quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: Still the "national religion", just like England is still a monarchy.
And just like the monarchy is currently about show, not about substance, the same goes for the national religion.
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quote:Because they are both holy wars? What's not to understand?
The scope of the multiple Crusades vs the terrorist activities of late are hugely different.
The Crusades were over 200 years, with over a 1/4 million deaths and many nations contributing to what was basically an invasion which was actively encouraged by the Pope/Roman Catholic Church.
The terrorist efforts of extreme Muslims are rejected by most Muslims, and the scale of murder is again, hugely different.
It seems like an unfair comparison Jeff.
The comparison I was trying to make wasn't about the size or how many were dying. It was just that they were both holy wars. One could argue that the Muslim Holy War goes further than simply terrorism, but that's not the point. The point is that one exists at all, and that it is a world crisis, and not just restricted to America. Remember how Britain's trains got bombed, or those attacks in Russia, or in France?
If you actually want to compare numbers, I don't know the exact amount, but over 2 million Muslims have died in the past 10 years (we keep bombing the crap out of them in Iraq and Afganistan, after all) due to the backlash of their Holy War. It's just like the Crusades: you can't just count how many Europeans died, can you? Both sides get tallied up in the end.
I do agree that the two are different, but the underlying principles are still there. They are/were both Holy Wars, the instigators claimed it was all for God, and a whole lot of innocent people died.
That was my reasoning for it, Stone Wolf, but it is certainly not a perfect comparison. Like I said, I was just saying that the Christians had their own Holy War at some point, not that it was the exact same thing. If you read back over the original post, that's all I was saying.
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It's frankly a pretty silly comparison. At the time of the Crusades, for one thing, Christians were much more monolithic than they are now...or than Muslims are now. Christians got behind their (multiple!) Crusades in which Muslims simply haven't.
Furthermore, to say, 'attacks happen all over-it's global!' means much less now than it would've then, what with the startling lack of cheap, fast, reliable international transportation centuries ago.
It's just so much of a stretch it's not a comparison that really bears making. How much of what happens in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel can be called 'Holy War'? Is every war a holy war in which god gets invoked, or does it take more?
In the Crusades, it took a massive theological infrastructure being united behind the Crusades to call it a Holy War. Now that we're talking about Muslims, though, the standard is lower. Millions and millions of Muslims worldwide, and only a very small fraction obviously are terrorists. But it's a holy war similar to the Crusades.
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Yeah, what's going on now with the extremist muslim factions going out and bombing things wherever they can isn't equivalent to the Crusades. We don't have the ~muslim Pope~ making an official edict that organizes up islam as an institution, and going out and conquering cities with the weight of entire nations behind it.
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Say what you will, but it is still a Holy War. That simple fact is the only comparison that I was trying to make. I believe I said something like the Christians had the Crusades, and now the Muslims have their own Holy War. I never said they were the exact same thing, only that they were/are both Holy Wars.
When someone says America and Zambia are both countries, are you going to disagree and say, "well, Zambia is a third world country, while America is a super power. It's not the same thing because blah blah blah blah." That may be true, but they are both still countries. Can you really argue that they aren't? Can you really argue that this isn't a Holy War against non-Muslims? Or that the Crusades was not a Holy War? It's the same with anything else. I was using the Crusades as an example of how every major religion goes through a phase where it decides to wage a holy war, and that right now it seems like its Islam's time. I was never suggesting that it was definitively the same in every conceivable way. Is it a perfect comparison? Of course not, but who cares? That wasn't the point. You are grasping at straws that have nothing to do with anything in the original argument.
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quote:Say what you will, but it is still a Holy War.
You're interpreting it as a holy war, and reeeallly stretching definitions and associations to make the case, when opinion on it largely differs and the reality is far more ambiguous than you made it out to be. The great majority of islamic holy leaders disagree even with the notion that there is Jihad against the west/America/whatever.
I mean, seriously. Aside from the minority insurgents lurking in back-asswards parts of the world, you could walk up to any Islamic jurist or imam at the centers of Islam across the world and say "I see that right now, Islam is having its own Crusades, because you're at Holy War with X."
The response would be something like "oh, really — that's news to me."
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Yes, it *can* be argued that Islam isn't engaging in a 'Holy War' against non-Muslims. It's been argued repeatedly, but your response is to say, "Well I didn't mean it for an *exact* comparison."
If by 'Holy War' you mean that very small numbers spread across the globe are angry for a lot of reasons and use religion as part of their motivator, well sure. 'This' is a 'Holy War'. That renders the term pretty watery, though-and likening it to the Crusades is just silly. The point is not that it's not a perfect comparison, it's that it's *terrible*.
Why is 'this' a 'Holy War', whatever you mean by this and what do you mean exactly by Holy War-and why does it get the caps, anyway?
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quote:You're interpreting it as a holy war, and reeeallly stretching definitions and associations to make the case, when opinion on it largely differs and the reality is far more ambiguous than you made it out to be.
I'm calling it a holy war because radical muslims have been calling it that for over a decade. When the party associated with the war calls it something, I'm pretty sure the word is justifiable to use when discussing the matter.
If you want to get technical, let's look at the facts. They have been calling this a Jihad for the past twenty years. A jihad, by definition is:
"A holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty." (Longman Dictionary of the English Language, p. 849).
I believe the definition is fairly exact on the matter. This is a holy war against non-Muslims. It doesn't matter whether or not the entirety of the faith is for or against it. The fact exists that it is being waged.
Holy War, by definition is: "A religious war led with an exceptionally high grade of religious feeling". Examples given are....
-The Crusades -The Herem referred to in the Hebrew Bible. -Reconquista -Seisen, the name given by Showa era propaganda to the Second Sino-Japanese War, based on the slogun hakko ichiu. -Taiping Rebellion -Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent -Jewish-Roman Wars -Arab-Israeli Wars -Way of the Celestial Masters -Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion -Jihad (generally translated into English as "Holy War") in Islam
If you want to argue that this isn't a holy war, go talk to the dictionary about it. Or better yet, track down the Muslims waging it and tell them to stop calling it one.
But again, this has very little to do with my original point, and it is growing tiresome to continue to debate something that in the end makes absolutely no difference.
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quote:I'm calling it a holy war because radical muslims have been calling it that for over a decade...
Right here is the key point. You started off talking as though Islam itself was having a holy war, and to bolster that statement you referenced the Crusades. Now you seem to have backed off of that somewhat, and now it's a holy war whenever a few (out of the whole) very angry radicals start using the word, the religion as a whole has to own up to it.
This is what we mean when we say it's different for Christians, for some reason.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You started off talking as though Islam itself was having a holy war, and to bolster that statement you referenced the Crusades.
Here is the original point I was trying to make, which everyone seemed to ignore, choosing to focus on the later example I gave as to the "drama" of the current state of the religion...
quote:The point I was trying to make was that while Christianity and most other religions have evolved to be a little more politically correct (most of the time), Islam is still a great deal behind in term of how it has changed and progressed. Women are still regarded as property, women can't wear certain clothes, adultery is still punishable by death, openly preaching another religion can still get you arrested and killed, and so on. It's like visiting another time period, to an extent, which is partially why everyone seems to be clashing with them. It also doesn't help that they live in a horrible envirnment and are basically born into war, just like those child soldiers in Africa.
The entire thing about it being a holy war was just a tangent of this thought. Islam as a whole is less politically correct than most other major religions because of the way it treats its people and anyone who disagrees with the faith, itself.
Now, let's examine the thought that caused you all to blow this whole thing out of proportion...
quote:I like to think of history as repeating, except with different people backing the same kind of thing. Christianity had the crusades, and now the Muslims have their own Holy War. I'm sure the Jews and the Buddhists had their own drama at some point too. Right now, though, the Muslims are up to bat and they're going to have to get through it and move on.
I was saying that every religion deals with drama, which the Muslim faith as a whole is doing right now (and has been for the past few decades), and then I used this holy war as an example of that, just like the Crusades were an example for the Christians. Just like every religion has had to deal with something major that eventually caused them to re-evaluate the way they were handling their religion. It was a mere observation with a comparison that everyone chose to focus on, yet had very little to do with the original point.
The point is that all Muslims are affected by this situation, and if they want to get through it (like the Christians and the Buddhists, and the Jews have in the past), they'll have to change how they do things as a whole. Granted, there are plenty who have, but there are a lot more who haven't.
You've got several nations who still practice laws that have been around in the religion for over a thousand years (laws like having zero tolerance for preaching other religions; killing women who have been raped; forcing women to walk around with a man because they are regarded as property). There's several terrorist organizations that are entirely made up of Muslims and claim to be involved in a "holy war" against the non-believers. There's constant skirmishes and tension between the Jews and the Muslims in the Middle East, which could escalate to the next World War if it went a certain way (I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true). And so on.
The religion as a whole just has too much going on right now. That is my underlining point. If it wants to survive, it needs to unify and take a breath, and then re-evaluate the way it works. If not that, then change needs to happen and spread throughout the religion in order to bring the madness to a close.
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quote:If you want to get technical, let's look at the facts. They have been calling this a Jihad for the past twenty years.
Who. Who is 'they?' Because I can guarantee you, that 'they' you're using here does not include the vast majority of muslims, muslim scholars, jurists, imams, etc. They will not agree at all with your summation that they've been in Jihad since two decades ago. Most of them are (gasp!) staying put, and not at all at war.
We're not blowing this out of proportion by noting that your original comparison used to say that the Islamic world is going through it's Holy War 'phase' today not only can be argued, but is easily argued.
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quote:If you want to get technical, let's look at the facts. They have been calling this a Jihad for the past twenty years.
Who. Who is 'they?'
OK, this is just getting rediculous. See that line you quoted? Now look back at the one right before that. I'm pretty sure I already said "radical Muslims" (wait...let me check...yeah...yeah, I did).
What's funny about this is that right after that post, Rakeesh proceeded to say the exact same thing you just did, and I addressed it, which begs the question: why are you repeating what Rakeesh just said? Why must I explain it again? Did you even read the last post (you know, the one right above yours)? It doesn't seem like you did. It doesn't seem like you read any of it. It's like you skimmed the whole thing and immediately forgot what I said.
quote: Because I can guarantee you, that 'they' you're using here does not include the vast majority of muslims, muslim scholars, jurists, imams, etc. They will not agree at all with your summation that they've been in Jihad since two decades ago. Most of them are (gasp!) staying put, and not at all at war.
If you read the last post I made, you'll see that that was not what I was saying at all. Try reading it again. I broke it down so that the actual points were easier to understand. You obviously didn't bother reading it, though, since everything you're talking about was already mentioned and then explained.
quote:We're not blowing this out of proportion
Yes, you certainly are. And you seem to be getting a little hostile about the whole thing, too.
[ June 04, 2011, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: Jeff C. ]
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quote:Because I can guarantee you, that 'they' you're using here does not include the vast majority of muslims, muslim scholars, jurists, imams, etc. They will not agree at all with your summation that they've been in Jihad since two decades ago. Most of them are (gasp!) staying put, and not at all at war.
If you read the last post I made, you'll see that that was not what I was saying at all.
This was quite literally in response to a quote from you stating "They have been calling this a Jihad for the past twenty years." I can (and will) point out who this 'they' is not. And why you should understand why this is important.
quote:Yes, you certainly are. And you seem to be getting a little hostile about the whole thing, too.
I'd really like to see a post I've made on this subject that's worded any more 'hostile' than how you've been responding. Check your projection at the door, mate. Doesn't help your case.
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I don't even think Jeff really understands what the comparison he was making really was. Either way, he's shifted stances without realizing it. That's probably the hangup here.
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