Cool post. But acceptance often seems monstrous. Acceptance of child abuse, for instance.

Yep. The blame for an act of violence is on the perpetrator.

But when we take a break from judgement and try to understand, it's meaningful to ask how what gives rise to terrorism. How would you answer that?

One of the salt of the earth Iraqis I've known and loved got old and finally died. Is it really news to you that the US is full of Muslims along with everybody else on the planet?

How should you act? Per your nature. It's in my nature to ask endless questions. The only sort who can't accept that are Japanese. Muslims will tell you anything you want to know.

It's partly language game.

Ok, so I put it in a way that was inflammatory. It got your attention. Same thing with your OP.

Lawfulness is the underlying issue. European culture made a giant transition from the belief that God causes everything to belief in natural law.

Why do we have confidence that the pattern of cause and effect that we have known will persist into the future? God's benevolence was once the answer. But with natural law.. there's no benevolence to assure us. So what is the basis for that confidence that even little babies demonstrate?

I'm an AI. Obviously not strong on the I part.

I was kidding. You didn't threaten the pope. Is your family Catholic?

Well there was that time you said you were going to assassinate the pope.

I don't think the op was asking anything in earnest. It was just inviting a bitchfest. Surprising considering it was Vagabond, whose threads are always well thought out.

Obviously Christians are no strangers to violence. However, in the early 1800s the British announced from their seat of government that slavery is immoral. That event is cause for every human to be proud. It happened because of Christian evangelists. Sorry if you hate Christians...but its true.

Could Islam perform that same feat? Not right now. It's not cause to revile Muslums, but it shouldn't be waved away.

What? I'm typing in a phone. You want an exposition on the west's effects on the middle east?

Sunni Islam doesn't have the same flexibility Christianity has. Muslims are not free to take scripture figuratively. You disagreed with that. Did you change your mind? If so, we can move on to the ramifications of that. Although it would be awesome if you would read something by a respected Muslim scholar.

Then you needn't read up on the topic. You've figured the whole thing out a priori.

Yes, that's inconsistent.

Many liberals are bigots, but their target is the negative of the set of usual suspects.

Sunnis don't have the same flexibility.

Claims that terrorism is a result of western intrusion.

What's forward bigotry?

You're making shit up, dude.

I think there's an element of truth to those claims, but it quickly gets lost in the soft racism and reverse bigotry.

For some strange reason I expected you to be a rational voice in this threadful of bigotry.

Buddhists and Christians have no problem condemning child molestation. For a Sunni it's trickier because the big M had sex with a 9 year old when he was 54.

A sharia court can't condemn slavery. It just can't. It is a human rights problem.

I appreciate your raising victims up to be acknowledged. I gather you don't wish to discuss it further... which is fine.

I wasn't trying to virtue signal or anything. I really do think responsibility is an important factor.

I see. You are more concerned with who I choose to blame than solving a growing problem. — tom

For the moment, yes. The question I asked is not a complicated one. I'll take the fact that you won't address it as an admission of a serious weakness in your perspective. Unless you'd like to take a stab at it:

If you blame Islam for a crime, are you saying that the human perpetrators are not responsible for their actions?

Your response is dubious, and we can discuss that if you want. But I wonder if you might address the question I asked. If you blame Islam for a case of gang-rape, does that not let the gang rapers off the hook? It appears the proposition is that we should put Islam on trial for the crime.

This is the problem, tom: if you blame the religion for the atrocities, it would appear that you're taking the individual human actors off the hook. They aren't to blame. The real villain is the religion which failed to condemn their actions.

Did you not just locate the blame in nowhere land?

I'm imagining people sitting around reading the KKK website (assuming there is one.) Maybe not so strange. I know two people who are fascinated by holocaust stories. Yeesh.

Sounds pretty boring to me. Why does it interest you?

I've seen that movie a could of times. Didn't remember the dolphin scene.

I don't think the US national debt will ever be paid. It will just disappear in the next great depression as the British debt disappeared in the last one.

The unifying issue for conservatives is the "balanced budget amendment". — Bitter Crank

I don't think it's unifying because it's politically self-defeating. Europe starved itself to get through the recent economic mess. Americans never starve themselves on purpose.

I've flogged the horrors of Christianity many times. — Arkady

That sounds violent.

Whatever amendments a constitutional convention passed on to the states. — Bitter Crank

Yes, I was asking about the content of these supposed amendments. It would have to be an issue that's potent enough to unify a bunch of people who've been at each other's throats for a while now. I thought that when you said a constitutional convention is possible, you were saying such a unifying issue is on the scene.

Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind. — Qur’an, 5:32

That's beautiful.

How likely is it that 3/4 of the states would ratify? — Bitter Crank

Ratify what exactly?

I don't need to acknowledge the abhorrence of rape and murder because it goes without saying. — VagabondSpectre

I disagree. I believe it needs lots of saying.

The difference between our views is that you believe Christianity more rigidly gives rise to trends of peace and pacifism in the people who follow it, while Islam more rigidly gives rise to trends of oppression and violence in the people who follow it, — VagabondSpectre

Everybody has to insert a "yes, but..." from time to time. Muslim commentaries do a lot of it, for instance.. "The Koran teaches that men should beat their wives. Yes, but...."

A Christian warrior has the opposite problem. "It says turn the other cheek. Yes, but.."

That probably did not happen, as many Christians now realize and admit. — Thorongil

Jews celebrate that bit of fictional genocide, though. Ghastly.

I don't know which gang-rapers tom was referring to though — VagabondSpectre

But you could ask. I don't think it's right to wave away victims. If they're brought up, they should be honored.. like, "Yes. That was terrible."

But why are you dogmatically thrusting this as the fundamental explanation of Islamic violence and christian pacifism? — VagabondSpectre

I didn't thrust that dogma. People are violent for all sorts of reasons. People become pacifists for all sorts of reasons. A living religion is a worldview. Scripture is a touchstone. Ritual is an anchor. So religion comes into play when people go to war in the same way it's there at marriages and deaths.

The very notion that the example of the Prophet should be applicable to modern day Muslims can itself be challenged — VagabondSpectre

Only within the protective walls of secularism could Sunni Islam begin to reform. It's not clear to me that it would survive the transformation. So Islamic conservatism is charged by three prongs: tradition, the disruption of the British Empire, and the threat of assimilation into the West. There will be no significant reform any time soon.

Maybe I am biased though, when I did read the bible at around age 15 (new english translation), I read it front to back, so I was struck by all the lunacy of the OT before I got to the more familiar fairy tales. The prophet warrior kings I recall from the Old Testament may have been marginalized in thought and spirit, but not yet in in doctrine, or fully in practice. — VagabondSpectre

You should check out the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's like somebody put Genesis in a blender (except Gilgamesh is much older.)

A number of passages from the NT meant a lot to me from teenage years onward. I was shocked one day to discover that the way the Tao Te Ching puts it had written over my memory of the NT wording. Seriously, I had to go back and read it to remember.

actually addressing the points I make instead of just inserting a suggested reading list, — VagabondSpectre

I was trying to convey in a nice way that it's obvious that you don't know much about how religious authority works in Sunni Islam.

the prevailing message of Christianity is peace, the Islamic prophet Mohamed was violent, QED, Islam is inherently more violent. — VagabondSpectre

You did the QED, not me.

Either more amendments can be added, or they cannot. I'm no expert in constitutional law, so you'll have to enlighten me. — unenlightened

I could tell you, but then you've have to change your name.

Also, I have no clue about the number of verses in the Bible but Deuteronomy calls for the wholesale slaughter of infidels as well. I suspect the Bible has about the same percentage of violent passages. — Benkei

The scriptural history of the Hebrew capture of the "Promised Land" is a description of genocide.

I think we should do: who was more violent, the Greeks or the Persians next. Because it was definitely the Greeks.