"Non-Muslims have survived centuries of Islamization, but just barely"

Accomodation is unacceptable. We must strengthen the Copts and other Christians living in now muslim lands and ourselves in order to prevent us from becoming another dhimmi in a muslim dominated land. The time to start is now. Government policy must be changed.

Thinking_One said 'Accommodation is unacceptable.'

I agree, however I think you need to think a little harder and consider eradicating all religions.

"Perhaps resilience itself may be the most powerful force of resistance to Islamization"

Freedom of Speech and its wide use is a powerful force too...it is why the Muslims fight so hard to curtail or remove it from the people who can use it...The Muslims do not want the real truth about Islam reaching infidel ears...

I agree, however I think you need to think a little harder and consider eradicating all religions.

When I was in kindergarten, I learned about this little trick called "prioritization". You should check into it. It'll help you progress beyond the infantile level you're at now.

Well, the Soviets were experts in eliminating all religions, perhaps, venividivici, we should emulate their example, since it was such a rousing success, and Russia is top of the heap, as far as civil societies go.

Jewel,

As long as Islam is eliminated, I don't give a fig what happens to other religions, unless they emulate Islam.

I was pointing out that people who call for "eliminating all religions" need to figure out an actual strategy for doing so and as part of that strategy, figure out the sequence of eliminations, because it is highly doubtful that a strategy of eliminating them all at once is likely to succeed. Also, they may find that once you eliminate Islam, the urgency of eliminating other religions dissipates.

I fully expect this post to be deleted, but as long as we're talking "eliminating" religions, I figured I'd inject some strategic planning into the discussion.

There is no strategic planning. Only learning from the past. I was serious when I said the Soviets were experts at eliminating religion. They had every angle imaginable covered. There isn't anything they did which couldn't be tried again, with the same results. That is because in their zeal to eliminate all religions, they replaced them with a counterfeit one. Communism. A vastly inferior religion to the Judaism or Orthodox Christianity that were the targets. It is interesting, that the very targets of Soviet elimination, accommodated themselves willingly to that tyranny.
As a result of spies, informants and Communist apologists infesting the churches, an underground church was born. That was the effect of the effort to eliminate all religions in the USSR.
You can also see how well the elimination of religiosity has worked in Europe, where churches are more like mausoleums than thriving bastions of Christian faith. It might be that Europeans will rediscover their religious heritage when the Eurabian state begins to enforce dhimmification on the remnant faithful.

venividivici said When I was in kindergarten, I learned about this little trick called "prioritization". You should check into it. It'll help you progress beyond the infantile level you're at now.

Why is eliminating superstition infantile when shoring up archaic and failing religions in the face of a growing and equally archaic but violent religion is nonsensical? How is that an advancement?

We have science now, we don't need to assuage our fears with drivel.

Try to be more civil, your ignorance is showing.

Jewel: You can also see how well the elimination of religiosity has worked in Europe, where churches are more like mausoleums than thriving bastions of Christian faith.

Jewel, with all respect, there's a direct link to the availability or information, knowledge and the increase in secular thinking. Europe is a great example. Christianity is failing because it's of no further use.

Abu Lahab

before you decide that 'Christianity is of no further use', and that it is 'an archaic and failing religion', I invite you to reflect upon the following human beings, all of whom lived in the twentieth century:

Jacques Ellul - read 'The Technological Society' and 'The Meaning of the City' and 'Hope in an Age of Abandonment'

Maximilien Kolbe

Irina Ratushinskaya
http://www.wheaton.edu/learnres/ARCSC/collects/sc44/

Arvo Part

Corrie ten Boom

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Richard Wurmbrand

Brother Roger of Taize

and then decide whether you can honestly say that their Christian faith was completely irrelevant to who they were and what they did and said.

And whether you can dismiss them all as contemptible and stupid.

Dumbledoresarmy, All could have been 'said' without any religious influence and I dare say there's a considerably more expansive list of horrendous things not only said but done in the name or religion that I could counter with.

Here's my list for anyone lost in religion:

god is not great - Christopher Hitchens
The god Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Sense and Goodness without god - Richard Carrier

I didn't say 'contemptible'. Laughable, yes. Until we put aside religion as untenable in the 21st Century (for anything other than a personal crutch) then we will always have the problems we see that islam is currently heading.

"Christianity is failing because it's of no further use."

Posted by: Abu_Lahab

It's of no use to you, but, fortunately, you don't speak for all humanity.

I'll strike a deal with you, though. I won't force my religious beliefs down your throat, if you won't force your atheism down mine.

"Europe is a great example. Christianity is failing because it's of no further use."

I take great exception to that. Although not a Christian, I believe that the values taught by Christianity - love, tolerance, charity, faithfulness and forgiveness - are essential in any civilised society.

If values such as these are of “no further use” in modern Europe, then the continent really is finished.

Matamoros, are you saying that without religion we have no morals? I clearly stated that we have no use for religion, not decent behavior.

Abu_Lahab

"Why is eliminating superstition infantile when shoring up archaic and failing religions in the face of a growing and equally archaic but violent religion is nonsensical? How is that an advancement?"

Uh, because not all religions are superstitions.

Even if they were, as long as the followers are not harming anyone, then people have a right to believe what they wish.

The point is not whether Islam is a superstition. The point is the specific teachings of Islam and how they affect those who follow them, in terms of the way they behave in the world in their treatment of unbelievers.

Apparently you are new to JW because only Islam treats unbelievers with such contempt, which then leads to the oppression and violence we see all around the world.

"Try to be more civil, your ignorance is showing."

I think you need to take your own advice.

Mo, please list any/all religions that are NOT superstitions. Also post any proof of any deity or miracle that a faith has ever been able to substantiate.

Waiting.......

Abu_Lahab:

Until we put aside religion as untenable in the 21st Century (for anything other than a personal crutch) then we will always have the problems we see that islam is currently heading.

But we tried that in the 20th Century. Two alternative belief systems - Nazism and Communism - put aside religion in favour of their own codes of values. It led to Auschwitz and the gulags.

By referencing Islam, your argument seems to be that lazy old “all religions are the same” nonsense trotted out by both liberal progressives and apologists for Islamism.

If we put aside all religion - Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and the rest - with what do you suggest we replace it? Every successful society needs an agreed moral code to live by - what other system of shared beliefs will instil those values that I outlined above?

Liberal progressivism? Charitable, maybe. But tolerant and forgiving? Hardly.

Atheism? The state religion of liberal progressivism, it too falls at the tolerance hurdle (as you have ably demonstrated in your posts above).

I clearly stated that we have no use for religion, not decent behavior.

But what you term “decent behaviour” has its basis, at least in Western societies, in inherited Judaeo-Christian values. As the belief in traditional religion wanes in Western societies, the influence of those values wanes. As religious belief is attacked as outdated superstition, those shared values are attacked as old fashioned, intolerant and inhibiting.

And so societal morality - “decent behaviour”- those group norms which were previously instilled by our religious inheritance, and which were shared by almost everyone in our societies, is gradually replaced by the cult of individual morality - the fashioning of one’s own belief system to suit one‘s own character. The benefits of this new religion are evident in every Western society: in the rate of family breakdown; the rate of crime and violence; in drug and alcohol abuse; in the obsession with money and possessions; and in our general lack of respect for one another.

You may deride religious belief as “archaic”, but I can’t help noticing that the decline in religious belief in the West - from the late 1950s onwards? - mirrors almost exactly the decline in “decent behaviour” and the rise of those social problems that I outlined above.

And I’m afraid that you can’t blame that on the “Mohammedans”.

I only care about another's religion because of its impact on me. Prior to increased jihadist activity and the growth of islamic immigration to the West, I did not concern myself with islam. It would have been like an American or Briton worrying about National Socialism in 1922.

Abu_Lahab

Feel free to research the Christian religion, with its basis in history, the prophecies about Christ, the case for the resurrection of Christ etc. Feel free to research how the Bible was written - by (I believe) it's 40 different writers, many of which were eyewitnesses to the events they wrote about. And despite the hundreds of years it all took, it holds together as one narrative from start to finish. If you're looking for one 'magic bullet' to convince you, I don't think you'll find that. But all these things I've mentioned makes for a strong argument.

Of course, judging from the attitude you've displayed thus far, you're not going to bother looking into the things I have said, right?

I'm not going to go on tangent about religion here, with someone who - for whatever reason - is hostile to religion in general. This place is for a discussion of Islam and its effects in the world, and what we can do about it.

Some infidels are always necessary, for they provide a convenient scapegoat for Koranists for their usually dreary lives in Cesspoolia. Without infidels around the Koranists would set upon themselves and their usually corrupt and useless governments. Besides, who would do all the dirty work considered beneath the dignity of Illah's chosen ones?

Mo, thanks for your suggestion, however you're talking to someone who has put in close to 30 years of independent research.

You're concerned about islam, I'm concerned about all religion.

One thing we can certainly agree on is that the immediate threat to the World is islam.

Peace

Abu_Lahab

Obviously all your studying has done you no good, since you cannot seem to grasp the fact that religions cannot be lumped into one equal pile, because they teach very different (contradictory) things at their core. That's why we have this site that deals with Islam, and as opposed to say, the Amish.

But I'm sure to you these two groups are pretty much the same.

I'm done here.

Mo,

All religion is based on lies for the purpose of mind control of the masses. I've yet to see anyone post even the merest shred of evidence to the contrary.

You can ignore the facts but it doesn't change anything.

Sorry to be the one to tell you your version of 'Santa' is bull.

Yes, you're done.

Religion itself, in the case of the Copts, embodies their hopes, history, aspirations both temporal and transcendand, their culture and values--it is the essence of their resistance to obliteration and their succor and strength, collective, familial and individual. Here, then, religion, the realm of conscience and psyche, is rather impervious to persecution and tyranny.

typo: read "transcendant"

"transcendent," that is

Abu,

Why is eliminating superstition infantile when shoring up archaic and failing religions in the face of a growing and equally archaic but violent religion is nonsensical? How is that an advancement?

We have science now, we don't need to assuage our fears with drivel.

Try to be more civil, your ignorance is showing.

I have no interest in eliminating or shoring up religions besides Islam because they are not bothering me and I don't bother them. My point is that your hysterical ranting about "eliminate all religions" is so grandiosely over the top and childish that it reflects the type of person who never prioritizes to actually accomplish something.

My job requires me to advise CEOs of very large companies. If I walk into their office and say "Get rid of the competition!", do you think they're going to be impressed? No, they'll boot me out because I didn't give them a plan, like, "Eliminate this competitor, then this one, then this one because by eliminating the first one, here's the change in the marketplace that will occur, etc., etc."

Or if business strategy isn't your bag (I'm guessing it, or any other type of strategy, isn't), maybe a simple disease analogy will work with you. Islam, on its best day, is cancer and all other religions, on their worst day, are a case of the sniffles and you're proposing devoting the same level of resources to getting rid of the sniffles as getting rid of cancer. Typical infantile anti-religion rhetoric, like I said from the beginning.

It's funny you would consider science a replacement for religion when they aren't even in the same category. That is basic Philosophy 101 (religion being philosophy for the masses). I would never read the Bible for advice in the art and science of business management (except in a very oblique way, because some of the stuff in there about how to run an organization is worthwhile), nor would I read Peter Drucker to understand what's going to happen to my soul after I die.

I think that Roderick makes some important points, especially the one that most people do not understand that Christianity predates Islam in the Middle east.

Also I wonder about those people who grace oppression and institutionalized violence as being cultural phenomenom that should be accepted and not criticized. Is it a soft form of bigotry? A predilection for amorality, or simply intellectual laziness?

Our southern United States has I think enhanced its culture since some were forced to stop treating its black citizens as chattel. Perhaps our arabized friends in the Middle east will actually be better off if they were to eschew violence and oppression for tolerance and diversity. I would guess that it is better for adherents of any religion to be so because of the convictions of their conscience rather than because of being kidnapped or held against their will in their belief system.

Didnt Mahomet say there should be no compulsion in religion?

Unfortunately, both Jamie Glazov and Rev. Roderick use the word "racism" to describe Moslem discrimination against and persecution of non-Moslems. This plays into the hands of the Moslems who pretend to be victims of racism in the West. We must scrupulously avoid that term unless it refers specifically to discrimination on the basis of race. Moslem persecution and discrimination of non-Moslems is just that: religious persecution and discrimination.

venividivici: My point is that your hysterical ranting about "eliminate all religions" is so grandiosely over the top and childish that it reflects the type of person who never prioritizes to actually accomplish something.

It may have escaped your notice but this is a message board not a board meeting. There is no need for a lengthy diatribe when a few succinct words will do. From my post you know my position. As for your allegation of 'hysterical ranting', 'over-the-top' and 'childish' statements based on our difference of opinion: Your exaggeration is a reflection of a weak argument.

venividivici: My job requires me to advise CEOs of very large companies...[SNIP].

Oh, good for you! Bravo! I wasn't advising CEO's, I'm on a message board, my posts are of an appropriate length (until now). You need to learn to match your message to your audience, ok?

venividivici: Or if business strategy isn't your bag (I'm guessing it, or any other type of strategy, isn't), You may want to use logic instead of guesswork, you'll be a CEO instead of groveling around them for their scraps.maybe a simple disease analogy will work with you. Islam, on its best day, is cancer and all other religions, on their worst day, are a case of the sniffles and you're proposing devoting the same level of resources to getting rid of the sniffles as getting rid of cancer. Typical infantile anti-religion rhetoric, like I said from the beginning.

Fine. Islam is a cancer, we're agreed on that, and I certainly agree that all other religions are diseases also. Where we differ is that you've forgotten how 'serious' these other 'diseases' were. I'd liken them more to the plague than the sniffles. Pick up a book, read up on some history of your chosen religion, find out about it before you declare it free from past disgraceful behavior.

venividivici: It's funny you would consider science a replacement for religion when they aren't even in the same category.

Then why did the Church go to such lengths to control science? It was to control knowledge. The fear in any religion is that the congregation will figure things out for themselves and make the Church obsolete.

Please email me directly at britishspunk (at) hotmail.com if you want to continue this conversation, let’s not waste space on JW/DW.

Thanks.

Abu Lahab

you appear to be convinced that Christendom without exception ruthlessly suppressed all science and thought - that it was all one long unmitigated Dark Age from the 4th century to the ?17th.

OK.

But have you read Toby Huff: 'The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West'?

Or, perhaps, Rodney Stark, 'For the Glory of God' and 'The Victory of Reason'?

And now I have a piece of history for you, followed by a question.

In Beijing, after the communists took over, they rounded up a whole batch of Christians at the University.

The Christians were given a Mohammed-style choice: publicly renounce their faith and embrace the Maoist manifesto, or be beheaded on the spot.

NOT ONE chose to renounce their faith. They were all executed that day.

Here's my question: had you been there, would you have observed the deaths of those Chinese Christians with pleasure, or with indifference? After all: the Maoists were heroically paving the way for something you seem to want - a completely 'religion-free' society...

Can't have omelettes without breaking eggs...