Stormbay,

Teuku wants to help us understand Muslims. He does mention Christians but not in the sense of helping us understand Muslims, but to throw us off the trail:

“Like other people in different religious groups - such as in Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism - some Muslims are moderate, some radical and fundamental and some are societal”

You don’t need to take this claim at face value or adopt the same fallacy by using the term “Abrahamic religions”. Christianity denies any commonality with Islam. It is like comparing Christian faith with communism.

In regard to the program on the ABC, I can only comment that the use of scripture to justify such inhuman behaviour is well outside mainstream Christianity; and that there is no “banding together” of the Christian faiths. My own church is riddled with internal division, for example. There really isn’t a sense of “Christendom” in the same way that the Muslim world is a bloc.

Oliver, you must live in Melbourne. Here in Sydney, we not only have Muslim neighbours but close Muslim friends - my children go to (a secular) school with their children and play in the same sports teams.

Anti-Christian sentiment is rife on this thread. Bigoted, fabricated statements such as Oliver’s are destructive and derogatory and I would argue that the opposite is true (and I don’t qualify the Muslim next door with a “moderate”, or “societal” or “cultural” tag either).

Polemics is “the art of practice of making arguments or controversies” and has a particular application to refuting errors in doctrine. I have used this word in the correct context.

Hi George
I wasn't really thinking in terms of religious education as instruction - more as a part of social studies. In my high school years in the mid-70s,as part of Geography we learnt about various countries which included a small part about the dominant religions. Not instruction in that religion, just an overview of what it meant to be a Buddhist or a Hindu etc. I don't remember a bias in the teacher's delivery.

Personally I don't think religious instruction should be part of a secular school system because this goes against the idea of embracing and welcoming all to our society. Religion/spirituality is such a personal issue that,from my view, is better taught within the religious confines of one's Church,community or relevant religious school.

When I was in Primary School RE was part of the school curriculum. Unless parents specifically requested their child be excluded it was a mainstream subject. From memory I think it only came around once a fortnight or month. My brother and I used to stand around outside with other Atheist, Greek Orthodox, some Aboriginal and Jewish kids who were also permitted to miss RE. I remember feeling a bit odd, somehow as though we were strange but other than that there was not the disharmony that we see now.

Ironically now that we are more secular, I sense a greater tension and divide in our society through religious and other differences. There appears such a strong sense of intolerance and defensiveness (we are all guilty) when it comes to our values, beliefs and moral makeup.

I am not sure where it is all headed, or why we have reached this impasse. Maybe, and we can hope, it is a transitional period that will stand the test of time.

"Anti-Christian sentiment is rife on this thread. Bigoted, fabricated statements such as Oliver’s are destructive and derogatory and I would argue that the opposite is true (and I don’t qualify the Muslim next door with a “moderate”, or “societal” or “cultural” tag either)." - KO

What statements of mine are a. bigoted and b. fabricated?

I have worked in Malaysia and Indonesia without a single problem. There, I felt no pressure to assimilate, yet Katie-the-unbigoted sees Islam inferior to Christianity and Muslims must assimilate to Australian (Christian) ways.

Regarding my last post, I had the historian Arnold Toynbee in mind. His approach is pretty much matter-of-fact. He relates religions to various stages of societal development. The problem is, the monotheistic faiths are not well placed to compromise by virtue of their core beliefs. Other ancient religions synthesise their systems to accommodate each other. Do you know of the Greeks and Romans having any religious wars? The Egyptians? [Akhenaten (1379-1362 BC did have his monothesism overturned, but that was internal.]

My comments at OLO are in no way directed against Jesus Christ as I believe he was a great teacher. Instead, I put that the OT is every bit as tribal and primitive as Koran. Elsewhere, I see others identifying with (Nicaean) Christianity, a body having a dark history indeed. Also the Christians of the fourth and fifth century were differentiated in belief from those of the second and third centuries, the former being more intersting in martydom and virginity than doctrine (Fox).

Moreover, I see hypocrisy in Christians criticising the flaws of other religions, including the pagans, based, often times on prejudice and misinformation. I see following Christ via Christianity a contradiction. The latter the antithesis of the former.

Shorter katie0: You can't trust Muslims because they're... well... Muslims!

As an atheist, I feel much the same about Christians - particularly when they get political.

However, I know that the vast majority of people I know who'd classify themselves as 'Christian' wouldn't dream of engaging in the kind of hate-mongering that katie0 has in this thread. Certainly, the considerably fewer Muslims that I know wouldn't either.

I think Sancho nailed it in this thread -

<< Islam will only drag itself into the modern world the same way Christianity did: by enduring a triumph of rationality over superstition and accepting a diminished role as a twee source of reassurance against the human fear of death.

Waging wars and persecuting immigrants doesn't bring that closer to reality, and very effectively pushes it further away. >>

That's very close to my own thoughts on Muslim immigrants - i.e. Islam's here, it's not going away, we need to help Muslims bring their religion into the 21st century in a way that doesn't involve mass antagonism, conflict and violence.

Beating Muslims around the head and ears with theological/ideological sticks isn't going to help, IMHO. Engaging in respectful and tolerant dialogue might, however, create possibilities whereby people might suspend their latter-day tribalism and work together on the other crap that we've collectively created.

I know it won't happen, but I dream that it might.

Amen.

Mikk: Halfon noted that the person of integrity is the fanatic we agree with. Although there is more to integrity than this, for instance one may claim that the theories that laden observations be observation laden, i.e. they have a reciprocal interaction, it would seem being respectful to others would be necessary. Sadly, do unto others as you would have done to you tends to devolve into do unto others as is done to you. How would you react if people talked to you that way?

John Kosci: Yes it does appear that they have something others want. It seems irrational then to not apply the same concept to Islam. The Ottoman Empire had surrounded Venice. Without aid soon the besieged city would fall to the invading Turks. They were defeated, Sep/11/1683 by a combined European effort under the leadership of the Polish King. Did anyone learn this in school or university?

A justification for war has always been a sticking point for the Christianity that has required an articulate theological justification. Islam however does not, as Muslims are to live as Mohammad did - who personally beheaded 700 people, according to the principle of abrogation (if two statements contradict it is the later one that is authoritative), peaceful verses in the Koran typically originate from Mecca, before he had power. Mohammad when he gained power acted as you would expect a seventh century warlord to act.

At the height of its power Islam did not conduct pacifist dialogue as did Western-European Christianity. The Maori in New Zealand were a divided tribal people constantly at war with each other. When they encountered Christianity, this lead them to develop pacifist movements - not from necessity but volition (trench warfare was invented by the Maori), the standard contemporary view, at least in New Zealand is that on the battlefield the Maori won.

As the article notes Muslims are normal people. The Koran provides an explicit mandate for conflict, a Muslim land if acting with integrity must have Sharia law. However some will observe the Koran more than others, thus you get Jihad.

Ancient Philosopher:

Not Venice but VIENNA in 1683; also 1529. Bernard Lewis writes in THE MIDDLE EAST: 2000 years of history from the rise of Christianity to the present day:

"There was a long history of desperate struggle between Ottoman Turkey and the Christian West. The almost successful siege of Vienna (1529) was a high water mark of Ottoman expansion into central Europe. In the middle of the sixteenth century Busbecq, ambassador of the Holy Roman empire at the court of Suleyman the Magnificent, expressed deep misgivings about the survival of Christian Europe under the threat of overwhelming Ottoman power, and wrote in a letter:

‘Persia alone interposes in our favour, for the enemy, as he hastens to attack, must keep an eye on this menace in his rear. … Persia is only delaying our fate; it cannot save us. When the Turks have settled with Persia they will fly at our throats, supported by the might of the whole East; how unprepared we are I dare not say.’"

The (naval) Battle of Lepanto (1571) was a desperate defence by the Holy League against the Turks. The Holy League was a coalition of the Republic of Venice, the Papacy [under Pope Pius V], Spain [including Naples, Sicily and Sardinia], the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller and others; the battle was fought at the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece.

EUROPE REMAINED IN GREAT FEAR OF THE ISLAMIC THREAT until the battle (second siege) of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottomans were routed by a coalition of armies commanded by King Jan III Sobieski of Poland - the saviour of Europe. After 1683, the weakness of the Ottoman state posed a problem for Europe – the ‘Eastern question’.

In 1853 tsar Nicholas I of Russia reportedly said to the British Ambassador in St Petersburg, speaking of Turkey, "We have a sick man on our hands, a man gravely ill. It will be a great misfortune if one of these days he slips through our hands, especially before the necessary arrangements are made."