Imams of Inanity (US Christian Fundamentalists=Islamic radicals BARF ALERT!!!)

The Washington Post ^ | December 3, 2002 | Richard Cohen

[Citizen of the United States]

Religious tolerance is a complicated, amorphous thing. At the risk of sounding like a former President of the United States, what does "tolerance" mean, if one genuinely considers it?

The Caudillo "tolerated" non-Catholic religions in his Spain, but certainly not in the sense that the concept is understood by most United States citizens.

On a side note, it is important that one distinguish religion from ideology. Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were Roman Catholics; though both men were my brothers in faith, I abhor their actions -- actions which were the products not of their religion, but of their National-Sociliastic ideology.

Islam is a religion; Islamism is an ideology. They are not identical; I personally have known a Muslim heathen who was in every way a moral, honest, civically responsible human being. He is no more a terrorist than I am a member of the Schutzstaffel.

One can easily argue that the National-Socialists, the Communists of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, the Khmer Rouge, and the Islamists are far more like one another than not; their murderous totalitarian ideologies are what dictate their behaviour, rather than their religious identities (generally speaking, Christian, atheist, and Islamic).

Conversely, those ideologies most emphatically do not identify practitioners of those religions. I know many atheists who are not Communists; I know many Muslims who are not Islamists; I know many Christians who are not National-Socialists. One finds it convenient (albeit somewhat misleading, and admittedly so) to use geometry: A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.

[billbears]

Well you might as well keep waiting if Powell's statements ring true. This is one set of knees that will not bow to Mecca.

[k2blader]

Religious tolerance is a complicated, amorphous thing.

Agreed, which is why I put "religious tolerance" in quotes.

At the risk of sounding like a former President of the United States, what does "tolerance" mean, if one genuinely considers it?

In most cases, I avoid using the words "tolerance" & "religion" because they tend to obfuscate rather than clarify; not to mention I believe in neither. ;)

Also, my usage in this instance was meant to deride the phrase.

---

Regarding this administration's lack of consistency, please see:

Bin Laden No Worse Than Falwell, Robertson, Swaggart, Top Muslim Says (my posts #58 & 64)

and

Conservatives Dispute Bush Portrayal of Islam as Peaceful (my post #390).

[Michael2001]

Richard Cohen is an idiot.

Yep. Islam has declared war on us. But Richard Cohen is still asleep.

[AnnaZ]

I think Richard Cohen is an idiot. I will not be printing a retraction.

Ditto. And ditto.

[syriacus]

On a side note, it is important that one distinguish religion from ideology. Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were Roman Catholics; though both men were my brothers in faith,

Hitler was not much of a Catholic...he didn't even like the Catholic Church.

The following is a selection from pages 9 through 11 of Chapter 1, "Hitler," of the 1938 edition of Mr. John Gunther's Inside Europe

[Adolph Hitler's] Attitude Toward Religion

He was born and brought up a Roman Catholic. But he lost faith early and he attends no religious services of any kind. His Catholicism means nothing to him; he is impervious even to the solace of confession. On being formed his government almost immediately began a fierce religious war against Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike.

Why? Perhaps the reason was not religion fundamentally, but politics. To Hitler the overwhelming first business of the Nazi revolution was the "unification," the Gleichschaltung (coördination) of Germany. He had one driving passion, the removal from the Reich of any competition, of whatever kind. The Vatican, like Judaism, was a profoundly international (thus non-German) organism. Therefore -- out with it. ...

Catholicism he considered a particularly dangerous competitive force, because it demands two allegiances of a man, and double allegiance was something Hitler could not countenance. Thus the campaign against the "black moles," as Nazis call priests. Several times German relations with the Vatican neared the breaking point. Protestantism was -- theoretically -- a simpler matter to deal with, because the Lutheran Church presumably was German and nationalist. Hitler thought that by the simple installation of an army chaplain, a ferocious Nazi named Mueller, as Reichbishop, he could "coördinate" the Evangelical Church in Germany, and turn it to his service. The idea of a united Protestant Church appealed to his neat architect's mind. He was wrong. The church question has been an itching pot of trouble ever since. All through 1936 and 1937 it raged.

It was quite natural, following the confused failure to Nazify Protestantism, that some of Hitler's followers should have turned to Paganism. The Norse myths are a first-class nationalist substitute. Carried to its logical extreme, Naziism in fact demands the creation of a new and nationalist religion. Hitler has indicated this in a speech at Nuremberg in September, 1935. "Christianity," he said, "succeeded for a time in uniting the old Teutonic tribes, but the Reformation destroyed this unity. Germany is now a united nation. National Socialism has succeeded where Christianity failed." And Heiden has quoted Hitler's remark, "We do not want any other God than Germany itself." This is a vital point. Germany is Hitler's religion.

One of Hitler's grudges against God is the fact that Jesus was a Jew. Another is a nationalist grudge again. The basis of the Nazi revolution was the defeat of Germany in the War. Thus religion had to be Nazified because no God who permitted the French and any other "inferior" races to win the War could be a satisfactory God for Germany...