Pro Rege Papers

Yes, the Muslims need to think before they speak. In their attempt to prove that Islam is non-violent, they have burnt effigies, yelled hateful slogans, [yes, hateful, Percival] and done other such actions as to prompt the Pakistani police to guard Papist churches from the protesters. This comes as a response to the pope’s remarks a few days ago.
BBC has a nice photo compilation of the protests at this address. Here is one of the photos, with a beautiful caption:

“Some Indian Muslims burnt an effigy of the world’s Roman Catholic leader who quoted remarks which linked Islam to violence.”

But it gets better. They accuse the pope of being hypocritical:

Just funny. But the pope has surrendered, saying he’s sorry, asking for forgiveness, and making a beautiful universalist statement that they both worship the same god.

Well at least that clears it up. It’s a good thing that I don’t worship the god of either of them.

Pope Benedict XVI made some comments in Germany that drew much criticism from Muslims today. He quoted (notice the word “quoted”, he did not compose this particular statement himself) a 14th century Byzantine Emperor, who said,

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Remember that the Emperor was speaking in a time when Islam was a serious force in the world. He was feeling the effects of this himself, being under siege several times from the Muslim Ottomans.

Anyway, the Muslims are all angry because he insulted “the Prophet” for what Muhammad truly stood for in the 14th century. Then they say that the pope doesn’t even understand Islam, even though

a. The pope didn’t say those words; he was quoting someone else.

b. He was addressing Muhammad, not Islam per se as a system, which contains some admirable things, such as morality laws.

c. The pope quoted a historical person who was critiquing Muhammad because he sought to spread his religion by violence (which was commonly known and felt in Manuel II’s time).

Despite these realities, Muslims are all angry over the pope making this statement. Hey, at least it shows some firmness; compared to this photo. Ohhh boy, watch out for another Crusade…

In case you had any doubts as to whether or not the Papal Church has departed from the Bible, here’s a nice photo:

Either all that celibacy has left him with wanting anything to kiss, or there’s something wrong here. That green book is the Koran, for those of you who do not recognize the symbol. Notice the gawking Arab on the left.

Hat tip: Stogie

Over the years, I have noticed that most of the secular world view Jesus as a good man who taught that we should be good people. They completely ignore the rest of the Bible and the rest of Jesus’ life.

I’ve gotten many accusations from non-Christians lately that I’m not a Christian because I disagree with people (particularly Muslims). They imply that because I disagree with them, I hate them, and therefore am breaking Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself. But Jesus didn’t teach that we could fulfill all the demands of the law in ourselves, summed up in “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,” and “your neighbor as yourself.” As expounded by Paul and others in the New Testament, the law is to condemn us. Which one of us has always loved God and our neighbor perfectly? Jesus’ message was that we are sinful, and need salvation. He said that His purpose in coming was to be the Messiah who will save the people from their sins. He received the punishment from God for our sins when He suffered and died on the cross. That way, our sins were put on Him, and His perfect righteousness put on us. Then He rose from the dead, signifying that the Father accepted His sacrifice. This message (the Gospel) is contained clearly in the Bible. But you wouldn’t get any of this from the people who are accusing me. They profess to be Christians (while I of course am not because of my vehement hate) but reject the Bible’s message, reject God and His Son, and ignore the plan of salvation in favor of a self-righteous profession of the Law, just like the Pharisees whom Jesus condemned.

People need to look to God for salvation and read the whole Bible, looking at the context in the Old Testament to Christ’s coming, instead of quoting Jesus’ sermons without understanding who Jesus is or why He came.

This is a response to Percival’s post about Islam. You’d better read his entry if you want to understand anything I say here.

If you read his entry, you’d think that I said a lot of things I didn’t. He makes some important mistakes about what I said that changes the argument. If you read my post and compare it with what he says that I said, you will find plenty of errors. Some of his arguments are actually convincing if I said what he thinks, but I didn’t. Whatever, this will set him straight.

…we should try to be less comprehensive - take one thing at a time?

Sorry, that’s my style. You should see some of the debates that Axinar and I have. They go on for at least one page per reply.

1. Bigotry v. Bigot:

You accused me of bigotry. The personal form of that noun is bigot. Logically you are calling me a bigot. Don’t shy away from the term, it doesn’t mean anything to me because I know it doesn’t apply to me. You said that bigotry is defined as “to condemn a group of people by ascribing negative qualities to them.” Now that’s a connotation, but we’ll deal with it anyway. You said that we, pronouncing “anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim rhetoric” are being bigots. We are not condemning Muslims as people, except when they are terrorists (and I hope you would agree on that point). We are condemning Islam as a horrible religion. Let me repeat that: We [at least myself, I can’t speak for others] are condemning Islam, not Arabs. That’s an important point that you should pay attention to.

2. Ranting:

Okay maybe not ranting per se, but it was interesting to see all of you, especially ThursdayNext talk in a self-righteous tone about how other people are so insensitive and horrible, whereas you guys are completely rational and civil. Then you had a round of agreements with wishes for peace. Okay, it wasn’t ranting, but it was funny.

3. Poop?

You say that you are “not attacking the Muslim way of life” but rather their “ideology, doctrines, and ‘end products’.” By “end products,” do you mean poop? How about consolidating your phrase into “beliefs,” which I think is what you’re trying to talk about.

This paragraph is based on an assumption that I said something that I didn’t. I didn’t say Muslim’s ideology, etc; I said ideology etc. of Islam. The end product of Islam is not poop. The end products of Islam are destruction, terror, and tyranny. I didn’t even say “the Muslim way of life”; I said the “Arab way of life”. There is quite a difference. Arabs are people with middle-brown skin, who speak Arabic, and live roughly in the Middle East. I hold none of those things against them. Most (but not all) Arabs are Muslims. Even that, specifically, I don’t have against them. If Islam were Christianity (which of course it isn’t) then I wouldn’t mind. It is Islam that I have the problem with. Islam is a religion that encompasses an ideology, doctrine, etc that is false. Its followers are called Muslims (which is not synonymous with Arabs). Okay, I’ll call it a religion. I just wanted to make that distinction in my last post for reasons that had come up at that time. Now that we’re clear on that, I’ll use it again.

Percival goes on in the next three paragraphs to pick apart a straw man. He repeats the phrase “Muslim way of life” over and over again as if I had said that; and fails to make a distinction between Muslim and Arab.

4. Defining Bigotry:

What he describes in the next few paragraphs is hatred, not bigotry. As I explained with my illustration about racism as opposed to disagreeing with Islam, bigotry is hating someone for something that they can’t help. It is part of their existence, they can’t change it, but you still hate them for it. Muslims can change.

Yet to suggest that people who hate blacks literally hate them for the color of their skin is absurd.

Yes it is, so you’re saying you’re not a racist; that’s good. Yes, of course people hate them for other reasons besides skin color. I just said that in passing. They hate them for other things too, but they still use skin color, physical features, etc. to identify them and thus discriminate against them.

Anyone who hates black people hates them because of the negative stereotypes they hold about them. You hold negative stereotypes about Muslims and the religion of Islam.

I don’t think that racists hate blacks because they hold stereotypes against them. What was the original act that they committed that could be applied to the whole? It wasn’t anything that would be different than what whites did. Again, it goes back to just the matter of skin color, physical differences, etc. The only stereotype I hold against Muslims is that they hold to Islam. That, in fact, is the definition of Muslim.

Percival then goes on to take a couple of my statements out of context and mesh them together.

You state: “You are implying that Aunty Belle, Stogie, and I are condemning specific persons themselves. You are implying that we hate certain Arabs. I definitely do not.” I’ve never cited any particular “Arabs” that you or anyone else hates – by “Arabs” I think you mean Muslims, which is the specific group I think we’re supposed to be talking about.

No, I don’t mean Muslims. I mean Arabs, the specific people in the Middle East. I don’t mean particular people, I mean the people as a group of individuals. If you’re talking about individual Muslims too, I don’t hate them either. I disagree with them. Disagreeing with them is much, much different than hating them. I hate Islam. (How many times am I going to have to make that distinction?)

you understand yourself as not truly disliking Muslims because “they’re capable of changing their beliefs” – to yours, I presume?

I define myself as not a bigot because they’re capable of changing.

Tolerance vs. Intolerance:

Intolerance is becoming something in many people’s minds that traditionally it wasn’t. People are being labeled intolerant because they refuse to say that another person’s beliefs are just as true as theirs. They’re being labeled that because they say that another person is (God forbid) wrong. However, I have always believed in absolutes. There is absolute truth, and absolute falsehood, and so on. Those absolutes demand that some people are wrong and that you shouldn’t change just to accommodate falsehood. So, in reality, you can’t stand me because I stand strong in my beliefs. That’s intolerance toward what you view as intolerance. Not to mention that Muslims aren’t exactly the most tolerant people out there. Remember the Danish incident?

Religion:

My point was that you, as an outsider should not be saying that you know more about a religion than the insiders. Yes, you can study at one of the best religious schools in the nation, but you still don’t have the scoop of what insiders have. The imams, clerics, etc. in the West, as I have said before, want to paint a wonderful picture of Islam. The communists did the same thing all through the ‘20s, ‘30s, and early ‘40s. People had virtually no clue about what was really going on in Russia.

By the way, just so everyone knows who keeps on saying this, I don’t watch FOX News. I don’t even get cable or satellite. I get my news largely from NBC, a little bit of ABC, the News Hour, BBC, and of course the blogosphere.

Mullahs:

Now those are the minority of mullahs, imams, clerics that speak out against terror.

Scripture:

Don’t even get me started on your example. Just read my blog.

Terrorism:

That paragraph still sounds like you’re giving an excuse for terrorism.

The major difference between them is that one attacks civilians willingly, whereas the other focuses on civilians primarily for their attacks.

I’m sorry, that was a typo. I meant to say that one attacks civilians willingly, whereas the other focuses on military (guerrilla Hezbollah troops) targets primarily for their attacks. If you want to dispute it further, first read my post that I linked to.

Between 2000, the year that Israel withdrew from Lebanon, and July 2006, exactly one Israeli civilian was killed by Hezbollah. The border during that period was extremely safe and stable by historical standards. Now, just this summer, we’re closing in on a thousand combined Israeli and Lebanese civilian deaths. All over the world there have been sustained truces for long periods of time with very low intensity conflict that has served to protect civilians. North and South Korea. Taiwan and China. The US and the USSR, East and West Germany – with the conflicts there coming to an end without warfare.

What does that have to do with present situations? The border was peaceful, now it’s not. Why? Because Hezbollah flared up the whole conflict again by kidnapping Israeli troops and launching rockets.

True Religions:

It’s a matter of faith. It’s something I cannot convince you of, Percival. You can see the fruits of Christianity as opposed to Islam and compare them (rather, contrast them): Science vs. backwardness, prosperous economies vs. oil-based and largely poor economies, a resemblance of love with the poring out of charity and aid vs. hate and terrorism, etc. Even these, however will not convince you. You need the Holy Spirit to work in you.

My story on Rush Limbaugh:

I did not tell that story in self-righteousness at all. I told it to contrast Christianity and Islam. Jesus said, “There is but one way to the Father, and that by me… I am the way, the truth, and the life… I am the door.” He didn’t say you could find salvation in Allah, or Muhammad, or your good works (which is what Islam is, a religion of good works). Percival then goes on to say that I can’t think rationally, without pointing out any holes in the story why Islamic clerics didn’t condemn 9/11 and censure Al-Qaeda.

I’ll say it one more time: I don’t hate the people; I hate the ideology.

Yes, the majority of Muslims don’t go out and try to blow up as many “infidels” as they can. They have responsibilities that they have to attend to. I might add also that many, many Muslims are nominal. The fact that the majority of Muslims don’t do those things doesn’t mean that Islam is therefore kind and gentle. Islam does not condemn terror. Neither do the majority of Muslims. What about Muhammad? Are you saying that he didn’t understand his own religion? He went out and did a modern form of terrorism: the “convert or die” approach.

you do have prejudice against Muslims

How many times do I have to say this?

Many people pretend neutrality in their views. Journalists say time after time that they’re unbiased in their reporting. Educators, bloggers, and many common people usually pretend impartialness in their writing and speaking. In reality though, there is no absolute neutrality that a human being can possess.

All humans have an opinion on everything. Unless you’re going to say something completely factual like, “At 5:30 pm, Sally went to the store,” you can’t be completely unbiased. Bias is part of humanity since the fall. We cannot control our bias in what we say. We insert it unconsciously. Even the sentence above could be biased toward Sally, since it doesn’t mention anything about who was with her. She could have been a kidnapper, and was taking a victim to a store that she owned to hold that person hostage. We don’t know, but that is a very important part of biasness today in reporting is leaving things out.

People can have a completely wrong view if they don’t know all of the information in a certain case. If you leave out one, small, but essential fact, the story could take on a whole new meaning that could be completely false.

Educators always have bias toward a certain view. You can’t avoid making a statement in commentary on an event. Bias also directly affects the way you interpret an event. People sometimes ignore facts in their prejudice. Take the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, for example. Some people say it’s a case of an aggressor overwhelming a small organization of poor, unprivileged people. Others say that it’s a case of defensive measures to insure that the organization does not use terrorist tactics against the country. It all depends on your bias as to how you accept and interpret the evidence. The same thing applies to science. Creationists say that such and such is proof of creation, whereas evolutionists say that it’s proof of evolution. It depends on what evidence you’re looking at, and what your bias is.

Photos and videos can give impressions from the angles they’re taking the picture from. You can see the amount of deception that pictures can contain from the Reutergate incident and the following discoveries having to do with “The Green Helmet Guy”, “The Collapsed Building that was Destroyed Over and Over Again”, etc. More are coming out everyday. Just read a few of the things coming out of Little Green Footballs.

There is also no neutrality in worldview. You can’t be partly Christian and partly secular, or Muslim, or what-have-you at the same time. They are what you call mutually exclusive views. Either you accept God and the offer of the Gospel, or you are not saved. It’s that simple. There’s no “balancing your good works against your bad ones”. That’s a myth, and if you’re trusting in it, you are headed for trouble.

Having been accused as a bigot, I feel a need to respond to someone who can’t stand intolerant people.  I got involved in a discussion on Saber Point which eventually took me to Romantic Dandy, the blog of someone named Percival. He has called Stogie, Aunty Belle, me, and a few other bloggers “bigots”. Meanwhile, he and his friends over on Romantic Dandy are ranting over how everyone from every religion just needs to get together and love each other, and how they can’t stand dissent from their views. I will attempt to address a few of Percival’s points (see his post too) in this post, though he seems to ignore much of what Aunty Belle and I are saying.

First, Islam is a religion and not an “ideology.”

Islam (as well as all other religions) contains a certain ideology that defines their outlook of the world. I didn’t say religion, because that connotates an attack on their way of life (that’s what the word religion means). I am not attacking the Arab way of life by any means. Many of the points for the way Muslims should live their lives, as prescribed in the five pillars of Islam, are noble. I believe in helping the poor, etc. However, I do not agree with all of them, and by no means think that you can be saved by just being a good guy. I am attacking the ideology, doctrines, and end products of Islam, which are completely false, against Christianity, and non-rational.

Second, you define bigotry as “condemning a whole group of people because they exist.” I’m not aware of any group of people ever having condemned another group for possessing the property of being itself.

What about racists? They are conventionally called bigots. They hate Africans, Asians, etc. for being the way they are. An African American cannot help the color of his skin, yet racists hate him for it. A Muslim can get out of Islam, and become a Christian, although it is harder in Islam than in Buddhism, for example. The recent incident in Afghanistan well illustrates that.

An accurate definition of bigotry is more like ‘condemning a whole group of people because you ascribe certain negative qualities to the people who belong to that group.’ Bigotry is a humungous negative overgeneralization about a large group of people.

Although I disagree with that definition, let’s use it for debate purposes.

The official definition of bigot, according to Webster, is someone who is prejudiced or intolerant. I’ll admit; I am prejudiced heavily toward Christianity, just as you are prejudiced heavily toward universalism, liberalism, and secularism. I try not to be intolerant of people, I try to talk with them first, but I’m not perfect. I might point out that you aren’t the most tolerant, either.

Anyway, you are implying that Aunty Belle, Stogie, and I are condemning specific persons themselves. You are implying that we hate certain Arabs. I definitely do not. It’s hard, the way they behave, and my being a fallen human; but I still do not hate them. I have rebuked Stogie for this several times. On the whole; however, Stogie focuses his attention toward Islam, not individual Muslims. He hates them for their beliefs, (which are capable of changing, as I explained earlier) not parts of their existence (which are incapable of changing, as I explained earlier). The vast majority of Arabs believe in Islam, that’s not an overgeneralization.

…the hate I’m hearing at the moment isn’t coming from a Muslim.

I am not hateful towards Arabs as a people; I am hateful towards their ideology, Islam. Read my comment over again if you’re not sure.

[The minority of] Muslims who are bigoted, violent, and don’t begin to understand the teachings of their own religion,

So you’re saying that you, a Westerner who studied at Chicago, not Riyadh, know more about their religion than they do? That’s very presumptuous. Many people say the same about Christianity who don’t know a thing about basic doctrines.

…serious criticism of terrorism coming from Muslim clerics. Try getting some of your news from the BBC, or out of Canada, or even NPR here in the states!

I do get a lot of my news from the BBC, actually. You missed my entire point that I said in the context to that question about Muslim clerics. I said, “If you ask a head of state or a Muslim in the US, [or Europe, etc.] then they will say that they are not radicals.” They want to make the best possible impression. If you ask a usual, small Arab town, Muslim imam, you will get little, if no condemnation of what terrorists say and do. You’ll get the same result if you ask the majority of leading clerics.

I’m sure that if you want to take particular lines from the Quran out of context and emphasize/distort them; you could find angry/vengeful/hateful verses. Ditto Judaism. Ditto Christianity.

Yes, that’s true. The difference between the verses in the Bible that say that, and the verses in the Quran that say that, is that the Bible is saying that God will punish those people, whereas the Quran clearly encourages Muslims to do the avenging themselves.

Percival goes on to give an excuse for people to become terrorists. He says that because a Palestinian had his relatives killed, and his house destroyed by a “precision” bomb, they have a right to become terrorists. They have a right, then, to strap themselves up with a bomb and blow up an Israeli bus filled with innocent civilians, just for revenge. He then asks what difference there is between Israeli violence and terrorist violence. The major difference between them is that one attacks civilians willingly, whereas the other focuses on civilians primarily for their attacks. There are plenty more differences, as I explain here.

[your] point seems to be that Christianity is “the best.”

Wow, he finally caught on! At least he made one right conclusion. Christianity is the only true religion. All others are fakes.

Then someone named Lady Wordsmith chips in and offers a Universalist proposition:

“We may all bow at different times and say our prayers in different ways, but we all offer the same praise and ask for the same grace.”

Try reading the Bible, compare it to the Quran, etc. and you’ll think differently.

I’ll leave all of you with my telling of what a radio talk show host said to a Muslim, posted in a comment on Saber Point:

I remember that one guy who was filling in for Rush Limbaugh one day about a month ago, who was arguing with a Muslim. The Muslim said that Islam was a religion of peace, and that the majority of Muslims are pacifist Pillsbury doughboys, etc., etc. The host said to him, (I don’t know the exact quote) “If terrorists are such a minority in Islam and the most Muslims are against jihadi violence, then why is there not an uproar and outrage when they do acts of terror? I mean, when the sexual abuse of boys by Roman Catholic priests was uncovered, the Pope and the Vatican cracked down on them. There was a huge trial and scandal and those people were punished. However, when Muslim terrorists blew up 3,000 New Yorkers, you didn’t see that kind of response. You saw people dancing in the streets with their fingers raised in the V-sign.” The Muslim couldn’t answer back, and proceeded to shift the focus of the argument away from what the host had said.
It was interesting to listen to.