BD,

Again you are betting on the ignorance of your counterpart and hoping for naïve audience. You are not getting either!
There are two different scenarios you keep confusing: POW and ‘treason during war’:

- When Prophet Mohamed entered Mecca after a decade or so of being persecuted and prevented to pray in his home town. He took 6,000 prisoners. These are POWs and what did he do to them? He released them all regardless of their religion with no condition.
- The incident you refer to is a time of war: all Jewish tribes promised truce when the prophet was in a war, then one of the Jewish tribes turned and attacked his back and killed lots of civilians. This is treason during war and at least has the decency to mention that the proposed punishment was made by other Jewish tribes who wanted to rescue the Muslim Jewish relations. Prophet Mohamed implemented the law.
- As for the ‘money’ matters: please read G. Sale / William Muir (English Historians) who documented that all he left at death was a shield and a mule (not even a horse) and everything he had he spent on Muslims orphans and widows.
There is no violent scripture in the Koran except within legal system or self defence. Even when self defence is mentioned, it stops as soon as the aggressor stops. Salahudin didn’t follow crusaders into Europe.
As for your reference to the Bible, maybe you should tell me the wisdom of God (ie Jesus in your belief) killing every first born child in Egypt until the Jews were allowed to leave.
God help those who read and listen to your versions of “truth”.

To conclude:

We are happy and proud of Islam and being Muslims. Just be happy with your religion and move on. Jesus teachings and miracles make more sense in the Koranic teachings (33 times mentioned versus 4 times for prophet Mohamed, does that tell you something?)

Robert / Laurie,
No offence intended if any of you are practising Christians.

Peace to all of you (including you BD).

AK

Heh. I'm actually not the slightest bit religious! :) I'm just keen on not denigrating those who are, of whatever persuasion, simply because others claiming to be from their spritual/moral/ethnic/national/whatever grouping happen to commit crimes. :)

LAURIE

if you have gained the impression that I see "ALL" followers of Islam as ready to drop everything, spend a week at the nearest maddrassa and belt up with a bomb, then please show me exactly where I suggested such ?

ROBERT happy to engage you on that matter (Joshua) but not now, "clutter"
Suffice to say, that on sound principles of interpretation, no one will be or is, slaughtering non Christians because of Joshua.

There are many levels of belief between the kindly likes of Fellow Human and the bombers. Some are close, others like Fellow Human are far.

We all need to understand the 'mindset' of Muslims, which generally emphasizes the good and positive of their faith, but take a look at Islamic sites and talk to some Muslims about Jerusalem/Palestinians/Jews, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. and you will gain an inkling of how deep the sense of humiliation goes, then you will see the anger, hate, frustration.

This is the point, where the easily influenced, impressionable, shapable mind is vulnerable.
Now "what" takes a mind of this type from being 'vulnerable' to 'willing to suicide and bomb' ?

Think about that for a moment....... done ? good :) it will be an intense indoctrination of the available negative (to us) aspects of the faith, the warlike 'fight the unbelievers' type of stuff. (that could be you, your mum, dad, son, daughter on the 6.15 from flinders street)
FELLOW HUMAN

Facts.

1/ Mohammed decided to make a raid on the Bani Qurayza, as he suspected they had made an alliance against him (which they had, out of pure survival interests)
2/ Bani Qurayza (Jews) had been beseiged for about 15 days.
3/ They gave up.
4/ Mohammed asked if they will accept the judgement of Sa'ad.
5/ They agreed. (thinking it would be kinder than Mohammeds)
6/ Sa'ad declared "'Kill the men/Enslave the womens/children".
7/ Mohammed then systematically beheaded them in small groups in the market place. 600 to 900 men murdered.

Srebreniza was different 'how' ?

BD,

610 AD was the year prophet Prophet Mohamed started preaching his message. Most of the Jewish tribes received him with hate, persecution and accused him of madness (the ‘liar’ wouldn’t stick because of his reputable truthfulness). For the following decade, they persecuted him, killed his followers, tried to kill him. They sieged him and followers in Mecca for three years and deined them food, water or trade and could whoever attempts to leave was killed. Famine and thirst would lead to the death of his wife, uncle and only son (including watching them celebrate his son’s death). Forcing him into wars where he was outnumbered either 9 or 11 to 1 (1 were the poor, the slave and the widow). Then driven out of his country of birth for his only sin was preaching monotheism to Arabs.

Yet he persisted until Islam had enough followers to defend itself, the tribes proposed peace. He accepted the truce and forgave the past. He put his trust in his new ‘allies’ only to come back and found the atrocities they did. He didn’t go fighting everyone neither did he cancel the truce but he investigated and siege only the perpetrators.
He arrested them and brought them back to the other Jewish tribes to judge them for treason during war and committing atrocities against the defenseless. He carried out the sentence proposed by the Jews and kept the truce and kept the peace with the other Jewish tribes. The whole legal system is there: Crime, investigation, arrest, judgment and sentence execution.
They were punished because of crime not for being Jews. Srebrenica their only crime was being Muslims.
As for your views on Muslim mindset, Religion on its own cannot ignite violence or terror but agree that it could be used as a catalyst if other factors such as lack of understanding of Islam and other religions, lack of understanding of history, tendency to violence/ emotional instability, lack of experience,etc. Unfortunately we do have a gap in educating the youth but the moderates are usually far less funded than the Wahabi!

Peace
AK

Strange that the arguments between Islam and Christianity commence 1000 or more years ago. Yes, strained times during a period of religious fever, when to not believe the crowd was dangerous and deadly. Understandable in a not so enlightened time.

Zip forward 1000 years and we still have conflict. However, if one thinks, the violence going on today can be seen as a result of religious beliefs being misused by factions as a tool rather than a true reflection of faith. There was a time when the Christian church used indoctrination and terror to achieve their goals. In the greater scheme of things what’s 1000 years? Another 1000 and perhaps the Krishna’s will be terrorising (no offence to the Krishna. It’s only an example!).

Yes, people are being brainwashed with certain aspects of Islam. But as Islam has the majority numbers on this little ball, why do we not have a million – or ten million bombers going off around the world? Could it be that most Muslims abhor the violence and misuse of their faith. Muslims tend to be somewhat stronger in their faith than Christians (I wonder why?) so it is conceivable that IF the violence was a true reflection, then many more of the Islamic faith would be blowing themselves up to reach heaven! But they are NOT!

As Laurie said (and I paraphrase) – no one has a moral superiority on another’s faith/religion/belief.

ON TOPIC – it is easy for one to misrepresent the faith of another. If so inclined, the Islamic community has a wealth of examples to give – both historic and modern. Simply looking at the behaviour of our ‘Christian’ west is ample. Corruption, greed, deceit. And to argue that these aren’t true Christians can easily apply to the fundamentalist Muslim’s current actions also. So pull your heads in and practice your true faith.

Go beyond cheap shots for your faith and practice the tolerance and understanding that both preach. It may be the first and only step to achieving peace.

Boaz-David, you do tend to imply that those who do not follow your faith, and who in particular follow Islam, have a higher tendancy towards criminality and 'evil'. I doubt you have ever specifically said 'all muslims are bad', but you do often imply this is your posts.

Besides, my previous two posts within this thread most certianly do not suggest you have said anything wrong, I have merely pointed out that all scriptures, of all religions, have negative examples of behaviour and advice, and that it is how a person practices that shows who they are, and that people should not be considered 'guilty by association', simply through their membership to a grouping that may have been accused of criminality.