Views about Chris Hitchens, please!

[DVV]

First of all, it's ignorance, not ignorancy.

I'm a broken English poster, mind you

[DVV]

Lastly, The god of Islam ordered violence. The god of the Jews and theoretically Christians directly ordered violence. Jesus himself said "Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." They all commanded terrible things. And their followers carried them out. What makes Allah worse than god, when they did the same thing?

Terrible things ? all ?
You can hate Christians as much as you like, fact is that Jesus never ordered anyone to be killed, nor raped.
Never and ever.
What you have quoted is another parable, referring to the fact that he was trying to bring his followers on a new path.
You won't compare this to the murders and rapes committed by Muhammad and his followers, will you ? These murders being, and that is worse, ratified by the law of God.

Moreover, the mission of Jesus was to "offer" the God of the Jews to all human beings (judaism being primarily a "national" religion). It means : e-qua-li-ty.

On the contrary, the Koran tells muslims that the life of an Infidel is of little value.

It's like that, like it or not.

[DVV]

Fortunately, a lot of muslims are better than their prophet.
Unfortunately, in the course of history, the Church has forgotten its own message.
Still, islam is quintessentially a violent and intolerant faith.

[Chris Scott]

"What makes Allah worse than god, when they did the same thing?"
To be honest there is little to choose between these equally fictional beings.
Whenever the violent acts carried out in the name of Islam are mentioned you will get someone saying "What about the Crusades? What about the Inquisition?" Of course Christianity has dark chapters in its history but I stress that word "history." The point is that it is the 21st century and atrocities in the name of Allah are being perpetrated by groups or at state level pretty much every day. Of course there are still examples of violence perpetrated in the name of Christianity by fanatics or those with mental health problems.
But I would suggest that the incidence of atrocities in the name of Islam vastly outnumber those of any other faith and that violence and intolerance are accepted as legitimate means of defending and disseminating the faith by a larger proportion of its faithful than other belief systems.
As another poster said we have seen crowds of thousands of Muslims marching in the UK in protest at slurs on the name of their prophet - but where were those same moderate Muslims to show their opposition to the 7/7 London bombings, or the Madrid atrocity or, indeed, any of the vile acts of murder done in the name of that same prophet?

[DVV]

Whenever the violent acts carried out in the name of Islam are mentioned you will get someone saying "What about the Crusades? What about the Inquisition?"

Ah oui, ça, on y a droit à chaque fois.
Quelle bande de noeuds.

[Errata]

Terrible things ? all ?
You can hate Christians as much as you like, fact is that Jesus never ordered anyone to be killed, nor raped.
Never and ever.
What you have quoted is another parable, referring to the fact that he was trying to bring his followers on a new path.
You won't compare this to the murders and rapes committed by Muhammad and his followers, will you ? These murders being, and that is worse, ratified by the law of God.

Moreover, the mission of Jesus was to "offer" the God of the Jews to all human beings (judaism being primarily a "national" religion). It means : e-qua-li-ty.

On the contrary, the Koran tells muslims that the life of an Infidel is of little value.

It's like that, like it or not.

I don't hate Christians. I don't hate Muslims. If I had to choose between the two, I'd probably be a Muslim, but only because there's more similarity to Judaism.

It is a parable. He is telling his follower that their purpose is to go out into the world and create division, conflict and strife. They are to wrench the faithful out of the clutches of the unbelievers. And that's fine. I mean, how else are you going to gather them? But it is antagonistic. Jesus was antagonistic. And I'm perfectly fine with that, but I'm not going to pretend he was all sweetness and light. He was not.

I don't know if you are a Christian. Clearly I am not. As such, I admit to not having the best handle on the nature of Jesus. And not all Christians believe the same thing. My thought is that since god is the Father, and Jesus the Son, as Catholics use Jesus as an intercessor between themselves and god, and as most people seem to agree that god and Jesus existed at the same time, so Jesus was not god on earth, that if one has to choose between the mandates of god and the mandates of Jesus, you are supposed to defer to god. And there isn't a lot of conflict there. But saying that Jesus ordered no deaths (though he encouraged behavior that could result in death) does not in any way mean that god his father ordered no deaths. He did. Many times. Actually that's almost his primary occupation. Christians follow the teachings of Jesus, or are at least supposed to, but they still worship and follow the word of god. It's great that Jesus didn't kill anybody. His God did. He did it a lot. So I'm not sure what exactly you mean by defending Christianity by saying that Jesus didn't order any deaths. Unless he is your god, and not god, or both are, it doesn't really matter what Jesus did when discussing the behavior of gods.

Jesus may have offered equality, but his followers didn't. Else there would have been no rift between Peter's Christianity and Paul's Christianity.

Finally, it makes sense to ask the question "Is there a reason Muhammad targeted the Jews in Medina?" And the answer is yes. There was a reason. And it's a reason both Jews and Muslims agree on, though clearly they have different interpretations. According to Muslims, the Jews of Medina, allies of Muhammad, betrayed him. According to Jews, the Jews of Medina withdrew their support of Muhammad because it became unclear what kind of future they would have under Muslims, whether they would be allowed to retain positions of power. Both side agree there was a betrayal, though Jews perceive having a good reason for it. So Muhammad killed them as traitors. Clearly Muhammad felt t was necessary, clearly Jews disagree. Any wholesale slaughter of any people is not okay. But nor is it accurate to think that Muhammad woke up one day and said "Hey, lets kill all the Jews". He had good relationships with some Jewish communities, bad relationships with others. He did not seek to destroy all Jews. Just those who arrayed themselves against him. Which is very human. But he had enough respect for even these enemy Jews that he allowed them to choose whether they would prefer to be judged under Islamic law or Jewish Law. In Qurayza, they chose to be judged by Jewish law, even though it meant death and slavery. Now it sounds appalling. But it was better to live and die under god's laws than to be spared under Allah's law. It is very rare that a people are offered their own law.

One thing you have to understand is that outside of the Middle East, the defining fear is not of Islam. Certainly they are far more destructive now than 200 years ago, but that didn't shape the Jewish character. In Europe, and thus in America, it is the persecution by Christians that shaped us. And yes, that was a long time ago. But living under that shadow made us who we are today. So despite the fact that Christians have really clamped down on antisemitic behavior, it doesn't change the past. It's not dissimilar to growing up in an abusive household, and now that you are an adult everything has changed. It's in the past, but it shaped you. You can't really ever forget. Forgive, certainly. But not forget. So yes, despite the fact it was a long time ago, we see the persecution by Christians the same way we see modern Muslim problems. I was changed by September 11. But I was also changed by the Inquisition. Both have affected my life as deeply, if not as intimately. I did not watch the expulsion of Jews from Spain the way I watched the Towers fall. But the culture I was born in was more affected by the Inquisition than by Al Qaeda. And that's just the way it goes.

[Errata]

I'm a broken English poster, mind you

No I know that. I wasn't being snide. I was just letting you know.

[Errata]

As another poster said we have seen crowds of thousands of Muslims marching in the UK in protest at slurs on the name of their prophet - but where were those same moderate Muslims to show their opposition to the 7/7 London bombings, or the Madrid atrocity or, indeed, any of the vile acts of murder done in the name of that same prophet?

They were there. They just weren't newsworthy. I wondered the same thing myself, so I looked it up. And it was all over the place, tucked in a corner deep in the newspaper near shoe ads. The King of Jordan, most of the Imams of Yemen, the ex President of Egypt, the Saudi royalty, all condemned the the terrorism. Even Khameini in Iran said something, which was really surprising. Every Muslim leader in the US and the UK condemned it. Maybe we weren't ready to hear it, and then when we were it had gotten lost in all the other news. Maybe it was in a bunch of people's best interests to keep us pissed off. Who knows. But people did express outrage. Not everyone of course, most people remember the Palestinians partying in the streets on 9/11. But that wasn't a religion thing, that was an anti American thing.

But the statements are there. You just have to look pretty hard for them.

[DVV]

No I know that. I wasn't being snide. I was just letting you know.

Thanks, Errata.
Whenever I'll meet the word "ignorance" in the future, I'll have a thought for you.

[DVV]

Jesus may have offered equality, but his followers didn't.

Some did, some didn't.
Anyway, that is off-topic.
We're talking about the core of religions.
Islam says that infidels have to be killed, or humiliated as dhimmis.
Christianism doesn't say so.

[DVV]

For the record, Hitler wasn't a Christian.
In Mein Kampf, he wrote that he considered the battle of Poitiers a defeat.
The mufti of Jerusalem was also one of his good friends.
And Mein Kampf has recently become a best seller in some muslim countries.

[Chris Scott]

They were there. They just weren't newsworthy. I wondered the same thing myself, so I looked it up. And it was all over the place, tucked in a corner deep in the newspaper near shoe ads. The King of Jordan, most of the Imams of Yemen, the ex President of Egypt, the Saudi royalty, all condemned the the terrorism. Even Khameini in Iran said something, which was really surprising. Every Muslim leader in the US and the UK condemned it. Maybe we weren't ready to hear it, and then when we were it had gotten lost in all the other news. Maybe it was in a bunch of people's best interests to keep us pissed off. Who knows. But people did express outrage. Not everyone of course, most people remember the Palestinians partying in the streets on 9/11. But that wasn't a religion thing, that was an anti American thing.

But the statements are there. You just have to look pretty hard for them.

I am talking about mass condemnation from the millions of good moderate Muslims we are always being told about. If Muslims are incensed enough to demonstrate around the world about a silly badly produced movie which they see as insulting their prophet then I find it amazing that there was hardly a peep from the moderate Muslims in the wake of over 2000 innocent people being killed in the name of their religion on 9/11. I would have thought that hideous act and its like in the UK, Spain, Yemen, Bali etc. did far more to harm their faith than a puerile and amateurish film - but obviously their priorities are different.

[ChainzCooper]

I hope that my god is a little more elevated than the spoiled brat who punches his playmate in the nose for calling him a "stupidhead".

My cousin believed in god, and she died of breast cancer at the age of 36. Am I supposed to believe that the god she loved and served was punishing her for some imagined slight, or should I believe that cancer happens?

How am I supposed to know the answer to this question? I'm not the grand architect of how the world works
Jordan

[ChainzCooper]

ROFLMAO. The irony being, Jordan there is entirely incapable of understanding the irony of what he just posted.

My god, insulting people who don't believe as you do? Kind of pales in comparison to wishing them a painful death, don't it? A narrow point of view? Indeed.

Wise up, indeed.

I never wished anyone to die thats not what I posted
Jordan

[Errata]

For the record, Hitler wasn't a Christian.
In Mein Kampf, he wrote that he considered the battle of Poitiers a defeat.
The mufti of Jerusalem was also one of his good friends.
And Mein Kampf has recently become a best seller in some muslim countries.

No. He was not a Christian. He wasn't a Muslim either, but kinda besides the point.

The Holocaust absolutely changed things for us. And will haunt us for a long time. But our culture was sort of fixed before the 20th century. And it's because of what happened in the last thousand years. In a way, the Inquisition, the Crusades, The Pale, put us in a mindset of being persecuted as a people. I think because we had one eye open for those kind of things, a lot more of us survived the Holocaust than otherwise would have. The Ghettos, the arrests, the harassment, the separation from the rest of society, we knew how to do that. That we were prepared for. We were probably even prepared for the deaths, but not on that scale, and not in such an impersonal manner. I think in a real way, surviving the Middle ages taught us how to survive the Holocaust. Although it would have been super if someone had come for us a few years earlier... but that's a whole other thing.

This isn't a blame thing. Christians did bad stuff. And they know it. And they acknowledge it. But what happened, happened. And because it was 500 years ago and not 5 years ago doesn't make what happened less horrible. It doesn't make it more okay than other bad things people have done. The Jews treatment of Palestinians is one of the worst things we have done in our history. And the fact that it was done to us doesn't make it okay. In fact it makes it worse. The fact that Arabs treat them just as badly doesn't make it okay. And the fact that we don't do these kind of things as often as other groups doesn't make it okay. We did it. We are doing it. And we may think we have a good reason, but it doesn't matter. People should not treat other people that way, and we of all people should know that. We should live that. And we don't. And 500 years from now, we will still have to accept that we did it. An that people were terribly hurt. And maybe even permanently altered by the experience. And I don't know what I would say, but I hope I would say that I'm sorry. I hope I would say that nothing makes that okay. It's what I say now.

You as a person are not responsible for what happened. But your religion was. And your religion may know better now, and that's great. But there are no excuses for what happened 500 years ago. There are reasons, and by knowing those reasons to your bones helps make sure it doesn't happen again. But even if the Inquisition was a 4 on the atrocity scale and other things are a 9, that doesn't mean the Inquisitors are off the hook.