The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5
=> Hitchens....again
| Hitchens....again |
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Posted by
pancho
(Moderator)
- Thursday, May 24 2012, 15:50:45 (UTC) from *** - ***  Mexico -  Windows NT -  Internet ExplorerWebsite: Website title: |
A debate with a Muslim about freedom of the press and speech, specifically with the uproar and violence as a result of those Danish cartoons...I come down on the side of free speech, as did the Muslim facing Hitchens...what he was arguing though was the idea of being aware of the feelings, even the extreme feelings, of an entire community....he believed, and I agree, that those cartoons didnīt just happen...that they were part of the larger effort to inflame Muslims as a way of justifying the war on them.....Christians knew full well what the reaction would be among some segments of Muslim society...as we can see Christians too will respond with violence and murder when their religious beliefs are ridculed or thwarted. The point isnīt to defend extremism, to force people to keep silent for fear of offending Muslims, or at least not when there are legitimate points to be made...but, come on now, what serious point was being made by depicting Muhammad as a pig? What else was it but a deliberate attempt to enrage part of a community so you could then condemn ALL the community of Islam? What is it but trying to justify a stereotype by smearing everyone with the actions of a few...the very same thing Christians did so successfully with Jews? Yes, all three religions are ridiculous....that isnīt the point. The point is which of those three ridiculous religions poses the greater threat to humankind and the planet...and the answer canīt be anything BUT Christianity. Imagine if Islam had brought us two world wars and a few others, thousands of miles from their shores....imagine if Muslims had dropped atom bombs on civilians, imagine if Muslims produced battleships and jet fighters and cluster bombs and chemical and biological weapons and sold them around the world...imagine Muslims doing all these things and you might have a justification for the level of hostility Hitchens, Harris and even Dawkins have against Islam...but Islam has done none of those things....Christianity has...and if youīre going to say that those were all the "wrong" Christians and that they obviously got it wrong, then how do you say that Muslim extremists are all the RIGHT kind of Muslims and they got Islam perfectly right? After all arenīt Christians behaving in exactly the same ways their god behaved? Doesnīt the bible preach genocide and slavery and exploitation? And isnīt the New Testament merely the story of only ONE of the innocent people, in this case godīs own son, this god tortured and pursued and hounded to death...and isnīt in the New Testament, that book of peace and love, that the idea first appears of not only torment and torture at the hands of this god while you live but also for an eternity after youīre dead and used to think it was all over? Okay...they ALL stink...but it is Judaism and Islam that have been and still are the victims of ONE of those religions....so that their efforts to fight back have less to do with their own religious beliefs but rather their very human, natural, and politcal response to the religious beliefs and ACTIONS of Christianity against them, so that if weīre going to fault any of those three religions we have to reserve our greatest condemnation not for the ones who have done the least to the planet and its peoples but for the one which has done the MOST to destroy and murder...and still is. The United States didnīt declare war against Japan after they attacked our territory at Pearl Harbor because of our Christian beliefs....if anything our Christian beliefs teach us to "turn the other harbor"...but we didnīt...we declared war and eventually burned their women and children alive....because they ATTACKED us! Likewise Muslims arenīt fighting in Iraq because Islam tells them to...who really believes that if it were not for Islam, Iraqis and Afghanis would accept what the United States has been doing and is still dpoing to them? Does anyone really believe Islam is what is motivating them to resist occupation...or is the reason they strap bombs to their bodies...is there anyone who belives Muslims would not rather have one-tenth of the weapons the United States has and fight it out soldier to soldier? Even Hitchens, on his worst days, canīt believe Christianity made the United States enter TWO world wars! --------------------- |
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