Multiculturalism

Straggler writes:Christianity has it's crazy-wing who want to impose a form of theocracy on the world and who are prepared to kill in the name of God (personally I'd put GW Bush in that category - but let's no fixate on specific individuals here) - Does this mean we can say that because these individuals exist we can say that "For Christianity it is a religious conflict by an empire intent on transforming every aspect of life into one defined by Christianity"?

The people who commit the worse offensesthe honor killers, the suicide bombers, the Taliban gunman who attempted to murder Malala Yousafzaiare absolutely clear about their motives and articulate them at every opportunity. They are motivated by Islam. Yes, other religions have problematic doctrines. We can even concede that the Old Testament is the most barbaric scripture of them all. But Christians and Jews don’t tend to take the worst of its passages seriously, for reasons that can be explained both by the centuries during which these Western faiths have been weathered by science and secularism and by crucial elements of their own theology. Most important, in my view, is the fact that Christianity and Judaism do not have clear doctrines of jihad, nor do they promise, ad nauseam, that martyrs go straight to Paradise. Islam is truly unique in this respect, which helps explain the fanaticism and violence we see throughout the Muslim world. Of course, your focus has been on the plight of women and girls under Islam, many millions of whom live in conditions that are antithetical to the most basic human happiness, as you know all too well. And the rationale for their oppression is drawn directly from scripture.

Tangle quoting Harris writes:But Christians and Jews don’t tend to take the worst of its passages seriously, for reasons that can be explained both by the centuries during which these Western faiths have been weathered by science and secularism and by crucial elements of their own theology. Most important, in my view, is the fact that Christianity and Judaism do not have clear doctrines of jihad, nor do they promise, ad nauseam, that martyrs go straight to Paradise.

Straggler writes:You will find muslims who consider "jihad" to be descriptive of an internal spiritual struggle rather than a call to holy war and 'martyr' to be similarly used to describe non-violent acts of sacrificing oneself for the greater good. Conversely you will find biblical fanatics who think that the bible instructs them to take revenge on sinners and suchlike.

Are these peace-talking muslims re-interpreting texts filled with medieval violence to suit their own modern moral outlook? Sure. Of course they are. Exactly as are biblical apologists are ignoring or re-interpreting the nasty bits of the bible to suit their own modern moral viewpoint. We see that all the time here at EvC.

So the justification for talking about "Islam" in this sweeping way seems to rest on a numbers game of how many from each religion choose to re-interpret their holy book in a nice way vs how many stick with the more brutal historical interpretation of what it is God supposedly wants them to do.

Do the bulk of moslems accept the brutal version over the apologists version?

How do we find out?

But jihadists are not insane, and their violence cannot be dismissed so simply. They are proud Muslims, adherents of a 14-centuries-old faith that conquered its way to one of history’s largest empires, the warriors before whom a now dominant, arrogant West once trembled. Their faith preaches that Allah wills the whole world to be united under the rule of Islam and its illiberal, totalitarian law code. Those who resist and refuse to convert are defying Allah; they are the enemies of Islam, the denizens of the House of War who endanger the spiritual wellbeing of the faithful in the House of Islam. As such, the infidels are the legitimate objects of Muslim violence, conquest, enslavement, and dominance, an aggression recorded on every page of history. If you want contemporary evidence for the reality of jihad, look around the world today, where Muslim violence is endemic, and accompanied by theological arguments drawn straight from Islamic scripture, theology, and jurisprudence.So contra Klein, the Paris jihadists didn’t do something that almost no human beings anywhere ever do. As we speak, plenty of Muslim human beings every day in Nigeria, Libya, Syria, northern Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to name a few venues of jihadist violence, are doing horrible things like murder, torture, beheadings, rape, sex-slavery, crucifixion, and all the other atrocities that are also copiously documented in the history of Islamic conquest and occupation. As a brave Egyptian critic of Islam, Ahmed Harqan, asked recently, What has ISIS done that Muhammad did not do? Thus it’s no coincidence that of the 7 global conflicts costing at least 1000 lives a year, 6 involve Muslims.Yet progressive orthodoxy dismisses this evidence as Islamophobic bigotry. Unable to deny the reality of theologically inspired Muslim violence daily filling the international news, they resort to blaming Western historical crimes, or scapegoating Israel. Another tack is to invoke the tu quoque fallacy, charging that Hebraism and Christianity are just as violent as Islam.This argument took off after 9/11 and has persisted among the jihad deniers. Historian of religion Philip Jenkins claimed, The Islamic scriptures [about war] in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible. Rabid anti-Zionist and apologist for terrorists Richard Falk played the moral equivalence card: The Great Terror War has so far been conducted as a collision of absolutes, a meeting ground of opposed fundamentalists. Atheist gadfly Richard Dawkins complained about fundamentalist Christians who fuel their tanks at the same holy gas station as Muslim terrorists. Similarly, a few years ago, Salon ran a headline asking, What’s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick. This specious moral equivalence descended into the absurd after the attacks in Paris, when a guest on MSNBC equated Islamic extremism, which murders thousands a week, with preacher Jerry Falwell’s 1988 unsuccessful libel suit against Hustler magazine.But even right-thinking people slip into this species of apologetics. A writer at Pajamas Media, in an otherwise perceptive analysis, wrote this as well: Unfortunately, this civilizational friction between the west and Islam has ebbed and flowed across the centuries. It is nothing new. Islam threatened the gates of Vienna and the Crusades reached the Holy Land. This smacks of the cycle of violence trope usually used against Israel. What it ignores is the fact that someone started the violence by serially invading and conquering the lands of others, and enslaving and oppressing their people. The siege of Vienna in 1683 was the last in a long history of Islamic military aggression against Europe and the centuries-long occupation of Western lands; the Crusades were an attempt to liberate from oppressive occupiers a land that had been Christian for centuries before being invaded by the armies of Islam.Most important, however, is the simple fact that the violence in the Old Testament is, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, descriptive, not prescriptive. It reflects the brutal reality of its times, not a theology binding the faithful for all times. As for the New Testament, the only violent verses apologists can dredge up, as a New York Times article did last week, come from the apocalyptic predictions of Revelations, or these words of Christ from Matthew: I come not to bring peace, but a sword. Grade-school catechumens know that this is a metaphor, not a call to jihad, like the Koranic verses instructing Muslims to slay the idolaters wherever you find them, or to fight those who do not believe in Allah, or to kill them wherever you find them.

Faith writes:Of course you wouldn't be interested in discriminating between beliefs, I wouldn't expect it of you. However this idea that islam is the same as Christianity only unreformed is a huge PC fiction. Read the article. All the violence in the OT is DESCRIPTIVE but in the Koran and other Islamic texts it's PRESCRIPTIVE. But of course that idea isn't PC so the false equivalence with Christianity is preferred.

However, I'm always glad that someone on the left, such as you and Harris etc., at least understand that Islam is a true danger and Christianity is not, even if you haven't a clue as to why.

Straggler writes:How do we find out?

Tan writes:Buggered if I know.

Straggler writes:What I question is whether this is innate to that specific religion

Give it a generation or two and will Islam be the problem?

Well we could try asking them.....

All the violence in the OT is DESCRIPTIVE but in the Koran and other Islamic texts it's PRESCRIPTIVE. But of course that idea isn't PC ...

The treatment of heretics[edit]Further information: Christian heresyWith the adoption of Christianity by Constantine I (after Battle of Milvian Bridge, 312), heresy had become a political issue in the late Roman empire. Adherents of unconventional Christian beliefs not covered by the Nicene Creed like Novatianism and Gnosticism were banned from holding meetings,[15] but the Roman emperor intervened especially in the conflict between orthodox and Arian Christianity, which resulted in the burning of Arian books.[15]In contrast to the late antiquity, the execution of heretics was much more easily approved in the late Middle Ages, after the Christianization of Europe was largely completed. The first known case is the burning of fourteen people at Orlans in 1022.[21] In the following centuries groups like the Bogomils, Waldensians, Cathars and Lollards were persecuted throughout Europe. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) codified the theory and practise of persecution.[21] In its third canon, the council declared: "Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, .. to take an oath that they will strive .. to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church."[22]Saint Thomas Aquinas summed up the standard medieval position, when he declared that that obstinate heretics deserved "not only to be separated from the Church, but also to be eliminated from the world by death" [23]The Old Testament has been the main source for Christian theologians advocating religious persecution. An example of this would be John Jewel. In defending the demand for religious uniformity by Elizabeth I of England, he declared: "Queen Elizabeth doth as did Moses, Josua, David, Salomon, Josias, Jesophat, ..." [24]