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Muslims must engage with Islamic ideas that give rise to terrorism : Comments
By Tanveer Ahmed, published 9/10/2014Those Muslims who cry Islamophobia repeatedly when asked about terrorism and Islam do themselves a disservice by not engaging with the ideas inherent in Islam that might lend themselves to actions of violent confrontation.
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I have never claimed that Protestants are pacifists, and I have stated that clearly in a previous post to you. What I have written (heads up!), is that the inventor of the Christian religion was a pacifist who preached love, forgiveness, peace, and tolerance. This message was concealed from the laity for a thousand years because almost nobody outside of the clergy had read the scriptures. This was because bibles were in short supply, bibles were written in high or low Latin, few people were literate in their own language (much less high or low Latin), the catholic church prohibited bible translations into national languages, and prohibited the printing, ownership, or reading of the bible by laity.
The church suppressed the literal teachings of the man who was titled "Jesus Christ" by the simple expedient of prohibiting anybody who was not clergy to read or own a bible in any language the laity might understand. Christ's teachings could only be "interpreted" by the clergy, and they not unsurprisingly, "interpreted" them in a way that reinforced the primacy of the clergy. Since absolute power corrupts absolutely, the clergy become absolutely corrupt. That the church was seen by the laity to be absolutely corrupt and in dire need of reform was the reason for the Reformation.
Europeans could not depend upon the catholic church for spiritual guidance when Popes were selling indulgences, claiming that he could side step God and personally condemn people to purgatory, indulging in clear insanity by having dead Popes exhumed and put on trial for heresy, and indulging in every kind of sexual misconduct. Any book on the Reformation can tell you that.
North European Protestant people have created the most desirable countries on Earth to live in. Our societies are generally peaceful and law abiding. We are tolerant, believe in forgiveness towards people who transgress and feel remorse, have low crime rates, have a cultural ideal to only use violence only as a last resort, and are the least corrupt societies on the planet. All of these cultural values resulted from our Protestant Christian heritage.