nation, foreign to the land they live in."

The imputation behind the original misquote is also at variance with Jefferson's support for both freedom of religious belief and practice and also his belief in freedom from religion. He was determined that the religious bigotry and intolerance in the Europe of his time would not be exported to America. In 1777 he drafted "An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" and in 1779 when he became Governor of Virginia he introduced the Act into the legislature. An opposing bill, proposing to make Christianity the official religion of America was then introduced by Patrick Henry and had primarily Anglican support.

Jews along with Baptists, freethinkers and some Anglicans supported the Jefferson bill. James Madison made a speech to the Virginia General Assembly which strongly swayed support to the Jefferson bill and it became law on 16 Jan 1786. It read, in part:

"II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.'

You almost had me Andak. I'll be sure to look up your sources before responding from now on.

[Johnny Yuma]

.... that we've gone off on this tangent, but we'll get back to where we're supposed to be, real soon. :D


I'm still tending to believe Franklin was an anti-semite. There is little reason not to believe that Pickney kept a diary; most politicians, as well as many 'common' people of the day, did. Secondly, Pickney, who, and you can find this easily, was sympathetic to Jews and was instrumental in removing "civil and political disabilities" of those who lived in South Carolina. I find it difficult to believe that he would write something spurious that Franklin had said about Jews. There again, Pickney liked Jews.

You may know more about Franklin's journeys in France, when he was raising money for the revolution, than I. So let me ask you if you know of any particular incidents that could have set Franklin on a path of dislike for them? Are you familiar with the term "Jacobin", and how it appertains to their involvement during the American and French revolutions? Do you know of any unfavorable encounters he had with them during his travels?

I'm looking for motive..

[red crabtree]

Sure, the Jacobins were political clubs in France prior to the Revolution in France. Debating societies if you will.Though as the Revolution went on they became very deadly. One of the leading Jacobins was Robespierre, the leader of the Terrors during the French Revolution. They heavily targeted the Catholic church along with the priests and nuns. Thousands were murdered. The only thing that I can associate the Jacobins with anti-semitism is from the overall comtempt and an almost patholgical hatred for anything religious. I am aware of the anti-semetic views, but also with the anti-Christian views of the leaders of the French Revolution, and of course the same for aristocrats, and eventually they managed to consume each other as well.
But as far as anything connecting them and Franklin specifically I do not recall, beyond his association with politics at the time. I do not believe Franklin was an anti-semetic. I have read a great deal on all the founding father's and never have run across anything like andak put up, and particularly in regards to Franklin who as a quaker would have seen that as alien. That's what made me go look, just didn't make sense, but thought there's always something more to learn. What I believe I learned are there are anti-semetics now who are using the founding father's for their own purposes in today's world. Just are some Christian Fundamentalists who try to portray the founders as just like them, when they in fact where not.
Please let me know if I am missing something here.

[red crabtree]

Forgot to add that it would not have been unusual for Pickney to have kept a diary, thing is if it exists from the convention no one knows where it is and if someone has it imagine what they could get for it at an auction, why keep it all to yourself? That does not make sense to me.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by red crabtree

Please let me know if I am missing something here.

Nope. You're right on the money. BTW... good eye. I'm glad you're here. :cool:

[andak01]

Originally posted by jewbyc
George Washington did not make such a statement. When other people make statements about islam that are taken out of context you get mad but its ok if you do it what gives.

I have a copy of a letter George Washington wrote to the Rabbi of the jewish temple in Rhode island. In it he thanked the jews of newport for their support during the war.

Well, the quote I gave was a single quote, and I frankly don't have any context for it. If you have more on the subject, or a link to the letter, I would be happy if you share it.

There are several purposes for my posts in this thread, so let me enumerate them to be clear.

- The popular conception of this country being built on Judeo-Christian ethics is a myth. Though the Jews and the Christians may have achieved a much closer relation at present, there was a great deal of anti-Semitism among the founding fathers. Which founding fathers and to what degree is something I am willing to explore further. And, this anti-Semitism was as typical of the age as the bigotry that allowed them to own slaves.

This myth is at present being used to further divide interests between Muslim Americans and the rest of American society. It creates an Us and Them mentality which must be stopped. Two of our greatest heros are Abraham (SAW) and Jesus (SAW). Recognizing that is the first step towards building some bridges. And yes, it goes without saying that such effort will need to come from both sides.

The relationship of the founding fathers to Islam was this, absolute and utter intolerance. The Muslims that came to this country in those days came from Africa in chains. They were forced to completely absolve their religion.

- Secondly, there is a myth that, since the founding fathers wished to create a secular state, they must have based everything on non-religious principles. This myth, popular among atheists, posits Franklin and Jefferson as scientific humanists without a shred of spirituality. But a study of their letters and speeches shows that they had a very solid moral basis that came from their religious upbringings. It was this, as much as anything else that led to the creation of a just system of government.

- Third, when we speak of patriotism, does that mean that country comes first above God? That is something that no pious Jew, Christian or Muslim would accept. If we don't put God first in our lives then religion is just a hobby. The patriotism of our founding fathers was about an idealism greater than what existed in America at that time. They built this country through their critical view of it. Their faith gave them the strength to achieve a higher level of Patriotism.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by andak01
Well, the quote I gave was a single quote, and I frankly don't have any context for it. If you have more on the subject, or a link to the letter, I would be happy if you share it.

There are several purposes for my posts in this thread, so let me enumerate them to be clear.

The popular conception of this country being built on Judeo-Christian ethics is a myth. Though the Jews and the Christians may have achieved a much closer relation at present, there was a great deal of anti-Semitism among the founding fathers. Which founding fathers and to what degree is something I am willing to explore further. And, this anti-Semitism was as typical of the age as the bigotry that allowed them to own slaves
It appears that you are attempting to promulgate your own myths by making unsupported statements that further your own agenda. Having admitted that you had no context for the quote by Washington, I remain, as always, of the mind that you simply surf the net searching for derogatory information that you can use to make your points.

This technique of information gathering along with the misleading activity of often posting a "link" to the information thus presented is one of the reasons why I do not consider the presence of links in a person's posts to necessarily signify anything, while others of course think that the mere presence of multiple links must certainly be a sign of deep erudition.

[andak01]

Red Crabtree,

I second Johnny's motion. I am also glad you are here. You have contributed greatly to this thread and, until I find otherwise, I will assume that this quote is a forgery. I didn't use the quote because I agree with it (yuck!). I used it to question the cosy view that Jews and Christians have always walked together hand and hand in these United States. Whether Franklin was anti-Semetic or not is relavant, but not the entire point. Whole eras of our past including the McCarthy era have had large injections of anti-Semetism. And it is just these examples I hold up to any Arab conspiracy theorists who claim that this country is run by the Jews.

You almost had me Andak. I'll be sure to look up your sources before responding from now on.

I didn't post that because I was trying to "trick" you. I did genuinely believe that some of our founding fathers were anti-Semites. I still do, but I won't be using that quote again. When I saw that the source was ADLUSA, I thought that ADL was the Anti-Defamation League and assumed that they would have no motive to spread false quotes. In fact, http://adlusa.com/ the homepage begins with the words Anti-Defamation League.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by andak01

I didn't post that because I was trying to "trick" you. I did genuinely believe that some of our founding fathers were anti-Semites. I still do, but I won't be using that quote again. When I saw that the source was ADLUSA, I thought that ADL was the Anti-Defamation League and assumed that they would have no motive to spread false quotes. In fact, http://adlusa.com/ the homepage begins with the words Anti-Defamation League.

The claim that America's Founding Fathers were anti-semitic is a popular slander of neoNazis, Palestinian supporters, and other anti-semites. These quotes are in every case doctored or complete fabrications.

George Washington had a warm personal relationship with a Jewish congregation in Connecticut. Thomas Jefferson was a fervent believer in freedom of religion. Benjamin Franklin was anything but a bigot. John Adams admired the Jewish people.

The "ADLUSA" site is racist and purposely misleading; as such, it is 100% compatible with those who attribute anti-semtic quotes to the Founding Fathers and spread these lies on the Internet. The conclusion they want people to draw is that anti-semitism is patriotic.

[andak01]

Originally posted by ibrodsky
The "ADLUSA" site is racist and purposely misleading; as such, it is 100% compatible with those who attribute anti-semtic quotes to the Founding Fathers and spread these lies on the Internet. The conclusion they want people to draw is that anti-semitism is patriotic.

That certainly was not my intent. I assume that the real Anti-Defamation League was not built for that purpose. If it was my purpose to spread anti-Semitic lies, I certainly wouldn't choose a largely Jewish audience. I don't think anti-Semitism is the least patriotic and I don't agree with any of the quotes. To the point that I applaud John Ashcroft (who I detest in many ways) for his support of anti-hate crime penalties. Jews being the largest portion of victims of these crimes are the greatest benefactors of such enforcement.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by andak01
That certainly was not my intent. I assume that the real Anti-Defamation League was not built for that purpose. If it was my purpose to spread anti-Semitic lies, I certainly wouldn't choose a largely Jewish audience. I don't think anti-Semitism is the least patriotic and I don't agree with any of the quotes. To the point that I applaud John Ashcroft (who I detest in many ways) for his support of anti-hate crime penalties. Jews being the largest portion of victims of these crimes are the greatest benefactors of such enforcement.

andak01, I wasn't accusing you, I was alerting you. I researched anti-semitic quotes attributed to the Founding Fathers quite some time ago. Other people brought this stuff here long before you.

Another favorite slander of these people is to quote the Talmud (a wonderful early work on ethics and law) and Moses Maimonides (a beacon of enlightenment for his era and even today) out of context.

[red crabtree]

andak, I am glad that was not your intent and because I thought it was I will apologize.
I despise anything that smacks of bigotry. It matters not where it comes from, radical Muslims or Fundamentalists of any stripe. Frankly those that identify with Pat Robertson and his ilk are nearly as bad as radical Islamists, to me the one difference is that they don't murder people with impunity. I sincerely feel that if this country was set up with a different govn't and we did not have from our founding father's a tradition of tolerance, it would be all too easy for the far Christian Right to have me back in the home having babies till I died of it. Yet I also believe deeply that they have a right to live their own lives from that viewpoint, can stand on the street corner and yell how wonderful God as any American can if they wish. What I want to ensure is they or any other specific religious sect can never do is to put their own practice into law. While much of the culture of this country from it's inception as an independent nation rests on Christian values, it does not rest on Christianity as a point of Constitutional law. To me the founder's of this fine country took Christian values that were from Christ, not a church, and melded it with the best of the enlightenment with it's value on human's as human's, and it's value of independent thought.
And thanks to Johnny and you for the welcome. I like it here, the conversation is stimulating and intellectual by and large, I have also learned much here. I appreciate it.

[jewbyc]

Isnt this thread about radical Islam. Enough with the george bashing please.

[Revkha]

Originally posted by jewbyc
Isnt this thread about radical Islam. Enough with the george bashing please.

Sometimes we need a minor distraction or a momentary escape from radical Islam to maintain our sanity in this world.

[Johnny Yuma]

I want a nice clean fight on this thread ... touch gloves and come out fighting! :cool:

[jewbyc]

Has everybody given up on this post. I hope not we need to make the world aware of the dangers of Islam when it is run by people who teach hate to thier children

[old-reb]

Here is old reb, a 62 year old uneducated redneck,

I don't have a million facts but I still have a brain and my reading on these religions is:

Jews started a powerful religion that supported their own people to success but this was a racist religion that only helped Jews and it did not try to reach out to gentiles.

Christianity copied Judism and added the reaching out to all people so that it outgrew Judism.

Islam copied Judism racism, Christian appeal for new converts but added punishment for not converting and death for anyone leaving Islam. This warrior religion is the most successful on earth.

old reb

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
Here is old reb, a 62 year old uneducated redneck,

I don't have a million facts but I still have a brain and my reading on these religions is:

Jews started a powerful religion that supported their own people to success but this was a racist religion that only helped Jews and it did not try to reach out to gentiles.

Christianity copied Judism and added the reaching out to all people so that it outgrew Judism.

Islam copied Judism racism, Christian appeal for new converts but added punishment for not converting and death for anyone leaving Islam. This warrior religion is the most successful on earth.

old reb
I think that perhaps you should have underlined and highlighted the part of this post in which you refer to yourself as an "uneducated redneck". It had the ring of truth to it, unlike the rest of what you posted.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by MichaelC
I think that perhaps you should have underlined and highlighted the part of this post in which you refer to yourself as an "uneducated redneck". It had the ring of truth to it, unlike the rest of what you posted.

Hello Michael,

Thanks for the insult. I see you are from NW Washington, the land of liberals with their heads in the clouds. I did a search on your post and mostly what I saw was short insults.
What I posted was my opinion and belief. Which part did you not like? or was it just all of it?
I is uneducated in the sense of formal schooling but I keep my eyes open and my hearing is good.
I know people with college education that have opinions made in Harvard instead of their own.


old reb

[minusthejihad]

Well, it seems you may have come here with good intentions, but you eneded up throwing around some pretty false and silly statements. Read below in red and I'll show you:

Originally posted by old-reb
Here is old reb, a 62 year old uneducated redneck,

I don't have a million facts but I still have a brain and my reading on these religions is:

Jews started a powerful religion that supported their own people to success but this was a racist religion that only helped Jews and it did not try to reach out to gentiles.

Well, this is pretty insulting. Judaism was the first monotheistic religion, but it was not started "to support our people to success", and what was a measure of success thousands of years ago anyway? This sounds like a racist, anti-semitic statement if anything.

Christianity copied Judism and added the reaching out to all people so that it outgrew Judism.

Oh boy. Christianity did not copy Judaism, it was started by supporters of Christ, hundreds of years later. Yes you are right, Christians did evangelise. Christianity and other religions eventually tried to force Jews to convert or murdered them, thatis what actually helped them outgrow Jews.

Islam copied Judism racism, Christian appeal for new converts but added punishment for not converting and death for anyone leaving Islam. This warrior religion is the most successful on earth.

oh man. You know what. Why am I even trying to eductae you on this. If you think Jews are racist, then FU!

old reb

[L@mplighterM]

Originally posted by old-reb
Here is old reb, a 62 year old uneducated redneck,

I don't have a million facts but I still have a brain and my reading on these religions is:

Jews started a powerful religion that supported their own people to success but this was a racist religion that only helped Jews and it did not try to reach out to gentiles.

Christianity copied Judism and added the reaching out to all people so that it outgrew Judism.

Islam copied Judism racism, Christian appeal for new converts but added punishment for not converting and death for anyone leaving Islam. This warrior religion is the most successful on earth.

old reb

I guess that you’re right your post do shows that you’re a brainless uneducated redneck. Actually Jews touch every charitable organization in the world. Million facts? I don’t think you even have a handful!

Do yourself a favor and do a search on google.com for Jewish charity you might find yourself in possession of two facts.

Islam is a warring religion but for the most part Muslims are sniffling cowards that will do anything to stay alive. It doesn’t take a brave warring Muslim to point a AK-47 at an unarmed little child and pull the trigger.

Seems to me that Muslims pastime is surrendering.

[old-reb]

"The jews are the chosen people." I think that is racist. I once dated a Jewish woman and her daughter cried when she said her parents would not let her date a non Jew and there was only one Jew in her whole school and he was taken.

Racism has become a dirty word. Everyone is racist to a point. When my son was in highschool he thought members of a competing HS were all morons until he got transfered there.

In your favor about Jews not being racist: In my youth the KKK hated jews because they would not support slavery.

Also the people I knew that were KKK were unable to read so that they had no source of info outside of our small town.

Today in Israel a muslim is treated with respect if he doesn't kill someone but a jew in Palestine wouldn't last five minutes.
I don't mean to offend but I believe Judism is based on a brotherhood of helping each other. That is racism but not a bad racism. A feeling like jealousy or racism is a human feeling and not necessarly all bad, unless taken to extreme.


old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by L@mplighterM


Seems to me that Muslims pastime is surrendering.


If this were true then the Middle East would still be dominated by Jews and not Muslim.

old reb

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
Hello Michael,

Thanks for the insult. I see you are from NW Washington, the land of liberals with their heads in the clouds. I did a search on your post and mostly what I saw was short insults.
What I posted was my opinion and belief. Which part did you not like? or was it just all of it?
I is uneducated in the sense of formal schooling but I keep my eyes open and my hearing is good.
I know people with college education that have opinions made in Harvard instead of their own.


old reb
I don't see why your undies are in a bunch. All I did was agree with your unsolicited self assessment. Other than that, I rather gently pointed out that I did not think the rest of your post had the same ring of truth to it. Pretty genteel stuff for such a "chronic insulter" such as myself. I confess though, I pulled my punch as you are new around here. In reality, the rest of what you posted was essentially racist garbage.

Now THERE'S an insult.

You made a racist statement in your post. I don't like racists. If that insults you, then it makes me feel good to do so.

You did not do much monitoring of the 1000+ posts I have at this board to be making comments like you did. Of course, such comments put you right there with some of the pro-islamic members of the board who also take any perceived criticism as an insult.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
Racism has become a dirty word. DUH !

[old-reb]

Originally posted by MichaelC
DUH !

Duh! back. Is this a college level conversation?

old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Radical Islam Rising
One percent of one billion is a lot.
Anyone who opposes jihad is an enemy of God.
“By asserting that jihad against apostates within the realm of Islam is justified—by turning jihad inward and reforging it into a weapon for use against Muslims as well as infidels—- [Taymiyya] planted a seed of revolutionary violence in the heart of Islamic thought,” wrote co-authors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon.
These two experts argue correctly it was precisely the weapon of jihad that heavily armed Muslim extremists turned to when they invaded and occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979.


Hello Johnny Yuma,

I used to watch the TV show Johnny Yuma. "That Rebel lad, he got fighting mad, Johnny Yuma."

I see how extremist are hyjacking moderate Islam. Is there a way to go back the other way or will every muslim become a terrorist?

old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by MichaelC
DUH !

You college guys have tried to eliminate racism from the array of human emotions. It is still there even if everybody denies it.
I see Muslims killing innocent Jews, Russians, Americans, French, indonesians , etc and I feel racist against muslims. It is a self defensive mechanism that has worked since we were monkeys. If a certain group poses a threat then you arm yourself against that group when you see them again.

I grew up Christian and I was told that I represented Christian life to the people I met and if my behavour was bad that that reflected back to all Christians. --- That is responsibility; something the Muslims don't want.

old reb

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
Duh! back. Is this a college level conversation?

old reb
Look, if you can't handle it, find another board at which you may espouse your philosophy without any questions asked. It is certainly not clear yet why a person with views such as yours even wants to post at the ISRAEL forum. We've certainly seen plenty of others show up and dump their refuse here only to disappear into the darkness from which they had only momentarily emerged.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
You college guys
Is this what you call people who have views unsupportive of your own? I expect to hear "pointy headed intellectual" any minute.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by MichaelC
Look, if you can't handle it, find another board at which you may espouse your philosophy without any questions asked. It is certainly not clear yet why a person with views such as yours even wants to post at the ISRAEL forum. We've certainly seen plenty of others show up and dump their refuse here only to disappear into the darkness from which they had only momentarily emerged.

You get 15 people with over 50 post to confirm this and I will disappear to never return.

old reb

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
You get 15 people with over 50 post to confirm this and I will disappear to never return.

old reb
Look, you do whatever you want to do. Just get real. If you spout racist nonsense, you will draw reactions. Even you must know this.

[abu afak]

Originally posted by old-reb
"The jews are the chosen people." I think that is racist. I once dated a Jewish woman and her daughter cried when she said her parents would not let her date a non Jew and there was only one Jew in her whole school and he was taken.


In America 60% of Jews marry non-Jews.
(this figure has grown virtually every year and is still doing so)

So they must be dating Gentiles..... I do .. and do so mostly...
and I live in NYC.

Judaism.. except among orthodox/Hasidim, is vanishing and being absorbed because Ironically, America is the only country to, for the most part, completely accept Jews.

your "crying daughter" is not representative.

One need not be a 'college boy' to make a fair and researched post... and while some of your points about everyone carrying some racism (I do that too) are true.. your facts and characterizations are often faulty.. especially re Judaism.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by abu afak
In America 60% of Jews marry non-Jews.
(this figure has grown virtually every year and is still doing so)

So they must be dating Gentiles..... I do .. and do so mostly...
and I live in NYC.

Judaism.. except among orthodox/Hasidim, is vanishing and being absorbed because Ironically, America is the only country to, for the most part, completely accept Jews.

your "crying daughter" is not representative.

One need not be a 'college boy' to make a fair and researched post... and while some of your points about everyone carrying some racism are true.. your facts and characterizations are often faulty.. especially re Judaism.

Thank you abu for your informative reply. The crying daughter eventually married a gentile and he went from $5.00 per hour to $75,000 per year in 1992. I personally know he earned every single buck of the $75,000.

When I dated the Jewish beauty I was enveloped in care and love by her community. It was something that is too wonderful to explain.
I asked them why so much of the world hated jews but got no answer. I told them how as a child I heard on the radio about how the Jews killed Jesus and I wondered who these evil people were that had killed my god.


old reb

[old-reb]

abu,

The college boy thing comes from people calling me ignorant because I lack formal education. Their bias (racism?) demands that I call them college boys as a return bias.

old reb

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
Hello Johnny Yuma,

I used to watch the TV show Johnny Yuma. "That Rebel lad, he got fighting mad, Johnny Yuma."

I see how extremist are hyjacking moderate Islam. Is there a way to go back the other way or will every muslim become a terrorist?

old reb

When you make a universal claim using the term "every", you make the argument nonexclusive. All one would have to do is find only one Muslim who was not a terrorist and the argument would be proven fallacious.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
When you make a universal claim using the term "every", you make the argument nonexclusive. All one would have to do is find only one Muslim who was not a terrorist and the argument would be proven fallacious.

I stand corrected and sent to dictionary.

fal·la·cious (f…-l³“sh…s) adj. 1. Containing or based on a fallacy: a fallacious assumption. 2. Tending to mislead; deceptive: fallacious testimony

old reb

[abu afak]

Glad to be of help and welcome to the board.

I appreciate your position here and your self-deprecation, and straightforward, unapologetic posts about your sentiments.
(Tho being anti-intellectual for it's own sake is needless.)
But you must be prepared, at least partially, to back them up.
Use the net/search engines... research your hunches.. get some links that agree with your positions .. preferably ones with as little bias as possible.


I am a strong critic of Islam and Muslims here and have taken much of the last few years researching my position (mostly on the net), despite the fact I am a college dropout myself.

The net makes facts and articles on any topic accessible to anyone, the only big problem being, any idiot can have a website just like the NY Times. ... It's a great equalizer but filled with alot of junk too.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by abu afak

(Tho being anti-intellectual for it's own sake is needless.)


it is true that calling someone college boy as an insult, insults all college people. What was I thinking?

I have some beliefs that can only be tested under the fire of the internet. I am not fixed in my beliefs but I will not give them up to half baked arguments or simple minded flamers. Also, if I thought the muslims were right I would side with them today but that info just ain't there.

old reb

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
I stand corrected and sent to dictionary.

fal·la·cious (f…-l³“sh…s) adj. 1. Containing or based on a fallacy: a fallacious assumption. 2. Tending to mislead; deceptive: fallacious testimony

old reb

Fine. I'll put it in terms a redneck can understand. Fallacious means you'll make yourself look like you've got your head up your a$$. Clear as mud?

But to answer your original question, I don't want to have to contemplate what must be done to reverse the trend, if it truly is a trend, and not simply an aberration.

If it is a trend, then the outcome for those who adhere to "radical" or "extremist" Islam is grim. If, on the other hand, it is an aberration with the impetus being disenfranchisement, as many claim, then the answer would be to create an environment of prosperity, and test the claim.

So before you go looking up what I wrote in the dictionary, let me rephrase it into the venacular:

If them ol' boys is a gonna continue to show their a$$es, an that's the way things is a gonna be, it don't look good for them there fellers. How so ever, if'n they're just foolin' around an complainin' about they ain't got 'nuf money, all we gotta do is give 'em all a regular paycheck and see if that shuts 'em up. If not, we know they'sa just shuckin' us, an someone's gonna bust their swimmer. Savey?

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
it is true that calling someone college boy as an insult, insults all college people. What was I thinking?

I have some beliefs that can only be tested under the fire of the internet. I am not fixed in my beliefs but I will not give them up to half baked arguments or simple minded flamers. Also, if I thought the muslims were right I would side with them today but that info just ain't there.

old reb

I'm starting to like you, already.

[MichaelC]

My own view of our new acquaintance is picking up a little also. But that "college boy" thing is going to take a while to get over.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by MichaelC
My own view of our new acquaintance is picking up a little also. But that "college boy" thing is going to take a while to get over.

Oh... I think he's a tad more educated than he claims.

it is true that calling someone college boy as an insult, insults all college people. What was I thinking?

Yes. What was he thinking? Who knows? But this level of sarcasm is clearly beyond an eighth grade reading level.

I have some beliefs that can only be tested under the fire of the internet.

Wow!...... Them there's high fallutin' words for an a$$ scratchin' redneck, don't you think, MichaelC?

I am not fixed in my beliefs

Curious, he didn't say "I'm a stick in the mud"..... More an insightful linguist than redneck extraordinaire.

Also, if I thought the muslims were right I would side with them today but that info just ain't there.

That line attracted me to him like the proverbial moth.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma

Originally posted by old reb
I have some beliefs that can only be tested under the fire of the internet.

replied to by Yuma
Wow!...... Them there's high fallutin' words for an a$$ scratchin' redneck, don't you think, MichaelC?
It does have a certain poetic quality to it.
Originally posted by old reb
Also, if I thought the muslims were right I would side with them today but that info just ain't there.
replied to by Yuma
That line attracted me to him like the proverbial moth .
Glad to hear he does not think they're "right". Curious as to how difficult the switch might or might not be if he changed his mind.

And I'm still curious about his use of the word "racist".

[old-reb]

In an ant bed or a bee hive there are gate keepers that keep out uninvited insects.

Johnny and Michael are the gate keepers for this here hive.

Racism is a key interest for me. I support jews but I believe that their religion was orginally based on racism, a human nature. Others were against Jews because they were jealous of and excluded from the success of the Jews.
The Muslims hate the Jews because it is Allah's will and commanded by the Imams.

My own father hated but admired Jews. In a big city it is hard to tell who owns what but in Dad's small town the Jews owned the ice house, the clothing mill and any thing that made money. He felt excluded from their wealth. The truth probably is that the Jews brought prosperty to the little town that it wouldn't have had otherwise.

old reb

[red crabtree]

Hello reb, personally I have a bit of a soft spot for "rednecks" see my previous post regarding hillbillies and rednecks if you want to know why.
Now just for the sake of stimulating debate let me throw something out there.
Christianity is an offshot of the Jewish religion, while I call myself Christian, I doubt if Christ himself actually intended on starting a new religion. Reforming the Jewish religion perhaps, but not a new religion. In my mind Christianity as we know it started with Paul and his interpetation of of Christ's thoughts or actions, and then from there the Judeo-Roman spin to it. Orthodox Christianity is not the same as the Roman version and to me that means saying Judeo-Christian hertiage only gets part of the picture. It was a melding of cultures and beliefs and burnished as things went along.
By the way Reb, if you were raised in a more evangelical, fundamentalist Christian background as so many in the south were I can tell you exactly why you were told as a child that the Jews killed Jesus. From the cultural and theological times it came from and how it evolved in the south if you are interested.
Not that this necessarily has a thing to do with radical Islam, just a bit of interest in what Reb brought up.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree

By the way Reb, if you were raised in a more evangelical, fundamentalist Christian background as so many in the south were I can tell you exactly why you were told as a child that the Jews killed Jesus. From the cultural and theological times it came from and how it evolved in the south if you are interested.


Greetings Crabtree,

We had lay preachers (preachers that felt the call of god instead of educated preachers)

I am interested, please tell me why we were told that the Jews killed Jesus.

BTW I wanted to start a thread but wasn't allowed to so I mooched off another interesting thread.

old reb

[red crabtree]

Oh, and I wanted to say that Judaism was not the first monotheist religion. Zoroasterism was. From Persia. It existed for centuries, and after ancient Persia or what later became Iran, became Muslim, the small community of Zosoaster's that were left went to India, were they still exist. Only about 100,000 and they don't allow converts nor marriage outside of the community. This trait is not exclusive to the Jewish people, Catholics did it, Protestants didn't marry Catholic's at one point in time, the Greek Orthodox church still insists that a person's religion is on their driver's license. I can give you more examples if you wish.
By the way I hold an associate's degree as a Registered Nurse, nothing of which has a thing to do with the topic at hand. I simply read alot.

I can tell you the cultural background to what you are asking about but it will be long, if you don't mind. I can't explain it short, and it will take me some time to put it together. I'm willing to email it to you if you would prefer. And just so you understand too, my dad's people are from the south and my great grandfather was a Baptist minister. Not formally educated in theology either, no more than many other's in family were that were preachers either. If you'd rather I posted it I will do that to. You can also reach me at activistrn@yahoo.com

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
In an ant bed or a bee hive there are gate keepers that keep out uninvited insects.

Johnny and Michael are the gate keepers for this here hive.

No sir. Not true. There are no gate keepers, here.


Racism is a key interest for me.

Gather 'round the campfire, ol' brother Reb is gonna speak.

I support jews but I believe that their religion was orginally based on racism, a human nature.

So.... if racism is human nature and we're all humans, then we're all racist?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Oh, and I wanted to say that Judaism was not the first monotheist religion. Zoroasterism was. From Persia. It existed for centuries, and after ancient Persia or what later became Iran, became Muslim, the small community of Zosoaster's that were left went to India, were they still exist. Only about 100,000 and they don't allow converts nor marriage outside of the community. This trait is not exclusive to the Jewish people, Catholics did it, Protestants didn't marry Catholic's at one point in time, the Greek Orthodox church still insists that a person's religion is on their driver's license. I can give you more examples if you wish.
By the way I hold an associate's degree as a Registered Nurse, nothing of which has a thing to do with the topic at hand. I simply read alot.

I can tell you the cultural background to what you are asking about but it will be long, if you don't mind. I can't explain it short, and it will take me some time to put it together. I'm willing to email it to you if you would prefer. And just so you understand too, my dad's people are from the south and my great grandfather was a Baptist minister. Not formally educated in theology either, no more than many other's in family were that were preachers either. If you'd rather I posted it I will do that to. You can also reach me at activistrn@yahoo.com

A very interesting post Crabtree. I prefer any info to be out in the open but if you prefer I will take it by email. I think you can email me through this board

[red crabtree]

Or looked at another way, we are all culturalists. In other words human's by and large like their own culture best. It is what we know and what we learn and people who are not like us are to be looked at suspiously. Taken to an extreme that is racism. I don't consider myself a racist because I don't automatically dislike every one that is not my race, my color or my creed. However that are certain cultural norms in various cultures, not necessarily based on color or religion, that I find repugnant. I believe that is a fairly normal human trait. What is a norm in one culture and seems perfectly normal is repubnant in another, and people raised in that other culture is not likely to suffer what they find repubnant easily. Does that make a lick of sense?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma



So.... if racism is human nature and we're all humans, then we're all racist? [/B]

Sure, it is in all of us and people like Mohammad and adolf knew how to use this potent force.
Now it is politically incorrect to have racist feelings so people just lie to themselves and say they don't have such feelings. I don't expect anyone to agree with me because of the massive brain wash of the subject.

People are so keen to stamp out racism that nobody would dare admit that he has such feelings.

If you are honest you will admit that you feel racist toward Islam and I feel the same way because of their unsavory behavour.

If you lived in Israel and terrorist were killing and maiming your friends you would be lying if you didn't feel a little racist hate of people who kill your friends just because of their religion.


old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Or looked at another way, we are all culturalists. In other words human's by and large like their own culture best. It is what we know and what we learn and people who are not like us are to be looked at suspiously. Taken to an extreme that is racism. I don't consider myself a racist because I don't automatically dislike every one that is not my race, my color or my creed. However that are certain cultural norms in various cultures, not necessarily based on color or religion, that I find repugnant. I believe that is a fairly normal human trait. What is a norm in one culture and seems perfectly normal is repubnant in another, and people raised in that other culture is not likely to suffer what they find repubnant easily. Does that make a lick of sense?

Is that the answer you were going to e-mail him?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Or looked at another way, we are all culturalists. In other words human's by and large like their own culture best. It is what we know and what we learn and people who are not like us are to be looked at suspiously. Taken to an extreme that is racism. I don't consider myself a racist because I don't automatically dislike every one that is not my race, my color or my creed. However that are certain cultural norms in various cultures, not necessarily based on color or religion, that I find repugnant. I believe that is a fairly normal human trait. What is a norm in one culture and seems perfectly normal is repubnant in another, and people raised in that other culture is not likely to suffer what they find repubnant easily. Does that make a lick of sense?

I think it makes sense, I will have to take my time and digest your thought. In a way it fine tunes the subject but in another way it makes it cloudy or more complex.

old reb

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Oh, and I wanted to say that Judaism was not the first monotheist religion. Zoroasterism was. From Persia. It existed for centuries, and after ancient Persia or what later became Iran, became Muslim, the small community of Zosoaster's that were left went to India, were they still exist. Only about 100,000 and they don't allow converts nor marriage outside of the community.
You might like to check out a similar conversation in another thread:

http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php3?postid=58547#post58547

which discusses this same topic but with some different viewpoints. This link picks up the part of the thread discussing Zoroastrianism, in the middle of the conversation.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
Sure, it is in all of us and people like Mohammad and adolf knew how to use this potent force.
Now it is politically incorrect to have racist feelings so people just lie to themselves and say they don't have such feelings. I don't expect anyone to agree with me because of the massive brain wash of the subject.

People are so keen to stamp out racism that nobody would dare admit that he has such feelings.

If you are honest you will admit that you feel racist toward Islam and I feel the same way because of their unsavory behavour.

If you lived in Israel and terrorist were killing and maiming your friends you would be lying if you didn't feel a little racist hate of people who kill your friends just because of their religion.


old reb

I'm going to preface my remarks by telling you that I lived in the segregated panhandle of Florida and witnessed, firsthand, desegregation. I have clear images of all that transpired during the march from Selma, AL. Together with this, my ancestors were slave owning South Carolinians that held on until Sherman marched through. I have uncles that were, and probably still are, Kluxers. I am no stranger to meaning of racism.

By your train of logic, since murder is a human nature, we're all murderers. And I say that nothing happens until it happens. Therefore, no one is a racist until they perform a racist act, through word or deed. You cannot be born a racist. Your claim is that it is nature; an inborne behavior. I claim it is nurture; environment.

I believe you would be more correct to say "biased" or "discriminating", as opposed to "racist", in your characterization of my feelings of Islam. Racism connotates hate for a particular human genetic trait; skin color, etc. And since adherants of Islam are of no one particular genetic trait, it does not follow that the term "racist" could possibly apply. You do realize, of course, that not all Muslims are Arabs?

[red crabtree]

I'll try to keep this short Reb.
The south was heavily influenced with the Scotch-Irish culture. The name Scotch-Irish is a particularly American name. Back in the 1600's the lowland Scots had by and large become Scots Prebyterians. These people were heavily influenced by the teachings of John Calvin, who was quite fundamentalist in the same meaning of the word today. He believed the Catholic church was terribly wrong and perhaps the easiest comparison to Calvinism would be the Puritans from the Church of England. Life was somber, colors were somber and the only real road to heaven was through Grace and Grace alone. Good works would get you no where and the way to attain Grace, which only God could give, not a Priest, was in appropriate belief and worship. That is a very short version of Calvinist teachings. Really short. The Scots Prebyterian church was set up in Kirks. Similar to Parishes, but without a supreme Priest, like the Pope. Doctrine was voted on, but then strictly enforced. Like if you questioned any part of doctrine the Kirk had the ability to hang you outside of any civil authority.
The lowland Scots took their religion very, very seriously. This caused issues with the Church of England who not only was attempting to impose their religion and Book of Common Prayer on the Prebyterians, the English king, head of the Church of England, was also having to fight the border Reiver's. These were Septs or clans that raided one another for sheep and cattle, and the honor of the clan was extremely important. These Septs crossed national boundries, so that a Sept often included both Scots and English, and the Sept was more important that any national loyalty. When the English went into Northern Ireland and kicked the Catholic's off their lands and set up the manor system, they created a problem that exists to this day. "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland stem from this. In any case the English hit on what they felt would be a brillant idea. The decided to move those Scots Prebyterians into Northern Ireland to help keep the Irish Catholic in their place, since the Prebyterians were very firmly Protestant, and by doing so England also felt it would remove the threat of these people from it's border's and stem the influence of the Septs on the borders as well.
So thousands of Scots Prebyterians were moved to Northern Ireland. Some of their own free will, some were not. While the Prebyterians were being persucuted prior to their move to Northern Ireland they were forced to meet in secret, without those who were formally educated either in basic theology or even in the theology of John Calvin. They became an incredibly independent religious people because of the circumstances they found themselves in. This they took to Northern Ireland with them.
After a couple generations there the Irish Catholic had an uprising and William Prince of Orange, now the English King brought troops from England to quell the uprising. He was strongly supported by the Ulsterman, those that were of Scottish background, but had lived in Northern Ireland for at least generations. While William was able to get the uprising to a low boil he was not able to entirely put down the entire rebellion, but he declared victory and went home. Leaving those Prebyterian Scots to fend for themselves. By the middle of the 1700's approximately 100,000 immigrated to America. Their lives in Scotland, particularly those on the border coupled with their lives in Ireland had suited them to a couple specific things. They made excellant frontiersman in this country, along with the northern English that shared the border in England with them, that had immigrated to this country as well. And what suited them for this in particular is that through their life and religious experiences found that they did not need a king nor a priest to tell them how to live. And land, land was incredibly important, as most were farmers and many had never actually owned their own land. The Scots-Irish settled primarily in the south. In Virginia, the mountains of the Carolina's and some in southern PA. When they got there they found many, many northern English. Those souls that shared the border with them back when, with a very similar culture.
These were our early frontiersmen, they lived in a great deal of isolation because of it. Their religion, always important, something they had been willing to die to keep, fighting both the English and the Irish Catholic to keep it, found that in their isolation, it was their guide and their comfort. Realise that by the mid 1600's nearly 70 percent of Scotland were able to read. That was higher then all of the other European countries combined. and the reason they could read was because the Kirks had set up schools specifically so that the common people were able to read their bible's and know their bible's without having a priest tell them what it said. The Scots-Irish in America may not have had another single book in their house but they had a bible and they read it. The downfall of not having someone who was formally trained in theology is that much of the history of why specific doctrines evolved were lost. And anyone who could read a bible could read it the way they felt was appropriate and encourage other's to do the same, losing more of the background and learning that intense study of theology gives one.
In time the Scots-Irish Prebyterian religion moved even further to the conservative side, and trust me John Calvin was already very conservative anyway, and the Baptist Church was born, with it's many outshoots such as the Assembly of God etc... what are called Bible Churches. By and large the culture of the south became very much a Scots-Irish culture. They helped lead the way for independence in this country by their firm beliefs that a man needed no king or no Priest. That God had given man the right to make choices and decisions on their own, and only God alone could judge a man. It is also important to know that Calvin put a great deal of weight on the old testament, which while other Protestant sects did not discount, they also generally did not put as much weight behind it as Calvin did. This culture produced some of our most well known frontiersman. It also produced a culture of God, country and family. All they had to rely on. It produced people who were highly independent and willing to risk everything to keep that independence. Some of the downside's it produced a culture that was not only independent but suspious of outsiders, that believed they were God's chosen people and all others were flat out wrong. They used their interpetation of the bible to prove it. Hence the Jews were evil because they killed Jesus. Certainly not only a Scots-Irish culture phenomenon, but one that was taken very, very seriously. It gives us the idea that Catholics are cultists, because there is little understanding of the history of Christianity or the Catholic church without learned theologians or people willing to delve past the "literal" word of God. In my experience, it is the rare "bible church" minister that has any formal training at all. While that gives a great deal of independence it also gives only part of the picture concerning Christianity and it's more obstuse points. It also leads to those who simply go down the road apiece and start their own church when they disagree with the minister or how the church is being run.
At times it has also led to those from this faith and background to not get the whole separation of church and state, Thomas Jefferson, not known to be a fan of any organized religion, commented on those "Scots Prebyterians" who had difficulty with this concept, and called John Calvin a demon who would take all joy out of living if possible with his pieties. As well as the inability of some of his converts to see that all are God's creations.
Your dad and you grew up in a culture that had all of these cultural values. I know these people, as I put in another post, they are my dad's people. While I do not subscribe to the religuous viewpoint's I do have a great deal of respect for the independence that my ancestors believed in and passed on to me. I also have great respect for all that they accomplished as the pioneers consistantly in this country. This culture has a tradition of fighting for it's religion, for fighting for it's independence and if you weren't going to be a preacher, a soldier would be just as good. Formal education was not highly valued, being able to read the bible and be a good Christian was.

I don't know if I answered your question real well, but I hope I gave it a start. It is very wrapped up in culture and goes back centuries to John Calvin. Gotta go to bed now, because I have to go to work and be alert enough to take care of sick people. So off to bed. Have a good evening.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by red crabtree
I'll try to keep this short Reb.
The south was heavily influenced with the Scotch-Irish culture. The name Scotch-Irish is a particularly American name. Back in the 1600's the lowland Scots had by and large become Scots Prebyterians. These people were heavily influenced by the teachings of John Calvin, who was quite fundamentalist in the same meaning of the word today. He believed the Catholic church was terribly wrong and perhaps the easiest comparison to Calvinism would be the Puritans from the Church of England. Life was somber, colors were somber and the only real road to heaven was through Grace and Grace alone. Good works would get you no where and the way to attain Grace, which only God could give, not a Priest, was in appropriate belief and worship. That is a very short version of Calvinist teachings. Really short. The Scots Prebyterian church was set up in Kirks. Similar to Parishes, but without a supreme Priest, like the Pope. Doctrine was voted on, but then strictly enforced. Like if you questioned any part of doctrine the Kirk had the ability to hang you outside of any civil authority.
The lowland Scots took their religion very, very seriously. This caused issues with the Church of England who not only was attempting to impose their religion and Book of Common Prayer on the Prebyterians, the English king, head of the Church of England, was also having to fight the border Reiver's. These were Septs or clans that raided one another for sheep and cattle, and the honor of the clan was extremely important. These Septs crossed national boundries, so that a Sept often included both Scots and English, and the Sept was more important that any national loyalty. When the English went into Northern Ireland and kicked the Catholic's off their lands and set up the manor system, they created a problem that exists to this day. "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland stem from this. In any case the English hit on what they felt would be a brillant idea. The decided to move those Scots Prebyterians into Northern Ireland to help keep the Irish Catholic in their place, since the Prebyterians were very firmly Protestant, and by doing so England also felt it would remove the threat of these people from it's border's and stem the influence of the Septs on the borders as well.
So thousands of Scots Prebyterians were moved to Northern Ireland. Some of their own free will, some were not. While the Prebyterians were being persucuted prior to their move to Northern Ireland they were forced to meet in secret, without those who were formally educated either in basic theology or even in the theology of John Calvin. They became an incredibly independent religious people because of the circumstances they found themselves in. This they took to Northern Ireland with them.
After a couple generations there the Irish Catholic had an uprising and William Prince of Orange, now the English King brought troops from England to quell the uprising. He was strongly supported by the Ulsterman, those that were of Scottish background, but had lived in Northern Ireland for at least generations. While William was able to get the uprising to a low boil he was not able to entirely put down the entire rebellion, but he declared victory and went home. Leaving those Prebyterian Scots to fend for themselves. By the middle of the 1700's approximately 100,000 immigrated to America. Their lives in Scotland, particularly those on the border coupled with their lives in Ireland had suited them to a couple specific things. They made excellant frontiersman in this country, along with the northern English that shared the border in England with them, that had immigrated to this country as well. And what suited them for this in particular is that through their life and religious experiences found that they did not need a king nor a priest to tell them how to live. And land, land was incredibly important, as most were farmers and many had never actually owned their own land. The Scots-Irish settled primarily in the south. In Virginia, the mountains of the Carolina's and some in southern PA. When they got there they found many, many northern English. Those souls that shared the border with them back when, with a very similar culture.
These were our early frontiersmen, they lived in a great deal of isolation because of it. Their religion, always important, something they had been willing to die to keep, fighting both the English and the Irish Catholic to keep it, found that in their isolation, it was their guide and their comfort. Realise that by the mid 1600's nearly 70 percent of Scotland were able to read. That was higher then all of the other European countries combined. and the reason they could read was because the Kirks had set up schools specifically so that the common people were able to read their bible's and know their bible's without having a priest tell them what it said. The Scots-Irish in America may not have had another single book in their house but they had a bible and they read it. The downfall of not having someone who was formally trained in theology is that much of the history of why specific doctrines evolved were lost. And anyone who could read a bible could read it the way they felt was appropriate and encourage other's to do the same, losing more of the background and learning that intense study of theology gives one.
In time the Scots-Irish Prebyterian religion moved even further to the conservative side, and trust me John Calvin was already very conservative anyway, and the Baptist Church was born, with it's many outshoots such as the Assembly of God etc... what are called Bible Churches. By and large the culture of the south became very much a Scots-Irish culture. They helped lead the way for independence in this country by their firm beliefs that a man needed no king or no Priest. That God had given man the right to make choices and decisions on their own, and only God alone could judge a man. It is also important to know that Calvin put a great deal of weight on the old testament, which while other Protestant sects did not discount, they also generally did not put as much weight behind it as Calvin did. This culture produced some of our most well known frontiersman. It also produced a culture of God, country and family. All they had to rely on. It produced people who were highly independent and willing to risk everything to keep that independence. Some of the downside's it produced a culture that was not only independent but suspious of outsiders, that believed they were God's chosen people and all others were flat out wrong. They used their interpetation of the bible to prove it. Hence the Jews were evil because they killed Jesus. Certainly not only a Scots-Irish culture phenomenon, but one that was taken very, very seriously. It gives us the idea that Catholics are cultists, because there is little understanding of the history of Christianity or the Catholic church without learned theologians or people willing to delve past the "literal" word of God. In my experience, it is the rare "bible church" minister that has any formal training at all. While that gives a great deal of independence it also gives only part of the picture concerning Christianity and it's more obstuse points. It also leads to those who simply go down the road apiece and start their own church when they disagree with the minister or how the church is being run.
At times it has also led to those from this faith and background to not get the whole separation of church and state, Thomas Jefferson, not known to be a fan of any organized religion, commented on those "Scots Prebyterians" who had difficulty with this concept, and called John Calvin a demon who would take all joy out of living if possible with his pieties. As well as the inability of some of his converts to see that all are God's creations.
Your dad and you grew up in a culture that had all of these cultural values. I know these people, as I put in another post, they are my dad's people. While I do not subscribe to the religuous viewpoint's I do have a great deal of respect for the independence that my ancestors believed in and passed on to me. I also have great respect for all that they accomplished as the pioneers consistantly in this country. This culture has a tradition of fighting for it's religion, for fighting for it's independence and if you weren't going to be a preacher, a soldier would be just as good. Formal education was not highly valued, being able to read the bible and be a good Christian was.

I don't know if I answered your question real well, but I hope I gave it a start. It is very wrapped up in culture and goes back centuries to John Calvin. Gotta go to bed now, because I have to go to work and be alert enough to take care of sick people. So off to bed. Have a good evening.

Hi RC, it's nice to see your words gracing the pages again. I've missed your knowledgeable take on things.

If you'll take a look at Post #103, you will note that I addressed it inadvertently to old reb when it was in fact responding to your post. After reading your post, I was stumbling around on the board and fell right over a conversation that was involved with the same subject, so I included the link in Post #103 if you care to take a look.

Old reb, if you're still reading along, and I reckon that you are, my bad. Hope I didn't confuse you.

By the way RC, this was a great and informative post. My paternal grandparents were from Donegal, so all of this is of particular interest to me.

[L@mplighterM]

I think racism is difficult to define and it’s a word that’s used loosely these days. I the good old days racism had meaning but that seems lost today and of course its used as a stifling weapon.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma


By your train of logic, since murder is a human nature, we're all murderers. And I say that nothing happens until it happens. Therefore, no one is a racist until they perform a racist act, through word or deed. You cannot be born a racist. Your claim is that it is nature; an inborne behavior. I claim it is nurture; environment.

I believe you would be more correct to say "biased" or "discriminating", as opposed to "racist", in your characterization of my feelings of Islam. Racism connotates hate for a particular human genetic trait; skin color, etc. And since adherants of Islam are of no one particular genetic trait, it does not follow that the term "racist" could possibly apply. You do realize, of course, that not all Muslims are Arabs?

I am having a brain overload with all these replies.

race1 (r³s) n. 1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage.

I am not sure what you would call it if a Muslim hates and kills a jew because of his religion. Would that fall under racism or would there be another word for it?

old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree
It produced people who were highly independent and willing to risk everything to keep that independence. Some of the downside's it produced a culture that was not only independent but suspious of outsiders, that believed they were God's chosen people and all others were flat out wrong. They used their interpetation of the bible to prove it. Hence the Jews were evil because they killed Jesus. Certainly not only a Scots-Irish culture phenomenon, but one that was taken very, very seriously. It gives us the idea that Catholics are cultists, because there is little understanding of the history of Christianity or the Catholic church without learned theologians or people willing to delve past the "literal" word of God.

Thanks Crabtree,

You have taught me a lot about my own culture that I didn't know. Now if I could just remember all that.

This bad feelings toward the jews seems to be found throughout all societies. I seek to find the cause of this pervasive racism.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
I am having a brain overload with all these replies.

race1 (r³s) n. 1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage.

I am not sure what you would call it if a Muslim hates and kills a jew because of his religion. Would that fall under racism or would there be another word for it?

old reb


In my world view, "racism" implies a position of power, like institutionalized racism. You hold someone back or deny them the right of access to the dominate power structure because of the color of ones skin, or because of their ethnicity...

Bias to me, means preference, being predisposed to liking a particular group, ideas, whatever...and there are elements of prejudice within bias.

Prejudice doesn't carry the same power in society. In fact, it tends to hurt the one holding the prejudice more than it hurts the object of their prejudice. Anyone can be prejudice.

But your question is very difficult because it crosses the line and involves actually taking someone's life. That's pretty much the ultimate display of power over another person. There are few societies where that kind of act wouldn't be condemned and the perpetrator punished. Nazi Germany was one, but that's an extreme example.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication

But your question is very difficult because it crosses the line and involves actually taking someone's life. That's pretty much the ultimate display of power over another person. There are few societies where that kind of act wouldn't be condemned and the perpetrator punished. Nazi Germany was one, but that's an extreme example.

Another one would be Islam. It happens everyday. Palestines are heavly rewarded for killing members of Jewish religion.
I say it is racism and a hate crime all in one and also power of life and death.

I noticed that on another thread they are working to get the common Israel and common Palestine to get together and become friends but that only occurs away from the Imams that spit hate. It is much easier to start a fire than to stop a fire.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
Another one would be Islam. It happens everyday. Palestines are heavly rewarded for killing members of Jewish religion.
I say it is racism and a hate crime all in one and also power of life and death.

I noticed that on another thread they are working to get the common Israel and common Palestine to get together and become friends but that only occurs away from the Imams that spit hate. It is much easier to start a fire than to stop a fire.

old reb


Palestinians are a disenfranchised people. Even though they have more power in the situation than they might realize, religion is often a substitute for political power with them. Despite all the lunatic sermons from the imams, I don't think most Muslim Palestinians think that they are superior to Jews. I could be wrong.* I just think that they believe their claim to the land is superior. Some Native Americans might think the same thing, but it's not like they are in a position to do much about it.

If the problem is nationalistic, we can solve it. If it is (or becomes) religious, than it won't be solved. The imams and groups like Hamas understand this.

*Of course, there are passages in the Koran that if considered to be the word of God, are racist (for example, Jews and Christians are monkeys and pigs) and prejudice (Muslims are the best community ever raised up for mankind).

[Mediocrates]

Originally posted by old-reb
Another one would be Islam. It happens everyday. Palestines are heavly rewarded for killing members of Jewish religion.
I say it is racism and a hate crime all in one and also power of life and death.

I noticed that on another thread they are working to get the common Israel and common Palestine to get together and become friends but that only occurs away from the Imams that spit hate. It is much easier to start a fire than to stop a fire.

old reb



No effing way. It's a ruse to think that only peaceful peaceloving murderous nuts in Hamas and Hezbollah are the only ones who claim blood lust and revenge. It is largely national policy of the PA, Abbas included. They vary only by the sweet words and vague distinctions they make between one 6 year old IDF 'terrorist combatant' and another. They traded in their imam robes for French suits, got a clean shave and walk in the front door of the White House.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication
Palestinians are a disenfranchised people. Even though they have more power in the situation than they might realize, religion is often a substitute for political power with them. Despite all the lunatic sermons from the imams, I don't think most Muslim Palestinians think that they are superior to Jews. I could be wrong.* I just think that they believe their claim to the land is superior. Some Native Americans might think the same thing, but it's not like they are in a position to do much about it.

If the problem is nationalistic, we can solve it. If it is (or becomes) religious, than it won't be solved. The imams and groups like Hamas understand this.

*Of course, there are passages in the Koran that if considered to be the word of God, are racist (for example, Jews and Christians are monkeys and pigs) and prejudice (Muslims are the best community ever raised up for mankind).

communication,

You make it look like it is the palestines that are the driving force against Israel. I believe the palestine people are the pawns and their Imams are there to keep them fighting.

All of Islam wants Israel gone from the middle east. No infidels where they were once driven away.

I talked to online Muslims (some radical and some moderate) and I could not find one that accepted Israels right to exist.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
communication,

You make it look like it is the palestines that are the driving force against Israel. I believe the palestine people are the pawns and their Imams are there to keep them fighting.

All of Islam wants Israel gone from the middle east. No infidels where they were once driven away.

I talked to online Muslims (some radical and some moderate) and I could not find one that accepted Israels right to exist.

old reb

You know, old reb, this is exactly the type of intellectualizing that is ascribed to the "college kids."

I was thinking about it, and it's a little more complicated to me than what I posted. The type of racism that was involved in say European/colonial racism is probably the easiest form of racism to spot, because it was based purely on the notion that white people were morally, intellectually and spiritually superior to dark skinned people. Nazism involved some of that because they depicted Jews as being morally inferrior, often depicting them as rats or worms and other subversive creatures. But one of the ways that they garnered support for thier ideology was by using that "subversive nature" as the basis for why Jews were a threat to Germany. At the same time that Jews were deemed morally inferrior to ethnic Germans, they were also cast as super-human. Even though nazism wasn't a religious ideology, Hitler was able to leverage centuries of deeply ingrained religious fears about a people that were capable of killing their God. Even though most Jews were poor ghettoized people with less than power than the average German, the "collective Jew" was a threat to not only German power but to world power through international finance and commerce. When France granted Jews emancipation and the right to citizenship, political cartoons circulated depicting napolean being led on a chain (the symbol of slvaery) by a Jew.

Early Arab nationalsim was very much inspired by Nazism. Even today, you can find Arab propaganda with Jews depicted as worms, vultures etc...Some of Nasser's earliest speeches contained references that show that the Arabs themselves ascribed super-natural qualities to the Jewish people, such as his willingness to sacrafice the lives of 10 million Arabs to rid Palestine of a few hundred thousand Jews. Still, it's a complicated situation because of the fact that the Palestinians are also victims in the conflict. As you say, they are being used as pawns, mostly by other Arab governments.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication


Early Arab nationalsim was very much inspired by Nazism. Even today, you can find Arab propaganda with Jews depicted as worms, vultures etc...Some of Nasser's earliest speeches contained references that show that the Arabs themselves ascribed super-natural qualities to the Jewish people, such as his willingness to sacrafice the lives of 10 million Arabs to rid Palestine of a few hundred thousand Jews. Still, it's a complicated situation because of the fact that the Palestinians are also victims in the conflict. As you say, they are being used as pawns, mostly by other Arab governments.

Then you are saying that Arab Muslim hate and aggression is racism eventho Jews and arabs are orginally the same race.

I think that is true and the world should recoginize and condem racism but even the BBC supports Palestine terrorist.

old reb

[red crabtree]

Some of what you are looking for Reb will be found only with a lot of reading of history and the cultural undertones of that history. It is worth knowing that "infidels" were never totally driven from the ME. One of the oldest Christian faiths exist in Egypt, the Coptic Christians. I can nearly guarantee you would not recognize the way they practice their religion as a Christian religion when compared with yours. There has been a Jewish community in Baghdad for almost since the time of Abraham. The sad part is that this community is literally down to 28 people now, and they are making the decision right now whether to tough it out or to immigrate to Israel.
The other thing that you will learn from history is that the Jews have not been universally hated at all times. There have been periods in which they were able to prosper and live with their neighbors. What is probably fairly universal is that they have consistantly been the scapegoat when there is a problem or the dominant culture felt threatened somehow. So the question would be why. To me that is easy. They were the minority, they were different, they refused to give up their culture for someone else's. Racism yes, but I believe it goes beyond racism. Sometimes it is politically expediant, regardless of the age or time it occured in.
Another thing to think about is this. The idea that Jews not marry outside of their religion etc... a inward looking society as such, was also a legitimate reaction to others attempting to extinguish their religion and their culture, neither can be easily separated from the other. This defense mechanism was then used against them to say that the Jews were racists or biased against others. A vicious cycle is then established. The more the Jews were attacked, the more close knit they became. the more close knit the more attacked they were.
Why were the first banks Jewish owned? Because Christians were not to be money changers based on Christs throwing over the tables of the money changers in the Temple. However in the minds of the Christians at the time, it was a service that was needed therefore that service went to a people that could do that without breaking the religious precepts of their religion. Then what happened? The Jews were looked down on for being money changers and the epithats that came with it. Yet the early money changing system could not have endured if someone besides Jews weren't borrowing.
As far as Muslims go, I personally think that racism is built into the religion, and the religion cannot be separated from the culture. That racism does not simply extend to the Jews, it extends to anyone that is not Muslim. It is not based on color, it is based on religion. In America regarding the culture clash thoughts of 9/11, but the truth is it is a culture clash. Here we make a distinction between religion and culture, because we have a dominant American culture, but that culture is able to be an umbrella for all regardless of their culture. Muslim cultures do not make that distinction and there in lays the culture clash. It is not simply a Palastinine and Jewish question. It is Muslim culture against anyone that is not Muslim. This is not a new phenonenom. What we see now happened first in the ME, that was predominately Christian and Jewish prior to the rising of Islam, then India and finally to Europe. Great violence to attain the goal of Muslim only cultures and lands. The crusades were not pretty, but they were a legitimate response to Muslim aggression to Christianity. If Christianity had not fought back it is likely all of Europe would have been Muslim.
And after 70 AD and the destruction of Temple by the Romans when did the Jews ever fight back until WWII? Perhaps someone who is Jewish can tell me if I am right here. And if I am right, then what better target than the one that won't fight back? Be that fighting back against the Christians or the Muslims. Perhaps that is the answer to your question more than any other, they didn't defend themselves, they simply moved into a closer knit group attempting to live their lives with as little notice from the predators as possible.

Michael, I appreciate your kind words.

[red crabtree]

Here we make a distinction between religion and culture, because we have a dominant American culture, but that culture is able to be an umbrella for all regardless of their culture. Muslim cultures do not make that distinction and there in lays the culture clash.
Actually meant-Here we make a distinction between religion and culture, because we have a dominant American culture, but that culture is able to be an umbrella for all regardless of their religion Muslim cultures do not make that distinction and there in lays the culture clash.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
I am having a brain overload with all these replies.

race1 (r³s) n. 1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage.

I am not sure what you would call it if a Muslim hates and kills a jew because of his religion. Would that fall under racism or would there be another word for it?

old reb

Okay, let me ask you this: Would you call it racism, when an Irish Catholic that hates and kills an Irish Protestant because of his religion? Is that racist, or simply "murder" because of differing opinions of who is most correct? Clearly, the motive isn't race. (Just between you and me, and I have this on good authority, most of the violence in Ireland is because of the drug trade and organized crime, now. It has little to nothing to do with wanting to be independant of Britain or of differences of opinion of religion.)

And since I'm on a roll:

How about if I told you that, if you sat a monkey in front of a keyboard and it banged on the keys, given infinite time, it could recreate the Bible with every single contradiction and grammatical blunder. Would you agree to that argument?

And since I'm drubbing a late equine......

Reb, are you aware that every human inhabitant on this planet can be genetically traced to a single black African Australopithecine female; even you? Does that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?

[Communication]

by old-reb [/i]
Then you are saying that Arab Muslim hate and aggression is racism eventho Jews and arabs are orginally the same race.

I think that is true and the world should recoginize and condem racism but even the BBC supports Palestine terrorist.

old reb [/QUOTE]

How do you like so much attention? :D

See, that's another thing right there, some Arabs claim that Ashkenazi Jews are not semitic. They have launched this whole propagnada war in an effort to claim that the Jews from Europe are not related to the original inhabitants of the land and the Jews from the ME, they call "Arab Jews" who they claim lived in perfect harmony with the Muslims until the "white" Jews came in and destroyed everything. I know a lot of people in Berkeley who buy this one hook, line and sinker, and continue to buy it even when presented with both historical and genetic research that proves the theory wrong. The fact that all that genetic research had to be done to dispell the story (which still lingers like everything else in this conflict) just goes to show how much time is wasted having to counter all the b.s. We hardly have time to get to the real essence of the conflict- "where do we go from here? because we are too bogged down and sidetracked with all this other garbage.

Still, I don't blame the Palestinian people. I see them very much as victims in this political conflict. I cringe at what's going on with this road map, which really isn't what's guiding the parties' actions anymore, rather it's the hudna that's guiding the present course. I go back and forth because on one hand, I see the value in increasing Abbas' standing among the Palestinian people. I think that you have to give them hope that Abbas can accomplish political rights for them and a homeland, but at the same time, I hate to see Israel and the US capitulating to the terror groups. It's never worked in the past and I don't see how it can work now. The demands the terror groups placed on Israel can't possibly be fulfilled and it only seems to have encouraged other terror groups like Hezbollah to increase their threats of kidnapping Israelis. I have a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, even though I do see how peace could be possible through compromise as many people do. But given the players involved, nobody seems to have a strategy to get us all there. The media is a total failure at that goes for American media too. One thing I do know is that Israel will only take so much. At some point, they will say it and they will unleash on the Palestinians, Syira, Iran, Egypt, whoever they have to, dspite what the world says. I suppose that will happen when there is nothing left to lose. So if you ever see Israelis leaving in massive groupings and the economy bottoms out to a level where most people can't sustain their families, then start getting right with Jesus because their aint gonna be another exile. ;)

[Communication]

Originally posted by red crabtree

And after 70 AD and the destruction of Temple by the Romans when did the Jews ever fight back until WWII? Perhaps someone who is Jewish can tell me if I am right here.
Michael, I appreciate your kind words.

Bar-Kokhba Rebellion in 132 C.E. The Romans were going to rebuild the Temple as a shrine to Jupiter. It was the final battle with the Romans.

[Communication]

THis one's my favorite....

http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car2.html

from our friends at the Palestinian AUthority, our "partners in peace."

[abu afak]

Originally posted by Communication
THis one's my favorite....

http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_Carcature/ipc-e_car2.html

from our friends at the Palestinian AUthority, our "partners in peace."

and one of my favorites... 'Sesame Street' Palestinian style


http://wtvt.com/investreptr/jihad.html

[Communication]

Originally posted by abu afak
and one of my favorites... 'Sesame Street' Palestinian style


http://wtvt.com/investreptr/jihad.html

the thing is, that caricature is on the PA's website right now when they are suppose to be showing jestures that they are stopping the incitement. If they can't even bother to remove these cartoons, can you imagine what they are still saying in the PA controlled t.v? Why isn't the US at the very least demanding that these things be removed? What is the excuse for continuing this?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma

How about if I told you that, if you sat a monkey in front of a keyboard and it banged on the keys, given infinite time, it could recreate the Bible with every single contradiction and grammatical blunder. Would you agree to that argument?



Prove it and I will believe it.

old reb

[abu afak]

Originally posted by Communication
the thing is, that caricature is on the PA's website right now when they are suppose to be showing jestures that they are stopping the incitement. If they can't even bother to remove these cartoons, can you imagine what they are still saying in the PA controlled t.v? Why isn't the US at the very least demanding that these things be removed? What is the excuse for continuing this?

1400 years of Islam.

Just last year they/Egypt dramatized the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' and it was shown in most Arab countries.
("Horseman without a Horse" was the 30 part series name)

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication



/QUOTE]

The media is a total failure at that goes for American media too. One thing I do know is that Israel will only take so much. At some point, they will say it and they will unleash on the Palestinians, Syira, Iran, Egypt, whoever they have to, dspite what the world says. I suppose that will happen when there is nothing left to lose. So if you ever see Israelis leaving in massive groupings and the economy bottoms out to a level where most people can't sustain their families, then start getting right with Jesus because their aint gonna be another exile. ;)

Hello Communication,

Reading your post is almost like a text book but I never read anything like that in a text book.

Jews are vastly outnumbered and they wisely keep their wars short and gave up Sina Pensula to keep from overextending themselves.
Also I believe they gave back West Bank and Gaza because those people could outvote Jews and Isael could become Islam by the ballot box.

Mohammad Ali's favorate tactic was to make his opponent so mad that he stopped thinking and just attacked.

old reb

[abu afak]

Originally posted by abu afak
1400 years of Islam.

Just last year they/Egypt dramatized the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' and it was shown in most Arab countries.
("Horseman without a Horse" was the 30 part series name)

From Operation S.I.C.K. (Stop Inciting Children to Kill)

Child Abuse

By Martin Fletcher, NBC NEWS, Tuesday, May 08, 2001

The Palestinians are calling on the youngest to join the battle, and using a stunning tactic: commercials on Palestinian TV asking children, “Drop your toys. Pick up rocks.”

The video shows a child dropping his toy and young boys throwing stones, even using actors to recreate the most famous image of the uprising, one that shocked the world: 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura dying in his father's arms, caught in a hail of Israeli bullets.

The commercial shows Mohammed in paradise, urging other children to "Follow him." The shot of al-Dura slumped against his father shifts to an image of the boy running through a sunlit field in "paradise" where he then greets other boys who sit together in the green grass.

At Mohammed's school in Gaza today, the daily prayer followed by a call to arms. "Are you afraid?" the teacher shouts "No," they answer. And then, "We ask Allah to destroy the Jews," rows of children in a schoolyard shout in unison.

Mohammed's desk is now a shrine, complete with his photograph, a PLO flag and flowers. The teacher asks, "Where is Mohammed?" The children answer, "Paradise!"

And in English class, they learned a new phrase today.

TEACHER: "The Israeli army killed our friend. Shame on them!"

CHILDREN (in unison): "Shame on them!"

Already, young boys are learning how to fight. Summer camp teaches how to resist the Israelis. But now they are being taught not to fear death. The greatest glory, they are told, is to be a martyr.

But what does it mean to teach children not to fear death? A coalition of American paediatricians, DOCS (Doctors Opposed to Child Sacrifice) says that official PA encouragement of children to participate in violence against Israel is "societal child abuse." DOCS founder Dr. Pejman Salimpour said, "Adults, governments, and media outlets that encourage young children to participate in violence to further their own political agenda are practicing a form of societal child abuse..." DOCS called on the PA to halt broadcasts that glorify martyrdom.

Dr. Salimpour and Mr. Fletcher deserve thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious since Arafat launched the latest war on Israel: children who should have been protected have been cynically and abusively manipulated, robbed not only of their childhoods, but of their humanity, and sometimes of their lives. And by extension, it will become impossible for them to ever find a way to accept the legitimacy of Israel, or of Jews living in the Middle East, ensuring that the conflict runs at least one more generation.

http://www.operationsick.com/articles/20010508_childabuse.asp

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Some of what you are looking for Reb will be found only with a lot of reading of history and the cultural undertones of that history. It is worth knowing that "infidels" were never totally driven from the ME. One of the oldest Christian faiths exist in Egypt, the Coptic Christians. I can nearly guarantee you would not recognize the way they practice their religion as a Christian religion when compared with yours. There has been a Jewish community in Baghdad for almost since the time of Abraham. The sad part is that this community is literally down to 28 people now, and they are making the decision right now whether to tough it out or to immigrate to Israel.
The other thing that you will learn from history is that the Jews have not been universally hated at all times. There have been periods in which they were able to prosper and live with their neighbors. What is probably fairly universal is that they have consistantly been the scapegoat when there is a problem or the dominant culture felt threatened somehow. So the question would be why. To me that is easy. They were the minority, they were different, they refused to give up their culture for someone else's. Racism yes, but I believe it goes beyond racism. Sometimes it is politically expediant, regardless of the age or time it occured in.
Another thing to think about is this. The idea that Jews not marry outside of their religion etc... a inward looking society as such, was also a legitimate reaction to others attempting to extinguish their religion and their culture, neither can be easily separated from the other. This defense mechanism was then used against them to say that the Jews were racists or biased against others. A vicious cycle is then established. The more the Jews were attacked, the more close knit they became. the more close knit the more attacked they were.
Why were the first banks Jewish owned? Because Christians were not to be money changers based on Christs throwing over the tables of the money changers in the Temple. However in the minds of the Christians at the time, it was a service that was needed therefore that service went to a people that could do that without breaking the religious precepts of their religion. Then what happened? The Jews were looked down on for being money changers and the epithats that came with it. Yet the early money changing system could not have endured if someone besides Jews weren't borrowing.
As far as Muslims go, I personally think that racism is built into the religion, and the religion cannot be separated from the culture. That racism does not simply extend to the Jews, it extends to anyone that is not Muslim. It is not based on color, it is based on religion. In America regarding the culture clash thoughts of 9/11, but the truth is it is a culture clash. Here we make a distinction between religion and culture, because we have a dominant American culture, but that culture is able to be an umbrella for all regardless of their culture. Muslim cultures do not make that distinction and there in lays the culture clash. It is not simply a Palastinine and Jewish question. It is Muslim culture against anyone that is not Muslim. This is not a new phenonenom. What we see now happened first in the ME, that was predominately Christian and Jewish prior to the rising of Islam, then India and finally to Europe. Great violence to attain the goal of Muslim only cultures and lands. The crusades were not pretty, but they were a legitimate response to Muslim aggression to Christianity. If Christianity had not fought back it is likely all of Europe would have been Muslim.
And after 70 AD and the destruction of Temple by the Romans when did the Jews ever fight back until WWII? Perhaps someone who is Jewish can tell me if I am right here. And if I am right, then what better target than the one that won't fight back? Be that fighting back against the Christians or the Muslims. Perhaps that is the answer to your question more than any other, they didn't defend themselves, they simply moved into a closer knit group attempting to live their lives with as little notice from the predators as possible.

Michael, I appreciate your kind words.

Hello Crabtree,

That pretty much sums up my question on why the Jews were hated so much through out history.

There are some smart cookies on this board.

I thought of compiling a list of reasons people hated Jews but I soon realized it appeared that I was making a list of reasons TO hate the Jews and that was not my intent so I will just keep this summary on my HD to help my understanding.

For many many years I have asked why the Jews were hated but I got no answers except for what I could dream up.


old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by abu afak


And in English class, they learned a new phrase today.

TEACHER: "The Israeli army killed our friend. Shame on them!"

CHILDREN (in unison): "Shame on them!"

Already, young boys are learning how to fight. Summer camp teaches how to resist the Israelis. But now they are being taught not to fear death. The greatest glory, they are told, is to be a martyr.

http://www.operationsick.com/articles/20010508_childabuse.asp

Abu,

Didn't they find that the boy had been shot in the back for propaganda purposes?

These people act so primitive but the most educated liberals in the West favor them over Israelies who fight only to survive.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
Hello Communication,

Reading your post is almost like a text book but I never read anything like that in a text book.

old reb

well, I just graduated from college, so that might have something to do with it. btw, I can answer any questions that you might have about Judaism in the relgion/culture section of this board. anything at all... :)

[old-reb]

Hello Communication,

You knowing so much about Judism reminds me of a well educated Southern Baptist preacher I once had. He told the congeration that Catholics weren't going to heaven because they didn't understand the bible. He told the congeration that Methodist weren't going to heaven because they didn't understand the bible. He told us that the people in the Baptist church down the street weren't going to heaven because they didn't understand the bible.

He stepped on an Airliner and saw a Rabbi so he thought how wonderful it would be to save a Rabbi and have him walk down the Isle of his Baptist church so he sat next to the Rabbi. After some time of discussion or preacher said he just refused to listen to the Rabbi and just silently said over and over "Praise Jesus, Praise Jesus".
He said that Rabbi really knew the bible so I told him that I wouldn't try to convert him if he wouldn't try to convert me so they spoke no more of religion.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
Hello Communication,

You knowing so much about Judism reminds me of a well educated Southern Baptist preacher I once had. He told the congeration that Catholics weren't going to heaven because they didn't understand the bible. He told the congeration that Methodist weren't going to heaven because they didn't understand the bible. He told us that the people in the Baptist church down the street weren't going to heaven because they didn't understand the bible.

He stepped on an Airliner and saw a Rabbi so he thought how wonderful it would be to save a Rabbi and have him walk down the Isle of his Baptist church so he sat next to the Rabbi. After some time of discussion or preacher said he just refused to listen to the Rabbi and just silently said over and over "Praise Jesus, Praise Jesus".
He said that Rabbi really knew the bible so I told him that I wouldn't try to convert him if he wouldn't try to convert me so they spoke no more of religion.

old reb

that's a cute story. ;)

[old-reb]

If I took the preachers reasoning one step further then I would say that only Jews were going to heaven.

I don't know of anyone who has talked to God about who is coming or to satan about who is going there.

At the end of life I only see a corpse but I hope they are right and there is a heaven to go to. I don't want to accept that death is the end of it all but there is no evidence to the contrary, just a lot of pretty words.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
If I took the preachers reasoning one step further then I would say that only Jews were going to heaven.

I don't know of anyone who has talked to God about who is coming or to satan about who is going there.

At the end of life I only see a corpse but I hope they are right and there is a heaven to go to. I don't want to accept that death is the end of it all but there is no evidence to the contrary, just a lot of pretty words.

old reb

What's that reasoning coming from those preachers?

As far as an afterlife goes, there is the notion that you live on in the memories of the people you leave behind. That's why birthdays are not such a big deal because the person could still take a turn for the better or worse while still alive. Only when a person dies can the people who knew that person say whether they were a righteous person or not. What's certain is that in the end, you will be judged.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication
What's that reasoning coming from those preachers?

As far as an afterlife goes, there is the notion that you live on in the memories of the people you leave behind. That's why birthdays are not such a big deal because the person could still take a turn for the better or worse while still alive. Only when a person dies can the people who knew that person say whether they were a righteous person or not. What's certain is that in the end, you will be judged.

That is alien to me. What I am used to is: If you accept Jesus into your heart and accept him as your saviour, you will have everlasting life. Then you must be saved in front of the church, then you must obey gods words and the preacher tells you what gods words are. etc etc.

old reb

[old-reb]

Hello communication,

This is a little off the wall but I recall a friend of mine went to work in south america and he had a party and when the cops came to end the party he kicked their butts and sent them on. but later some very big cops knocked his door down, kicked his butt and put him in jail.

While in jail a jew came to visit him and paid his bail and gave him an airline ticket home. He asked the jew why he did that and his reply was because, I am a jew and you are an american, we are brothers. Max said thanks and was on his way. In their court if you didn't speak spanish it was just too bad and he was looking at five years in THEIR prision.

Max had always been a racist against blacks and jews and was just amazed at what happened.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
Hello communication,

This is a little off the wall but I recall a friend of mine went to work in south america and he had a party and when the cops came to end the party he kicked their butts and sent them on. but later some very big cops knocked his door down, kicked his butt and put him in jail.

While in jail a jew came to visit him and paid his bail and gave him an airline ticket home. He asked the jew why he did that and his reply was because, I am a jew and you are an american, we are brothers. Max said thanks and was on his way. In their court if you didn't speak spanish it was just too bad and he was looking at five years in THEIR prision.

Max had always been a racist against blacks and jews and was just amazed at what happened.

old reb


Your friend didn't know this mysterious Jew?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication
Your friend didn't know this mysterious Jew?

He never heard of him or saw him before the incident or after.

old reb

[Communication]

Well, then I guess we should consider that a good sign, hopefully of even better things still to come.

Genesis 12:3

"I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse."

The United States is the first country to ever give the Jewish people complete equality and protection under its laws. The United States is Israel's only true ally. Without the United States, Israel wouldn't exist and doubtfully would continue to exist. So we owe her our loyalty and our prayers for the blessings of our God.

Ezekiel 37
15
The word of the LORD came to me:
16
"Son of man, take a stick of wood and write on it, `Belonging to Judah and the Israelites associated with him.' Then take another stick of wood, and write on it, `Ephraim's stick, belonging to Joseph and all the house of Israel associated with him.'
17
Join them together into one stick so that they will become one in your hand.
18
"When your countrymen ask you, `Won't you tell us what you mean by this?'
19
say to them, `This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am going to take the stick of Joseph--which is in Ephraim's hand--and of the Israelite tribes associated with him, and join it to Judah's stick, making them a single stick of wood, and they will become one in my hand.'


Alternatively, it could have just been some very good fortune that your friend happened to come across down south. :D

[old-reb]

Thanks for the nice post.

I recall reading that in the 1700,s or early 1800's in the colonies that one Mayor allowed freedom of worship for all religions so the Jewish people moved in bringing money, schools, manufacturing jobs and in general prosperty. When the other cities saw this then they wanted the Jews in too.

old reb

[Mediocrates]

Charleston, SC. A bunch Brazilian Jews who were kicked out by the Inquisition washed up in Charleston. The Guv didn't want them but his personal physician had died. So he called out "You can stay if any of you is a doctor." Several hands went up. the rest as they say, is history.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
Charleston, SC. A bunch Brazilian Jews who were kicked out by the Inquisition washed up in Charleston. The Guv didn't want them but his personal physician had died. So he called out "You can stay if any of you is a doctor." Several hands went up. the rest as they say, is history.

To build a finiancial empire or to be a doctor you must be motivated for long hours of dedicated self sacrifice.

I have always been happy to work 40 hours and just relax the rest of the time but when I lived in a Jewish community for a year I observed that people were driven by a fire to acheive. Nobody was lazy. I felt sorry for my girlfriends grandchildren because they didn't really get a chance to just play in the dirt all day. Thay had to study and they had to train for atheletics their life was full. The adults were wealthy businessmen but if my girlfriend called for help, those rich men came dressed in workmans cloths to take care of this widow lady.
I am thinking this is why the jews are over acheivers. We need someone at the top and someone at the bottom but when other people realize that they are serving the Jews at the top then they become upset. But they had a choice.

old reb

[red crabtree]

Actually I would call that the good ole fashioned Jealousy. The Green eyed monster rears it's head in a variety of places. You get out of life what you put into it, no matter what religion or color you are.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Actually I would call that the good ole fashioned Jealousy. The Green eyed monster rears it's head in a variety of places. You get out of life what you put into it, no matter what religion or color you are.

Hello Crabtree,

I thought I was banned when the board went down.

You are right, it is good old fasioned jealousy and my dad had that jealousy but he thrived to immulate the wealthy jews in town.

That same jealousy from homocidal maniacs like Nazis or Muslims becomes genocide.

Quote:
At various times, Jews in Muslim lands were able to live in relative peace and thrive culturally and economically. The position of the Jews was never secure, however, and changes in the political or social climate would often lead to persecution, violence and death. Jews were generally viewed with contempt by their Muslim neighbors; peaceful coexistence between the two groups involved the subordination and degradation of the Jews.

When Jews were perceived as having achieved too comfortable a position in Islamic society, anti-Semitism would surface, often with devastating results: On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power. End of quote.

In five words I can explain why the Nazis wanted to and the Muslims still want to exterminate the Jews and also why the KKK hated the jews.

A clue to the answer is in my story about my Baptist Preacher.


old reb

[Communication]

because everybody thinks that they understand the bible better than the people who wrote it?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by old-reb


In five words I can explain why the Nazis wanted to and the Muslims still want to exterminate the Jews and also why the KKK hated the jews.

A clue to the answer is in my story about my Baptist Preacher.


old reb

Jews can not be indoctrinated.

Because of Culture, education or whatever they won't buy into a Hitler, Muslim or KKK onslaught of arm twisting.

My preacher converted several Catholics and Methodist but he could not convert a jew.

Hitler demand total loyality to his monster regime but Jews didn't buy it and aided other people in not buying it. KKK didn't like Jews because they wouldn't get into the racist thing.

Muslims could not convert Jews and Jews educated (inoculated people against buying the Islam doctrine.)
============
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to convert and rejected Muhammad, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled; in 627, Muhammad's followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
Jews can not be indoctrinated.

Because of Culture, education or whatever they won't buy into a Hitler, Muslim or KKK onslaught of arm twisting.

My preacher converted several Catholics and Methodist but he could not convert a jew.

Hitler demand total loyality to his monster regime but Jews didn't buy it and aided other people in not buying it. KKK didn't like Jews because they wouldn't get into the racist thing.

Muslims could not convert Jews and Jews educated (inoculated people against buying the Islam doctrine.)
============
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to convert and rejected Muhammad, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled; in 627, Muhammad's followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.

old reb

yeah, well..Martin Luther started out saying positive things about the Jews too. when he couldn't win them over, that ended all that. The thing about it is this. The Jews have never said that God couldn't have different covenants with other peoples. But we treat our covenant very seriously. In fact, we treat is as sort of a competition. SInce there is no compulsion in religion, then we have to be a light to the other nations. If someone comes up with a better system, then we will abandon ours. But in 5000 years, we haven't seen it. That's why there is so much chaos in Israel now. Because it's much easier to be a righteous person when you can claim the right to victimhood. It's much more difficult when you have your own nation and you thus accountability. If Israel doesn't feed its poor, if Israel doesn't treat strangers among them as we would have wanted to be treated in Egypt, then we fail to meet our own convenant. Not so easy, given the situation we are in now. These virtues can and have been exploited. It's so much easier to live in books.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication
yeah, well..Martin Luther started out saying positive things about the Jews too. when he couldn't win them over, that ended all that. The thing about it is this. The Jews have never said that God couldn't have different covenants with other peoples. But we treat our covenant very seriously. In fact, we treat is as sort of a competition. SInce there is no compulsion in religion, then we have to be a light to the other nations. If someone comes up with a better system, then we will abandon ours. But in 5000 years, we haven't seen it. That's why there is so much chaos in Israel now. Because it's much easier to be a righteous person when you can claim the right to victimhood. It's much more difficult when you have your own nation and you thus accountability. If Israel doesn't feed its poor, if Israel doesn't treat strangers among them as we would have wanted to be treated in Egypt, then we fail to meet our own convenant. Not so easy, given the situation we are in now. These virtues can and have been exploited. It's so much easier to live in books.

If the whole world was like the Jews then the Hitlers, Stalins, Mohammands would find no one to blindly follow them.
Hitler tried to destory anyone or anything that disagreed with him, including nations like France, England and Russia. What chance did the Jews have? At least they didn't become SS.

Compared to the Palestines the Israel are angels to me.


old reb

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
My preacher converted several Catholics and Methodist but he could not convert a jew.

old reb

Last I heard, Catholics and Methodists were both christian sects. What, precisely, did your preacher convert them to?

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Last I heard, Catholics and Methodists were both christian sects. What, precisely, did your preacher convert them to?

Southern Baptist.

There was an explosion of angry activity after he saved another Southern Baptist preachers wife and had her walk down the isle of his church to recieve Christ and be Baptized again.

The preacher fired the music minister about once a year but he got one that had the backing of the congregation and our preacher was arrested and put in a psyco ward after he preached that anyone following the music minister was going to hell because the music minister was satan himself.

old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by old-reb


Jews can not be indoctrinated!!

Because of Culture, education or whatever they won't buy into a Hitler, Muslim or KKK onslaught of arm twisting.

My preacher converted several Catholics and Methodist but he could not convert a jew.

Hitler demand total loyality to his monster regime but Jews didn't buy it and aided other people in not buying it. KKK didn't like Jews because they wouldn't get into the racist thing.

Muslims could not convert Jews and Jews educated (inoculated people against buying the Islam doctrine.)

============

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to convert and rejected Muhammad, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled; in 627, Muhammad's followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.

old reb

This answers a burning question I have had all my life of why are the Jews perscuted and murdered. If anyone disagrees with this assement please let me know.

old reb

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
Southern Baptist.

There was an explosion of angry activity after he saved another Southern Baptist preachers wife and had her walk down the isle of his church to recieve Christ and be Baptized again.

The preacher fired the music minister about once a year but he got one that had the backing of the congregation and our preacher was arrested and put in a psyco ward after he preached that anyone following the music minister was going to hell because the music minister was satan himself.

old reb


Inconceivable.... However, it cannot be true that the music minister was Satan himself. Here's why:

I never told anyone this before, but......... my ex-wife and I got divorced because of religious differences. Yeah... I was Southern Baptist, and she was Lucifer.....


..... the second little pig was puffin' on a Marley,
up rode the wolf on his big bad Harley.
Little pig, little pig, let me in.... . :cool:

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Inconceivable.... However, it cannot be true that the music minister was Satan himself. Here's why:

I never told anyone this before, but......... my ex-wife and I got divorced because of religious differences. Yeah... I was Southern Baptist, and she was Lucifer.....


..... the second little pig was puffin' on a Marley,
up rode the wolf on his big bad Harley.
Little pig, little pig, let me in.... . :cool:

I know where you are coming from there, brother! Amen; I heard that! You can say that again!.

old reb

[Revkha]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
she was Lucifer.....



That's how all men describe their ex-wives!

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
I know where you are coming from there, brother! Amen; I heard that! You can say that again!.

old reb

... actually, I wasn't Southern Baptist (my parents were, but they "converted" to Lutherens....), however, my ex was, and still is, Lucifer. Just ask her fifth husband.....

Currently, I am an agnostic Frisbeetarian, but I am converting to Judaism.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Revkha
That's how all men describe their ex-wives!

Probably. Mine certainly fit the profile. She was the most beautiful angel, when I married her. A couple of years later, she became pure evil and mutated into something with one eye and one fang, and made my life Hell.....

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Probably. Mine certainly fit the profile. She was the most beautiful angel, when I married her. A couple of years later, she became pure evil and mutated into something with one eye and one fang, and made my life Hell.....

Sometimes

To have the wife you want, you must be the husband she wants.

You make her happy and she makes you happy.

A woman is heaven and hell all in the same package. The trick is to keep the heaven.
I married my ex for the heaven I got at night but I should have considered other things too.
There I go again, getting out of my expertise.

old reb

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by old-reb
Sometimes

To have the wife you want, you must be the husband she wants.

You make her happy and she makes you happy.

A woman is heaven and hell all in the same package. The trick is to keep the heaven.
I married my ex for the heaven I got at night but I should have considered other things too.
There I go again, getting out of my expertise.

old reb

Out of your expertise? No $hit! Haven't you ever heard the old southern expression: "People that live in glass whore-houses should not give marital advice."?

[Communication]

Originally posted by Revkha
That's how all men describe their ex-wives!

Yikes! Are you somebody's X too? Maybe when people get married, they just stop trying? I dunno. I think marriage is a great institution. I just don't know if I'm ready for an institution yet. Yuck, Yuck. I think that was May West.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Communication
Maybe when people get married, they just stop trying? I dunno.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it just doesn't take the first time, especially if one of them is the spawn of Hell.....

I divorced in 1980 and remarried in 1983. We celebrate our 20th anniversary, this year.

[Donna]

Originally posted by Communication
Yikes! Are you somebody's X too? Maybe when people get married, they just stop trying? I dunno. I think marriage is a great institution. I just don't know if I'm ready for an institution yet. Yuck, Yuck. I think that was May West.


I've been with my husband longer than I was with my mama and daddy.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Donna
I've been with my husband longer than I was with my mama and daddy.

That's 'cause you got married when you were 14, you hillbilly... :D

[Donna]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
That's 'cause you got married when you were 14, you hillbilly... :D

Well, what with the triplets comin' and all... :p

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Donna
Well, what with the triplets comin' and all... :p


".....kiss me quick and say, 'I do', baby's on its way.... "

[Donna]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
".....kiss me quick and say, 'I do', baby's on its way.... "

It was a real purty weddin'...and my two lil' brothers played their banjos...

[red crabtree]

Bwaahahhhhhaaa!

Ok, now a true story. My husband and I dated in high school. Broke up, went separate ways and some 17 years later we got back together. While we dated in high school my hubby's mom would do odd things like take off to another state because the mood moved her. Other things that made it apparent that there was some issues there. However she was not taken to a doc that could have helped her because her family were firm Baptist and all she needed to do was pray to get rid of those demons. Her brother is a paster, as well as several others in the family who are as well. When she was well she was a wonderful mother a wonderful wife and a wonderful person. Taught Sunday School and played the organ for the church.
After I graduated and had moved away from home, my hubby's mom was finally taken to the physc hospital after she took off and went to Texas and had to have someone come and get her because she had no money to get home. She was diagnosed with bipolor disorder and given the appropriate meds. And funny damn deal she was the person everyone remembered prior to her getting ill. Now is the kicker and the point to the story. While she was in the hospital the freaking preacher stood up in front of the congregation and told them to not send her cards, not to visit etc... because she had a demon inside and the best thing they could do was pray for her, but under no circumstances should they contact her so they would not get "infected". This man had known my mother in law since elementary school, she and her family had been instrumental in getting the church he had going, and had been in that church for over 25 years.
When a friend of mine wrote to me about what had happened I was furious. Not only had I dated her son, but I was also best friends with one of the girls in the family and had spent untold hours in their home.
Years later I moved back home, ran into my now hubby after we had divorced other people and within a matter of months we married. He had just moved from up from Florida and was staying with him mom until he got his own place. I enjoyed visiting with her immensely and talking about old times, I don't remember how it got brought up but she started talking about the church and when I found out that she was still going to this church I about fell out, and could not resist asking how she could do that after what the paster had done. She told me that a true Christian forgives people and their lapses. From that moment on I had more respect for her as a person than probably anyone I had ever had except for my dad.
My MIL, now deceased, was to me what a real Christian is supposed to be. The Preacher on the other hand is not. I wouldn't piss on this man if he were on fire. I have not learned to be as forgiving as my MIL. Someday maybe, but not yet.
And just for the record I do not live in the south. I live in Michigan. But much of the southern traditions are here in the area I live in because of the large migration from Kentucky and Tennessee that took place after WWII for the jobs in the car industry.

[Donna]

Tell me that rat dastard of a Pastor is no longer there, please. You may not piss on him if he was on fire, but I wouldn't sell him a jug of air if he was suffocating, so I guess that makes us equal.

Your MIL must have been a remarkably kind and forgiving soul.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Bwaahahhhhhaaa!

Ok, now a true story. My husband and I dated in high school. Broke up, went separate ways and some 17 years later we got back together. While we dated in high school my hubby's mom would do odd things like take off to another state because the mood moved her. Other things that made it apparent that there was some issues there. However she was not taken to a doc that could have helped her because her family were firm Baptist and all she needed to do was pray to get rid of those demons. Her brother is a paster, as well as several others in the family who are as well. When she was well she was a wonderful mother a wonderful wife and a wonderful person. Taught Sunday School and played the organ for the church.
After I graduated and had moved away from home, my hubby's mom was finally taken to the physc hospital after she took off and went to Texas and had to have someone come and get her because she had no money to get home. She was diagnosed with bipolor disorder and given the appropriate meds. And funny damn deal she was the person everyone remembered prior to her getting ill. Now is the kicker and the point to the story. While she was in the hospital the freaking preacher stood up in front of the congregation and told them to not send her cards, not to visit etc... because she had a demon inside and the best thing they could do was pray for her, but under no circumstances should they contact her so they would not get "infected". This man had known my mother in law since elementary school, she and her family had been instrumental in getting the church he had going, and had been in that church for over 25 years.
When a friend of mine wrote to me about what had happened I was furious. Not only had I dated her son, but I was also best friends with one of the girls in the family and had spent untold hours in their home.
Years later I moved back home, ran into my now hubby after we had divorced other people and within a matter of months we married. He had just moved from up from Florida and was staying with him mom until he got his own place. I enjoyed visiting with her immensely and talking about old times, I don't remember how it got brought up but she started talking about the church and when I found out that she was still going to this church I about fell out, and could not resist asking how she could do that after what the paster had done. She told me that a true Christian forgives people and their lapses. From that moment on I had more respect for her as a person than probably anyone I had ever had except for my dad.
My MIL, now deceased, was to me what a real Christian is supposed to be. The Preacher on the other hand is not. I wouldn't piss on this man if he were on fire. I have not learned to be as forgiving as my MIL. Someday maybe, but not yet.
And just for the record I do not live in the south. I live in Michigan. But much of the southern traditions are here in the area I live in because of the large migration from Kentucky and Tennessee that took place after WWII for the jobs in the car industry.
I very much enjoyed reading this story RC. I like your mom in law. Thanks for sharing these things with us.

[minusthejihad]

Originally posted by red crabtree
I live in Michigan. But much of the southern traditions are here in the area I live in because of the large migration from Kentucky and Tennessee that took place after WWII for the jobs in the car industry.

Me too. Thanks for clearing that up. I always wondered why there are people I meet here with Southern accents. No kidding.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by old-reb
Thanks for the nice post.

I recall reading that in the 1700,s or early 1800's in the colonies that one Mayor allowed freedom of worship for all religions so the Jewish people moved in bringing money, schools, manufacturing jobs and in general prosperty. When the other cities saw this then they wanted the Jews in too.

old reb Jews have lived in Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations since the early 1700's Touro Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in America not in continuous use. St Thomas Synagogue was built in 1833 and has been in continuous use since. I have been to both and was very moved by the experience.

[jewbyc]

This thread should be retired it is suppose to be about radical Islam but no one seems willing to talk about it.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by jewbyc
This thread should be retired it is suppose to be about radical Islam but no one seems willing to talk about it.

Well.... since I started it and I'm not complaining, why don't you bring us back to the topic?

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Well.... since I started it and I'm not complaining, why are you? Because On September 11 2001 the world Trade center came crashing down and the Pentagon was hit by a plane. We can no longer afford to ignore this world’s biggest problem terrorism. The first step to solving a problem is to admit there is one. If Israel and America hopes to when this war it needs to look at the source Radical Islam or maybe Just Islam. I am not convince that there is a moderate side to Islam. I had hoped to hear a far louder cry from the moderate's in Islam but instead I saw Arabs Dancing in the street in the west bank :(

[Revkha]

Originally posted by Communication
Yikes! Are you somebody's X too? Maybe when people get married, they just stop trying? I dunno. I think marriage is a great institution. I just don't know if I'm ready for an institution yet. Yuck, Yuck. I think that was May West.

Actually no, I'm not somebody's ex-Lucifer. Between you and me, I think the Lucifer complex attributed to these women by some of our male posters probably found its origin in the females' selection of mates. You know what they say about men! :p


Good luck at Stanford. I don't know if you have an area of law that interest you but Intellectual Property is a hot spot today and will be for decades. It's interesting, stimulating and ever-changing in this technology era.

[L@mplighterM]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Well.... since I started it and I'm not complaining, why don't you bring us back to the topic?

Snip:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Searching through rubble, forensic experts have found clues that could link Tuesday's bomb blast at a Jakarta, Indonesia, hotel to attacks last year in Bali, CNN has learned.

At least 14 people were killed and more than 100 injured when a powerful car bomb was detonated at lunchtime Tuesday at the five-star JW Marriott Hotel in central Jakarta, authorities said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/08/05/indonesia.blast/index.html

[red crabtree]

Naw, it's like any good conversation, and one thing thought leads to another to talk about.

There are radicals in any religion, personally I think there are aspects of fundamentalists Christians that I find nearly as frightening as radical Islam, right in this country. They attempt to legislate morality as if everyone's morals are there own, something that clearly is not appropriate under the constitution and something the founding fathers of this country did not want. I personally believe that there are a good many Christian fundamentalists that would make good Nazi's. The difference between them and radical Islam is that we have a system here that blocks the ability to place religion and politics in the same arena, and when boundries are overstepped enough people get up in arms about it that they are forced to back off. The thing I think that people need to realize about radical Islam in this country is that it is real, and that it is not in the best interest of anyone to be so politically correct that we are not willing to say so for fear of offending someone, anyone. The fear of being called a racist is so strong that there are many people out there that are not willing to call a spade a spade.
I also think as time goes on that we may find that GW is not as good a Friend to the Jewish people as he would like everyone to think. Like so many things with this President he is good at the talk but not so good at the walk.

Donna the preacher for the church I was talking about is still there, but the church split into two parts several years ago because of behavior like this. Most of the older folks stuck with him, most of the younger folks did not. My MIL passed away 5 years ago, I miss her all the time, she was probably the kindest and most gentle person I have known.

[Revkha]

Originally posted by red crabtree

There are radicals in any religion, personally I think there are aspects of fundamentalists Christians that I find nearly as frightening as radical Islam, right in this country. They attempt to legislate morality as if everyone's morals are there own, something that clearly is not appropriate under the constitution and something the founding fathers of this country did not want. I personally believe that there are a good many Christian fundamentalists that would make good Nazi's. The difference between them and radical Islam is that we have a system here that blocks the ability to place religion and politics in the same arena, and when boundries are overstepped enough people get up in arms about it that they are forced to back off. The thing I think that people need to realize about radical Islam in this country is that it is real, and that it is not in the best interest of anyone to be so politically correct that we are not willing to say so for fear of offending someone, anyone. The fear of being called a racist is so strong that there are many people out there that are not willing to call a spade a spade.
I also think as time goes on that we may find that GW is not as good a Friend to the Jewish people as he would like everyone to think. Like so many things with this President he is good at the talk but not so good at the walk.


As long as people do not become apathetic, we Americans as a democracy do have control over what direction the country takes. Unfortunately less than half the voting age people actually vote in any given election.

As for GWB, I don't know his true motives. I can speculate based on past experiences and his family's association with people who were not that fond of Jews and Israel. If the Christian Right had not aligned itself with the Republicans years ago, we would probably know his true colors.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Naw, it's like any good conversation, and one thing thought leads to another to talk about.

There are radicals in any religion, personally I think there are aspects of fundamentalists Christians that I find nearly as frightening as radical Islam, right in this country. They attempt to legislate morality as if everyone's morals are there own, something that clearly is not appropriate under the constitution and something the founding fathers of this country did not want. I personally believe that there are a good many Christian fundamentalists that would make good Nazi's. The difference between them and radical Islam is that we have a system here that blocks the ability to place religion and politics in the same arena, and when boundries are overstepped enough people get up in arms about it that they are forced to back off. The thing I think that people need to realize about radical Islam in this country is that it is real, and that it is not in the best interest of anyone to be so politically correct that we are not willing to say so for fear of offending someone, anyone. The fear of being called a racist is so strong that there are many people out there that are not willing to call a spade a spade.
I also think as time goes on that we may find that GW is not as good a Friend to the Jewish people as he would like everyone to think. Like so many things with this President he is good at the talk but not so good at the walk.

Donna the preacher for the church I was talking about is still there, but the church split into two parts several years ago because of behavior like this. Most of the older folks stuck with him, most of the younger folks did not. My MIL passed away 5 years ago, I miss her all the time, she was probably the kindest and most gentle person I have known.

While the far right and far left have no love for Jews I will worry about them when they start killing people with planes. Radical Islam is worse because it gives Evil men a voice and cause and rewards them by giving them control over women. I think the world needs more moderates of every religion.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by red crabtree

There are radicals in any religion, personally I think there are aspects of fundamentalists Christians that I find nearly as frightening as radical Islam, right in this country.


Let's see. As the US has been basically a Christian country for the past 200 plus years......and as Jews have lived here in this country for about the same amount of time......exactly how many Jews have been murdered, bombed, raped, deported and generally mistreated by Christian America in that period?


After all....we are nearly as bad as those mean Moslems:)

As long as I am on the subject. Which is worse? To try to legislate basic Judeo/Christian morality or to legislate immorality? Which has the worse effect on civilization?

Well, you might say; it is better to have NO values and legislate them accordingly. Everything goes. I would argue that a democracy can only exist and function when the people are basically moral people. Otherwise you have a law for every possibility and you soon have less than a democracy. But the ACLU is working in that direction already.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Alfred
Let's see. As the US has been basically a Christian country for the past 200 plus years......and as Jews have lived here in this country for about the same amount of time......exactly how many Jews have been murdered, bombed, raped, deported and generally mistreated by Christian America in that period?


After all....we are nearly as bad as those mean Moslems:)

As long as I am on the subject. Which is worse? To try to legislate basic Judeo/Christian morality or to legislate immorality? Which has the worse effect on civilization?

Well, you might say; it is better to have NO values and legislate them accordingly. Everything goes. I would argue that a democracy can only exist and function when the people are basically moral people. Otherwise you have a law for every possibility and you soon have less than a democracy. But the ACLU is working in that direction already.
Now c'mon Alfred, you're being a little hard on RC with that spiel. There are a lot of people that do not wish to see religious zealots of any stripe passing legislation that forces the citizenry into a mold.

There are differing ways of looking at the same things and just because you think ultra conservative "Christians" have the low down on the way everyone else should live is presumptuous.

By the way, I almost emailed you to get your attention when andak was bad mouthing Mormons, but I just stepped in and slapped him upside his "intellectual head" instead.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Revkha
Actually no, I'm not somebody's ex-Lucifer. Between you and me, I think the Lucifer complex attributed to these women by some of our male posters probably found its origin in the females' selection of mates. You know what they say about men! :p


Actually, if the truth must be known, it's because she turned into the eighth dwarf; Sleazy. Yep. She always had her legs up and her arm out.... Just couldn't say no to cocaine. That, my dear, is the Lucifer that I was married to.... Think that was my fault? Probably gave her too much money, huh? Should've kept her barefoot and pregnant, instead of buying her a BMW and giving her a platinum American Express. but I was young and trusting.

[Revkha]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Actually, if the truth must be known, it's because she turned into the eighth dwarf; Sleazy. Yep. She always had her legs up and her arm out.... Just couldn't say no to cocaine. That, my dear, is the Lucifer that I was married to.... Think that was my fault? Probably gave her too much money, huh? Should've kept her barefoot and pregnant, instead of buying her a BMW and giving her a platinum American Express. but I was young and trusting.

Johnny - You had stars in your eyes and love in your heart and she had dreams of mountains of white powder. Sometimes you really don't know a person until it's too late.

Sorry for your experience.

My previous post was in jest only!!!

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Revkha
Johnny - You had stars in your eyes and love in your heart and she had dreams of mountains of white powder. Sometimes you really don't know a person until it's too late.

Sorry for your experience.

My previous post was in jest only!!!

My current spouse had dreams of mountains of white powder too, but she's a avid/rabid snow skier. My ex, the eighth dwarf, gave a whole new meaning to the song, "Hi Ho!".... :D

[Donna]

Originally posted by red crabtree
[B]

There are radicals in any religion, personally I think there are aspects of fundamentalists Christians that I find nearly as frightening as radical Islam, right in this country. They attempt to legislate morality as if everyone's morals are there own, something that clearly is not appropriate under the constitution and something the founding fathers of this country did not want.


Had an "exchange" with a relative over this. The relative was shocked that I as a Christian dared to compare the "dress codes" in many Christian churches to the dress codes set up by the Taliban. As in: can't cut hair, no make up, no jewelry, must cover body. Well, gee...sure can't see any similarities at all.


Donna the preacher for the church I was talking about is still there, but the church split into two parts several years ago because of behavior like this. Most of the older folks stuck with him, most of the younger folks did not. My MIL passed away 5 years ago, I miss her all the time, she was probably the kindest and most gentle person I have known.

I've seen thriving churches that have been all but obliterated by the actions of those who were attempting to control every aspect of those churches, down to telling the members whom they could speak to and how.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred


As long as I am on the subject. Which is worse? To try to legislate basic Judeo/Christian morality or to legislate immorality? Which has the worse effect on civilization?


They're equally as bad in effect, in my opinion. One man's garbage is another man's gold.

Well, you might say; it is better to have NO values and legislate them accordingly. Everything goes. I would argue that a democracy can only exist and function when the people are basically moral people.

Who's morality are we talking about here?

Otherwise you have a law for every possibility and you soon have less than a democracy. But the ACLU is working in that direction already.

I disagree. There are infinite possibilities and not enough resources to have infinite laws to cover each and every possibility.
And the last time I checked.... wait... let me check again.... okay, nothing's changed.... we don't live in a democracy. This is a republic, so we already have less than a democracy.

Where do you stand on the question of the gay Episcopal Bishop?

[Alfred]

Originally posted by MichaelC
Now c'mon Alfred, you're being a little hard on RC with that spiel. There are a lot of people that do not wish to see religious zealots of any stripe passing legislation that forces the citizenry into a mold.

Naw, I was just having fun. I would argue however, that what has been the general code of conduct (morality) for 200 years in this country is not being rammed down peoples throats- as it was already there. In fact it is being deleted every day. Who is ramming what down peoples throats? It is the new "morality" that is being forced down peoples throats. That's why Christians are almost up in arms:)

When a conservative speaks of morality they are accused of being a fanatic...but when the Left proposes their definition of morality they are considered progressive.


Originally posted by MichaelC

By the way, I almost emailed you to get your attention when andak was bad mouthing Mormons, but I just stepped in and slapped him upside his "intellectual head" instead.

Oh fun! I missed it.

By the way, you will love my treatise on: "Do the Jews have a right to the land of Israel?" I think I will put it in Road Map for Peace. You may want to bring Andak out of the dog house:)

[Alfred]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
Where do you stand on the question of the gay Episcopal Bishop?


Well, first of all.

1. I think that it is silly to force Priests/Bishops/Clergy to remain unmarried. There is no basis in the early Christian church for that position. Zealots in the 300 AD timeframe came up with the fact that you could not serve two masters... and that being married was.....hmmm, uh, maybe they were right:)

2. Estimates are that 50% of the Catholic clergy are homosexuals. I do not know if that is true, and it probably is not, but....... when you get homosexuals in a position of power over young boys you end up with all the problems we have been reading about over the last couple of years. And yes, you could have the same problem with straight priests. See number one to solve that problem.

3. And the ACLU wants Gay Scout leaders in the Boy Scouts???? On campouts...way up in the mountains, in tents??? Give me a break.

4. One would have to be nearly brain dead to not understand that the Christian God does not agree with homesexuality(not pointing at you Johnny) Now, one is free to disagree with the Christian God if you like. He could be homophobic and behind the times. Perhaps some Senator would like to take his place. If a church professes to worship and follow the teachings of the Christian God then it is silly to suggest that you could have a homosexual Preacher. For that matter a cross-dresser, a transvestite, a child molester, a rapist, an abortion doctor or any other person who clearly was practicing that which is very much verboten to the Christian God.

Now of course, if you profess to be the Church of Larry...or the Church of Ted, then you can do whatever Larry or Ted wants. In this case, if the Anglican Church goes with an openly homosexual Priest they are telling me that they are the church of Larry or Ted. If I were an Anglican who believed and wanted to follow the Christian God then I would split off.

We are all free to worship what we choose. That is the beauty of America. You can worship money, God, elephants, dogs and even football. It is a bit silly however, to claim you represent God on this earth and then do everything that is against what God preaches.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred
Naw, I was just having fun. I would argue however, that what has been the general code of conduct (morality) for 200 years in this country is not being rammed down peoples throats- as it was already there. In fact it is being deleted every day. Who is ramming what down peoples throats? It is the new "morality" that is being forced down peoples throats. That's why Christians are almost up in arms:)

When a conservative speaks of morality they are accused of being a fanatic...but when the Left proposes their definition of morality they are considered progressive.


"I've been a registered Republican for 29 years.", he said, typing the words while wearing his PAC shirt, "Explain me...."


Oh fun! I missed it.

By the way, you will love my treatise on: "Do the Jews have a right to the land of Israel?" I think I will put it in Road Map for Peace. You may want to bring Andak out of the dog house:)

Would you like to explain what the significance of the following passages is, or should I?

10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.
14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred
Well, first of all.

1. I think that it is silly to force Priests/Bishops/Clergy to remain unmarried. There is no basis in the early Christian church for that position. Zealots in the 300 AD timeframe came up with the fact that you could not serve two masters... and that being married was.....hmmm, uh, maybe they were right:)

2. Estimates are that 50% of the Catholic clergy are homosexuals. I do not know if that is true, and it probably is not, but....... when you get homosexuals in a position of power over young boys you end up with all the problems we have been reading about over the last couple of years. And yes, you could have the same problem with straight priests. See number one to solve that problem.

3. And the ACLU wants Gay Scout leaders in the Boy Scouts???? On campouts...way up in the mountains, in tents??? Give me a break.

4. One would have to be nearly brain dead to not understand that the Christian God does not agree with homesexuality(not pointing at you Johnny) Now, one is free to disagree with the Christian God if you like. He could be homophobic and behind the times. Perhaps some Senator would like to take his place. If a church professes to worship and follow the teachings of the Christian God then it is silly to suggest that you could have a homosexual Preacher. For that matter a cross-dresser, a transvestite, a child molester, a rapist, an abortion doctor or any other person who clearly was practicing that which is very much verboten to the Christian God.

Now of course, if you profess to be the Church of Larry...or the Church of Ted, then you can do whatever Larry or Ted wants. In this case, if the Anglican Church goes with an openly homosexual Priest they are telling me that they are the church of Larry or Ted. If I were an Anglican who believed and wanted to follow the Christian God then I would split off.

We are all free to worship what we choose. That is the beauty of America. You can worship money, God, elephants, dogs and even football. It is a bit silly however, to claim you represent God on this earth and then do everything that is against what God preaches.

Would you go so far as to say that it's the Abomination of Desolation standing where it should not?

[Alfred]

QUOTE]Originally posted by Johnny Yuma


Would you like to explain what the significance of the following passages is, or should I?

10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.
14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. [/QUOTE]


Wow. I could, but it would take awhile. Let me make a quick pass for the audience of breathless onlookers.

In the last days (..in that day..), God will gather his believers together as one would gather wheat. For in the last days there will be two main camps; those that fight against God and those that try to follow him. The good will be gathered in various ways throughout the world, both Jew and Gentile. Some speculate that the world will become so wicked that all the good people in the world will have to choose to follow good or to follow evil. They will not be able to sit on a fence.

The Jews will return to the land of Israel for the most part. This may also be forced upon them as the countries in which they reside become more wicked. The Gentiles however will flock to Christianity and the good will be gathered from all the lands. Many Christians have historically gathered to America, which is the ensign (light upon a hill) that is referred to. As the world becomes more wicked, the good will flee to America similarly to the Jews fleeing to Israel.

Ephraim who was the oldest child of Joseph (who was sold into Egypt) is the tribe that will be in charge of the gathering of the Christian Gentiles . Judah, is the tribe in charge of gathering the Hebrews to Israel. You will see in the last days that the tribes of Ephraim and Judah (who hated each other and fought for power throughout Hebrew history) will start to cooperate. You can see the Christians being big supporters of Israel and for the gathering of the Jews. This is part of the plan.

The Mormons are mostly of the tribe of Ephraim and our leadership is working on this gathering as we speak. The land of Israel was dedicated three times (1840, 1860 and the early 1900's) for the return of the Jews. We are fighting for religious freedom in all lands and will be essentially "leading the charge" in the last days. All other Christian demoninations will be equal partners, as will the Jews as Ephraim and Judah start to work together. Jews will not become Mormons and neither will the Christian denominations I speak of. This is a partnership between all good people to gather together to fight the storm that will be hitting the world in the near future.

There is a bright future for Jews and Christians working together. That must really scare a few of you:)

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred
QUOTE]Originally posted by Johnny Yuma


Would you like to explain what the significance of the following passages is, or should I?

10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.
14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them.


Wow. I could, but it would take awhile. Let me make a quick pass for the audience of breathless onlookers.

In the last days (..in that day..), God will gather his believers together as one would gather wheat. For in the last days there will be two main camps; those that fight against God and those that try to follow him. The good will be gathered in various ways throughout the world, both Jew and Gentile. Some speculate that the world will become so wicked that all the good people in the world will have to choose to follow good or to follow evil. They will not be able to sit on a fence.

The Jews will return to the land of Israel for the most part. This may also be forced upon them as the countries in which they reside become more wicked. The Gentiles however will flock to Christianity and the good will be gathered from all the lands. Many Christians have historically gathered to America, which is the ensign (light upon a hill) that is referred to. As the world becomes more wicked, the good will flee to America similarly to the Jews fleeing to Israel.

Ephraim who was the oldest child of Joseph (who was sold into Egypt) is the tribe that will be in charge of the gathering of the Christian Gentiles . Judah, is the tribe in charge of gathering the Hebrews to Israel. You will see in the last days that the tribes of Ephraim and Judah (who hated each other and fought for power throughout Hebrew history) will start to cooperate. You can see the Christians being big supporters of Israel and for the gathering of the Jews. This is part of the plan.

The Mormons are mostly of the tribe of Ephraim and our leadership is working on this gathering as we speak. The land of Israel was dedicated three times (1840, 1860 and the early 1900's) for the return of the Jews. We are fighting for religious freedom in all lands and will be essentially "leading the charge" in the last days. All other Christian demoninations will be equal partners, as will the Jews as Ephraim and Judah start to work together. Jews will not become Mormons and neither will the Christian denominations I speak of. This is a partnership between all good people to gather together to fight the storm that will be hitting the world in the near future.

There is a bright future for Jews and Christians working together. That must really scare a few of you:) [/QUOTE]

Tell 'em about the resurrected Jesus coming to America....

[Donna]

Focusing on one statement here:

Originally posted by Alfred
The Mormons are mostly of the tribe of Ephraim and our leadership is working on this gathering as we speak.


Pardon me if I misunderstand, but by that do you mean that barring those who have converted to Mormonism, there is an actual blood line back to the tribe of Ephraim?

If that is the case, wouldn't DNA tests be able to support that? Have there been DNA tests?

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Alfred
There is a bright future for Jews and Christians working together. That must really scare a few of you:)
I gotta tell you Alfred, I generally like to listen to people's intelligent religious interpretations and I was enjoying yours until that last line.

It strikes me that lots of "Christians" have this "thing" about scaring people. I've heard it all, but don't respond much to that stuff anymore. My feeling about God is a lot more familial than that.

There are lots of people who put that kind of belief on the front burner ahead of love, compassion, non-judgement (you know, judge not lest ye be judged and all that) and they are adamant that all hell is about to engulf us (could quite possibly be right judging by current events) and that THEY have the inside line on it and the rest of us better just watch out.

But I keep thinking maybe they ought to just spend more time loving their neighbors and less time scaring the hell out of them, and maybe then regular folks might be more responsive.

Good golly, I can't believe how much ground this thread has covered since it was first started with whatever the heck topic it was about!

[Alfred]

Originally posted by Donna
Focusing on one statement here:



Pardon me if I misunderstand, but by that do you mean that barring those who have converted to Mormonism, there is an actual blood line back to the tribe of Ephraim?

If that is the case, wouldn't DNA tests be able to support that? Have there been DNA tests?


Not to my understanding. We don't have Ephraims DNA. Do you have Judahs? If so, then they were related you know.

You don't have to go back very far in Europe to get some Jewish blood in your tree by the way. But that is not the only way we determine lineage. A Patriarch in the church tells you your lineage via a Patriarchal Blessing.

[Johnny Yuma]

If you believe this:

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of G_d, thought it not robbery to be equal with G_d:

And do this:

29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?


Do you get door number 1, 2, or 3?:

41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

Or possibly end up here?

11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.
12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

[L@mplighterM]

Originally posted by Alfred
Let's see. As the US has been basically a Christian country for the past 200 plus years......and as Jews have lived here in this country for about the same amount of time......exactly how many Jews have been murdered, bombed, raped, deported and generally mistreated by Christian America in that period?




I’m unable to throw any figures your way, but I’m certain that the figures would be shocking.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by MichaelC
I gotta tell you Alfred, I generally like to listen to people's intelligent religious interpretations and I was enjoying yours until that last line.



I am confused as to how that last line upset you. I meant that many Jews would rather be buddies with a snake than a Christian....especially a fundamentalist Christian. As we all want them dead etc. etc.

I agree with you that we should all get along, love thy neigbor, turn the other cheek etc. Nothing I said should lead you to believe I meant anything else but that.

In fact that is why I have not posted on this or any other board for so long. I wanted to chill out...stop watching the news, relax and enjoy life. You know, do a sanity check on my goals.

But you know. The end times are coming. Not to scare anyone. I am not scared... just trying to prepare and enjoy life in the meantime. My comments are in response to a question about scripture pointing to these last days.

Good Grief. All one has to do is look outside to see that we are on a thin sheet of ice lately. North Korea with nukes, Iran with nukes, the Islamic fanatics are going to get nukes. If I am scaring anyone then they haven't read the newspapers of late.

It's good to be back:)

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred



Ephraim who was the oldest child of Joseph (who was sold into Egypt) is the tribe that will be in charge of the gathering of the Christian Gentiles . Judah, is the tribe in charge of gathering the Hebrews to Israel. You will see in the last days that the tribes of Ephraim and Judah (who hated each other and fought for power throughout Hebrew history) will start to cooperate. You can see the Christians being big supporters of Israel and for the gathering of the Jews. This is part of the plan.

The Mormons are mostly of the tribe of Ephraim and our leadership is working on this gathering as we speak. The land of Israel was dedicated three times (1840, 1860 and the early 1900's) for the return of the Jews. We are fighting for religious freedom in all lands and will be essentially "leading the charge" in the last days. All other Christian demoninations will be equal partners, as will the Jews as Ephraim and Judah start to work together. Jews will not become Mormons and neither will the Christian denominations I speak of. This is a partnership between all good people to gather together to fight the storm that will be hitting the world in the near future.

There is a bright future for Jews and Christians working together. That must really scare a few of you:)

19 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord G_D; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Alfred
I am confused as to how that last line upset you. I meant that many Jews would rather be buddies with a snake than a Christian....especially a fundamentalist Christian. As we all want them dead etc. etc.

I agree with you that we should all get along, love thy neigbor, turn the other cheek etc. Nothing I said should lead you to believe I meant anything else but that.

In fact that is why I have not posted on this or any other board for so long. I wanted to chill out...stop watching the news, relax and enjoy life. You know, do a sanity check on my goals.

But you know. The end times are coming. Not to scare anyone. I am not scared... just trying to prepare and enjoy life in the meantime. My comments are in response to a question about scripture pointing to these last days.

Good Grief. All one has to do is look outside to see that we are on a thin sheet of ice lately. North Korea with nukes, Iran with nukes, the Islamic fanatics are going to get nukes. If I am scaring anyone then they haven't read the newspapers of late.

It's good to be back:)
Hey man! You're scarin' me again.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
If you believe this:

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of G_d, thought it not robbery to be equal with G_d:

And do this:

29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?


Do you get door number 1, 2, or 3?:

41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

Or possibly end up here?

11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.
12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.


Forgive me Johnny. I am lost as to what you are getting at.

I know of only one kind of person who will fit item #12. That is someone who rejects God after they have seen him face to face. (the devil or satan comes to mind).

[red crabtree]

Well, as an Episcopalian I believe a gay priest is not a problem. I don't care that the man is gay, all I care about is whether he is a good priest. And the reality is this, which you are not getting in news reports, the national confirmation process is a formality. Each Episcopal parish operates as it's own entity by and large. While the national convention comes up with guidelines from the Bishops no parish is under any obligation from a governing board to run their parish as dictated by anyone. The region of New Hampshire that voted for this man to be their Bishop in reality therefore, could have had a Priest that was gay who they voted as their Bishop, but was rejected by the National Conformation process and if they wanted to they could have thumbed their nose at it and done it anyway. Bishops are not appointed, they are voted on. There is no "big giant head" of the American Episcopal church per se. We are in communion with the Church of England as the historical parent, but no Anglican community is under any obligation to follow any directive. We vote on those things, right down to each parish.
Personally I think Christ gave direction to love your neighbor, not love your hetersexual neighbor. He also made a point of saying to take the log from your own eye before taking the splinter out of your brother's. Oh, and there is that thing about God being the judge.
Now Alfred as far as legislating morality I personally believe that is something is very abhorrent to someone then they should make a point of not participating in it and teaching their children not to either, while at the same time teaching their children that little thing called tolerance that our founders were so big on. Which is why Jews were not murdered or expelled from this country like so many others. What was considered moral even 50 years ago we often look quite askance at now. Once upon a time owning slaves was very moral and good Christians made sure to take care of their slaves well, but they were still slaves nonetheless. When current morality is legislated you stop the process of normal culturalization, and take away the ability of a culture to develop and grow. To mature. Once upon a time it was quite moral to murder someone because they were not the same sect as you, let alone a different religion. The philosphers of the Enlightment believed that people had the ability to reason and did not need someone to tell them how. It was that enlightenment that brought us Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin etc... And thank God for it. A mature society will take that and build on it, an immature society will attempt to use legislation to stop the process in the name of the good ole days, yelling God all the way.
I have a whole book on what the Episcopal church believes in terms of reason, with firm theological reasoning. It is that which drew me to the church and it is not simply talk. I believed in it enough to confirm formally with the church. I have a female priest, another reason that I opted for the Episcopal church, because no church is going to make me or my daughter feel we are less simply because we lack a certain anatomy.
So I say, GO BISHOP ROBINSON! and many happy and productive years for you!
Oh, and what you said about Catholics and celebacy is off by a couple hundred years, as well as the reasoning behind it. By 300s AD Christianity was still a persucuted faith until Constantine who did not ascend to Caesar until the early 300's. The Nicene Creed was not done until 325, and that is considered one of the first acts of the "Catholic" church. The Episcopal church also says the Nicene Creed every Sunday which contains the phrase Catholic church, which means only "universal" church, though it came to denote the Roman church. Also just for grins, there were more than a few Popes who had mistresses after the marriage rule was imposed, with children as well who were acknowledged as their own and given principalities as well as political power. Um, history with the cultures it developed in is my thing. :)

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred
Forgive me Johnny. I am lost as to what you are getting at.

I know of only one kind of person who will fit item #12. That is someone who rejects God after they have seen him face to face. (the devil or satan comes to mind).

Yeah. I know. A son of perdition. But enlighten us as to the other passages, in great detail.....

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Alfred

Good Grief. All one has to do is look outside to see that we are on a thin sheet of ice lately. North Korea with nukes, Iran with nukes, the Islamic fanatics are going to get nukes. If I am scaring anyone then they haven't read the newspapers of late.

It's good to be back:)

While I have been online battling Muslims some crackhead ran of the road and over my daughter and grandson at 45mph. Last year 43,000 americans were killed by motor vehicles and 1.4 million world wide. I have two nephews one is high on illegal drugs and the other stays high on legal drugs. I look for them to kill or get killed on the highway. The sky is falling!! Says chicken little. Scars, Aids, Hiv, Muslim terrorist, drugs homo preist accepted. Women's lib. Forest fires. When is the next ship to mars?

old reb

[red crabtree]

Just for good measure regarding the end times. First of all the Book of Revelations never went into the New Testament until 400 something and after only much controversy, and second the Episcopalians believe it has already came to pass as we interpert it as the fall of the Roman Empire.
And only God knows.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
While I have been online battling Muslims some crackhead ran of the road and over my daughter and grandson at 45mph. Last year 43,000 americans were killed by motor vehicles and 1.4 million world wide. I have two nephews one is high on illegal drugs and the other stays high on legal drugs. I look for them to kill or get killed on the highway. The sky is falling!! Says chicken little. Scars, Aids, Hiv, Muslim terrorist, drugs homo preist accepted. Women's lib. Forest fires. When is the next ship to mars?

old reb
Reb, are your daughter and grandchild OK?!!!

[red crabtree]

Originally posted by old-reb
While I have been online battling Muslims some crackhead ran of the road and over my daughter and grandson at 45mph. Last year 43,000 americans were killed by motor vehicles and 1.4 million world wide. I have two nephews one is high on illegal drugs and the other stays high on legal drugs. I look for them to kill or get killed on the highway. The sky is falling!! Says chicken little. Scars, Aids, Hiv, Muslim terrorist, drugs homo preist accepted. Women's lib. Forest fires. When is the next ship to mars?

old reb

Do not make me spit soda on my computer screen again! It is bad for the machine!

[Donna]

Originally posted by old-reb
[B]While I have been online battling Muslims some crackhead ran of the road and over my daughter and grandson at 45mph.


I really hope they are alright!

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Do not make me spit soda on my computer screen again! It is bad for the machine!

Perhaps it would be a good idea to tape multiple layers of plastic wrap over the screen. That way, you can strip them away, and have a free-of-spittle-screen, as necessary..... just like the NASCAR drivers. ;)

[MichaelC]

Someone has egg on their face. It's either Red Crabtree or me and Donna. Now that RC is a smart cookie and she thinks you were totally jesting. But Donna is a smart cookie too and she took you seriously just like I did.

You may be getting in some multiple "leg pulling" licks here tonight. But I do want to know that nobody ran over your family.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Personally I think Christ gave direction to love your neighbor, not love your hetersexual neighbor. He also made a point of saying to take the log from your own eye before taking the splinter out of your brother's. Oh, and there is that thing about God being the judge.

Yes, but there is a difference between loving your neighbor and being a representative of God...which is supposedly what a Priest is. If God came out and said "thou shalt not wear blue," and you had a Priest put on a blue outfit; can that person really be considered an agent or representative of God? Especially if that Priest basically said that God was an idiot for saying "thous shalt not wear blue?"

If the congregation wants a homosexual priest...that is their choice. But don't blame the folks who leave saying that a gay priest is bogus. Maybe thats my problem however. Maybe the congregation does not consider the Priest as an agent of God...but an entertainer, or counselor, or nice guy who gives great speeches. I could be old fashioned. In which case, as he does not really hold the Priesthood of God...then let the party start.


Originally posted by red crabtree

Now Alfred as far as legislating morality I personally believe that is something is very abhorrent to someone then they should make a point of not participating in it and teaching their children not to either, while at the same time teaching their children that little thing called tolerance that our founders were so big on.


You make some very good points, and we should all be tolerant. But remember that one can be so open-minded that his/her brains fall out.

If you have homosexual priests and boy scouts leaders you are going to have problems.

If you have a raging heterosexual guy as a girl scout leader you are going to have problems.

If one argues that you shouldn' t limit marriage to a man and a woman then why stop at humans? Why not have loving relationships between man and sheep? Legally binding of course and monogamous. Silly? Not in the future it won't be.

One can argue that children can make up their mind about sex with adults.

One can argue that pornography is ok in all cases...why limit it?

Why is murder so bad? Wouldn't Darwin subscribe to the survival of the fit?

Speaking of Darwin. What would he saying about homosexuals and their effect on a species? Would he be less tolerant that modern Christians?

Society needs some basic rules, otherwise you have anarchy. You have to have common agreed upon rules. If everything is open to "well it depends on what is, is." then you do not have a civilization.

Apply the same logic to the Constitution. Radio was never considered in the 1st Ammendment etc. etc. etc.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred

Now of course, if you profess to be the Church of Larry...or the Church of Ted, then you can do whatever Larry or Ted wants. In this case, if the Anglican Church goes with an openly homosexual Priest they are telling me that they are the church of Larry or Ted. If I were an Anglican who believed and wanted to follow the Christian God then I would split off.

We are all free to worship what we choose. That is the beauty of America. You can worship money, God, elephants, dogs and even football. It is a bit silly however, to claim you represent God on this earth and then do everything that is against what God preaches.

But if Larry, or Ted were Mormans, were sealed to their wives and children for all time and eternity, came from a lineage of priests through baptism of the dead by proxy, and did all their other temple ordinances, then would it be dishonest of you to say that there could not very well be a "Church of Larry, or, Church of Ted"? Tell the truth and shame the devil.....

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred
I could be old fashioned. In which case, as he does not really hold the Priesthood of God...then let the party start.


Time to come clean about who does hold the Priesthood of G_d, as well, Al.

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Donna
I really hope they are alright!

He was knocked unconcious and was thrashing about wildly but in just a few minutes he was life flighted to a trauma center. In three days he was awake and in a week he was home. Last night he went to football practice.
She has a smashed arm/hand and bad knee. The crackhead was driving his moms car so all hospital bills are being paid and also she will be paid for lost wages. It all happened about 3 weeks ago and he is seven years old.

Our biggest danger is our love, the automobile.

old reb

[Communication]

fascinating....you humans are truly extraordinary!

[old-reb]

Originally posted by Communication
fascinating....you humans are truly extraordinary!

The boy had the best and fastest medical care that money can buy. Also he had the prayers of many religious groups.
Even one Muslim I was flaming stated that he was married to a Christian woman and they had their church congration pray for the boy. I am not religious but I was praying like crazy. Now it is like nothing had ever happened and he has no memory of the accident.


43,000 americans weren't so lucky, they ended up in the graveyard.


old reb

[old-reb]

MichaelC
Senior Member

old reb

Glad to hear your kin are OK Reb.

__________________

Communication
Senior Member

old reb


You're right. And I'm glad that your family made it. The automobile industry killed public transportation. There are too many cars on improperly maintained roads and not enough safe alteratives to the car for those crackheads who don't listen to the public safety commercials.

______________


Donna
.
Oh No!! (post #208)

I really hope they are alright!

Thank ya'll for caring; Red Crabtree too.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
The boy had the best and fastest medical care that money can buy. Also he had the prayers of many religious groups.
Even one Muslim I was flaming stated that he was married to a Christian woman and they had their church congration pray for the boy. I am not religious but I was praying like crazy. Now it is like nothing had ever happened and he has no memory of the accident.


43,000 americans weren't so lucky, they ended up in the graveyard.


old reb

You're right. And I'm glad that your family made it. The automobile industry killed public transportation. There are too many cars on improperly maintained roads and not enough safe alteratives to the car for those crackheads who don't listen to the public safety commercials.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
He was knocked unconcious and was thrashing about wildly but in just a few minutes he was life flighted to a trauma center. In three days he was awake and in a week he was home. Last night he went to football practice.
She has a smashed arm/hand and bad knee. The crackhead was driving his moms car so all hospital bills are being paid and also she will be paid for lost wages. It all happened about 3 weeks ago and he is seven years old.

Our biggest danger is our love, the automobile.

old reb
Glad to hear your kin are OK Reb.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by Alfred
Yes, but there is a difference between loving your neighbor and being a representative of God...which is supposedly what a Priest is. If God came out and said "thou shalt not wear blue," and you had a Priest put on a blue outfit; can that person really be considered an agent or representative of God? Especially if that Priest basically said that God was an idiot for saying "thous shalt not wear blue?"

If the congregation wants a homosexual priest...that is their choice. But don't blame the folks who leave saying that a gay priest is bogus. Maybe thats my problem however. Maybe the congregation does not consider the Priest as an agent of God...but an entertainer, or counselor, or nice guy who gives great speeches. I could be old fashioned. In which case, as he does not really hold the Priesthood of God...then let the party start.




You make some very good points, and we should all be tolerant. But remember that one can be so open-minded that his/her brains fall out.

If you have homosexual priests and boy scouts leaders you are going to have problems.

If you have a raging heterosexual guy as a girl scout leader you are going to have problems.

If one argues that you shouldn' t limit marriage to a man and a woman then why stop at humans? Why not have loving relationships between man and sheep? Legally binding of course and monogamous. Silly? Not in the future it won't be.

One can argue that children can make up their mind about sex with adults.

One can argue that pornography is ok in all cases...why limit it?

Why is murder so bad? Wouldn't Darwin subscribe to the survival of the fit?

Speaking of Darwin. What would he saying about homosexuals and their effect on a species? Would he be less tolerant that modern Christians?

Society needs some basic rules, otherwise you have anarchy. You have to have common agreed upon rules. If everything is open to "well it depends on what is, is." then you do not have a civilization.

Apply the same logic to the Constitution. Radio was never considered in the 1st Ammendment etc. etc. etc.
You sound like a homo phode to me!!!!!! or is your name Santero. If just one person is denied his rights then all rights are in Doubt. If you hate gay people so much I hear that you would be welcome in say Saudi Arabia or the West bank.While It may not be the life style for me who am I to Judge.

[Communication]

Originally posted by jewbyc
You sound like a homo phode to me!!!!!! or is your name Santero. If just one person is denied his rights then all rights are in Doubt. If you hate gay people so much I hear that you would be welcome in say Saudi Arabia or the West bank.While It may not be the life style for me who am I to Judge.

I think Alfred is talking specifically about whether a homosexual is qualified to be a leader in a religious community, not whether they have the right to live as they choose. The bible is very specific about the qualifications for who such a person can be. He must be married and only to a wife who was a virgin at the time of marriage. All of his children must also be upstanding. The high priest couldn't be blemished, not scared or lame, or otherwise maimed...

[old-reb]

deleted by old reb

[MichaelC]

If you ask me, some moderator is going to come along, take a look at what this thread has developed into, and lock it.

We surely have drifted here and there.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by Communication
I think Alfred is talking specifically about whether a homosexual is qualified to be a leader in a religious community, not whether they have the right to live as they choose. The bible is very specific about the qualifications for who such a person can be. He must be married and only to a wife who was a virgin at the time of marriage. All of his children must also be upstanding. The high priest couldn't be blemished, not scared or lame, or otherwise maimed...

Yes, that is my point exactly.

It is a bit hypocritical to be the President of the Fender guitar company and only play Gibsons.

To be the President of the Corvette club and drive a Yugo....

To be President of the Blue T-Shirt club and then show up in a red T-Shirt

That is my point.

And no, I am not homophobic. I am homo-nauseous however.



And you know..... I think old Johnny has some deep dark religious skeletons he is hiding in the closet. Or perhaps wounds. Maybe he has too many neighbors that start with "M" in Arizona. Relax Johnny, no one is trying to convert you. My sole mission in life is to get Takeo to say the US is the best country in the world.... that is all.

[Communication]

Originally posted by Alfred




And you know..... I think old Johnny has some deep dark religious skeletons he is hiding in the closet. Or perhaps wounds. Maybe he has too many neighbors that start with "M" in Arizona. Relax Johnny, no one is trying to convert you. My sole mission in life is to get Takeo to say the US is the best country in the world.... that is all.

Don't mess with Johnny Yuma! Cause if you do, Donna and I will be forced to take out a can of woop-ass!

[Alfred]

Originally posted by Communication
Don't mess with Johnny Yuma! Cause if you do, Donna and I will be forced to take out a can of woop-ass!


Nah, I am not messing with him...put your can of woop-ass away. I can just see where he is going with his questions about Mormons. You can tell he knows the answers before he asks the question.

But let's save that for a religion thread. This is not the place.

:)

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred

And you know..... I think old Johnny has some deep dark religious skeletons he is hiding in the closet. Or perhaps wounds. Maybe he has too many neighbors that start with "M" in Arizona. Relax Johnny, no one is trying to convert you. My sole mission in life is to get Takeo to say the US is the best country in the world.... that is all.

I'd just like you to answer the questions, so everyone here will know what the remnant of Ephraim believes. So I'll ask you again, tell us what it means to receive the exaltation of the Sun, and what do you have to do to get it, or at least what your church says you have to do to get it. We'll see who has the "deep dark skeleton".

[Johnny Yuma]

Okay, okay. I'll confess, Al. I am an Agnostic Frisbeetarian.

I believe that when I die, my soul goes up on the roof, but I deny the existence of a ladder strong enough or high enough that can be used to get it down....

[jewbyc]

TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND
Muhammad ordered
Muslims to kill Jews?
Palestinian academic says tradition makes it religious obligation

Posted: July 15, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The killing of Jews is a mandatory religious obligation established by
Islam's founder Muhammad, according to a Muslim academic who spoke on
Palestinian Authority television.
"Muhammad said in his Hadith: "The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not
arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or
tree] and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah,
there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'" said Hassan Khader, founder
of the Al Quds Encyclopedia.
Khader spoke during a lecture, broadcast Sunday, on what he describes as the
war of the Jews against Palestinian "trees."
The program was monitored by Palestinian Media Watch
<http://www.pmw.org.il/new/>;, or PMW, an Israel-based group.
PMW director Itamar Marcus says Khader's statement was one of many instances
in recent years of Palestinian religious leaders teaching publicly that this
Hadith - part of Islamic traditions attributed to Muhammad - is a current
obligation of Islam.
Marcus says these teachings challenge the common belief that the premise for
negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is over borders.
"Palestinian religious and academic leaders publicly teach that the
Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of Islam's irreconcilable religious war
against the Jews," he says.
"To justify this view," he adds, "Palestinians repeatedly cite Islamic
sources to demand as religious doctrine, that Jews be hated, even demanding
the killing of Jews as the will of Allah."
Marcus says "the continued expression of this PA worldview is most ominous."

"For by depicting redemption as dependent on Muslims' murder of Jews, the
murder of Jews is being presented as mandatory religious obligation," he
says.

http://memri.org/antisemitism.html

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/748

[red crabtree]

Reb, I am glad that your family is ok, I'm sorry I really thought your were joshing. I'm a Registered Nurse and used to work Neuro-trauma ICU several years ago, it is not unusual for people who have had a trauma to not recall a thing. In fact it is unusual for a patient to remember what happened, I always figured that was God's blessing. Plus depending on the injury we give all sorts of drugs that are amnesics as well as sedatives. It is good they lived in an area in which life flight is available. I live in a rural area and there is no life flight, one has to get an ambulance to a hospital where life flight comes to. Sometimes that is a matter of life and death, or living death.

Alfred I know very little about the Morman church except what I have read and from a friend my first husband had who was Morman. I would guess you know just as little about the Episcopal church. So let me explain some of it. First of all Reason has a high premuim placed on it. There is much encouragement to not only study the bible but to study the history of the Christian religion, which brings the Catholic Church front and center. There is encouragement to study various theology with the understanding of who wrote it and the times they wrote in. While there is much good to be said about say, St. Paul he was also as much a product of his time and his place as we are. The Roman beliefs of where a woman ranked in their society can be seen in all of Paul's writings. In today's world he would be known as a misoganist. St. Augustine sincerely believed that women had nothing to do with the conception of a child, she was only the carrier. Was he an idiot? No, some of his writings are outstanding, some are horrid. But he took what he knew at the time and utilized that knowledge to be able to base his theology on something. Understanding that is what the Episcopals call reason. Today, though science we know that women contribute half of what later becomes a human child, but St. Augustine did not have that knowledge. Should we therefore discard all of St. Augustine? No, again he has things that are relevent to today's world. Should we then discard what we know through science? Again no, we simply have to be able to intergrate all of our knowledge and marvel at the human machine that God created. Episcopals put more of a premium on the new Testament, not so much the old testament, even though sections of both are read every Sunday based on the church calender. However it the belief that we are Christians, and therefore the new Testament is to be looked for more answers than the old, or we would be Jewish.
Now from my own standpoint. If one is going to follow the old testament in terms of who may or may not be a priest, or what is said about homosexuality etc.. then one does not have the right to pick and choose what you will follow. From that reasoning it is my belief that if you opt to follow who may be a priest etc.. then you also are obligated to follow ALL of the laws. That means that it is ok if some guy rapes your wife or your daughter as long as he pays the money required. It also means it wasn't her fault as long as she yelled loud enough. You have dietary laws to follow as well, not to mention lots of other things. And if you do all that then by defination you are not a Morman or any other religion except for Jewish and then Orthodox to boot. It is my belief that one should not take out passages of the old testament in particular to prove your right unless you are also living each and every one of those laws.
I also believe that Christ made it clear that simply going through the motions of each of those laws did not mean you were in the right, part of his problems with the pharisees, yes? In other words you could adhere to every single Mosiac law and still not get into the kingdom of heaven if you were not a decent person and decency meant being good to even sinners, because we were all sinners in one way or another. In the Episcopal church the Priest is not God's image, the Priest is there to assist their members not tell them what to do. It is always easier to give up your own independence and let someone else tell you what is right and what is wrong, then it is to have to think about it, and make up your own mind.
I don't believe that anyone would be so foolish as to believe that screwing a sheep is appropriate or that murder is something we would put up with. Of course society has to have boundries. That does not mean that everyone however should have someone else's morality shoved down their throat. I expect there will be people who leave the Episcopal church over Bishop Robinson, just like their were members who left when women were ordained as Priests, and again when women were allowed to become Bishops, and again when gay or lesbians were allowed into the Priesthood. If they are that uncomfortable, then they should leave. However for each time people left, the church gained others who yearned for a church that sincerely believed we are all God's children, and that God loves all of his creations. It is for this reason I specifically left the Lutheran Church of my youth and became an Episcopalian. I also happen to believe that God endowed humans with a brain for a reason, and expects us to use that gift and not simply be drones doing what someone else with no more brain than the rest says to do. It is that ability to use reason and think for myself that made me an Episcopalian, a decision I have never regretted. No, it's not for everyone, but then I believe that Christ said there were many rooms in his father's mansion, which tells me there is room for all.

Now I have a question, being fairly new and all. Would a moderator actually close a thread simply because a topic wandered? Like I said earlier I simply regard it as good conversation that has many turns like any good conversation. However if it is not acceptable here to do that, then I would like to know so I don't do it again.

[jewbyc]

more proof of radical islam on the rise

Calls for change win him enemies, a Saudi finds
By Faiza Saleh Ambah, Associated Press, 8/4/2003

EDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Back when Mishari al-Zaidi believed Saudi Arabia
wasn't Islamic enough, he helped burn down a video shop, believing it spread
corruption and immorality.
Now, as a peaceful reformer and journalist, he has criticized Saudi Arabia's
religious establishment, accusing it and his former comrades of breeding
hate and extremism. Last month, Zaidi's name turned up on a hit list found
with terrorism suspects arrested following attacks in Riyadh, the capital,
that left 34 dead, including nine attackers.
He said he and other reformists are under fire from two directions: the
extremists and Saudi Arabia's religious establishment. The clergy, he said,
resents the charge that extremists are nourished by what they hear in the
country's mosques and on television.
''They want us to say that Saudi extremists are influenced by outside and
not indigenous ideas, but that is not true,'' said Zaidi, who writes for the
pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
The clergy is powerful because of the alliance between the Saudi dynasty and
Sheik Mohammad Abdul-Wahab, the 18th-century founder of the country's only
permitted Islamic doctrine. In return, clerics often influence what is said
in mosques, taught in schools, discussed in the media, and written in the
law about women's rights and other social issues.
Last month, Abdul-Aziz al-Qassim, a former judge, criticized religious
institutions in an interview with the al-Madina newspaper. Qassim, 40, said
extremists were misusing the writings of Abdul-Wahab to rationalize violence
against non-Muslims.
Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the highest religious figure in the
kingdom, demanded that portions be deleted. Qassim refused, and the
interview never appeared.
Abdullah Bijad al-Otaibi, 32, a reformed extremist, was stopped from writing
for the Al-Riyadh daily in June after publishing an article that accused
some members of the religious establishment of spreading extremist views.
The paper printed an apology to the mufti after he called to complain.
Government officials and establishment clerics rarely mount a
counterargument against the reformists, apparently preferring to gag them.
Saudi newspapers are privately owned but closely monitored by the
government.
Another muzzling tactic is the two fatwas signed by extremist clergy and
posted on the Web calling for the death of Mansour al-Nogaidan, 33, a former
imam and militant who spent two years in prison with Zaidi for the burning
of the video shop. His offense was to tell an Internet magazine called
Al-Wasatiya that Saudi Arabia preaches an Islam of hate in its radio
programs, schools, and mosques.
Turki al-Dakhiel interviewed Zaidi and Otaibi on his programs on the
Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Corp. ''Our religious establishment had
been saying over and over, `We have nothing to do with terrorism or
violence; this is due to external factors, to unemployment and corruption.'
But I put these guys on the air and they said, `No, we have to look at
internal factors, too.' ''
The response, Dakhiel said, was hundreds of calls and e-mails attacking him
for hosting the two men. One anonymous critic called him insane, and another
called him a ''neo-secular criminal who resents Islam.''
Zaidi also said he has received hundreds of supportive e-mails, letters, and
phone calls from all over the country.
The power of reformists like Zaidi and Otaibi is in their background. As
former militants, judges, and imams, they are well versed in Wahhabism and
once issued religious edicts themselves.
''These writers are chipping away at the foundation of the religious
establishment,'' said Ahmad Adnan, a writer for Al-Madina newspaper.
''They're fighting to reform Islamic thought in Saudi Arabia. It's normal
the establishment is fighting back. Any time a new idea comes along, the old
guard has to go to war against it.''
The extremists, for their part, ''see me as more dangerous because I
criticize them with the same language they use,'' Zaidi said. ''I use
Islamic discourse to explain that participating in jihad [holy war] is not a
condition of being a good Muslim, that jihad is a political decision, not a
religious duty.''
This story ran on page A6 of the Boston Globe on 8/4/2003.
© Copyright </globe/search/copyright.html> 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

[jewbyc]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Reb, I am glad that your family is ok, I'm sorry I really thought your were joshing. I'm a Registered Nurse and used to work Neuro-trauma ICU several years ago, it is not unusual for people who have had a trauma to not recall a thing. In fact it is unusual for a patient to remember what happened, I always figured that was God's blessing. Plus depending on the injury we give all sorts of drugs that are amnesics as well as sedatives. It is good they lived in an area in which life flight is available. I live in a rural area and there is no life flight, one has to get an ambulance to a hospital where life flight comes to. Sometimes that is a matter of life and death, or living death.

Alfred I know very little about the Morman church except what I have read and from a friend my first husband had who was Morman. I would guess you know just as little about the Episcopal church. So let me explain some of it. First of all Reason has a high premuim placed on it. There is much encouragement to not only study the bible but to study the history of the Christian religion, which brings the Catholic Church front and center. There is encouragement to study various theology with the understanding of who wrote it and the times they wrote in. While there is much good to be said about say, St. Paul he was also as much a product of his time and his place as we are. The Roman beliefs of where a woman ranked in their society can be seen in all of Paul's writings. In today's world he would be known as a misoganist. St. Augustine sincerely believed that women had nothing to do with the conception of a child, she was only the carrier. Was he an idiot? No, some of his writings are outstanding, some are horrid. But he took what he knew at the time and utilized that knowledge to be able to base his theology on something. Understanding that is what the Episcopals call reason. Today, though science we know that women contribute half of what later becomes a human child, but St. Augustine did not have that knowledge. Should we therefore discard all of St. Augustine? No, again he has things that are relevent to today's world. Should we then discard what we know through science? Again no, we simply have to be able to intergrate all of our knowledge and marvel at the human machine that God created. Episcopals put more of a premium on the new Testament, not so much the old testament, even though sections of both are read every Sunday based on the church calender. However it the belief that we are Christians, and therefore the new Testament is to be looked for more answers than the old, or we would be Jewish.
Now from my own standpoint. If one is going to follow the old testament in terms of who may or may not be a priest, or what is said about homosexuality etc.. then one does not have the right to pick and choose what you will follow. From that reasoning it is my belief that if you opt to follow who may be a priest etc.. then you also are obligated to follow ALL of the laws. That means that it is ok if some guy rapes your wife or your daughter as long as he pays the money required. It also means it wasn't her fault as long as she yelled loud enough. You have dietary laws to follow as well, not to mention lots of other things. And if you do all that then by defination you are not a Morman or any other religion except for Jewish and then Orthodox to boot. It is my belief that one should not take out passages of the old testament in particular to prove your right unless you are also living each and every one of those laws.
I also believe that Christ made it clear that simply going through the motions of each of those laws did not mean you were in the right, part of his problems with the pharisees, yes? In other words you could adhere to every single Mosiac law and still not get into the kingdom of heaven if you were not a decent person and decency meant being good to even sinners, because we were all sinners in one way or another. In the Episcopal church the Priest is not God's image, the Priest is there to assist their members not tell them what to do. It is always easier to give up your own independence and let someone else tell you what is right and what is wrong, then it is to have to think about it, and make up your own mind.
I don't believe that anyone would be so foolish as to believe that screwing a sheep is appropriate or that murder is something we would put up with. Of course society has to have boundries. That does not mean that everyone however should have someone else's morality shoved down their throat. I expect there will be people who leave the Episcopal church over Bishop Robinson, just like their were members who left when women were ordained as Priests, and again when women were allowed to become Bishops, and again when gay or lesbians were allowed into the Priesthood. If they are that uncomfortable, then they should leave. However for each time people left, the church gained others who yearned for a church that sincerely believed we are all God's children, and that God loves all of his creations. It is for this reason I specifically left the Lutheran Church of my youth and became an Episcopalian. I also happen to believe that God endowed humans with a brain for a reason, and expects us to use that gift and not simply be drones doing what someone else with no more brain than the rest says to do. It is that ability to use reason and think for myself that made me an Episcopalian, a decision I have never regretted. No, it's not for everyone, but then I believe that Christ said there were many rooms in his father's mansion, which tells me there is room for all.

Now I have a question, being fairly new and all. Would a moderator actually close a thread simply because a topic wandered? Like I said earlier I simply regard it as good conversation that has many turns like any good conversation. However if it is not acceptable here to do that, then I would like to know so I don't do it again.
Jews do not call it the Old testament It is called the Torah. Old implies that there is a new one which we do not believe in

[old-reb]

Originally posted by red crabtree
Reb, I am glad that your family is ok, I'm sorry I really thought your were joshing. I'm a Registered Nurse and used to work Neuro-trauma ICU several years ago, it is not unusual for people who have had a trauma to not recall a thing. In fact it is unusual for a patient to remember what happened, I always figured that was God's blessing. Plus depending on the injury we give all sorts of drugs that are amnesics as well as sedatives. It is good they lived in an area in which life flight is available. I live in a rural area and there is no life flight, one has to get an ambulance to a hospital where life flight comes to. Sometimes that is a matter of life and death, or living death.
---------------------------------
No, it's not for everyone, but then I believe that Christ said there were many rooms in his father's mansion, which tells me there is room for all.
----------------------------
Now I have a question, being fairly new and all. Would a moderator actually close a thread simply because a topic wandered? Like I said earlier I simply regard it as good conversation that has many turns like any good conversation. However if it is not acceptable here to do that, then I would like to know so I don't do it again.

Hello Red Crabtree,

It is that living death that I had feared most. On medical care I knew people who were standing and fell and hit their head and received no care and died.

About closing the thread; I wrote a partically offensive reply prior to Michael wanting a moderator. So I deleted it. Even in my old age I still sometime get out of bounds.

I like the many rooms for god. Will someone please tell that to the Muslims.

I like the way you reason.



old reb

[old-reb]

Originally posted by jewbyc
Jews do not call it the Old testament It is called the Torah. Old implies that there is a new one which we do not believe in

I did not know that.

I heard on the radio today that there were 3 kinds of jews and they named them but none of the names stuck to me brain.

old reb

[red crabtree]

oh, I realize that, I'm simply speaking of it from a Christian background.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by red crabtree In the Episcopal church the Priest is not God's image, the Priest is there to assist their members not tell them what to do. It is always easier to give up your own independence and let someone else tell you what is right and what is wrong, then it is to have to think about it, and make up your own mind.

By the way. This little diversion does have some relevance to the original topic. As there would probably have been death threats by now if we were questioning Islam.

Red-

You have stated your position very well and I appreciate the time you have spent. I better understand your position. Today, on Sean Hannity, he interviewed Pat Robertson and a lady Bishop from your church. I was shocked at her attitude, but better understand it after reading your essay. The question from Hannity was essentially " is homosexuality a heavy moral sin according to the Bible, and an abomination to God?" The underlying question was that if it was, how could her church vote a practicing homosexual in as a Bishop.

The answer from Robertson was predictable. He cited several examples of Old and New Testament. But the lady Bishop essentially said that whatever was written years ago can be superceded by a new understanding that sexuality between men is normal...or something to that effect. This essentially matches what you were saying, in that while God may have said XXX 2,000 years ago; it may not be relevant today; and that more enlightened and fair minded people would make up their mind as to what was right or wrong. Or perhaps better yet, what his prophets, being mortal men, said was not applicable today depending upon the current trends and interpretation of morality is. I hope I have understood what you are saying.

A different way of looking at this approach would be with a teenager looking at her parents rules. The teenager picks and chooses which rules to follow, according to her sense of justice/morality at the moment. When however, she gets in deep trouble, the kind parents shake their heads and tell her that they have a bit more experience at life than she does, and that the rules that are set are to help her get to the next level; adulthood in one piece. It is the same with God, who is our parent, and has a bit more experience with this short period we call "life on earth."

So. One can play the teenager, or one can try to follow the rules. Even if we do not fully understand at this moment why the rule was made. I am not talking blind obedience to every nuance dreamed up by some Bishop in 432 AD who was mad at the local governer. But the basics almost all Christians can agree to. With the homosexual Bishop issue we are talking basics.

But we are free to do as we please.... that is the beauty of America. I am only responding to the original question by Johnny as to what I thought about the Gay Bishop issue.

Originally posted by red crabtree

No, it's not for everyone, but then I believe that Christ said there were many rooms in his father's mansion, which tells me there is room for all.


Speaking of Johnny. You have just answered his last question better than I could.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by old-reb
Hello Red Crabtree,

It is that living death that I had feared most. On medical care I knew people who were standing and fell and hit their head and received no care and died.

About closing the thread; I wrote a partically offensive reply prior to Michael wanting a moderator. So I deleted it. Even in my old age I still sometime get out of bounds.

I like the many rooms for god. Will someone please tell that to the Muslims.

I like the way you reason.



old reb
Don't get me wrong Reb. I was just pointing out the way forums sometimes work. No one around here will shut down a good conversation, but with that comment you made, I realized that it was possible that a moderator MIGHT feel that the thread had been mined for all that was of value.

It did take off again with many good points being shared, and I for one certainly have no problem continuing to read along. I'm sorry if I seemed judgemental. It wasn't how I felt, but the fact is that the Israel/India thread was locked down moments before I made that comment and so, I thought it a possibility in this thread also.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Alfred
By the way. This little diversion does have some relevance to the original topic. As there would probably have been death threats by now if we were questioning Islam.

Red-

You have stated your position very well and I appreciate the time you have spent. I better understand your position. Today, on Sean Hannity, he interviewed Pat Robertson and a lady Bishop from your church. I was shocked at her attitude, but better understand it after reading your essay. The question from Hannity was essentially " is homosexuality a heavy moral sin according to the Bible, and an abomination to God?" The underlying question was that if it was, how could her church vote a practicing homosexual in as a Bishop.

The answer from Robertson was predictable. He cited several examples of Old and New Testament. But the lady Bishop essentially said that whatever was written years ago can be superceded by a new understanding that sexuality between men is normal...or something to that effect. This essentially matches what you were saying, in that while God may have said XXX 2,000 years ago; it may not be relevant today; and that more enlightened and fair minded people would make up their mind as to what was right or wrong. Or perhaps better yet, what his prophets, being mortal men, said was not applicable today depending upon the current trends and interpretation of morality is. I hope I have understood what you are saying.

A different way of looking at this approach would be with a teenager looking at her parents rules. The teenager picks and chooses which rules to follow, according to her sense of justice/morality at the moment. When however, she gets in deep trouble, the kind parents shake their heads and tell her that they have a bit more experience at life than she does, and that the rules that are set are to help her get to the next level; adulthood in one piece. It is the same with God, who is our parent, and has a bit more experience with this short period we call "life on earth."

So. One can play the teenager, or one can try to follow the rules. Even if we do not fully understand at this moment why the rule was made. I am not talking blind obedience to every nuance dreamed up by some Bishop in 432 AD who was mad at the local governer. But the basics almost all Christians can agree to. With the homosexual Bishop issue we are talking basics.

But we are free to do as we please.... that is the beauty of America. I am only responding to the original question by Johnny as to what I thought about the Gay Bishop issue.



Speaking of Johnny. You have just answered his last question better than I could.
It's just fine for folks to believe in their religion and even to believe that it has more answers than other religions, but time and again history has shown that when people get uppity with religion and intimate to their neighbors that they are low down sinners and not in God's good graces, trouble ensues.

Why can't people just live their beliefs before their God, refrain from judging others and, needless to say, from blowing themselves up along with those whom they consider "infidels' or whatever.

You have yourself a religion that fits your needs, you think it has the last word on things, and that's just fine.....until you start puffing up and implying that those of other persuasions just don't get it.

I am reminded of a biblical tale about a poor widow praying in the back of the church and hoping for the mercy of God, while a haughty cleric stood proudly at the front of the house, preening and congratulating himself on his piety. Guess who the Lord liked best?

Don't misunderstand me Alfred. I like you and am not applying this metaphor to you. I am just reminded of the tale as we carry on this discussion.

[Johnny Yuma]

Originally posted by Alfred

Speaking of Johnny. You have just answered his last question better than I could.

No he didn't and you know it. What Alfred keeps dodging and won't state is that Mormans are taught, when you die and resurrect, you either become a supreme being with your own heaven and your own planet, or an angel, or you live life eternal in some terestrial existence. Or.... you go to Hell. Those are the four resurrections.

As a diety, with your your wives (if you choose to take them along) you will have spirit children (the pre-existent children that will eventually become flesh and live on the planet you rule, if you so choose), along with your own plan of salvation for those that live upon said world.

They believe that G_d was once a "man" that became a supreme being. His name is Elohim. He rules over a planet named "Kolob" which is said to be one thousand times the size of the planet Earth. He had a spirit child that became a diety and is the ruler of this planet, Earth. His name is Jesus, or Jehova.

Further, they believe this gospel must be presented to every being that exists or has existed on this planet; either now or in the spirit world. Everyone gets a chance to accept or reject this doctrine.

Now I'm not saying this is right or wrong, and I'm not criticizing the belief, but I am saying that it defines this belief system and underlies its agenda, worldwide.

[Communication]

Originally posted by MichaelC
It's just fine for folks to believe in their religion and even to believe that it has more answers than other religions, but time and again history has shown that when people get uppity with religion and intimate to their neighbors that they are low down sinners and not in God's good graces, trouble ensues.

Why can't people just live their beliefs before their God, refrain from judging others and, needless to say, from blowing themselves up along with those whom they consider "infidels' or whatever.

You have yourself a religion that fits your needs, you think it has the last word on things, and that's just fine.....until you start puffing up and implying that those of other persuasions just don't get it.

I am reminded of a biblical tale about a poor widow praying in the back of the church and hoping for the mercy of God, while a haughty cleric stood proudly at the front of the house, preening and congratulating himself on his piety. Guess who the Lord liked best?

Don't misunderstand me Alfred. I like you and am not applying this metaphor to you. I am just reminded of the tale as we carry on this discussion.


Great response, MichaelC. The Jewish religion has a similar story to the one you mentioned about the poor widow and the haughty cleric. It's a very interesting human phenomenon, the idea of exhaulting one human being over another because of that person's learning. Some even make it the basis of their religion.

[old-reb]

Many of you speak about homosexuality or other diversity with great therotical knowledge but I can only speak from experience.

My dad hated New yorkers, jews, homos and blacks and so did I.

When he died at 61, my mom married a New york, homo with a trace of black in him; too bad he wasn't Jewish to complete the set. Daddy would turn over in his grave.

In public my dad spitted and sputtered and had a short fuse, But my new dad was smooth around groups of people, he showed interest in everyone and how they related to one another. He treated my mom like a queen. Everybody loved him even after he was arrested for having sex with another man in a department store bathroom. It was something that took a lot of soul searching for me to come to terms with what he was when he was such a good person.

He let me know he was interested but never pushed anything with me. I love and respect the man.

My dad lived a clean life and died at 61 my step dad smoked, drank, went to bars, and sucked ***k but he lived to 87.

I am thinking the ability to get along with all people brings a peace that helps one to live a long life.

My step Paw left no blood children.

I still don't approve of gay leadership but I have been wrong before.

old reb

[Communication]

Originally posted by old-reb
Many of you speak about homosexuality or other diversity with great therotical knowledge but I can only speak from experience.

My dad hated New yorkers, jews, homos and blacks and so did I.

When he died at 61, my mom married a New york, homo with a trace of black in him; too bad he wasn't Jewish to complete the set. Daddy would turn over in his grave.

In public my dad spitted and sputtered and had a short fuse, But my new dad was smooth around groups of people, he showed interest in everyone and how they related to one another. He treated my mom like a queen. Everybody loved him even after he was arrested for having sex with another man in a department store bathroom. It was something that took a lot of soul searching for me to come to terms with what he was when he was such a good person.


He let me know he was interested but never pushed anything with me. I love and respect the man.

My dad lived a clean life and died at 61 my step dad smoked, drank, went to bars, and sucked ***k but he lived to 87.

I am thinking the ability to get along with all people brings a peace that helps one to live a long life.

My step Paw left no blood children.

I still don't approve of gay leadership but I have been wrong before.

old reb


You're so great old reb! I'm really glad that you are here. You're like a midrash made flesh.



"Midrash"

the art of extending and interpreting Torah by commenting on the text, answering unanswered questions in the text, or deducing laws and traditions from the text. From the time the Torah was closed and canonized, Jews have been interpreting and reinterpreting the sacred writings of the Torah. Many of these interpretations are expressed through Midrash. There are two basic types of midrashim: Halakhic midrashim deal with legal matters; Aggadic midrashim deal with moral and spiritual issues and tend to read like stories. The sages of old wrote midrashim to teach and inspire, explain esoteric legal matters, and interpret the meaning of events of their day.

[Communication]

...and if they shut this thread down, they'd be damned fools.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by MichaelC

You have yourself a religion that fits your needs, you think it has the last word on things, and that's just fine.....until you start puffing up and implying that those of other persuasions just don't get it.

Well, I hope that I am not coming across as puffy, or implying people don't get it. That is not my intention. I am flabergasted that people are still religious in this day of "feel good" and "everything goes."

I was asked my opinion on the quesiton of the homosexual Bishop, I gave it along with my reasoning.

Everyone believes that they are in the "right' religion or church. Else why would they be there? Those that don't believe they are in the right church tend to move on to others. I would expect that many of the Anglicans may move based upon their reading of scripture versus the decision that was made on the Bishop. Then again, many outsiders may like the decision and may choose to join the Anglican church.

My only point about morality is:

1. If you use the Bible (Old and New) as a benchmark then homosexuality is not acceptable and a church leader should not be a homosexual. You can disregard what is in the Bible but you are doing exactly that. So be honest and say it doesn't matter what is in the Bible. That is what the Lady Bishop on the radio was doing.... being honest.

2. If you have some other benchmark, then you are free to do whatever you want, and can fully justify it.

The same argument can be said of the Constitution. If you want to increase the power of the Federal government to where it intrudes in everyone's daily life; do not claim that the Constitution says you need to do so; be honest and say the Constitution does not matter. That is what is sorely lacking in Washington DC.

It gets back to the topic of this thread. Islam rising. Now, it appears to be perfectly acceptable in Islamic culture to murder those who convert to Christianity or who disagree that Mohamad was the true and last prophet. We do not share those moral values.

This country was founded on basic Christian values which also happen to be basic Jewish values... eg those found on the Ten Commandments. It is a social contract between peoples who unite to form a country. We have been blessed with a great amount of freedom in this land, and it works because we all tend to follow the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule. Which is why I find it very curious that so many are going out of their way to destroy any trace of the Ten Commandments in public society.

This country (for the most part) has agreed upon what is moral and what is not moral for 200 plus years. We have a common set of expectations and rules which society tends to follow. For the most part this country has been very succesful and prosperous. We are a beacon to the world and a great majority of the world would love to be an American.

Over the past 50 years however, there has been a growing movement to change the basic moral fiber of this nation. To make "anything goes," to push religion from all public officials, to legislate the destruction of these common bonds. All of this is done with the call of "freedom" and "separation of church and state." The results are massive crime, massive amounts of father-less children, shocking amounts of rape, molestation etc. You even see it in the Catholic Church priesthood. You have people trying to destroy the Boy Scouts, the schools, and society in general. It is as if the country has being run by a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave.

What is happening is NOT religious people forcing their views down the throats of the masses. It the new religion of these drunken sailors that is being forced upon all. Usually by judicial fiat.

Many in the conservative camp are fighting as best they can the enemy...or the drunken sailors. But the enemy uses the same freedoms we all enjoy to destroy that freedom for all. The enemy will use "free speech" to destroy your free speech...that is, if you disagree with the enemy. The enemy of this nation try to point out that it is the religious (of all persuasions) who are bigoted, unforgiving, narrow minded and despicable. It is they however, who are the new-comers to this nation; not the religious minded. So draw your own conclusions.

We have to all be reminded that we can be so open-minded that our brains fall out. Society today is seeing the results of a lot of open-minded people....it is not that pretty.

[Johnny Yuma]

This illustrates what the Mormans teach about the cycle of birth, death, and resurrection.

The big picture, according to the Mormons. (http://nowscape.com/mormon/kolob1.gif)

These are the rituals that must be performed to become a diety:

Temple Rituals (http://nowscape.com/mormon/mormcr1.htm)

This is some of their physical evidence that they are "a remnant of the Jews". :

Artifacts (http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/decalog.html)

And the belief that there are three 2,000 year old "Nephites" still roaming the Earth: (This will blow your mind. Get out the popcorn.)

The immortals..... (http://nowscape.com/mormon/3nephites.htm)

[Alfred]

You know Johnny...people with a little knowledge and an agenda can go off a cliff. Is there a reason why you feel so motivated to try to "expose" the Mormons? It gets back to my "deep dark secret" comment.

Your earlier comments show that you have some knowlege, but you were wrong in your analysis of who goes to Hell according to our beliefs. So, people should take your analysis as being based upon incomplete knowledge....much of it from sources that are antagonistic of the Mormons.

As this is a Jewish related site, they should understand historically what I am talking about.

If I am completely wrong about your agenda then I apologize in advance.

PS: I looked at your URL's. Some of it is true, some of it is bogus, and some of it is sad. These are all anti-mormon sites by the way.

[L@mplighterM]

Originally posted by Johnny Yuma
This illustrates what the Mormans teach about the cycle of birth, death, and resurrection.

The big picture, according to the Mormons. (http://nowscape.com/mormon/kolob1.gif)

These are the rituals that must be performed to become a diety:

Temple Rituals (http://nowscape.com/mormon/mormcr1.htm)

This is some of their physical evidence that they are "a remnant of the Jews". :

Artifacts (http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/decalog.html)

And the belief that there are three 2,000 year old "Nephites" still roaming the Earth: (This will blow your mind. Get out the popcorn.)

The immortals..... (http://nowscape.com/mormon/3nephites.htm)



Mormons get their own planet to rule, Arabs only get 72 virgins(females or males) I think they are getting short changed.

[Alfred]

Originally posted by L@mplighterM
Mormons get their own planet to rule, Arabs only get 72 virgins(females or males) I think they are getting short changed.


The real question is do these "virgins' have to remain virgins throughout eternity. That would mean that all these Moslems studs who blow themselves up can "only look but don't touch."


Is that Hell??

[MichaelC]

I believe that it has already been pointed out in this thread that “times change” and people are prone to altering “the way things have always been done”. I believe it has also been pointed out in this thread that at one time “good” Christians felt no disharmony with slavery. I’m sure many of us could produce other examples from the historical record to further illustrate the point that the understanding of scripture changes as people evolve, and in the same way that no one would continue to argue that slavery is ordained by God, it is obvious to many that there are other issues that are not ordained by God either.

It seems that when anyone puts it this way, some feel it to be little more than an assault on the Ten Commandments (where is the one that decries homosexuality by the way?) and on their own concept of inviolable scripture. For my part, I think it would be more accurate to view it as an affront to their "personal" interpretation or their "church’s" interpretation, of scripture and a detour from the way they "think" things should be.

And all that is OK. I don’t care at all. At least not in a way of challenging their right to believe “whatever” they wish. It is in the public arena where folks start “vying” with their renditions of how “God” wants us to live that the trouble starts.

You’re a good guy, Alfred. I appreciate your presence here and you make plenty of sense most of the time. (You can hear the “but” coming already, can’t ya?), but I think you’re digging in your heels over a subject that needs more discussion in America and not a simple stereotyping as “evil” or “sinful” or…..whatever. You are free to think and do whatever you wish, but I consider you easily intelligent enough to understand that when you simply close the door to discussion, claiming that you already know what “God says” about an issue, you will never “hear” anything further.

I know that plenty of people “believe” in this manner, and while I am loathe to make the comparison, I believe it has already been mentioned that islam pretty much follows the same muse. They don’t listen to anything, they have allah’s word on everything and they don’t need “no stinkin’ discussion” about it. The infidels, those who do not see it their way, have no meaning to them as people and can be easily dispensed with either physically or with dhimmitude.

In the free world, the way in which people view religion has grown over the centuries and behaviors have been altered that are no longer appropriate, if they ever were.

Which leads us back to the way in which we are discussing this topic. It “is” rather civilized and yet, I can sense that certain aura of spiritual obstinacy that always wants to define people out of God’s realm. And I don’t get that. I don’t accept it either. Which, I am sure, doesn’t bother “true believers” anywhere. But, I’m always hoping that this idea that “we’re going to heaven and you, buddy, are headed elsewhere” will just fade away at long last and people will discover that God is simply much nicer than all that.

Originally posted by Alfred
Well, I hope that I am not coming across as puffy, or implying people don't get it. That is not my intention. I am flabergasted that people are still religious in this day of "feel good" and "everything goes."

I was asked my opinion on the quesiton of the homosexual Bishop, I gave it along with my reasoning.

Everyone believes that they are in the "right' religion or church. Else why would they be there? Those that don't believe they are in the right church tend to move on to others. I would expect that many of the Anglicans may move based upon their reading of scripture versus the decision that was made on the Bishop. Then again, many outsiders may like the decision and may choose to join the Anglican church.

My only point about morality is:

1. If you use the Bible (Old and New) as a benchmark then homosexuality is not acceptable and a church leader should not be a homosexual. You can disregard what is in the Bible but you are doing exactly that. So be honest and say it doesn't matter what is in the Bible. That is what the Lady Bishop on the radio was doing.... being honest.

2. If you have some other benchmark, then you are free to do whatever you want, and can fully justify it.

The same argument can be said of the Constitution. If you want to increase the power of the Federal government to where it intrudes in everyone's daily life; do not claim that the Constitution says you need to do so; be honest and say the Constitution does not matter. That is what is sorely lacking in Washington DC.

It gets back to the topic of this thread. Islam rising. Now, it appears to be perfectly acceptable in Islamic culture to murder those who convert to Christianity or who disagree that Mohamad was the true and last prophet. We do not share those moral values.

This country was founded on basic Christian values which also happen to be basic Jewish values... eg those found on the Ten Commandments. It is a social contract between peoples who unite to form a country. We have been blessed with a great amount of freedom in this land, and it works because we all tend to follow the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule. Which is why I find it very curious that so many are going out of their way to destroy any trace of the Ten Commandments in public society.

This country (for the most part) has agreed upon what is moral and what is not moral for 200 plus years. We have a common set of expectations and rules which society tends to follow. For the most part this country has been very succesful and prosperous. We are a beacon to the world and a great majority of the world would love to be an American.

Over the past 50 years however, there has been a growing movement to change the basic moral fiber of this nation. To make "anything goes," to push religion from all public officials, to legislate the destruction of these common bonds. All of this is done with the call of "freedom" and "separation of church and state." The results are massive crime, massive amounts of father-less children, shocking amounts of rape, molestation etc. You even see it in the Catholic Church priesthood. You have people trying to destroy the Boy Scouts, the schools, and society in general. It is as if the country has being run by a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave.

What is happening is NOT religious people forcing their views down the throats of the masses. It the new religion of these drunken sailors that is being forced upon all. Usually by judicial fiat.

Many in the conservative camp are fighting as best they can the enemy...or the drunken sailors. But the enemy uses the same freedoms we all enjoy to destroy that freedom for all. The enemy will use "free speech" to destroy your free speech...that is, if you disagree with the enemy. The enemy of this nation try to point out that it is the religious (of all persuasions) who are bigoted, unforgiving, narrow minded and despicable. It is they however, who are the new-comers to this nation; not the religious minded. So draw your own conclusions.

We have to all be reminded that we can be so open-minded that our brains fall out. Society today is seeing the results of a lot of open-minded people....it is not that pretty.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Alfred
The real question is do these "virgins' have to remain virgins throughout eternity. That would mean that all these Moslems studs who blow themselves up can "only look but don't touch."


Is that Hell??
I have heard it put this way. The virgins are perpetually renewed. Hmmmmmm. A continual deflowering, as it were.