Posted on 12/22/2006 4:33:05 AM PST by SJackson
Reflections on the treatment of non-believers by the three great monotheistic religions on their holy days.
But quite unlike the Jewish and Christian religious celebrations of Hanukkah and Christmas, if you are a non-Muslim, don’t plan on investigating the mysteries of Islam by joining your Muslim friends on their trip to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj – you’re not invited.
Perhaps no better contrast between Judaism, Christianity and Islam exists than the treatment of non-believers on the respective holy days of each religion. I recall fondly the many times that I have participated in the Passover seder at the invitation of Jewish friends and have each time been awed at the profound meaning attached to every element of the seder which is designed to illustrate the fascinating historical narrative of the Jewish people over the millennia that is the foundation of both the Christian and Islamic faiths.
I also remember the occasion several years ago when a Chinese friend of mine who was finishing his PhD at Ohio State joined my family and I for our Christmas Eve celebrations. After joining us for worship, he told us with tears in his eyes how that was the first time that he had ever heard the gospel message that Jesus Christ had come into the world to save sinners – a message that had been branded as counter-revolutionary and been outlawed in his own country. Needless to say, we were delighted when he joined us again the following year for Christmas Eve, where he was anxious to tell anyone at church who would listen how he had embraced the free offer of the gospel and become a Christian the previous year. Having returned home to China, my friend is now a leader in the underground Church there.
But if I wanted to join my Muslim friends next week on the Hajj, I would have to bear in mind that my reception would not be as friendly. I would be forbidden to bring my Bible or any Christian literature with me on my trip to Saudi Arabia, and be required to remove anything identifiably Christian from my person (crosses, etc.). There are no Christian churches allowed in the “Land of the Two Mosques”, so there would be no opportunity for me to join with fellow Christians there in our weekly celebration of the Lord’s Day, and I would constantly be under watch by the Wahhabi Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice police to ensure that I didn’t share my Christian faith with anyone else.
Even having arrived in Saudi Arabia and complying with the absolute ban of any expression of my faith, as I approached the holy city of Mecca, I would be denied entry. Despite all of the supposed Quranic endorsements of the “People of the Book” (i.e. Jews and Christians), as a kafir, my presence is not welcome at the Hajj. We should remember that the cardinal offense that prompted Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lackeys to declare war on the “Crusaders and Zionists” in 1996 was the presence of American troops in the Arabian Peninsula, though nowhere near the sacred cities of Mecca or Medina.
For Muslims in the West, they have as much freedom as any other to practice their faith openly and freely without any fear of being molested. The number of mosques popping up all over America is a testament to that freedom.
Such is not the case for Jews and Christians in Islamic lands, however, where people of those faiths are subject to countless acts of intimidation and violence on a daily basis. Even in their synagogues and sanctuaries, believers are not immune from attack. In fact, many are prevented from approaching their own holy sites. In the Holy Land, Muslims occupy the Temple Mount – the historic location of the ancient Jewish Temple – and Jewish worshippers are subject to regular assaults by stone-throwing Muslim crowds at the nearby Wailing Wall and other sacred sites. And it was the mere presence of a Jew – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – near the Temple Mount in September 2000 that sparked the second intifada that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Jews, Christians and Muslims in recent years. Jews have also been forbidden from visiting the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron – Judaism’s second-most holy site – since it was converted to a mosque in 1266.
And earlier this month Turkish authorities feared that Pope Benedict might take the opportunity while touring the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul – one of the greatest churches in the world that was seized by Muslims after 1,000 years of constant use by Christians – that he might actually try to pray there.
It isn’t just the Hagia Sophia that has suffered the inglorious fate of being converted from its original use as a Christian church to be taken over by invading Islamic forces and made into a mosque. In her book, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Bat Ye’or chronicles how innumerable Christian and Jewish holy sites, such as the Church of St. John in Damascus that was demolished by the Islamic Caliph Abd al-Malik in 705 and had the Umayyad Mosque built over it, were taken over for the exclusive use for Islamic worship during the constant waves of Islamic conquest. It is worth noting that even the Kabaa, the central location of worship in Mecca, was seized by Mohammad from non-Muslims.
Getting back to my original point – one of the constant complaints of Muslim apologists is that Westerners just don’t understand Islam. Fair enough; but is that entirely the fault of non-Muslims who are shut out of Islam’s most important rituals? And might it be the case that those of us, Christians and Jews alike, who are angered at the treatment of our brethren in Islamic lands do so not because of our alleged “Islamophobia”, but rather on the basis of real grievances?
As former President Jimmy Carter travels the country promoting his book identifying Israel as an apartheid state because they refuse to capitulate to Palestinian terrorism, perhaps he might take some time and try to join his Wahhabi patrons during the Hajj this year and see what religious apartheid is really all about. While believers and non-believers alike will enjoy the Hanukkah and Christmas holidays, the invitation for Jews and Christians to join their Muslim friends and neighbors for the Hajj this year didn’t get lost in the holiday mail. It was never sent.
Only God is the Lord and Giver of Life: He can authorize when it can be taken, and He can prohibit the taking of it. He says:
Deuteronomy 19:10
Innocent blood must not be shed
Proverbs 6:16-17
These .. things doth the LORD hate: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood
Isaiah 59:2-7
Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood..[you] make haste to shed innocent blood
Jeremiah 7:6
Oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood ...
Jeremiah 22:3
Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood.
Moreover, merely beinging to a false religion (Islam) or going on a Hajj doesn't make a person guilty of a capital crime. Crime is something you do, not merely something you think. Destroying a nuclear installation (which could well be a justified action) is not the same as murdering families on pilgrimage. And a person who is not in combat is not a combatant. Surely you know that.
You are not a Catholic, but for the sake of Catholics who might be reading this exchange, I want to add that the Catechism of the Catholic Church gives strong expression to the American and Judeo-Christian law cited above:
2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out. Thus the extermination of a people, nation, or ethnic minority must be condemned as a mortal sin. One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide.
2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."
I thought you folks (and any of your other FR buddies) might be somewhat interested in this thread.
And Truman and the rest of America had to live with the decision that these tactical strikes saved what some analysts were predicting to be in excess of hundreds of thousands of casualties trying to take the home island of Japan by invasion. "Kill Them all, God will know his own" was used by a Christian leader ordering the Albigensian Crusade. We can "go down fighting" against Fundamentalist Islam or we can submit. I choose the first as my tagline states. In war (especially the type of non-conventional war that we are currently fighting), this area becomes extremely blurry and I don't believe that Truman was wrong. I was agreeing with sentiment expressed out of frustration, I am quite sure, that we "take the gloves off". I am not going to hang around to discuss the morality of Truman's decision.
Theocide, maybe ;^)
Most?
What were the others??
Well, when they hide in amoung the innocent(?) then what are we to do?
NIV Matthew 13:24-30
24. Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
25. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.
26. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27. "The owner's servants came to him and said, `Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'
28. "`An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, `Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
29. "`No,' he answered, `because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.
30. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"
Unlike the show of resolve at Hiroshima that saved millions of lives, a Mecca nuke would simply be vindictive.
Well CRAP!!
Let's just give up then!
Here: take my head, as I won't be using it.
AMEN!
On a final note, the atomic weapons used against Imperial Japan was not part of policy to eliminate the entire race of Japanese.
1. (which explains the Geneva rules we are ignoring today - if you ain't in a uniform and take up arms against me, you're fair game and NO protections apply.)
2. There's also the simple reality that, if it does not terrify them into abject surrender (dhimmitude), it can really piss-off the civilians and seriously complicate things if you manage to best their army. ----- (See rule #1)
Very succinct description of the workings of islam. It is a criminal enterprise and must be punished (wiped out).
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
-Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
We should because they're terribly important.
Deliberate targeting of non combatants is a war crime.
Then why wasn't Curtis LeMay tried as a war criminal after WWII? Why wasn't Sherman tried as a war criminal after the Civil War?
if you wish to assume moral equivalency with them.
It's precisely this kind of silly thinking that's going to lead to the deaths of thousands more American civilians. We are not and never will be 'morally equivilant' to these thugs.
"He who would kill you, arise and kill him first." Leviticus.
L
Their 'holy book' commands them all to be 'holy warriors'.
There are no civilians. Once again, you haven't educated yourself on the mindset of the enemy. Now if you want to risk your life that's fine. But you've no right to gamble with mine.
L
Absurd.
So if we don't nuke Mecca, then we should just give up? Nothing else will work? Invading Iran and Syria won't work? Just nuke Mecca or surrender, right?
I guess you really aren't using your head. You certainly won't miss yours.
The problem though, is that the world's 1 billion Muslims are not the enemy, but the enemy's captives; moreover, with respect to the present jihad movements, many more of them are victims than perpetrators, and God knows how many millions or tens of millions are in some confused and fearful place in-between.
I believe St. Paul had a handle on this when he wrote,
(Ephesians 6:12)
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
If that is the case, we are in a very dangerous situation indeed; it is war, but war in which the spiritual forces are salient; and it is all the more urgent that we not repudiate God's law and thereby forfeit His indispensible guidance and protection.
Because they were on the winning side?
"We are not and never will be 'morally equivilant' to these thugs."
If our soldiers are not equivalent to thugs --- and I believe they are not --- then it behooves them to refrain from behaving like thugs. Just warriors attack combatants, the enemy's warmaking assets, and military targets. Thugs attack civilians, or destroy whole districts indiscriminately.
Our soldiers have an ethic of honor. They have an ethic of destroying the enemy's ability to fight, and shielding the noncombatants, which they do even when it is costly to themselves. This pertains to a warrior's honor: and this is the reason why our troops deserve our support.
There is no international law! There is also nobody to enforce it, that is more than obvious...
No law prevents any military action...
The deployment of massively destructive weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were at the sole discretion of the U.S. president.
The same is true today. The War Powers Act is still a valid act of Congress, it has never been repealed...
You have a point in the sense that that jihadis want their war to be the uprising of the whole people, including pregnant women strapping on explosives, and 12-year-olds setting up IED's. And of course, they can put together a pageful of their perverted scriptures in support of this filthy vision.
However, not all Muslims go along with this. You yourself know that a substantial majority of those killed, injured, made homeless and forced into exile over the past 20 years by Muslim jihad groups, have been other Muslims. Sectarian violence and ethnic/regional mayhem seem to account for the lion's share of violent deaths.
With nobody wearing uniforms, following a flag, following a recognized command structure, or representing a state or government. it is exceedingly difficult to sort out who is a combatant and who isn't. Most of the combatants are technically civilians; and they'll use anybody--- street-sweepers, beggars, schoolgirls, babies -- as human shields.
In such situations, you can't expect our troops to be clairvoyant or exercise infallible judgment as to targets. It's inevitable that as they target the thugs, there'll be a lot of collateral deaths. OK. But they still have to target the thugs.
For that reason, it's still important to rule out notions like "Let's drop a Big One on Mecca at the height of the Hajj." That's not war: that's butchery. It puts you on the same moral level as Mohamed Atta al-Sayed.
Islam = slavery
Moderate Muslim = out of bullets...
I really don't remember... don't much care...
I do know most of them were Saudi...
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