Harrak - the prophets and Thomas Jefferson

Submitted by Sidda (United States), Mar 6, 2006 at 11:43

Well, Harrak, Judaism obviously came before Christianity. The Old Testament contained prophesies of the coming of the savior, Jesus Christ. The New Testament was the fulfillment of that prophesy.

In the Old Testament, the prescribed punishment for adultery was stoning; Jesus, in the New Testament, says to the crowd gathered to stone a woman accused of adultery, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Mohammed went back and reinstituted the stoning penalty from the Old Testament. This is but one example of the regressive nature of Islam. On a side note, I don't really know of any mainstream Jewish denomination (or any at all for that matter) that still advocate stoning for adultery in the 21st century.

I am not really concerned that the Jews deny the divinity of Jesus or how they view Solomon or David. That's their business. My point on my last post was that it serves no purpose to point out the imperfections of those in the Old Testament (or the New Testament for that matter). Christians believe that the only perfect being was Jesus Christ and he is the one we are to keep our focus on.

As a Catholic I could spent hours debating my "born again" Christian brothers and sisters on the differences in our perspectives. I personally think that to get into the fine points of various belief systems obfuscates the main issue and that is the threat we face today from Islamofascism. It's not whether a person holds a personal religious belief that differs from others, it is whether or not his belief system compels him, in one manner or another, to force his beliefs on those who do not believe as he does. It is whether he believes his belief system should "dominate and not be dominated" or cover the earth until all are either converted, subjugated, or killed. This belief system is at odds with values of pluralism and democracy which we in the West (and also in some non-Western societies such as India) espouse.

I believe Thomas Jefferson, one of our founders, summed it up quite nicely when he said, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty Gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket or breaks my leg."

The problem the world is facing today is that Islam, as a belief system, does not follow that philosophy. And yes, I know about the "there is no compulsion in religion" verse that many Muslims quote as proof of the tolerance of Islam for other faiths. But, most of us know that these peaceful Meccan verses were abrogated by the more violent, intolerant Medina ones. Even if (and I believe this to be true) many decent, peaceful Muslims do not know of this abrogation or follow it, the extremists do.

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