Why not war against Islam?

[I Ratant]

Y'know, if you're going to rant and rave about how ignorant "ppl" are, it's best not to immediately make it apparent that you don't know the difference between the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire.

.
Or the existence of Jesus to start with.

 

[A'isha]

I see people still aren't interested in discussing the topic at hand, and even armageddonman hasn't yet engaged with me on the topic. So, I'm going to give it another try.

In most commentaries, the authority for jihad is mainly described as coming from Qur'an 2:190-194. In Yusuf Ali's translation,

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah. but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression. The prohibited month for the prohibited month,- and so for all things prohibited,- there is the law of equality. If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, Transgress ye likewise against him. But fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves.

Now, to be fair to armageddonman, Salafist interpretation of the above verses is along the lines he describes. In the Saudi-sponsored and Wahhabi-approved Hilali-Khan translation of the Qur'an, for instance, the above verses are annotated as follows:

Al-Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah's Cause (with full force of numbers and weaponry) is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars (on which it stands). By Jihad Islam is established, Allah's Word is made superior, (His Word being La ilaha illallah [there is no God but God] which means none has the right to be worshipped but Allah), and His Religion is propagated. By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and the Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim, and he who tries to escape from this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfill this duty, dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrite.

Similarly, Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Pakistan's Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, wrote in his 1930 pamphlet Jihad in Islam:

Islam is neither a religion, nor the Muslims a nation in the conventional sense of those terms. Islam, instead, is a revolutionary concept and ideology which seeks to change and revolutionise the world social order and reshape it according to its own concept and ideals. In the same way Muslims are in fact an international revolutionary party organized under the ideology of Islam to implement its revolutionary programme. Jihad is the term, denoting the revolutionary struggle to the utmost, of the Islamic revolutionary party to bring about Islamic revolution.

...

A communist cannot live according to the communist ideology in England or America, for the capitalistic system will prevail by dint of power and the communist would not escape retribution of the law of the land. Similarly a Muslim cannot order his life according to the teachings of Islam under the authority of a non-Islamic system of government. All the laws and regulations that a Muslim considers wrong, the taxes that he deems unlawful, all matters he believes to be illegitimate, the culture and the way of life which he considers obnoxious, the education system which seems to him detrimental to his creed and culture will be so inexorably imposed on him, on his home and on his children that he will not be in a position to avoid.

Hence be it any individual or community believing in a certain ideology, their faith and conviction compels them to strive for the extirpation of the rule opposed to their ideology and bring their own ideology into power as they cannot live according to their own faith under the rule of an inimical ideology. Any slackness or indifference in this struggle shows nothing but insincerity and hypocricy in one's faith and conviction.

...

One can easily understand the fact from the explanation given above that the division of war as "offensive" and "defensive" is quite irrelevant to the concept of Jihad in Islam. These terms apply only to the wars between nations and nations and between countries and countries, for the terms "attack" and "defense" are used with reference to a country or a nation. But when an international party rises with a universal faith and ideology inviting the humanity at large to embrace its faith and ideology and accept into its fold all and sundry irrespective of race and colour, language and territory on equal footing and strives only to liquidate the powers of tyrrany and oppression, injustice and inequality and replace them with the rule of its own ideology. Thus the terms "offense" and "defense" carry no justification in this case.

(Incidentally, the whole thing is pretty tedious that way, and the "revolutionary" terminology is intentional. I swear you could do a cut and replace the Islamic terms with Communist terms, and you'd have something straight out of old Soviet propaganda)

Sayyid Qutb, the main Islamist thinker of the Muslim Brotherhood, built on the above concept of jihad, saying things like "A Muslim goes to war in order to fight in the way of Allah, to exalt Allah's Word and to make Allah's order prevail in the human life. Then he gets killed in this way and becomes a martyr. Jihad is necessary all the time. It is an element that walks together with the Divine Invitation."

But not ever Muslim agrees with the above. Even extremely fundamentalist Sunni Muslims disagree with the above.

Many devout Turkish Sunnis, for instance, especially those who feel nostalgic for the days of the Ottoman Empire, have a very strong anti-Wahhabi streak, and Wahhabists and other Salafists like Maududi and Qutb. Turkish publisher Hakikat Kitabevi is known for publishing books critical of all of them, with their work being a mix of theological disagreement and weird conspiracy theories. In the book Islam's Reformers, an extended polemic against Salafism and Salafists, states flat-out that Qutb and Maududi's version of jihad as a revolutionary ideological struggle carried out by individuals is wrong, and (as you might expect from Muslims harking back to the days of the Ottomans) says that jihad is strictly the purview of an Islamic Nation-State along straight-up military lines:

It is understood that they [ie, Muslims living in non-Muslims countries] should migrate to the Muslim country and should not incite sedition (fitna) by opposing the non-Muslim state. Sayyid Qutb calls this incitement "jihad". Whereas, 'jihad' means 'the Islamic State's fighting with its army, with all its modern weapons and methods of war against non-Muslim states to rescue people from unbelief and torture'. The jihad of Muslims living in non-Muslim countries does not mean 'opposing individually the non-Muslim state's forces' but it is carried out, within the limits of the laws, by spreading Islamic knowledge by trying to tell everybody Islam's value and uses and by showing the beautiful morals of Islam.

...

Again in World's Peace and Islam Sayyid Qutb wrote:

"Muslims are revolutionists. They revolt against cruelty and injustice."

This ideas of his does not conform with what the Islamic scholars have reported. Muslims do not revolt. They do not arouse sedition and mischief. It is a sin to revolt against even a cruel government. It is not jihad but fitna (mischief) to oppose the laws and commands. Sayyid Qutb, Mawdudi [Maududi] and those who have been deceived by them have fallen into calamity by giving wrong meaning to the thirty-ninth ayat of the surat al-Hajj. This ayat states, "Jihad against the cruel who attack Muslims has been permitted." When the unbelievers of Mecca had oppressed, injured and killed Muslims, permission to fight against them had been asked many times. It had not been permitted. This ayat was revealed upon the migration to Medina, permitting the newly founded Islamic State to perform jihad against the cruel in Mecca. This ayat does not permit Muslims to oppose their cruel government; it permits the Islamic State to make jihad against the armies of cruel dictators who prevent their peoples from hearing about Islam and becoming Muslims. The hadiths quoted on the forty-first and seventy-first pages of the translation of As-siyar al-kabir declare, "Paradise is haram [forbidden] to the person who revolts against the ruler," and "Perform jihad under the command of every ruler, just or cruel!" Jihad, as it is written in books means 'war against the unbelievers of other countries'. The hadith given in the books Radd al-mukhtar, Kamil and al-Baihaki's Shua'b al-iman, declares, "When you cannot correct a wrong thing, be patient! Allahu ta'ala [God the Most High] will correct it." This hadith commands not to oppose or revolt against the laws but to advise through legitimate ways and to be patient. The hadith quoted by al-Manawi, at-Thirmidhi and at-Tabarani declares, "The most valuable jihad is to say the word pointing to the right way in the presence of a cruel sultan." Scholars should advise the state officials as much as they can. But one should be very careful lest sedition should arise while performing al-amru bi 'l-maruf [part of the religious duty of "enjoying the good and enjoining the evil"]; this means that Muslims neither revolt nor surrender to cruelty and injustice. They seek for their rights through legitimate ways. It is wajib [a necessary religious duty] for every Muslim to obey the government's legitimate (mashru') commands. No person's commands are to be carried out if they are haram, yet one should not revolt against them and cause fitna (oppression over Muslims). One should not oppose the cruel or dispute with them. For example, while it is one of the greatest sins not to perform salat, if one's chief or commander is a cruel unbeliever and says, "Don't perform salat," one should answer, "With pleasure. I won't," and think of saying, "I won't when near you for it is haram to cause fitna." Right after leaving that cruel person, he should perform salat.

Well, that's all well and good, but it's still a pretty weak condemnation. Especially since the the idea of spreading Islam via conquest is still accepted by that book's authors, as well as otherwise espousing a particularly conservative brand of Sunni Islam. What do some other scholars have to say about jihad?

Let's go back to the actual commentaries of of Qur'an. Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Tabataba'i, a Shia scholar who was the influential teacher of many participants in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has a very narrow view of those specific verses in the Qur'an that Hilali and Khan say is so important in establishing the "pillar" of jihad:

The context of the verses shows that they were revealed together. The whole talk has only one aim: permission, for the first time, of fighting with the polytheists of Mecca. These verses refer to driving them out from whence they drove the believers out, to disbelief and to reprisal; they prohibit fighting with them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight the believers in it. All these matters were connected with the polytheists of Mecca. Also, the sentence: fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, deserves more attention. It is not a condition, i.e., it does not mean, "fight with them if they fight with you." Nor is it a restrictive clause (as some people think) meaning, "fight with the men, and not with their women and children who are not in a position to fight with you", because nobody "fights" with those who are unable to fight back. Had it been the aim of the sentence, it would have been proper to say "do not kill them." Therefore, the words those who fight with you only refer to a fact - fight those who are presently engaged in fighting against you. And it points to the polytheists of Mecca.

The verses have the same significance as the following verses: Permission(to fight) is given to those upon whom war is made, for they have been oppressed, and most surely Allah is able to help them; those who have been expelled from their homes without a just cause except that they say, Our Lord is Allah (22:39-40). These verses also contain the initial (but unconditional) permission to fight with the fighting polytheists.

These five verses together promulgate a single law covering all its limits and details. And fight in the way of Allah is the basic law; and do not exceed the limit puts disciplinary restriction on it; And kill them wherever you find them defines the limits of pressure; and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you therein puts a restriction according to the place; and fight with them until there is no more mischief (disbelief) shows its duration; The sacred month for the sacred month, and reprisal (is lawful) in all sacred things explains that this legislation is based on the principle of retaliation in fighting and killing, it is paying them in their own coin; And spend in the way of Allah makes the believers responsible for the financial preparations for war: they must spend for their own preparation and for that of others. Therefore, it seems that all the five verses were sent down together about one subject. It is wrong to say (as some have done) that some of these verses abrogate the others; or that they were revealed separately on different occasions. In fact, the aim of all these verses is one: permission to fight against the polytheists of Mecca who were fighting the believers.

And since there aren't exactly a lot of battlin' polytheists in Mecca these days, it would seem those verses are of little applicability today (and, indeed, Tabataba'i explicitly says it does not apply to the People of the Book, ie Jews and Christians).

What about some middle ground? That is, scholars who do think the above verses give a general authority for jihad, but not in the way the followers of Qutb and Maududi think? Well, in his own tafsir, Muhammad Asad said:

This and the following verses lay down unequivocally that only self-defence (in the widest sense of the word) makes war permissible for Muslims. Most of the commentators agree in that the expression la ta'tadu signifies, in this context, "do not commit aggression"; while by al-mu'tadin "those who commit aggression" are meant. The defensive character of a fight "in God's cause" - that is, in the cause of the ethical principles ordained by God - is, moreover, self-evident in the reference to "those who wage war against you", and has been still further clarified in 22:39 - "permission [to fight] is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged" - which, according to all available Traditions, constitutes the earliest (and therefore fundamental) Qur'anic reference to the question of jihad, or holy war (see Tabari and Ibn Kathir in their commentaries on 22:39). That this early, fundamental principle of self-defence as the only possible justification of war has been maintained throughout the Qur'an is evident from 60:8, as well as from the concluding sentence of 4:91, both of which belong to a later period than the above verse.

In view of the preceding ordinance, the injunction "slay them wherever you may come upon them" is valid only within the context of hostilities already in progress (Razi), on the understanding that "those who wage war against you" are the aggressors or oppressors (a war of liberation being a war "in God's cause"). The translation, in this context, of fitnah as "oppression" is justified by the application of this term to any affliction which may cause man to go astray and to lose his faith in spiritual values (cf. Lisan al-'Arab).

[The phrase] "and religion belongs to God [alone]" - i.e., until God can be worshipped without fear of persecution, and none is compelled to bow down in awe before another human being. (See also 22:40.) The term din is in this context more suitably translated as "worship" inasmuch as it comprises here both the doctrinal and the moral aspects of religion: that is to say, man's faith as well as the obligations arising from that faith.

Thus, although the believers are enjoined to fight back whenever they are attacked, the concluding words of the above verse make it clear that they must, when fighting, abstain from all atrocities, including the killing of non-combatants.

In his book "The Road to Mecca", Asad explains this using an actual concrete example. In chapter 11, "Jihad", he talks about the family of his friend Muhammad az-Zuwayy. Az-Zuwayy's grandfather, Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sanusi, established a sort of Muslim pseudo-state in parts of what is now Libiya, recognizing the Turkish sultan as Caliph, but otherwise pretty much left to its own devices. At least, until World War I.

The British, then solidly entrenched in Egypt and obviously not too anxious to see the Italians expand into the interior of North Africa, were not hostile to the Sanusi. Their neutral attitude was of utmost importance to the Order since all the supplies of the mujahidin came from Egypt, where they enjoyed the sympathy of practically the whole population. It is quite probable that this British neutrality would in the long run have enabled the Sanusi to drive the Italians entirely out of Cyrenaica. But in 1915 Turkey entered the Great War on the side of Germany, and the Ottoman Sultan, as Caliph of Islam, called upon the Grand Sanusi to assist the Turks by attacking the British in Egypt. The British, naturally more than ever concerned about safeguarding the rear of their Egyptian possession, urged Sayyid Ahmad to remain neutral. In exchange for his neutrality, they were prepared to accord political recognition to the Sanusi Order in Libya, and even to cede to it some of the Egyptian oases in the Western Desert.

Had Sayyid Ahmad accepted this offer, he would only have followed what common sense categorically demanded. He did not owe any particular loyalty to the Turks, who had signed away Libya to the Italians some years earlier, leaving the Sanusi to fight on alone; the British had not committed any act of hostility against the Sanusi but, on the contrary, had allowed them to receive supplies from Egypt -and Egypt was their sole avenue of supply. Moreover, the Berlin-inspired 'jihad' which the Ottoman Sultan had proclaimed certainly did not fulfill the requirements laid down by the Koran: the Turks were not fighting in self-defence but rather had joined a non-Muslim power in an aggressive war. Thus, religious and political considerations alike pointed to one course alone for the Grand Sanusi: to keep out of a war which was not his.

Several of the most influential Sanusi leaders -my friend Sidi Muhammad az-Zuwayy among them advised Sayyid Ahrnad to remain neutral. But his quixotic sense of chivalry toward the Caliph of Islam finally outweighed the dictates of reason and induced him to make the wrong decision: He declared himself for the Turks and attacked the British in the Western Desert.

The jihad against the British in World War I was not a legitimate jihad, because the Turks were attacking the British (and the British were not "oppressing" the Muslims in such a way as to count as an aggressive act requiring defending against).

Oh, and the Yusuf Ali translation of these verses from the Qur'an? Yusuf Ali's own commentary on them says:

This passage is illustrated by the events that happened at Hudaybiyyah in the sixth year of the Hijrah, though it is not clear that it was revealed on that occasion, The Muslims were by this time a strong and influential community. Many of them were exiles from Makkah, where the Pagans had established an intolerant autocracy, persecuting Muslims, preventing them from visiting their homes, and even keeping them out by force from performing the Pilgrimage during the universally recognised period of truce. This was intolerance, oppression, and autocracy to the last degree, and the mere readiness of the Muslims to enforce their rights as Arab citizens resulted without bloodshed in an agreement which the Muslims faithfully observed. The Pagans, however, had no scruples in breaking faith, and it is unnecessary here to go into subsequent events. (Cf. 5:2).

In general, it may be said that Islam is the religion of peace, good will, mutual understanding, and good faith. But it will not acquiesce in wrongdoing, and its men will hold their lives cheap in defence of honour, justice, and the religion which they hold sacred. Their ideal is that of heroic virtue combined with unselfish gentleness and tenderness, such as is exemplified in the life of the Prophet. They believe in courage, obedience, discipline, duty, and a constant striving by all the means in their power, physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual, for the establishment of truth and righteousness. They know that war is an evil, but they will not flinch from it if their honour demands it and a righteous Imam (such as Muhammad was par excellence) commands it, for then they know they are not serving carnal ends. In other cases, war has nothing to do with their faith, except that it will always be regulated by its humane precepts. (R).

Suppress faith: in the narrower as well as the larger sense. If they want forcibly to prevent you from exercising your sacred rites, they have declared war on your religion, and it would be cowardice to ignore the challenge or to fail in rooting out the tyranny.

 

[Complexity]

agreed....a liberal* and objective education, which most of the rabid christians here oppose, much like the taliban opposes education.

*liberal, not in a political sense, but the true meaning of the word.

Of course. This is the only kind of education. The other stuff that passes under that name is mere indoctrination.

 

[Dayan81]

To all of those who suggest that Muslims are a violent, aggressive, & war-mongering people, I ask you this question: how many Christian nations were invaded by Muslim nations during the 20th century?

How many acts of genocide were committed against Christians by Muslim armies?

How many Christian nations were colonized by Muslim nations?

Any honest & accurate analysis of genocide, colonization, and invasion between Christian & Muslim nations clearly shows that aggression during the 20th century was clearly on the side of Christian and not Muslim nations. Christians accusing Muslims of being genocidal, aggressive, and colonialist is like Christians accusing Jews of being discriminatory, genocidal, and prejudiced during the 20th century. Both accusations are steeped in irony and horse manure.

 

[DC]

I see people still aren't interested in discussing the topic at hand, and even armageddonman hasn't yet engaged with me on the topic. So, I'm going to give it another try.

In most commentaries, the authority for jihad is mainly described as coming from Qur'an 2:190-194. In Yusuf Ali's translation,



Now, to be fair to armageddonman, Salafist interpretation of the above verses is along the lines he describes. In the Saudi-sponsored and Wahhabi-approved Hilali-Khan translation of the Qur'an, for instance, the above verses are annotated as follows:



Similarly, Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Pakistan's Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, wrote in his 1930 pamphlet Jihad in Islam:



(Incidentally, the whole thing is pretty tedious that way, and the "revolutionary" terminology is intentional. I swear you could do a cut and replace the Islamic terms with Communist terms, and you'd have something straight out of old Soviet propaganda)

Sayyid Qutb, the main Islamist thinker of the Muslim Brotherhood, built on the above concept of jihad, saying things like "A Muslim goes to war in order to fight in the way of Allah, to exalt Allah's Word and to make Allah's order prevail in the human life. Then he gets killed in this way and becomes a martyr. Jihad is necessary all the time. It is an element that walks together with the Divine Invitation."

But not ever Muslim agrees with the above. Even extremely fundamentalist Sunni Muslims disagree with the above.

Many devout Turkish Sunnis, for instance, especially those who feel nostalgic for the days of the Ottoman Empire, have a very strong anti-Wahhabi streak, and Wahhabists and other Salafists like Maududi and Qutb. Turkish publisher Hakikat Kitabevi is known for publishing books critical of all of them, with their work being a mix of theological disagreement and weird conspiracy theories. In the book Islam's Reformers, an extended polemic against Salafism and Salafists, states flat-out that Qutb and Maududi's version of jihad as a revolutionary ideological struggle carried out by individuals is wrong, and (as you might expect from Muslims harking back to the days of the Ottomans) says that jihad is strictly the purview of an Islamic Nation-State along straight-up military lines:



Well, that's all well and good, but it's still a pretty weak condemnation. Especially since the the idea of spreading Islam via conquest is still accepted by that book's authors, as well as otherwise espousing a particularly conservative brand of Sunni Islam. What do some other scholars have to say about jihad?

Let's go back to the actual commentaries of of Qur'an. Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Tabataba'i, a Shia scholar who was the influential teacher of many participants in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has a very narrow view of those specific verses in the Qur'an that Hilali and Khan say is so important in establishing the "pillar" of jihad:



And since there aren't exactly a lot of battlin' polytheists in Mecca these days, it would seem those verses are of little applicability today (and, indeed, Tabataba'i explicitly says it does not apply to the People of the Book, ie Jews and Christians).

What about some middle ground? That is, scholars who do think the above verses give a general authority for jihad, but not in the way the followers of Qutb and Maududi think? Well, in his own tafsir, Muhammad Asad said:



In his book "The Road to Mecca", Asad explains this using an actual concrete example. In chapter 11, "Jihad", he talks about the family of his friend Muhammad az-Zuwayy. Az-Zuwayy's grandfather, Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sanusi, established a sort of Muslim pseudo-state in parts of what is now Libiya, recognizing the Turkish sultan as Caliph, but otherwise pretty much left to its own devices. At least, until World War I.



The jihad against the British in World War I was not a legitimate jihad, because the Turks were attacking the British (and the British were not "oppressing" the Muslims in such a way as to count as an aggressive act requiring defending against).

Oh, and the Yusuf Ali translation of these verses from the Qur'an? Yusuf Ali's own commentary on them says:

very informative, thanks.

 

[citizenzen]

Your Openness and communication failed. 9-11 happened because we were too ignorant to acccept the reality.

Well then Bill, please tell me ... what do you want to do?

As I said, there's 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.

They're the majority religion of 47 nations.

Somewhere over 1 million of them live in the United States.

What do you want to do with these people Bill?

What do you want to do?

 

[Dayan81]

What do you want to do with these people Bill?

What do you want to do?

I think we can all answer that question for them.

The haters of Muslims & Islam seek to convert, expel or kill all Muslims from Christian lands.

What should be done with the Muslim nations? I am sure some want them to be destroyed using America's and Russia's vast nuclear-arsenals. Others might give them the opportunity to convert to Christianity first, but not too long as ICBMs & their warheads do have an expiration date.

 

[Virus]

ABB showed us what Chsirianity really stands for and what the real goal of Christianity is.

ABB was not excessively religious.

 

[DC]

ABB was not excessively religious.

Nope he abuses christianity for his needs.

 

[Virus]

How many acts of genocide were committed against Christians by Muslim armies?

Armenian genocide.

 

[DC]

Armenian genocide.

how many is that?

 

[FireGarden]

I see people still aren't interested in discussing the topic at hand, and even armageddonman hasn't yet engaged with me on the topic. So, I'm going to give it another try.

Thanks for taking the time to post, anyway.

I think you've provided a wide range of opinions from the Muslim world.

 

[Dayan81]

Armenian genocide.

Yes this was one. Do you know of any more?

 

[bikerdruid]

Also, I am saying this again....the Holy Roman Empire was not holy and is not the model for the Christian Religion!!!

They were a pagan culture that murdered Jesus then later on Constantine seen a flaming cross (which the KKK later used) in the sky, then proceded to kill hundreds of thousands in the name of Jesus. It was a model for the kingdom of the antiChrist and not Christians. Get this throughtion or your thick skulls.

that is a very interesting, but highly fictitious, take on historical revisionism.
have you considered a writing career in historical fiction or steam punk literature?

 

[bikerdruid]

No I do. One worshipped pagan gods such as zues etc. and the other one hijacked Christianity.

wow.
actually, the romans honoured jupiter. zeus is his greek counterpart.
constantine didn't hijack christianity, he invented it.
(see the 'council of nicea')

 

[Dayan81]

Also, I am saying this again....the Holy Roman Empire was not holy and is not the model for the Christian Religion!!!

They were a pagan culture that murdered Jesus then later on Constantine seen a flaming cross (which the KKK later used) in the sky, then proceded to kill hundreds of thousands in the name of Jesus. It was a model for the kingdom of the antiChrist and not Christians. Get this through your thick skulls....

The Holy Roman Empire was the first Germanic Empire and existed between the years 962 & 1806 A.D. They were all firmly Roman Catholic, surely were not Pagan & did not kill Jesus as they came almost a millenium too late.

 

[citizenzen]

I think we can all answer that question for them.

Well, I'd prefer it if they actually had the courage to answer the question directly themselves.

They portray Islam as this great threat.

So what do they propose to do about it?

If my suggestion of trying to coexist peacefully is pie-in-the-sky liberalism, then please give me your alternative plans.

In detail.

 

[Craig4]

.
One might be reluctant to be circumcized, and fail to show up at the appointment.

That will send tremors from Rabat to Kuala Lumpur.

 

[Craig4]

Sure. Let's start with the knowledge that the 19 hijackers of 9-11 were college educated and from upper-class families. What does that educated knowledge tell us?

How about that *********** education is not the *********** answer and regardless of what we want to believe, there are human beings among us that need to be *********** taken off the *********** planet?

There are over a billion of them. How many would you suggest would be a suitable number to kill?

ETA:
So again, how specifically would you suggest we fight Islam?

 

[Taarkin]

Armenian genocide.

ABB's actions don't count because he's "not excessively religious", but the Ottomans in charge of the genocide were?