No longer do entire Muslim nations want to march across Western nations and replace spires with minarets.

Are you sure about that?

There you go again taking religions out of context. Islam is heresy pure and simple.

Olaf, you are unable to see the death cult of Islam as it is because you Christians share in the same mental illness and delusions that muslims have in these dogmatic belief systems. I’m not partial to any religion so I can see things objectively. Its funny you label Islam a heretical religion when your own religion is a bastardization and plagiarization of Buddhism and other pagan texts.

The Bible was assembled at the Council of Nicea and your “divine word of god” was put together based on the tastes and whims of humans who kept what texts they liked and rejected those that seemed ‘too crazy’. All believers are gullible dupes of shrewd individuals who craved wealth, power and control over individuals.

In fact, it is your “modernity” that drives arabs to islam in the first place.

Arabs were driven to Islam largely by threats, violence, terrorism and war from the cult-members of Islam like every country that is muslim today.

Modernity (Democracy) is the only cure for the Barbarism that is Islam. The proof is self-evident, we in the West are richer, freer, more advanced, tolerant and sane than those in the muslim world. Our women enjoy freedoms and equality that those in Islamic countries only dream about-all thanks to secular democracy.

Muslims do NOT need to be killed like you think..They just need to find the Truth. Let them be proselytized and converted back to Orthodox Christianity.

You secularists try to hide it, but you always end up revealing your violent and murderous thoughts regarding religious people, sooner or later.

SaintOlaf on December 15, 2008 at 10:58 AM

If you want to have a reasonable discussion with me you need to stop putting your crazy words in my mouth and accusing me of things I’ve never stated. Nowhere have I ever said we need to kill all the muslim (or christians)-those are your own idiotic inferences no doubt due to your poor reading/comprehension abilities and hatred towards secularists.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, not one muslim has to die in order to stop Islam. All we need to do is recognize that Islam is a threat to our civilization and ban it. Those muslims who refuse to leave the cult should be deported. However we know in reality that’s not going to happen, muslims will fight us tooth and nail, since they think they’re god’s people doing his work by trying to conquer us.

In the past I would’ve agreed with you that converting muslims into christians would be a good way of neutralizing the threat that Islam poses but as an atheist I don’t think that it does them any favors. Religion is dying in the West anyway, most Europeans are secular and its growing in America. So I think muslims would be better served if they were given secular-democracy, with the freedom to convert to other religions if they choose.

thinkagain on December 14, 2008 at 8:51 PM

There you go again taking religions out of context.

Islam is heresy pure and simple.

that of Islam vs Modernity.

This is NOT what it’s about.

In fact, it is your “modernity” that drives arabs to islam in the first place.

Why can’t you understand that?

Muslims do NOT need to be killed like you think..

They just need to find the Truth.

Let them be proselytized and converted back to Orthodox Christianity.

You secularists try to hide it, but you always end up revealing your violent and murderous thoughts regarding religious people, sooner or later.

I think nottakingsides’ point is that the problems are endemic to islam, itself, and not caused by some alleged extremist factions….

progressoverpeace on December 13, 2008 at 8:36 PM

I think you hit on the most important point in the GWOT. We, our collective conscious in the West automatically buys into the false, politically correct myth that there is a ‘radical’ (undesirable/extreme) and a ‘moderate’ (acceptable/peaceful) division within Islam.

It would follow logically since most major religions such as Hinduism and Christianity are peaceful with some fringe lunatics and we unthinkingly and mistakenly assume this also applies to Islam. However Islam is the only religion in the world with a mandate for the forcible conversion, subjugation or death of unbelievers. It is also a political (state based) as well as a social religion, hence its totalitarian agenda.

This naive division we concocted to avoid “offending” the 1 billion allegedly “peaceful” muslims makes it significantly more difficult to defeat Islam since we don’t know who the real enemy is and they blend in with the muslim community.

So while our vast resources are focused on a wild goose chase hunting down some rag-tag terrorists, the majority of muslims are left undisturbed to continue building their numbers and working to destroy our civilization from within.

The common defense is how can you blame the whole religion that’s ‘racist’ (Islam is an ideology not a race), or it’s ‘hateful’, which distracts from the fact that Islam is a hateful, apartheid, war-mongering ideology. It divides the world into muslim and non-muslim and pits them against each other in a life and death struggle. This is self-evident if anyone reads their religious texts. Just an example:

Sura 8:12 – I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

Qur’an 8:39 – So, fight them till all opposition ends and the only religion is Islam.

By accepting that there is a ‘moderate’ form of Islam, it sends the signal to muslims who might otherwise leave that there’s nothing wrong with Islam, aside from some zealots. It also confuses westerners/non-muslims because we get a false sense of security from thinking only a handful of muslims oppose us, rather than the reality that we’re in a civilizational war between two incompatible worldviews, that of Islam vs Modernity.

The day we all realize that we’re not at war with ‘radical Islam’ but Islam itself, our task will become greatly simplified, since we won’t be searching for some obscure, hard to find radicals. We’ll know our enemy is right out in the open and we’ll also know how to defeat them assuming we have the will and fortitude.

I travelled in Egypt about a year ago, doing the traditional cruise down the Nile, which I strongly recommend. I talked to dozens of ordinary Egyptians along the way, kids, pedestrians, cashiers, vendors, camel drivers, salesmen, caliche drivers, security guards, etc. Only one was interested in talking about Islam. I had several conversations with Egyptians talking about how to get to America and how to find work. Most of them were very impressed by our relative wealth, our material success.

While I was very impressed by how often the calls to prayer came in Cairo and how pervasive they were, I was also impressed by how few Cairenes actually responded to it. It was very common to see a handful of guys spread out their carpets and pray while the overwhelming majority of Egyptians walked on by without the least notice of them. Sure, they like their Islam, but they are not crazy go nuts about it.

The best way to peel back the Islamic fundamentalists is to hit them at their weak point, their worldly incompetence, rather than their strong point, their otherworldly faith. After all, you can’t prove or disprove faith. You can directly measure physical well-being. Even the most illiterate, uneducated, and ignorant observer can see wealth. It is a simple metric, understandable by all.

We can break Islamic fundamentalism by embracing Muslims with our secular success. If you allow a young man to get a good job with prospects for a better future, give him the wherewithal to get married, tie him to family, work, and his community, you have created a peaceful guy. Only unhappy men volunteer to be jihadis. Islam only delivers this by accident. Where Islam prevails, the economy is destroyed. Where Western democracy and capitalism prevails, the economy booms.

Muslims don’t need more faith. They need more material opportunities to have a better life, the kind of opportunities Western secular culture delivers best. We ought to expand that secular culture where we can. In that respect, a prosperous, free, democratic, capitalist Iraq can be a wonderful rebuttal to Islamic fundamentalism.

What kills me the most is gung-ho denominationalists like Olaf who heave the non-biblical traditions and creeds of their particular heresy at others while denouncing the same sort of deviance in Muslims.

You think the Orthodox Church is heretical?

That’s a first.

Even any honest Roman Catholic or Proestant will admit that the Orthodox Church is the first Church and is the one unchanging Church.

Does that mean that the Bible is heretical considering that the Orthodox Church canonized the Bible?

But Theo Spark has a good idea on how this gets won:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theospark/304882498/

Some institutions lend themselves more readily to tyranny, such as socialism and communism which are bad things as would be state religion however its the people who are would be tyrants who have no issue with taking advantage of those opportunities, that leads to oppression.

Their descendants have dwindled to a tiny minority among Islam.

I have yet to see the evidence of that. Anyone help me out?

Look, they attack us based on our loose morals. You’ll find that thread throughout their stupid rants. We don’t subjugate women, we don’t kill gays, we don’t force religion down the throats of those not interested.

I rather like being hated for that.

progressoverpeace on December 13, 2008 at 8:36 PM

Yep, you said it better than I did.

Dark-Star on December 13, 2008 at 1:11 PM

What kills me the most is gung-ho denominationalists like Olaf who heave the non-biblical traditions and creeds of their particular heresy at others while denouncing the same sort of deviance in Muslims.

I suppose most people will always rather run errands for an impressive worldly organization that pays well rather than actually be slave-labor for an unseen King.

Time for a mini-series of The Inferno.

profitsbeard on December 13, 2008 at 6:31 PM

That would be awesome!

Sower of Discord, indeed.

And exterminating the Godly and/or mouthy?

baldilocks on December 13, 2008 at 3:37 PM

no doubt that went on. you wonder how the heirs of wilberforce, CS Lewis, Wesley, etc could end up like they did.

Bunyan was imprisoned. the pilgrims had to flee..

right4life on December 13, 2008 at 3:53 PM

Then there was this and this (what I had in mind), not to mention the inconvenient: all the end result of godless ideologies.

If you don’t believe in God,, you will believe in anything.

JellyToast on December 13, 2008 at 8:08 PM

Only if its factual. Who believes in God with you?

If they are Mormon, Islamic or great spirit Native American, just how specific is that? And yet they and you believe in an original creator.

Besides, what worth is any belief but that it stands the scrutiny of an open mind?

Your statement is just an excuse that absolves the need of anything but blind faith and denigrates people who honestly seek more than a feeling.

If your faith is Christianity, understanding is part and parcel of Man is created in God’s image.

The only final answer is salvation through Jesus Christ. Anything other than that is a temporal band-aid over an eternal cancer.

JiangxiDad on December 13, 2008 at 8:42 PM

Not to worry, JDad. I just did the same thing, myself, on the JJJr thread right below this. Is there a full moon or something?

progressoverpeace on December 13, 2008 at 8:36 PM

2nd time I struck out today. Maybe I better hang it up. I thought he felt it was impossible for radical and extreme to ever be used as adjectives with Islam. My apologies for the snark.

JiangxiDad on December 13, 2008 at 8:27 PM

I think nottakingsides’ point is that the problems are endemic to islam, itself, and not caused by some alleged extremist factions. I tend to agree with this. Most of the views that Westerners tend to call “islamic extremism” have popular support among muslim populations far exceeding anything that would relegate them to fringes. It’s hard to call something “extremist” when over 50% of the population agrees with it.

When people use the phrase “islamic extremists”, or anything of the like, they are being politically correct (against all availbale evidence) and that sort of political correctness is exactly what weakens us.

Whenever I see the phrases “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremists” instead of “Islamic fundamentalists” or simply Islamists, I stop listening. It’s not an honest discussion to begin with.

nottakingsides on December 13, 2008 at 7:58 PM

Do you use other words for “radical” or “extreme”, or have you just banned the concepts entirely? That would be linguistically “extreme.” Or is it some kind of extreme religious thing? Personally, I don’t like the words “cole slaw.” Each to his own I guess.

Time for a mini-series of The Inferno.

Let the Mohammedans try to ban that.