'This has nothing to do with Islam'

[Warren Dew]

I a sick and tired of "moderate" Muslims coming out after the fact to distance their "religion of peace" from acts of violence done in its name. Too late then bud.

I'd rather have them do that than stay silent. I don't remember even the "moderate" Muslim religious leadership condemning the Benghazi attack after it happened.

Any unbiased observer of the current milieu will be able to see that violent acts committed in the name of Islam vastly outweigh those committed in the name of Christianity.

I suspect some in the middle east view drone attacks there by the U.S. to be driven by Christianity, even if that's not how we see it.

[Mallardz]

I'm sure we have this but I only just saw it and wanted to post it somewhere

[Robert_S]

Sure, there are many nasty bits in the Old Testament, and the hoary old quote "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." is often trotted out to somehow suggest that modern, mainstream christianity fully embraces Old Testament values, which is in virtually all cases an absurdity.

Just speaking for myself, I trotted the hoary old quote out merely to somehow suggest that modern, mainstream Christians fully ignore Old Testament values despite Christ's endorsement of them.

There are many more exhortations to violence in the Koran than there are in the New Testament.

I don't know if you have totted up the number of exhortations in either, but I have not done so myself. You could be right, I don't know, but this isn't a football game where the winner is determined by the number of points scored.

It's true that I haven't, but I'd be prepared to bet that there would be a major difference, in the direction I suggested.

Let's say for the sake of argument that is in fact the case. It would be hard to make a case that the presence of many exhortations to violent jihad against infidels would have no impact on the likelihood of its adherents to be violent in the name of their prophet and holy scriptures...

The best christians can do is to get a little hostile towards moneychangers in the temple...

Which for predatory tele-evangelists is quite amusing...

That's the genius of contradictory religious texts! You can have your peaceful and tolerant folks and your violent fanatics all under one roof. You can also trot out your progressives to cover for your backward bigoted bastards.

What does Westboro have to do with Christianity? A lot actually. When you consider things like the resistance to gay marriage and the disproportionately high number of gay youth suicides, it doesn't look like the universal condemnation of them is about their anti-gay stance. It is the methods they use to get their point across.

[ronmcd]

Terrorists such as these fuckwits murder in the name of religion, but are in fact murdering for political reasons. The religion is simply the way they identify "them" and "us", which community they are part of.

Christian terrorists: IRA in Northern Ireland. Political, excused by perceived inequalities and hostility to their community. Same with loyalist terror groups.

Islamic terrorists: these two nutters in London. Political, excused by perceived attacks on "their" community ie Islam by the west.

It's all the same. People also murder people for other "them" and "us" reasons, disenfranchised nutters who go back to their old school and kill people, nutters who go to an island full of youth activists with different political views than theirs.

My point is to single out Islam as the unique element in terrorism is wrong. It happens in other religions, it happens in non religious groups. Islamic extremists are perhaps the biggest terror threat currently, cant argue with that. But to claim Islam is uniquely dangerous and to blame is to ignore the Christian and non religious political terrorism elsewhere.

[cronus]

Islam is to blame for a lot of terrorism in recent times though. You can't hide the fact. Lefties like Muslims because they've lost Communism and need a new stick.

[Rum]

Islam is to blame for a lot of terrorism in recent times though. You can't hide the fact. Lefties like Muslims because they've lost Communism and need a new stick.

The utterness of your stupidness continues to astonish me. It is really quite entertaining in a car crash sort of way.

[JimC]

Terrorists such as these fuckwits murder in the name of religion, but are in fact murdering for political reasons. The religion is simply the way they identify "them" and "us", which community they are part of.

Christian terrorists: IRA in Northern Ireland. Political, excused by perceived inequalities and hostility to their community. Same with loyalist terror groups.

Islamic terrorists: these two nutters in London. Political, excused by perceived attacks on "their" community ie Islam by the west.

It's all the same. People also murder people for other "them" and "us" reasons, disenfranchised nutters who go back to their old school and kill people, nutters who go to an island full of youth activists with different political views than theirs.

My point is to single out Islam as the unique element in terrorism is wrong. It happens in other religions, it happens in non religious groups. Islamic extremists are perhaps the biggest terror threat currently, cant argue with that. But to claim Islam is uniquely dangerous and to blame is to ignore the Christian and non religious political terrorism elsewhere.

I agree that it's not simply a religious matter - global politics and hominid tribalism are major players, and there is a definite perception that recent western military actions are essentially a war against Islam.

None of that changes the fact that Islam, of all current major religions, is the one whose religious writings and historical actions resonate the strongest with acts of violence against unbelievers...

And even against "faulty believers" within Islam themselves...

Someone mentioned Westborough before. Nasty little arseholes that they are, I haven't noticed them blowing things up or hacking people to death with machetes. And they would have to be at the top of the current Christian league table of nastiness...

[Svartalf]

Islam is to blame for a lot of terrorism in recent times though. You can't hide the fact. Lefties like Muslims because they've lost Communism and need a new stick.

Lefties like muslims because they are stupidly PC, period, look at my sig.

[klr]

Terrorists such as these fuckwits murder in the name of religion, but are in fact murdering for political reasons. The religion is simply the way they identify "them" and "us", which community they are part of.

Christian terrorists: IRA in Northern Ireland. Political, excused by perceived inequalities and hostility to their community. Same with loyalist terror groups.

Islamic terrorists: these two nutters in London. Political, excused by perceived attacks on "their" community ie Islam by the west.

It's all the same. People also murder people for other "them" and "us" reasons, disenfranchised nutters who go back to their old school and kill people, nutters who go to an island full of youth activists with different political views than theirs.

My point is to single out Islam as the unique element in terrorism is wrong. It happens in other religions, it happens in non religious groups. Islamic extremists are perhaps the biggest terror threat currently, cant argue with that. But to claim Islam is uniquely dangerous and to blame is to ignore the Christian and non religious political terrorism elsewhere.

I agree that it's not simply a religious matter - global politics and hominid tribalism are major players, and there is a definite perception that recent western military actions are essentially a war against Islam.

None of that changes the fact that Islam, of all current major religions, is the one whose religious writings and historical actions resonate the strongest with acts of violence against unbelievers...

And even against "faulty believers" within Islam themselves...

Someone mentioned Westborough before. Nasty little arseholes that they are, I haven't noticed them blowing things up or hacking people to death with machetes. And they would have to be at the top of the current Christian league table of nastiness...

There are also very, very few of them, and they will likely lose heart once Papa Freddie Phelps shuffles off this mortal coil.

[JimC]

"Assisted euthanasia" is looking very appealing in his case...

[Cormac]

Pretending that the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism is independent of Western oil driven mercantilism is a near guarantee that this crisis will continue to escalate.

[Svartalf]

Well, when said mercantilism has fostered wahhabism by raising the house of saud to the arab throne, that makes it hard to deny.

[Cormac]

Well, when said mercantilism has fostered wahhabism by raising the house of saud to the arab throne, that makes it hard to deny.

Yep.

[JimC]

Pretending that the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism is independent of Western oil driven mercantilism is a near guarantee that this crisis will continue to escalate.

Well, when said mercantilism has fostered wahhabism by raising the house of saud to the arab throne, that makes it hard to deny.

Agreed in both cases, but that doesn't undermine anything I've said about Islam itself.

The whole thing is a perfect storm - the economic position of the west, and its relation to the oil producing nations, Arab pride and nationalism, and a religion with violence at its heart...

[Cormac]

Pretending that the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism is independent of Western oil driven mercantilism is a near guarantee that this crisis will continue to escalate.

Well, when said mercantilism has fostered wahhabism by raising the house of saud to the arab throne, that makes it hard to deny.

Agreed in both cases, but that doesn't undermine anything I've said about Islam itself.

The whole thing is a perfect storm - the economic position of the west, and its relation to the oil producing nations, Arab pride and nationalism, and a religion with violence at its heart...

...Not to mention its own infamous Imperialism by the sword, and slavery, and so on...

...and Islam is vile, same as Christianity.