Answer to Juan Rios

Submitted by populous930 (Canada), Apr 10, 2006 at 15:47

To: Juan Rios, Mar 17, 2006 at 13:59

"I am an American Muslim who has proudly served as a United States Marine. I simply can't stand it anymore. I hate Muslims (THAT'S RIGHT... HATE) who have twisted our faith for thier own ambitions."
Is there any muslim rulers that you like? why you find them so universally bad? Is it because they use religion to justify their action whatever the action might be? Do you agree that religion and state should be separated?

"I also hate people who because they know nothing of my faith, they decide to villainize it because it doesn't match their own, which is the same thing certain Muslims do."
What do you say of those who villanize islam even though they studied it better then their own. Those who leave it when they realize that after you are done abrogating the old verses with the newer ones as mohammad explained, you are left with something we refuse to allow into our home and close to our children? You do understand the concept of abrogation in the koran right?

"In any holy scripture, there are words of anger and words that induce violence. Yet what people fail to mention is that these actions are only left as a last resort!!!!"
Ah the argument of 'violence only as a last resort'! A very broken argument as I will demonstrate (again). First the new testament has a couple semi-violent verses in it: "I brought the sword" however it is mostly tempered in peace. I repeat 'mostly, as in 99.9% tempered in peace'. The Koran never offers peace, only accepts the peace if offered. I repeat "Never offers peace as the 6400 verses in it never offer peace, Koran only accepts peace." So with islam peace can only be achieved if total victory is achieved and although that thought might bring a smile to your face it does not bring a smile to all the non-muslims, the people who studied islam and realized it is not for them and the people who chose to leave islam. For these people, they have to brace for violence and it becomes comical when you claim islam is a religion of peace. And for the record even the koran verses that appear to calm down the reader are later abrogated by violence.

"What if I were to do that with Timothy McVeigh, who's main reason for hurting hundreds of people was because he was inspired by Biblical verses???"
Tim is inspired by hate propaganda and by the fact that his government is robbing him of his rights. It is too bad that he still believes in the old testament which usually fail at tempering down violent tendencies. So yes, I blame the spiritual advisers of Tim for failing to do their job of calming him down. They failed on so many levels. At worst he should not have directed his bombs at collateral damage. However, no one is crazy enough to claim the old testament is a religion of peace. I never once heard a jew claim they have a religion of peace. I only heard jews claiming they should become more peaceful. The problem with the old testament and the way it is presented is peace could only be achieved if all the tribes became jewish and even that was impossible since you have to be born a jew and you can not convert. So all those christian sects that refuse to abrogate the old testaments with the new one then as far as I am concerned they are dangerous and should be treated with caution. However It is very important to keep in mind that, the testaments were not written by God. So if someone enforces a verse he only has himself to blame if judged.


"Islam itself means Surrender."
And Juan, that is a problem. Actually it means submission but your close enough. You expect me to submit to a religion that that does not allow other cultures to thrive, that instigates violence among those you perceive contradict your view of the world (ie: sunni do not believe the shiite to be muslims and vice-versa), a religion that does not separate government and religion. So in practice when you submit to a priest who is also your governor, it becomes very hard for your to criticise the priest's actions because he will hide behind the cross. So you end up with a dictator priest or imam which was the fate of every muslim caliphate in history. Submission is the opposite of freedom, if you like to submit to your rulers then pick any muslim country, pick any time in history present or past (barring Spain in the early period right after the invasion), and go live there. It gets worse when only one interpretation is permitted (ex:sunni vs shiia) then you end up with one political party who has the truth versus the other opposition parties who blaspheme.

"First and foremost in all faiths we want diplomacy and peace talks."
That is true to all financial systems as well. satanists, nazis, commies, capitalists all want peace. Wanting peace does not make you a religion of peace. Offering peace makes you a religion of peace. And the koran does not offer peace. I am of course assuming we are reading the same book with approx. 6400 verses.

"The sword comes only when attacked first."
That is not a defence. I can garantee, you will be attacked, I will be attacked, we will all be attacked. islam is just quicker to draw the sword. Those damn cartoonists, how dare they. All it took was for an imam to add couple pictures depicting mohammad as a pig to the 12 existing pictures and we had riots with people getting killed and churches burning. Muslims are just too volatile and whose fault is it that they allow themselves to be led into a trap like that.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".