I doubt they are either patriots or Christians.  That being said, they are being called that.  However there is an important thing to remember.  Uh, the part I said about "support".  There are nutters of every stripe out there.  Their effectiveness is magnified (or diminished) by the support of the heirarchy and community.  These nutters got neither.

So while you tongue-in-cheek sarcasm is duly noted, you are proving my point, not refuting it.

You know, many muslims I know say that the muslim terrorists aren't muslims at all. Since most of the violence caused "in the name of Islam" is directed against muslims, I think they might be on to something.

It's just easy to label anyone as an extremist religious nut, when it's not your religion involved. You can make an easy link between the involved religion and nutiness. It's not a proper link, but it's a link nevertheless.

These people saw themselves as strong christians. They followed christian precepts probably stronger than many people in the U.S. when it comes to going to church. They thought that the USA were being taken over by the foreigners. No matter what they actually were, they saw themselves as christian patriots, and they were ready to commit violence in honor of those ideals.

Does that make the Christian or the Patriotic ideals flawed? No. It makes them flawed.

Does the terrorists make the Muslim ideals flawed? No. It makes them flawed.

The ennemy isn't the Islam. The ennemy is the radicalism that exist in all our societies. Both ours and theirs.

Since, Cikomyr, I doubt I'm not going to get a response to the questions that I posed.  I beat that you think that somehow Liberals, atheist and agnostics can never do any wrong.  Let's just forget about what happened in the 20s with the whole eugenics, euthanasia (and Dr. Jack), and forget ancient Greek/Roman.  It seems that you want a society where can do wahtever you want basically eat your cake and ice cream. Society where anything goes or where you should be allowed to do what ever you want as long it doesn't affect someone don't last that long.

I agree with Dr. Guy what you said about the difference between Islam and Christians (you did an excellent job).  One can read the Qu'ran and come to have many different interpretations.  While one can read the Hadiths, which you'll see the 'prophets' true actions and come out with very few intrepetations.  Cikomyr, Have you read the Qu'ran or more importantly have you read any of the Hadiths? 

It seems that you only answer questions to when the going is good.  When the going is no longer good yeah.

Which one?

Actually, that is quite false. Ideology does not make one right.

Indeed. Let's also forget slavery, racial discrimination, the appartheid, the Nazism, McCarthy and a few other down the line.

I don't claim that liberals (or whatever passes as liberal during their time) are perfect, nor that they are an inherently force of good in our society. Just that they aren't a force of bad either, no more than the conservative, anyway.

And please tell me, exactly, how applying double standard to example works.

"Crazy muslims are killing people" = Islam is a violent religions

"Crazy christians are killing people" = These people aren't "real" christians.

Christianity has been the source justification of a lot of killing in its time. Crusades, american genocide, inquisition, witch burning. Are you going to claim that these people weren't christians either? They were. You don't need a book to tell you to kill people to find a reason to kill people in the religion's name, trust me about that.

I don't see your point. "Read the Qu'ran, you will see things that say to kill people". Yhea, if that is what you look for, that's what you're going to find. If I take the Bible trying to prove that Christians are killers, I can find quite a large number of things saying that I should kill those unworthy of God (hell, a lot of people did found that statement in the book).

Ultimately, it's not the book that matters, it's the interpretation you make of it. It's not the religion, it's the religious. It's not the dogma, it's the dogmatics.

You want an argument that you will understand? Religion don't kill people. People kill people.

Most Christians condemned the murderer. Some seem to enjoy the fact that the victim, a man who they also saw as a murderer is dead. None except for a few criminals adored the murderer.

Do you think Christians will celebrate Roeder like Muslims celebrate the guy who killed a Jewish family in Haifa and was sent back to Lebanon last year?

So why do they never demonstrate against terrorist attacks against Jews?

If those terrorists are not Muslims, couldn't they condemn them rather than celebrate them?

Go to a random mosque and ask them who they think follow's G-d's will: the Israeli defending his country or the terrorist attacking a Jewish kindergarden. You will find that "resistance" is considered an Islamic duty by most.

It's not a double standard.

Although I disagree with the conclusion that Islam is a violent* religion, you don't apply a double standard to arrive at it.

Murders done in the name of Christianity are uniformly condemned by all bigger and most smaller churches. You can walk into a random church anywhere in the world and chances are that they will agree with you that those murders are sins and unjustified (and that murder cannot be justified).

Try the same trick with murders commited by Muslims and random mosques. I dare you.

Many people measure a religion by the effect it has on its nominal followers. And by that logic Islam is more violent than Christianity.

*That's "violent" as in "aggressive". When it comes to self-defence the Quran is more violent than the New Testament.

Not that there aren't Muslims that really condemn terrorism. And they are, in fact, closer to their true faith than the others. (They don't even have to modify Quran quotes to justify their actions.)

http://www.amislam.com/demo.htm

But that's in Italy and Italy is different.

Yay Italy!

Berlusconi, the evil leader of the Italian people, just won local elections and the European media, private and state-owned, are claiming that democracy has "failed" (and that Berlusconi controls the media, obviously).

Yay Berlusconi!

Again, no argument.  But you miss the critical piece.  I have no doubt that the terrorists are not practicing their religion, but the problem is they have the support of figures of authority.  If the Imams were to universally condemn them, I doubt they would have 2 shillings to rub together for their cause, and volunteers would be as rare as hens teeth.  But they do have the support of many of the religious heirarchy and that is what perpetuates their lie.

To break my own rule, if the Catholic Church had not supporter the Crusades, there would not have been more than one (if even one), and the whole mess would have died aborning. That is my point.  We can kill the nits till the cows come home, but if the breeding ground remains intact, there will always be more.

It is easy to label them as extremist nuts even when it is your relligion involved.  I excuse none of the excesses of my religion, as the only commonallity with my religion is they "professed" the same creed.  Clearly they did not understand or live it.  But the problem with the Muslim terorists is the broad support they have within their own religion.  Yusuf Islam might not be considered an extremist, but he sure as hell supports them.  Andhe is just one of the prominent idiots that perpetuate the terrorism.

That is open to debate.  According to sources close to them, the leader was more a Jim JOnes than a strong Christian.

Yes, and i am sure the muslim terrorists pray 5 times a day. But then most religions do warn about those who go through the motions of faith, without any of the belief behind them.  The rich man and the camel is but one.  They put on the show for others, but that is all.  And so it is again here.

So is the KKK, and they sound more like them than they do Christians.  But again, I will not argue what they called themselves.  One merely has to look at their deeds to see they are not.  And more importantly one only has to look at the authoratative support they received to see how truly dangerous they were.  They could have blown up a bus, but their insanity was not stretching beyond the messianic preechings of their cult leader.

Again, no arguement.  If you like, we can call them terrorists who profess to be Muslims.  I do not believe I ever stated that Islam was the villian, only that the villians were getting support from the heirarchy within Islam.

Yes.  And ostracizing and isolating it is the first and biggest step to erradicating it.  I think this episode demonstrates that is the norm with the professed Christian terrorists.  But no one can honestly claim it is the norm with muslim terrorists.

In my blog entries I usually use quotes around words when I refer to terrorists. I call them "Muslims".

But who are those "Figure of Authority"? who appoint these?

The big, big difference between Christianity and Islam is the lack of independant power structure. Christianity usually have the Catholic Church, or other organisations that decide who gets appointed priest, who can preach at churches, and the like. Islam, not so much. Usually, the government will decide who can and who can't be Imams, mullahs, and the like.

Well, technically, an Imam is somebody who has the care of a Mosque. So anyone who get landed with that responsibility becomes an Imam, regardless of the study he might have taken (sometimes elected by a community, appointed by the government, or simply because they had the financial means to do so). A Mullah are the equivalent of our "religious scholar" = priests.

So you have radical Imams who act like the demagogues pundits here in America. They know what make their flock angrier, and the angrier they are, the more they listen to him, the less they listen to other Imams. So it's no wonder that there happens to have some radical Imams who support violence. But they answer to no one, except their flock. A priest who would advocate killing the jews would, (I hope) have to answer to the Vatican.

Also, the other problem with condemning Islam as a violent religion based on the attack made by the Arabs against Israeli is that this conflict is a political conflict beforehand. Religion got mixed in it by necessity and opportunism, but ultimately, it's not about religion.

The initial beef, I'd say, of the countries around Israel against it wasn't that it was a "Jewish state". It's that it was a powerful country right on their doorstep where before it was only tribesmen. I don't think any country likes to see a dangerous neighbour materialise overnight, with the West's support.

Now, I might suppose that since these countries have had to live with Israel as their neighbour for the past 60 years, they are probably more likely to accept them. On the other hand, Jordan and Egypt have no interest in seeing the Palestinians becoming a free state, so they do their best to make sure the problem is never solved. Also, I guess they like to see their nuclear-armed neighbours being busy with a guerilla war, antagonising the whole region because of it.

....

Darn, I actually thought all of that as I wrote it. So... the Palestinian struggle serves Syria, Jordan and Egypt's geopolitical goals? Brillant!

How could that have been their initial beef? When Israel became independent it was neither powerful not did it have the West's support. The US almost voted against the partition and the United Kingdom armed and trained the Jordanian military that invaded Israel and took Jerusalem.

I wouldn't exactly call it "support" when the UK managed almost to destroy their newly-independent former territory.

And nothing made the new country "dangerous". That's why the Arabs attacked it. They thought (and said) that it would be easily beaten. Jews were not exactly known as excellent fighters in the Middle-East. The Arabs armies were well-equipped and trained (by the British) and Israel was equipped only during the war, not by the west but by Czechoslovakia. (Of course, Czechoslovakia's support ended after the Soviet-Union invaded them in the 60s.)

Incidentally, the Arabs also attacked (and more successfully so) all the other non-Arab peoples in the region. Israel was just the only one acknowledged as an independent country by the UN and the only one who actually survived the attacks. All the other peoples were simply given Arab rulers and that was it. Perhaps creating dozens of Arab countries created a dangerous situation for their neighbours and the people they ruled? Or what was the "initial beef" with all those other non-Arab peoples? (What's the beef with them now? Is Darfur a dangerous neighbour? Was Southern Sudan?)

I doubt the Arabs considered any of the non-Arab peoples, Jews or any of the others, dangerous in the military sense.

But I appreciate your appraisal of a Jewish state as obviously "dangerous" to its neighbours!

The "Palestinian struggle" obviously serves anyone who wants the Jews exterminated. That's why Hitler's mufti created the struggle, in case you were wondering. Despite what many in the west say about Islam, anti-Semitism of that kind didn't really exist in the Arab world before the (English-appointed) "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" imported it from Germany and France. (Note that the founder of the Baath Party was a Christian.)

Appoints?  WHo appoints a Baptist minister?  The congregation.  Who appoints a Lutheran Pastor?  The congregation.  Wirh some exceptions (Anglican, Catholicism), most are hired by the body of the church.  Much as I suspect happens in the Muslim world.

Government?  In Theocracies perhaps.  But I dare say in most nations, they stay out of it.

Even Jeremiah Wright was not condoning terrorism.  So that analogy falls apart.  I am sure you can find a wayward minister somewhere if you try hard enough.  But how hard do you really have to try to find a violent preaching imam?

And again, I never condemned the religion.  I noted that there is a lot of violence being preached from the pulpit and the only way to stop the violence is to change those preaching.  For anyone to deny that there are many violent muslims who find solace and inspiration from religious leaders is to deny reality.  That does not say that ALL are.  And the second part is that no one denies there are christian wackos as well.  But the major difference is they can find no refuge in their relligion from people of authority.  Muslims can.

TODAY it is a (relatively) powerful country.  it was not in 48, 56 or 67.  Yet the hatred goes back that far (that was when it was declared a country, so before you would have to look for ethnic violence).  That argument would hold water if the animosity was recent, instead of chronic.

How we got from terrorism to Israel is strange, but the above I agree with mostly.  Jordan and Egypt really do not care about israel any longer (they are at peace so can concentrate elsewhere) and yes, they love the guerilla war as it does keep Israel concerned within its own borders.  If Israel had plans for Egypt or Jordan, that would give them pause.  I do not think they do, but I can understand where those countries may - or at the least figure better safe than sorry.

I was going to ask you who Dan was until I put on my glasses.  But yes, from a geo-political standpoint, i can very well see where it does.  saber Rattling does not really bother many as all countries do it and very seldom is a shot fired.  So they can bluster about Israel, while going back to the safety of their house and drink their tea knowing that is one area they do not have to worry about too much.

In that respect, yea, palestinians are merely puppets to occupy not very friendly neighbors while you concentrate on other problems.

Jordan always tried to get out of the anti-Israel coalition. Don't forget that it was the Jordanian king's grand uncle who made the pact with the Zionists and called on them to create a Jewish state.

Neither Egypt nor Jordan love the guerilla war because that war is also directed against them. Jordan fought off a PLO rebellion with Israeli help in the 1970s and Egypt is constantly worried about the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas) staging a coup in Egypt as they have done in Gaza.

Both Egypt and Jordan just want the conflict to end and play whatever role the "international community" wants them to play (with Egypt even openly defending Israel when the rest of the world blames it for war).

Syria is the major Arab player who want the war to continue because it allows the Assad family to stay in power (as Shiites in a Sunni country) and because it allows them free reign in Lebanon. They also want free reign in Israel and Jordan which is why they support the PLO and Hamas. The dream of a Greater Syria is not gone and Syrian maps routinely show Lebanon as a part of Syria.

My only problem with Egypt is that they keep shooting African refugees trying to get into Israel. Egypt does this partly to protect Israel from terrorists but mostly to protect Arab Sudan from a PR disaster. No Arab country wants black slaves to escape to, of all places, Israel!

Oh, and Dr. Guy, Israel is VERY powerful.

A "relatively powerful country" would not be able to send a field hospital to the other side of the planet within days and before even super powers nearly bordering the location in question are able to set up anything like that.

A "relatively powerful country" would not be able to develop nuclear weapons, which everybody thinks Israel has done.

And it wouldn't be able to send commandos into the middle of Africa or bomb the PLO in Tunisia (which is pretty far away) or nuclear power plants in Iraq. Nobody would fear that Israel might attack Iranian nuclear sites either.

Apart from all the conspiracy theories, the Jewish state really is extraordinarily powerful, not just relative to its size and population but in absolut terms as well. And that is what keeps Arab armies from invading these days.

When Israel was weak, they invaded. When Israel seemed weak, they invaded. Today Israel is strong and everybody knows it. And most Arab countries respect strength. That's why it's so dangerous when Obama weakens Israel in any way. We'll have a big war within months if he is too "successful" with that strategy.

But in 1948 Israel was not very powerful and it certainly didn't seem to be even as powerful as it really was.

In the Middle-East the idea of a fighting Jew was a joke. Jews never fought in armies. They weren't allowed to. Only Muslims fought and were big heroes. Jews were weak second-class citizens that could be driven out of their homes at Arab will. Until 1948.

I doubt the Arabs even took into account the possibility that the Jews might survive.

"Relatively" in the sense it is small.  Not in what it is doing per capita (which makes it a very powerful counrtry in that sense).

Israel cannot be in 10 places at once, but where it does go, it does make an impact.  That is the "relative" part.