Arm yourself with the facts

Submitted by Strong Female (United States), Mar 30, 2011 at 13:29

The Crusades were launched to RECLAIM land lost to Mohammed during his own 'crusades'. The first Crusade began in 1095, only after centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians.

Slavery, of any people, is wrong. The West has come to terms with their history of enslavement of people, admitted to it and has apologized for it. Far from ignoring or condemning slavery, Islam condones the horrible institution like no other religion. Muslims are encouraged to live in the way of Muhammad, who was a slave owner and trader. He captured slaves in battle. He had sex with his slaves. And he instructed his men to do the same. The Qur'an actually devotes more verses to making sure that Muslim men know they can keep women as sex slaves than it does to telling them to pray five times a day. Even today there are examples of forced labor, as illustrated by the mulitude of news articles coming from places such as Saudi Arabia and UAE of women from Asian countries coming for work, only to have their passports taken and forced to work long hours for no pay under the threat of harm.

As to your comment on the fights between priests, there has always been tension between the different christian groups running the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This is a 'turf' war over control and not sectarian. This doesn't excuse the juvenile behavior shown by either side and the behavior should be condemned. However, aside from a few bloody noses and bruises, all parties involved walked away with their heads intact..

Ireland was not a 'Holy War'. The IRA did not have a Biblical charter. They were a Marxist-atheist organization. Neither did the British government have religious motives, nor any of the other major groups. There were some smaller, radical groups that used the language of religious purity, but they were relatively obscure. The issue for the "Catholic" factions was Irish nationalism, and for the "Protestants" it was self-preservation and an end to the violence. Only a very small minority of the citizens in Northern Ireland actually participated in the conflict, although the grief was spread among many.

World War II was hardly a scheme to spread Christianity (or Lutheranism, since Hitler invaded other "Christian countries" for the most part). The war was the result of a quest for political and economic power by the Germans and the Japanese - the same motives that drive most wars. Even the Nazi act of killing Jews was purely racial, as Hitler made very clear in Mein Kampf by insisting that Jews were a race and not a religion. Those who followed Christian teachings in Nazi Germany wound up in concentrations camps. In fact, during WWII, the largest community of Christian clerics in Europe was to be found in these death camps - surpassing even the Vatican in strength of numbers. The Nazis listed 'Geistliche' (pastors, priests and clergymen) alongside 'Juden' and 'Homosexueller' on concentration camp entry forms to define prisoner type.

I will agree with you that there are evil people associated with all religions. Christianity encourages it's followers to emulate Jesus, while Islam encourage it's followers to emulate Muhammad. Reading the biographies of both men I, for one, would have to say that the scales of evil weight heavily toward the marauding, warmongering, pedophile than the passive, peace loving celibate.

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