San Bernardino

Have a few friends in the general vicinity. I've seen numerous headlines on FB in the past few days.

 

Arguing that some Christians commit atrocities, too, is like saying that Jeff Samardzija and Zack Greinke were the same in 2015 because Greinke, too, gave up some runs.

 

A minority of their leaders are extreme. The rest denounce terrorism, but for some odd reason you think their condemnation of it doesn't matter.

 

I'm still really interested to know how you define extreme vs. moderate.

Is just condemning terror enough to not be considered extreme?

What's a moderate Muslim -- especially a moderate Muslim leader?

What's a moderate Muslim leader think the penalty should be for apostasy for example? How do they view the rights of women? Is a women's word equal to a man's in a court of law?

What should be the standard to prove rape according to a moderate Muslim leader?

 

Wow. That story really offends me -- as a coffee lover!

 

Yeah, the condemnation has almost eliminated terrorism worldwide.

 

I uphold Christianity -- and as a subset, a certain kind of protestant Christianity - as the truth. Islam, to me, is false. Wrong. Legalistic and controlling. A geopolitcial religion that appears concerned with worldy events, which for me casts doubt on the sovereignty of Allah. Ultimately ruinous to many of its sincere, humble adherents, who are often caught up in fascist regimes run by mid-level thinkers who sway like grass in the wind and cling to the legalism of their faith to grapple with a inherently broken, unfair world. ISIS is full of such leaders, and while I accept that they think they're pursuing a worldwide jihad and they think that they're living out some "pure" form of their faith, they're really just broken and bankrupt human beings doing what broken and bankrupt human beings in power tend to do: Make a million rules and threaten violence to anyone who doesn't agree. That's human history, of which Islamic history is merely a part. The light of Christ has been dim in the world at times because of the legalism, fascism and rule-making of so-called Christians, too.

If you choose to say "well, this violence and fascism is endemic of Islam," that's fine, but if you don't believe in Islam, I'm not sure what difference it makes. It's not like most people want to have a sincere apologetics debate with Muslims across the spectrum. Most "Christians" aren't even interested in the distinctives of our own denominations. If you're not "down" with Islam, then you think it's false and, as such, you label the good ideas coming of Islam as mere happenstance/common grace/human spirit and the bad ideas as the evil/fallen nature/the way things with bad people.

What bugs me about the whole thing - and I have reasonable friends whipped up in this, too - is that some Americans almost want to invite this conflict, and will use Islam as a convenient way of drawing more into the concern, because - and this is scary to me -- plain old fascism and despotism and human ugliness isn't disturbing enough. The religious component almost delivers a kind of intrigue. And I fear, if America gets drawn down that path -- if it allows ISIS to be "inspired" and "on a mission" instead of being the gang of tinpot thugs they are, lording over mostly poor people without resources or recourse because these countries are geopolitical shitholes long propped up by the money we spend for the oil they have -- it is precisely the kind of legitimacy people who run ISIS crave. They're nihilists and narcissists, trolling global powers, banking on our acknowledgment of their "religious" underpinnings to draw hopeless acolytes. If we give them that - and we have been - we deliver to them a fuel that keeps their organization running. We magnify them as world powers.

And, again, it seems like we just might be doing for the sake of intrigue, which is what global powers unfortunately do.

 

Are you saying we'd be better off ignoring them? That they'll lose interest if we don't "encourage" them?

 

Thanks heavens the Christian God took dinosaur bones from other planets and put them on our planet when forming the Earth so we'd have oil.

 

Because there's no room at all between carpet-bombing and ignoring?

 

I was asking Alma legitimate questions. I'm curious as to his answers. And I know that unlike many posters around here, he's honest and thoughtful enough to respond.