Patrik: Check your facts please

Submitted by Ned Lora (Canada), Nov 30, 2002 at 12:13

I think you are being extremely disingenious when you say that Holy War is not in the Christian sciptures. Read deutronomy 20:10-19 in the Bible. Islamic Jihad can be considered a peace document compared to the 'Laws of Warfare' in the Bible.

And let's not forget that the Crusades (over 60,000 Muslim and Jewish civilians were slaughtered in the name of Christ during the 1st crusade only !), the Inquisition, the religious violence surrounding the Protestant Reformation and the burning alive of people, the witch burnings (over 60,000 women were burned alive; alive !), the hundreds of years of religious wars in Europe, the brutal, de-humanized slavery in the American South and the largest genocides in the history of mankind; the destruction and annihilation of the native populations of the New World in the name of the Church all had one thing in common; Christianity ! And of course, most Nazis and officers of the SS were Christian, brought up in conservative, "good" Christian homes with strong anti-semitic upbringing.

And let's not forget that the Islamist violence is a response to the consequences of the State Terrorism and Kleptocracy of the European Commercial Imperialists of the last 200 years, now embodied by the US, who also happen to be Christians.

Also, the argument that it is due to Christianity that the liberal secular tolerant societies have come around is a half truth. These societies have become tolerant by moving away from original Christianity, and not the other way around ! It was the Islamic empires of the past that allowed people of other faiths within the empire to be governed by their own religious laws, not the Christian Empires. In fact, history is witness that Christiandom could not tolerate even a small minority of jews within itself and regularly persecuted them.

So is that grounds to demonize Christianity? My answer is No. But has Christianity succeeded in shaping communities who treated all humans as equals with the same rights as themselves and prevented mass genocide of others by its adherents? My answer is again NO !!

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