Some of the posters, here, suggest a level of hatred that reminds one of the Thirty Years War in Germany. It was not pretty, but it was justified on similar theological intolerance. While I certainly do not agree with the criticism of Judaic and Christian values, that some say are inscribed within the Muslem shrine, it was a belief that Judaism and Christianity had become corrupt that inspired some of the early Muslem firment. Answer their argument, by all means, but do not beg the question by hurling epithets back, against whatever isolated phrases you may quote out of context.
The terrorists today are fanatics. Fanatics are not limited to any one faith. As we root out this set of fanatics, and bring justice to them, let us not help recruit other fanatics by persecuting people who simply come from a similar religious background. The destruction of those Buddhas in Afganistan was an atrocity. So were some of the actions of Savonarola, who spoke no better for true Christianity than the Taliban do for Islam.
The idea of spitefully destroying someone else's ancient shrines, is no way to promote your own Faith; no way to honor God; and above all, since some of you feel the need to preach, no way to reach any of the unconverted and bring them to your Faith. Nothing could be more counter-productive. Some of you need to take a cold shower and stop and think.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
But I have a question to ask you. When you stated that some people needed to take a cold shower was that directed at me, and if so, why?
What if, rather than destroying it, we move it. It was sited there to obliterate the memory of the Temple, and the church too which stood near the site. You cite the destruction of the Buddhist shrines as a horror, which it was. But if the Taliban builds a Mosque at the site, you switch to their side. Buddhist's, if you are able don't move the Mosque and rebuild your shrines, you're a fanatic. It's easy to become a fanatic Ohioan. The Dome was sited there for a reason, the same reason the shrines were destroyed, the permanant destruction of a non Islamic religion. The Buddhist's might want to rebuild their shrines one day. Is that spiteful? Why is the desire to reconstruct the Temple spiteful?
...and above all, since some of you feel the need to preach, no way to reach any of the unconverted and bring them to your Faith.
I'm unclear who that is adressed to. I have no need to preach, and my religion doesn't encourage me to "reach any of the unconverted and bring them to your Faith". Not an issue.
This Dome was built where it was specifically to drive a silver stake into the heart of one religion, ending it forever. It is also placarded with blasphemies against another religion. The latter had over 80% of the population of the Land when Islam took over, and the former most of the remainder. Muslims could have had a convention in a phone booth, and for years a handful of them, armed to the teeth, would meet each Friday in and around the Temple ruins on the south side, where Al Aqsa would later be constructed.
There is nothing hateful or anti-Islamic in my posting. History shows that they were unable to kill off the two religions they attacked: indeed those religions remain vibrant and interesting, while Islam represents nothing but poverty, feudalism, illiteracy, perversion, vice, murder, brutality toward women in every way, and a hundred things that you would have the hide of any American who practiced them, or if they even advocated them.
Yet for your little Muslim darlings, you make excuses for any vileness, any filth.
Note that I advocated not the destruction of this vicious Dome, but its careful stone-by-stone preservation so that it could be set up where it belongs, in the world capital of hatred, intolerance, and the non-permitting of diversity. That is Mecca.
The penalty for a non-Muslim who sets foot there is instant death. I have not heard any claim, not even by his frothing enemies in the media, that anything adverse might happen to a non-follower of Jerry Falwell who might set foot in Lynchburg. Perhaps you had better examine the differences between those two, instead of claiming there is something similar.
Christians, and Americans, and Jews are all innocent of the WTC bombing. And so am I. So why does the vituperation get directed at US, instead of at the guilty party, the abomination of desolation itself?