A peaceful and tolerant religion...
 

I guess it means that Islam, at least in some areas, is 'only' a 'few hundred' years behind Christianity.

Perfect dismissal, pretty much what I expected. Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.

A convenient way to side step the issue.
 

Hmmmnnn that technique looks and sounds soooo familiar.

btk

Organized religion, at least it's heirarchy, has a despicable and sordid past that somehow gets glossed over time and time again with "yeah, but look at the charities".

For example, it happens with Hamas (nobody else operates hospitals in Gaza!). Talk about the Catholic priest abuse scandal and people will immediately try to deflect the conversaiton to some of their charities.

I've had a theory about Islam 'maturing' like an organism. Just as you had Christianity go through stages of going from the persected to the persecutors (Roman times, then gain power up through things like the Inquisition and then the Salem Witch Trials), I wonder if Islam is doing the same.

Now, you have fewer wide-scale atrocities going on but they still happen (remember, the Christians were the ones inflicting the genocide in Bosnia) and MOST scandals are on a smaller scale (though some still make your stomach turn).

It's like we have two choices, neither very comforting. Either ignore it and people die - or go for 'conversion by sword' and people die. Leave it alone? Intervene?

I'll be the first to admit that I'm tired of hearing of all the crap done in the Name of God - and I don't care WHICH religion is the perpetrator.

I would think your opening sentence would be more accurate
 

if it started with the word "some".

I also think "events" good and or bad, have to do with man in general...not a given religion per se'.

btk

I think someone should see a shrink and get it over with. Millions of God fearing people for hundreds of years committed no atrocities and treated everybody the way they wanted to be treated. Understand.

Islam is what Islam is.

Yoda

Ajack: No Muslim ever threatened my ex-wife's life. That distinction belongs to a supposedly mainstream Christian who ran a BBS in Londonderry NH.

And if I take your point about millions of God-fearing people committing no atrocities, well, I certainly have no problems with them. I might feel differently if I were a pagan in the Middle Ages, a Protestant in Northern Ireland 35 years ago (or a Catholic there 100 years ago) or a Croat in the 1990s (or a Bosnian Muslim for that matter). There are millions of ALL religions who have not perpetrated atrocities. It doesn't excuse those who do.

You cannot chastise millions of Christians because of a few, just like you cannot condemn all muslims for what happened on 9-11.

The only difference being that virtually all Christian leaders of good faith, and almost as certainly all their congregants, would condemn the violence of a Christian in today's world, especially if done in the name of God.

I've yet to hear of any Muslim, let alone any leader of their faith, denounce the violence of members of their religion committed in the name of their God.

I can't even think in terms of Muslims of "good faith", because I have a feeling that, for them, "good faith" translates into an edict, or fatwa if you will, to commit violence against those they consider nonbelievers and therefore unclean.

There will be, and cannot be, any real and lasting peace in the world until Muslims by vast majority believe, as do modern Christian majority countries, that people are ultimately free to believe and worship in their own way. The only other end is that the Muslim religion is victorious and converts the world through word or sword.

You cannot take into consideration the fact that in most if not every conflict in the world, you will find Islam and Muslims involved.

That would not be fair.

Yoda