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BVS

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John Hagee is a fundalmentalist preacher from San Antonio, TX. You may have seen his sermons broadcasted on cable. He's very far Christian right. I happen to catch a sermon he did on Muslims in America, it was very disturbing and it's been bothering me since. I found a website with some excerpts...

http://diskbooks.org/hageeislam.html
 
In the first mp3, he's using "true" things and adding to it. It is true that the Muslims that are on this violent jihad think that Americans are infidels. But the majority of Muslims in the world do not believe this at all.

I find irony in "killing people who do not submit to your doctrine, is that peaceful?!" coming from a preacher. Crusades.

These clips are disturbing, it's true. He's just twisting the words of the Qu'ran and of the prophet Muhammed around to make Muslims sound evil.
 
Lilly said:
I find irony in "killing people who do not submit to your doctrine, is that peaceful?!" coming from a preacher. Crusades.


Oh bull :censored: ! You are implying that all Christians follow a similar doctrine. I get tired of this simplistic and uninformed view of the crusades.
 
nbcrusader said:



Oh bull :censored: ! You are implying that all Christians follow a similar doctrine. I get tired of this simplistic and uninformed view of the crusades.

Reminds me of a Crusades thread in here.....
 
That is an erroneous translation of the word "jihad". Jihad means a personal struggle against sin; it's from an Arabic verb meaning "effort". Only the terrorist nutcases use it to mean war. Someone has apparently done a*terrible* translation of the Koran. With screw-ups like this you can't take this guy's "information" very seriously.
 
nbcrusader said:



Oh bull :censored: ! You are implying that all Christians follow a similar doctrine. I get tired of this simplistic and uninformed view of the crusades.

And some are implying the same about Muslims.

The fact is that if you take certain passages out of context and use examples of certain groups throughout history any religion can be viewed as a violent and dangerous religion. Even Christianinty...
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


And some are implying the same about Muslims.

The fact is that if you take certain passages out of context and use examples of certain groups throughout history any religion can be viewed as a violent and dangerous religion. Even Christianinty...

I agree. People shouldn't make blanket statements about any religion, be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc, etc.
 
So let's blind ourselves to a critical look at Islam? It seems every time a Christian points to a verse from the Quran as it is preached in mosques in many parts of the world, we get this immediate "well, the Christians had the crusades, so be quiet" type response.

I agree, many, if not most Muslims in this country to not follow the strict teachings of Quran. Maybe it is something about this country.
 
nbcrusader said:
So let's blind ourselves to a critical look at Islam? It seems every time a Christian points to a verse from the Quran as it is preached in mosques in many parts of the world, we get this immediate "well, the Christians had the crusades, so be quiet" type response.

No, but if this critical look at Islam concludes, as many seem to, with the idea that the Quran orders Muslims to be at war with people of other religions, then it's legitimate to remind people that Christianity can and has also been interpreted as teaching this. The crusades were an expression of the way in which people interpreted Christianity at that time, therefore it is possible that some people's interpretation of Christianity is that it encouarges its followers to be at war with other religions.

It seems that some people draw the conclusion that the Quran is a "book of violence" and therefore Muslims a "violent people" while claiming that Christianity could never and has never been interpreted in this way. In those cases I think it's legitimate to point out that there are people (and the crusades are merely one example) who would interpret Christianity in this way.

It's not to suggest that no Christian can ever criticise Islam, but rather that it's inaccurate to portray Islam as a fundamentally violent religion and Christianity as a religion which is fundamentally peaceful and could never and has never been used to justify violence.
 
I agree Fizz. I don't think Islam is criticism-proof. We Catholics take exception to their marriage laws, for example, because we don't believe in divorce. It's specifically this alleged violence teaching that I think is a bum rap, and a product of what I would call an overly adversarial look at Islam.
 
FizzingWhizzbees said:
The crusades were an expression of the way in which people interpreted Christianity at that time, therefore it is possible that some people's interpretation of Christianity is that it encouarges its followers to be at war with other religions.

This is not an accurate statement of the crusades.

Political power, not Scriptural interpretation, drove the crusades.
 
FizzingWhizzbees said:
So you're saying that the crusades had nothing to do with Christianity?

I'm not entirely sure what this question means.

It had nothing to do with someone studying or interpreting the Scriptures.
 
nbcrusader said:
So let's blind ourselves to a critical look at Islam? It seems every time a Christian points to a verse from the Quran as it is preached in mosques in many parts of the world, we get this immediate "well, the Christians had the crusades, so be quiet" type response.

I agree, many, if not most Muslims in this country to not follow the strict teachings of Quran. Maybe it is something about this country.

So I'm assuming you agree with the fact that their strict teachings do in fact preach violence?
 
Well, I originally stated that if a person is going to claim Islam is a religion of violence based on some people's interpretation of Islam, then it could also be claimed that Christianity is a religion of violence, based on some people's interpretation of Christianity during the crusads.

You said that interpretation of scripture had nothing to do with the crusades, so my next question was whether you believe the crusades had nothing to do with Christianity.

Or to rephrase it: in your opinion, did Christianity play any role in the crusades?
 
Be careful when you assume.


Strict teachings may not elevate to the level of violence (though Muslim women may have a different view), but one must address the view of infidels in the strict teaching.
 
nbcrusader said:
Be careful when you assume.


Strict teachings may not elevate to the level of violence (though Muslim women may have a different view), but one must address the view of infidels in the strict teaching.

Do I really have to remind you how Biblical scripture has been twisted throughout history?
 
Are we back to "tit for tat" again?

Yes, there are twisted interpretations of Scripture. We even have some nice cults as a result. But Ithought we were talking about Islam.
 
Was it melon who once posted here a quote about how religion is the best way to separate people from God? It's what I thought of today when I read the back and forth posts here.
 
nbcrusader said:


This is not an accurate statement of the crusades.

Political power, not Scriptural interpretation, drove the crusades.

That's very true. The Crusades were all about politics. But some of the people who "took the cross", as the saying was, sincerely believed they were following the will of God. God forbid me defending the Crusades, :censored: :censored: but it *was* the Middle Ages.
 
nbcrusader said:
Be careful when you assume.


Strict teachings may not elevate to the level of violence (though Muslim women may have a different view), but one must address the view of infidels in the strict teaching.

You could say that "strict teachings" are Wahhabism. It must be admitted that Wahhabism, a sect of the Sunni tradition of Islam, has some skeletons in its closet as per their attitudes toward alleged "infidels". However, traditional Wahhabists are actually pretty otherworldly and are mainly concerned with the afterlife. Some of the more modern ones are more political. Wahhabism is the sort of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, thus it is Osama bin Laden's heritage. Moslems outside of Saudi Arabia are mostly critical of Wahhabism. This is a pretty good write-up on Wahhabism.

http://www.iicas.org/english/enlibrary/libr_04_01_02_is.htm

In fairness to the Saudis many of them don't care for this interpretation of the Islamic faith, either.
 
nbcrusader said:
Are we back to "tit for tat" again?

Yes, there are twisted interpretations of Scripture. We even have some nice cults as a result. But Ithought we were talking about Islam.

No just trying to get people to look at themselves before they cast the first stone. That's all.
 
nbcrusader said:


This is not an accurate statement of the crusades.

Political power, not Scriptural interpretation, drove the crusades.

I wish I had saved the links that I had on this topic. I was so tired of people in this forum throwing the "Crusade" word out there as if it were "JUST" a religious event.

Go NB....
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:
No just trying to get people to look at themselves before they cast the first stone. That's all.

Then why start this thread? Another chance to say "Look at the crazy right-wing fundamentalist Christians"?
 
nbcrusader said:


Then why start this thread? Another chance to say "Look at the crazy right-wing fundamentalist Christians"?

The FYM theme....LOL....Just do not attack the Catholics though....that would offend someone.:wink:
 
nbcrusader said:


Then why start this thread? Another chance to say "Look at the crazy right-wing fundamentalist Christians"?

No like I said in the original post, I had watched his sermon(like I do on occasion) and was absolutely infuriated. I'm infuriated that a man that is so admired in his realm, a supposed man of God, would throw around so much hate, misinformation, and twist the words in order to cast fear to so many.

To me this is a big problem in America, in the whole world for that matter, people don't understand so they cast fear. People of power, and yes this man has power, and yes it happens to be in the right wing fundamentalist Christian portion of our country. But people of all religions are doing the same thing. That's my point.
 
Dreadsox said:


The FYM theme....LOL....Just do not attack the Catholics though....that would offend someone.:wink:

Oh please, we do not need yet another debate on the alleged bias of FYM mods. Why can't we just discuss the issues instead?

I replied to this post because I wanted to make a comment on the suggestion that Islam is a violent religion while Christianity could never be used as a justification for violence. I believe that's incorrect: yes, there are Islamic teachings which may be interpreted as calling for violence, but there are also Christian teachings which have been interpreted as advocating violence. I didn't reply to the thread because I wanted to complain about what nbc described as "crazy right-wing fundamentalist Christians" and I would have replied if the original post was about a sermon given by a Catholic, a Jew, an athiest or anyone else.

Now can we just get back to the subject? :)
 
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