Farooq,

Thanks for staying – most radical Muslims before you had a very short fuse (excuse the punt)

1. …what US or western countries are doing in Iraq, afghan… is it possible that christianity could take some responsibility for those killings?

War wasn't the correct response to 9/11. But You're confusing bush-blair-howard with Christianity.

2. Why is Islam only attacked?

This is your biased suspicion – historically not true.

3. … 3000+ people that died on 9/11 innocent, while 300,000+ civilians dead in Irag and …Does it mean if i need to avenge the life of one person then i need to kill 1000?

Again you are seeing it a revenge killing. The war was on terrorism I thought. BTW your maths should be 100 for 1, not 1000.

4. Barbaric behaviour of the dead or the one that killed? Please clarify.

Killing is killing. All barbaric and animalistic. Not civilised.

5. (i cant say anything about Jesus since i believe in him. All i can say is no Prophet can gurrantee you paradise if you sin, it is only possible if Allah desires.

You don’t know Jesus - you just believe what is in the Qur’an. Jesus forgives sins because He is God. Read the Injill.

6. … coach, you guys make jokes about your Prophet. Cartoon jokes, dirty jokes and all. It is respectful to make fun of someone who is trying to save you from hell? pretty strange eh!!)

Jesus is more than a prophet. I have the same respect for Him as God. Jesus is not just “trying” (insha’ Allah) but He has already done it on the cross.

Again you are confusing Christians with what you watch on TV.

7. Allah does not speak to anyone, even the muslims. What is the purpose of sending messengers and prophets if Allah was to speak to us?

Sorry buddy - Jesus is the Word of God. God (Allah) speaks to us though the Holy Spirit that lives IN us.

8. Do you want the truth? First you must believe the Bible is the TRUE word of God?

Pericles.. that last post of yours was rather shabby mate... you 'vilified' all those criticizing Islam.. and yet this very thread is concerned with Islamic radical mayhem, murder and many good people have died due TO that radicalism.. you seem to be suggesting that radical Islam is beyond scrutiny ?

I'm not sure who is doing the 'insulting' unless in my case if you consider pointing to a discussion of evidence 'insulting'. Kactuz is quite animated yes, but I'm not sure if he is Christian.. perhaps he can enlighten us.

PAUL L.. speaking as a conservative evangelical protestant Christian, and addressing your 'I abhor fundamentalist Christians'.. I think abhor is a bit strong, unless you qualify the term 'fundamentalist'.. for example "Like Fred Phelps"... if that's who you have in mind then we are 'one' on that score. But if you mean "Like Boaz and Coach".. it's probably good (and quite acceptable to me) to say so, in order that we know how to respond.

Paul, please keep in mind there are many types of fundamentalist. I believe in the fundamentals of the faith, and you can find them in the Nicean Creed. But this does not translate into burning atheists, witches or muslims, in fact, the opposite. As a shepherd searches for a lost sheep, so is the impact of those fundamentals on me, and perhaps others. But the truest fundamentalist is simply one who believes the Scriptures, (correctly interpreted) and has a living relationship with Christ.
Jesus never held back in addressing religious hypocrisy, false teachers, scumbag lawyers, he gave them a decent serve. But in righteousness, not in arrogance.

It is our lot in life I guess, that as we seek to emulate Him, we will never please all the people all the time.

Pericles, CJ, and perhaps urself as cases in point.
blessings.

CJ.. demo will go ahead, minimum 6 people :)

Very well said, Pericles. Agree with you totally.

I'm not here to condem any religion, but one thing i need to clear is no one and i mean no one can be converted to any religion forcefully. If you put a gun to my head and ask me to convert and i do convert to save my life. Is this convertion? while inside i would still practice my religion. Our Prophet never used force to convert others to Islam. Its whats inside that counts.

Dont worry, i wont blow my lid. I have patience.

I'm only sending a message, that do not believe what you hear from others. No religion on the face of this earth asks its followers to commit sin. We have good people, we have bad people. Good go to heaven, and bad go to hell. Right?

With love you can win a war, with hatred you can prolong a war. Its like a give and take. Respect me and i respect you. Respect my religion and i respect yours. When i ask for help, if you can, help me. If you cant, dont. If i dont ask for help, dont portray yourself as saviour of the world when in fact you are just serving your personal interests.

Before juming to conclusions, try to put yourself in others position and feel what others feel.

If our beloved ones are killed in the so-called war on terror, i would certainly hate the ones that killed them, not their religion. The muslims hate americans, britishers or the occupiers, not christians, while the other side, muslims are not hated it is ISLAM. Why? If muslims and muslims are fighting it is because they hate each other as persons, they dont go out and attack religions.

BD and Coach, you guys are too nice.

Pericles, So I "demean and denigrate someone else's faith" by quoting and linking to texts from that faith? Strange idea! How can calling attention to Muslim writings be considered an insult? (except to infidels)

Farooq, No "religion on the face of this earth asks its followers to commit sin." That, of course, depends on the definition of sin. Sin is not synonomous with evil. Eating pork for some is a sin. Bacon is not evil in my book. Once again we go back to what Islam's prophet did. Mohammad murdered, tortues, enslaved, etc.. and Muslims do not denounce this, and consider him to be an example of morality - so I can only conclude that these are not sinful to Muslims.

I dislike Islam because I see it as an intolerant, deceitful, oppressive ideology. I have seen nothing in it or from Muslims to make me reconsider. Worse yet, I have noticed that even "pious" Muslims cannot be honest even about the basic principles of their faith. They may be 'good' people, but they cannot be trusted to stand up for our lives and liberties.

Tell me why I should trust a Muslim that reads the texts linked above and says they don't matter or he doesn't care? Am I being unreasonable?

I don't trust anyone that says PBUH after the name of a person that did the vile things Mohammad did. Oh yes, the threats to me and my family didnt improve my opinion of the 'Relighion of Peace."

People here say that being honest about Islam or hurting Muslims' feeling will drive them into the arms of the radicals. Maybe, maybe not. But for 5 years governments and organizations have been nice to Muslims and nothing has changed. We are still waiting for the moderates to change things. And when is this going to happen?

So why not try truth? Churchill didn't overcome Nazis by being nice. Apartheid in SouthAfrica didn't end by not talking about it. Racism in the American South was not fought by not hurting Whites' feelings.

Continued...

If Muslims want to end all these terrible insults maybe they should just stop preaching and doing hate and violence throughout the world. Or is that too much to ask? Muslims do these things and then blame others for talking about it.

"Our Prophet never used force to convert others to Islam". Are you sure? What about "If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them"
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/019.smt.html#019.4294
Convert, pay tribute or die. No force there! Nope! None at all.

I can hardly read any statement about Islam from Muslims without finding errors, distortions and lies. Either they don't know their own writings or they are dishonest. Muslims have this tendency to say things about Islam that reflect what they would like to hear, not what their own writings actually say.

I give facts and my opinions. The facts are that Islam is full of hate and violence from its inception, documented in its own texts. My opinion is that these are relevant to current events and explain a lot of things.

Why don't Muslims talk about the hate and violence in their own writings? They can't overcome these because they don't want to consider the problem. The answer is too ugly, too distressing for Muslims to contemplate.

I do this because I believe it is going to get worse, much worse. I blame Muslims. I see no improvements. I can link to posts left here two years ago with the very same people saying that Muslims have to renouce or denounce terror - and did it work? Has the situation improved?

Oh yes, get us out of Iraq and every Muslim country because it won't make any difference. They will still hate and kill, with or without us. They will continue to attack after Iraq, just because we are infidels. It is what Mohammad did, it is what Muslims do - or just make excuses and blame others.

Kactuz

kactuz,

>>So I "demean and denigrate someone else's faith" by quoting and linking to texts from that faith? Strange idea!<<

It may be a strange idea to you, kactuz. But to me, the simple act of trawling through someone else's religious texts, with the sole idea of picking out those parts that you can use to draw adverse conclusions about that religion's adherents, is faintly disgusting.

Since there are similarly aggressively worded clauses in the Bible, this practice has always struck me as the height of hypocrisy.

The other difference in our viewpoints is that I hold both documents in the same esteem: they were written with the intention of recruiting followers, and used man's natural gullibility about the supernatural as the recruitment tool. To me, your witterings about the Qur'an are as meaningful - or, more accurately, meaningless - as Boaz's constant citing of verses from the Bible. So however much you claim that this verse or that verse shows Muslims to be inherently dangerous to the future of life on earth, it only comes across as background noise.

As an atheist I judge people on their actions. You, on their religious affiliations. So to me, as I have said on any number of occasions, the acts perpetrated by the Crusaders in the name of their God in the twelfth century were totally reprehensible, as are the present-day religiously-motivated attacks on innocent bystanders in New York, Madrid, London etc. etc.

So perhaps you can see why to me, all this whack-a-Mozzie stuff appears as an unhealthy obsession.

In the seventies, America poured money into the IRA largely on the basis of stories about what King Billy's Proddy dogs did to the Micks at the Boyne in 1690. The relevance to the 1970s and 80s was infinitesimal, but the emotion - and consequent financial largesse - was huge.

It would have been unrealistic for the public to have taken issue with the entire Irish people for the actions of a few religiously-motivated criminals. So it is today with Muslims and Islamic terrorists.