Posted on 04/05/2006 7:40:30 AM PDT by Tolik
What I find most amusing is the widespread belief among Muslims that this Sharia law is essential in order to preserve Islam. . . religion is absolutely not about mere outward compliance with the law. It is about belief -- it is about what a person believes in his heart. But in a nation where conversion away from Islam means death, then no believer can be sure that his own obedience is purely a matter of conscience.
I would agree with him in about 95% of all religions in the world. Certainly, Christianity and Judaism both emphasize willingly choosing to put one's trust (faith) in God, and having so trusted Him, to trust that He knows what He's talking about in matters of morality, so that one's actions and obedience to God's commands flow naturally out of that love and trust/faith.
Islam, on the other hand, does not preach love and faith. Nowhere in the Quran will you find the equivalent of the two prime commands of the Torah which Yeshua (Jesus) pointed to: Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as yourself. Rather, it preaches unquestioned obedience, even in defiance of one's own concience--and the penalty for any breach of that obedience is horrible mutilation and/or death.
In other words, Christianity and Judaism care about what's in the heart. Islam does not, so long as there is the outward show of obedience. Judaism and Christianity preach love; Islam preaches fear.
There is no faith under compulsion.
Agreed, but Islam demands compulsion in the Quran, the Hadith, and the example of it's cheif prophet. Islam is not a religion of faith.
And until Islam finds a way to make that the universal policy of all true Muslims, so that anyone who claims the right to kill for Allah is immediately denied the right to be recognized as a Muslim by any established Muslim community, then Islam poses a continuous threat to the freedom of all people in the world, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
The problem is that it cannot do that and still be Islam. Its founding documents (the Quran), traditions (Hadith), and example of its prophet (in the Sira) all demand the blood of those who would convert from Islam or resist it in any way. There is a reason why Mohammed is called by his followers the Prophet of the Sword.
The equivalent would we saying that Chrisitanity needs to renounce the idea that Yeshua died for our sins and rose again three days later. It can't do that and remain Christianity.
The reason why you will not get the moderate Muslims to go against the "fanatics" is that the moderate Muslims are caught in an inconsistant faith--all of the documents and traditions of their faith tell them that those who would impose Sharia by the sword are correct, though their own consciences find that abhorrent. A person with an inconsistant faith cannot be expected to champion it with any courage--just look at the wishy-washyness of those "Christians" who start trying to pick-and-choose what to believe from the Bible.
I hate to be the nutjob here, but the only way to save Islam is to destroy it--that is, the only way to save moderate Muslims from their religion is to destroy Islam in a way that it must be either abandoned or seriously reinterpreted. Demonstrating that Allah has no power to save the Islam from "the Great Satan" by destroying or at least permanently desecrating its holy sites is, IMHO, the only way to win this cultural war.
Of course, that means giving up any kind of incremental solution and going full-bore into WWIV, losing Middle-eastern oil (at least that which we can't secure by our troops), and being the bad guy for a while. It also means paying a terrible price in American blood, a price that our "allies" are unlikely to help us shoulder.
Which is why we won't do it.
The other solution would involve thousands or tens of thousands of Christians from all over the world slipping into the Islam world and preaching the Gospel in the power of the Spirit despite the almost certain cost of their lives. If the moderate Muslims heard a Word of God which coincided with their conciences, saw the power of the Spirit, and saw the willingness of Christians to die for their faith without complaint, how many of them might receive the true Prophet?
I don't see that happening either. The Church (the whole worldwide body of the Messiah) is too lukewarm and too comfortable or just plain too dead in some areas to mount such a campaign.
The third way is the most comfortable in the near term, but will haunt us in future years as Islam continues its spread through the West: Keep doing as we're doing.
Card recognizes the danger. What I don't think he recognizes is that his appeal to the "faith" of the Muslims to moderate is wasted, because they don't know Christian faith--only fear and obedience from fear.
Just my two cents.
Ender Wiggin Bump!
Lets step back and ask a similar question: Who is a good Christian? Or, who is a good Jew? Or who is a good atheist?
There are many answers to these questions, but despite doctrinal disputes within each group, we don't expect the answer to define somebody who will use violence to subjugate or kill the disagreeing. When violence is claimed to be committed in the name of Christianity or Judaism the biggest danger to the outsiders is to get overrun by the issuing stampede to the microphone of all those who will denounce the claim to be totally absolutely unequivocally false.
On another side there is large enough movement within Islam with plenty of names that none describe them completely or exclusively: Islamists, islamo-fashists, Jihaditsts; Wahhabists; irreconcilable wing of Islam. They do want to subjugate or kill the infidels. They claim to represent the only true interpretation of Islam. It does not help that they stretch the definition of infidel to include other disagreeing Muslims. Are they correct in doing so? I have no idea.
When we talk about the vast numbers of Muslims who don't act as Jihadists (and we talk here about high hundreds of millions people), I think I have a legitimate question, why? Because they are good Muslims, or because they are bad Muslims?
I have no more desire to become a scholar of Quaran than to read through doctrinal differences of, lets say, Catholics and Orthodox Christians. I don't want to be involved in deciding who and why is a good Muslim and who is not. I care only about their actions. If they will try to subjugate others, they represent threat to me.
So its up to them to decide. And the answer is better be right. Because if aggressive Muslims win, they won't be able to hold themselves from striking us hard. A scorpion is a scorpion is a scorpion. And regardless of how timid the West has become, a strong punch will unleash a stronger response than we've seen yet. Despite all of its multicultural PC, Europeans already enacted laws that humble our Patriot Act. They forget about patience quickly. Granted, their responses are short lived and slide back to the slumber fast. But with the nastier prodding they will act. And I am not talking about them really, but US. We still might do all that you described (even I want very much for that to never happen).
I posted thison an older thread butt..I wanted to point this out to the fellow OSC fans, that they have made so far two comics out of his stories. My favorite series is the Alvin Maker series and now they have a comic adaptation out for Red Prophet and Wyrms:
RED PROPHET: TALES OF ALVIN MAKER (2006)
http://www.milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=list&title=68034883364&snumber=1
Wyrms (6 issue mini-series)
http://www.dabelbrothers.com/home.html
Thanks for the links, but I can't get through. Any idea?
I have an agreement with the hosting company (its one of their services) that if the bandwidth is exceeded, rather than restricting access, they "fund" the additional bandwidth through advertisements. So, right now, the site has used like 54 Gb this month as opposed to a 52Gb limit that I am paying for. So, an ad will come up for ten seconds before going on to the site. Just let the ad sit there and you should go to one of those site.
The bandwidth resets on the 7th (day after tomorrow). Sorry for any inconvenience...but I just noticed myself.
Hope that helps. If not, Fremail me.
If people act in accordance with their good conscience, respecting others, being compassionate, allowing others the moral dictates of their own conscience in so far as it does not truly infringe on their own, standing up for what is good and will benefit the individual and society, then those people are following what I believe is the "light of Christ", which, in my faith, in some measure or another is given to every person born into this world.
I don't care what color, what origin, what culture, etc. they come from. If they heed that voice from within and follow it to those ends...they are good people.
Now, depending on the culture you are raised in...this may be more of a challenge for one than another. BUt I still believe that voice speaks to them from within. And that's okay and ends up being fair too...it just means those other people are challenged in other ways. We are all challenged in life...it is why God in Heaven has us here...in my faith, why we chose to come here in the first place from our Heavenly home. Others rebelled against God, wanting instead of His plan of compassion, mercy, free agency and atonement through His son, to seek compulsion. They followed Satan and are his.
In my Christian faith, that same war and fight is playing itself out constantly in the mortal world all around us. Basically a fight between good end evil, compulsion and freedom, good conscience versus coersion.
Anyhow...to the extent that Islam is used against those good ends and for the bad, then it is a danger and threat to people of good will, good conscience, reason, and liberty everywhere. It's very doctrine and history indicates it is and will not change instituionally until a massive and probably violent reformation takes place...and in essence then, it would cease to be Islam as it has been practiced to date. The same would be true (and has been) of any other ideology or doctrine used for those ends.
LOL. Have you ready any of Card's novels? He maintains his own website/fansite. Wouldn't be hard to reach him if you really wanted to. I think he also does writer's workshops now and then also.
I've read a bunch of his novels...did not know he had his own web site so I will check it out. Thanks.
Now we need to drum up world support against honor killings. After all that is another trait of islam.
Bump to read later!
Most Black Muslims in the US feel that the only true
reparations for slavery will be 400 years of white slavery
and in fact, that is why they became Muslim. They are
told and believe that Allah will make that happen.
Only Muslims can change Islam.
We could change it from a living religion to a dead one.
But there are still way to many people with their heads
in the sand, um... OK.
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