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Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
SaptaZapta Wrote:The Spanish government and the Church sent their soldiers over there to get the gold and the souls of the natives.
The soldiers on site might have been more "atrocious" than their senders intended, but the original purpose was never a peaceful mission.
Well that certainly depends on what your definition of peaceful is. And you certainly seem to be projecting an unorthodox definition.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - SaptaZapta - 2016-03-23
xparasite9 Wrote:Well that certainly depends on what your definition of peaceful is. And you certainly seem to be projecting an unorthodox definition.
Peaceful = preachers carrying books.
Not peaceful = soldiers carrying swords.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
SaptaZapta Wrote:Peaceful = preachers carrying books.
Not peaceful = soldiers carrying swords.
The environment necessitated it. Not all indigenous were peaceable, indeed they warred amongst themselves. Soldiers and Swords was an insurance policy, should the peoples they were ministering to be attacked, or they themselves be attacked.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - SaptaZapta - 2016-03-23
xparasite9 Wrote:The environment necessitated it. Not all indigenous were peaceable, indeed they warred amongst themselves. Soldiers and Swords was an insurance policy, should the peoples they were ministering to be attacked, or they themselves be attacked.
Nice story.
Amazing how modern-day missionaries, even to dangerous places, don't surround themselves with armed bodyguards.
Then again, they don't come from countries where the Inquisition runs the show, either. Or will you tell me that the Jews were run out of Spain, or forced to convert, without the heads of the State or the Church knowing of that, either?
Doesn't actually matter, come to think of it. Torquemada committed atrocities "in the name of God", along with other ordained clergy, who were just as much a religious authority as the imams you denounce.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - VerrKol - 2016-03-23
xparasite9 Wrote:Well that certainly depends on what your definition of peaceful is. And you certainly seem to be projecting an unorthodox definition.
Conquistador literally translates to conqueror. There's really not a lot of ambiguity in that job title.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
SaptaZapta Wrote:Nice story.
Amazing how modern-day missionaries, even to dangerous places, don't surround themselves with armed bodyguards.
perhaps that's because the "dangerous places" of today aren't nearly as dangerous? that advances in transportation technology make it much easier to "get the hell out of Dodge" should the need to do so arise?
SaptaZapta Wrote:Then again, they don't come from countries where the Inquisition runs the show, either. Or will you tell me that the Jews were run out of Spain, or forced to convert, without the heads of the State or the Church knowing of that, either?In terms of modern values, yes they can be viewed as atrocities. Not quite so when compared to the legal system of the area and time. All courts in Europe used torture. The Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only two percent of its cases, and never longer than fifteen minutes. Most cases were acquitted or had sentencing suspended.
Doesn't actually matter, come to think of it. Torquemada committed atrocities "in the name of God", along with other ordained clergy, who were just as much a religious authority as the imams you denounce.
As for the Jews run out of Spain and "forced to convert", I'm not quite sure what you are referencing. The closest I can find about this is in regards to Jews who had found it expedient to "join" the Catholic church for socio-econo-political gain, only superficially, remaining at heart Jews, and in the eyes of the Church, heretics.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - SaptaZapta - 2016-03-23
xparasite9 Wrote:As for the Jews run out of Spain and "forced to convert", I'm not quite sure what you are referencing. The closest I can find about this is in regards to Jews who had found it expedient to "join" the Catholic church for socio-econo-political gain, only superficially, remaining at heart Jews, and in the eyes of the Church, heretics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
SaptaZapta Wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree
a cursory research seems to suggest it was quite comparable to Israel's Hafrada. "Forced conversion", however, is antithetical to itself, and in many cases were found null-and-void in the coming Inquisition (settled simply with a formal declaration that they were not catholic and never were catholic).
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - SaptaZapta - 2016-03-23
xparasite9 Wrote:a cursory research seems to suggest it was quite comparable to Israel's Hafrada. "Forced conversion", however, is antithetical to itself, and in many cases were found null-and-void in the coming Inquisition.
Israel's Hafrada does not apply to the million or so Arab Israeli citizens living inside the borders of 1948 Israel.
It also does not say "leave, leaving all your belongings behind, or be summarily executed."
All it does is keep people who have publicly vowed to destroy Israel, outside of it.
The Jews in Spain made no such threats against Spain. Nor did the Jews in the other European countries that expelled them before and after Spain did.
It is interesting to note that during this period, the Islamic rulers and people were much more hospitable to Jews than the Christians were. If you read the article you'll see that the Jews in the Iberian peninsula thrived under Islamic rule, before the reconquest by the Christians, and also fled to and were welcomed in the Ottoman empire after the Alhambra decree. So, not all the world was as not-atrocious-for-its-time as you paint the Inquisition to be.
Fact is, Christianity is not inherently peaceful, and Islam is not inherently violent.
Both have had their peaceful periods, both have had bloody violence done in their name.
Which doesn't make it justified in either case. It just makes it so villifying the religion itself, rather than those who are using it as a tool for destruction, is invalid.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
SaptaZapta Wrote:Israel's Hafrada does not apply to the million or so Arab Israeli citizens living inside the borders of 1948 Israel.http://www.sephardicstudies.org/decree.html neither did the decree.
It also does not say "leave, leaving all your belongings behind,
SaptaZapta Wrote:or be summarily executed."I'll let you have that one. That's pretty fucked up and I can't even find much of anything willing to address that.
SaptaZapta Wrote:All it does is keep people who have publicly vowed to destroy Israel, outside of it.Their defamation of the sacraments and of Catholic devotions, and of the rabbis who did openly vow to try their hardest to "de-convert" legitimate converts was tantamount to destroying Spain, in the eyes of the government.
The Jews in Spain made no such threats against Spain.
SaptaZapta Wrote:It is interesting to note that during this period, the Islamic rulers and people were much more hospitable to Jews than the Christians were. If you read the article you'll see that the Jews in the Iberian peninsula thrived under Islamic rule, before the reconquest by the Christians, and also fled to and were welcomed in the Ottoman empire after the Alhambra decree. So, not all the world was as not-atrocious-for-its-time as you paint the Inquisition to be.Indeed, their friendly status with the moors was so great, it was perceived as dangerously subversive and a threat to Europe.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - SaptaZapta - 2016-03-23
xparasite9 Wrote:http://www.sephardicstudies.org/decree.html neither did the decree.
Their defamation of the sacraments and of Catholic devotions, and of the rabbis who did openly vow to try their hardest to "de-convert" legitimate converts was tantamount to destroying Spain, in the eyes of the government.
Indeed, their friendly status with the moors was so great, it was perceived as dangerously subversive and a threat to Europe.
Wikipedia Wrote:The king and queen issued the Alhambra Decree less than three months after the surrender of Granada. This was primarily a decision of Isabella, not her husband Fernando.[citation needed] That her confessor had just changed from the tolerant Hernando de Talavera to the very intolerant Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros suggests that Cisneros may well have had a role in Isabel's decision.[11] In it, Jews were accused of trying "to subvert their holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs." These measures were not new in Europe.[12]
Some Jews were only given four months and ordered to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Under the edict, Jews were promised royal "protection and security" for the effective three-month window before the deadline. They were permitted to take their belongings with them – except "...gold or silver or minted money or other things prohibited by the laws of our kingdoms...".[1]
The punishment for any Jew who did not convert or leave by the deadline was summary execution.[1] The punishment for a non-Jew who sheltered or hid Jews was the confiscation of all belongings and hereditary privileges.
And in the words of the edict itself, which you linked:
Edict Wrote:And concerning this we command this our charter to be given, by which we order all Jews and Jewesses of whatever age they may be, who live, reside, and exist in our said kingdoms and lordships, as much those who are natives as those who are not, who by whatever manner or whatever cause have come to live and reside therein, that by the end of the month of July next of the present year, they depart from all of these our said realms and lordships, along with their sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants, Jewish familiars, those who are great as well as the lesser folk, of whatever age they may be, and they shall not dare to return to those places, nor to reside in them, nor to live in any part of them, neither temporarily on the way to somewhere else nor in any other manner, under pain that if they do not perform and comply with this command and should be found in our said kingdom and lordships and should in any manner live in them, they incur the penalty of death and the confiscation of all their possessions by our Chamber of Finance, incurring these penalties by the act itself, without further trial, sentence, or declaration.
And, by the same token as Judaism being seen as a threat to Europe, the imams condoning terrorism view Western culture as destructive to Muslim society and Muslim souls.
Why do you see their view as barbaric, yet accept the same view in 15th century Europe?
That's like an ten-year-old saying, "Yeah, I used to throw tantrums when I was two, but I don't do that anymore and neither do my friends. So my toddler sister shouldn't, either!"
Again, I'm obviously not justifying terrorism. Freedom of religion is all well and good, as long as it doesn't come to hurting innocents. And that was just as true 500 years ago, even if fewer people knew it. I don't know why you insist on trying to justify behavior that the Pope and King of Spain already acknowledged was wrong. Just as modern day America is trying to make amends for enslaving Africans and nearly exterminating the native peoples of America, even though those activites were considered "normal" for their time. Morals can be applied retroactively, where possible.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
SaptaZapta Wrote:I don't know why you insist on trying to justify behavior that the Pope and King of Spain already acknowledged was wrong.
Mostly because our back-and-forth is allowing me to learn about things I never even would have thought about researching. And that kind of learning is like a kind of high for me. Also, which Pope, and which King?
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - Derimed - 2016-03-23
VerrKol Wrote:To respond to your previous post, I didn't mean to imply that "Islam" is a victim. I was stating that Islamic people have suffered more at the hands of violent Islamic extremism than most Westerners. Why did Christians start the Crusades with their (intermittently) friendly trading partners in the Middle East despite adhering to religion which preaches "love thy neighbor" as one of it's founding tenants? Why didn't other Christians stop the Popes which blessed such actions? This line of reasoning isn't particularly productive, but who knows? We may see an equivalent to the Protestants arise from the moderate Islamic factions. I'd merely suggest that many Middle Eastern Muslims are not in a viable position to fight militant groups be they government sanctioned or otherwise without significant military aid in some situations. It's difficult to have a modern day revolution a la the American colonies when you're facing F-15s and tanks with small arms like in Syria.
Islam is the religion of savagery because they've been killing each other brutally and pointlessly way before any of us got there for any reason. The sentence that most accurately describes Islam is not "the religion of peace and tolerance" but "behead anyone who thinks Islam is violent." The Sunnis and Shiites worship God in a nearly identical way but are mortal enemies because of factors that to outsiders seem largely cosmetic. They are not "victims" of the violence they themselves are responsible for, because they are collectively making it happen, and have no interest in stopping it. Whenever somebody else goes on "their" space for any reason, they are out for blood -- but are intimately aware of their own rights on other people's space. Whether or not you as an individual have respect for Islam, these facts make it so a lot of people just don't, and they're justified in it. Before the world was pukefied with political correctness and liberal assertions that we "must not judge," people in the West exhibited unmitigated revulsion for Islam for precisely this reason.
Christianity did barbaric things in the distant past but has EVOLVED to more accurately reflect its founding ideals. In the 1700s, Scotland voting on a referendum to cecede would have been crushed by the Brits with force; but as Christianity is now, the Brits used political incentives to keep them in the fold. Islam, in the Middle Ages, was fairly evolved, but it has DEVOLVED to what it is now. The Jews and Christians, back then, were largely tolerated and allowed to live as they saw fit, with minor things such as a dhimmi tax to be allowed to do so. Today, Islam in most of its countries is not nearly as tolerant of either Jews or Christians, and I repeat that both of those religions has either been run out, or is in the process of being run out, by those same Muslims that whine to heaven that we must respect their rights in the West. Try judging a religion as what it is in 2016, rather than what it was 600 years ago.
Quote:Saying it doesn't make it so. You're completely ignoring Turkey, Jordan, Egypt (treatment has varied widely in recent years), and India (significant but not majority Muslims) which are all involved in the region and don't fit the Islamic picture you paint with such broad strokes. You'll also find that there's an incredibly wide gap between the Iranian government which is controlled by the clerics and the Iranian people. Ahmadinejad would actually be a fair parallel to Trump becoming president. Both were considered unrealistic candidates due to their extremist positions which represent reactionary views not held by a majority of the population and feature a strong vein of nationalism. Both based their electoral support on religious conservatives and low income workers.
Dude, I am not ignoring any of them. Turkey exterminated a large number the Christian-minority Armenians and is to this day denying it ever happened, just like Western neo-Nazis deny the Nazi Holocaust happened. They are a genocidal country that refuses to come to terms with its genocide, and I cannot and will not give any respect to them until they do; they are people in cahoots with those who worship Hitler; that's Turkey. Egypt HAS gone through many governments, and you're conveniently forgetting that the Muslim Brotherhood that originated in their borders spawned abominations like Hamas. India in our day loathes Islam because Muhammad Ali Jinnah betrayed Mahatma Gandhi to form Pakistan, which is India's mortal enemy to this day. THEY BETRAYED MAHATMA GANDHI. Ok? Mahatma Gandhi is liberalism at its purest, if there ever was a man truly like Jesus around our world it's him. And they stabbed him in the back. I remember reading statistics about what country has the least respect and support for Palestine, and India was the lowest, precisely because in its borders the Muslims were being Muslims.
Comparing Ahmanidejad to Trump is lunacy. Trump is an pimento, Ahmanidejad speaks about exterminating nations constantly.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - VerrKol - 2016-03-23
[MENTION=159]Derimed[/MENTION]; I think the problem here is that you perceive the entire Islamic Middle East as a homogeneous region. The conflicts you repeatedly cite have their roots in economics, politics, and non-religious cultures. Islamic rhetoric is frequently used to justify such actions, but that doesn't make the religion itself violent. It's a correlation not a (proven) causation. I wouldn't say that Islam is a religion of "peace and tolerance" or inherently violent. We've already established that there have been periods where Muslims were largely peaceful and Christianity's "evolution" proves that they can be so again. There needs to be a distinction between the ruling clerics and politicians which use Islam as justification for atrocities that they would probably commit anyway (bc corrupt, power hungry leaders) and the people which are subject to their rule. I don't know how you intend to "hold Islam responsible" but I don't think hurling blame at inactive majority is going to help matters.
You're effectively proposing to hold an entire subcontinent and worldwide religion is responsible for actions perpetrated by the minority. It's the world's biggest Good Samaritan Law. If your neighbor commits a crime, you should have stopped him! Western ethics and philosophy is based on the premise that you cannot hold a person responsible for the actions of others.
Ah I should have stated this better. Trump is not Ahmanidejad nor did I intend to call their political beliefs comparable. There's no doubt that Ahmanidejad was far, far worse. I intended to make a comparison between their rises to power should Trump win. Trump would accurately represent about as much of the population as Ahmanidejad did.
You're also judging countries by how they were in the past. Either historical context is important to today's political and religious climate and relevant to this discussion for both Islam and Christianity or it's not. Choose one.
Turkey is a Muslim majority country that is remarkably secular and tolerant of minorities. The Kurdish minority is a notable exception, but the terrorist elements within the KPP bring to mind some parallels in Israel which you seem to (?) support. It's also hardly the first country to deny past genocides. It can certainly be condemned on these grounds, but that requires equivalency in policy with non Islamic countries which have done the same. The level of current discrimination against the group can be found in many other non-Islamic countries. Islam is not the primary influence in this case making the country distinct from other Middle Eastern nations.
I did not forget the Muslim Brotherhood, although I certainly glossed over the issue which is far larger than the Brotherhood with a single word. My point here wasn't that Egypt is a great place for religious tolerance, but that it has been reasonably tolerant at times in recent history. This supports my above statements.
India may loathe Islam but it has a substantial Muslim minority and constitutionally grants freedom of religion. Tbh I can't even remember why I brought it up. I'm not sure how India's lack of support for Palestine is relevant. There are a lot of good reasons to dislike Palestine (and especially it's "government") that have nothing to do with religion.
(For clarity, this is not directed at you or anyone else in particular)
It really makes no sense to me that some Religious Conservatives can simultaneously believe that all Americans should be Christian, that there should be no social services or wealth redistribution, that unrestricted greedy businesses are the best kind, and that all outside groups are stupid, needy, and barbarous. I don't think even Douglas Adam's electric monk could handle that many contradictions.
This is horrendously long and I feel a strong desire to nap now...
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - Derimed - 2016-03-23
@VerrKol : I don't want to appear like I am ignoring your points or saying they have no merit, but I hope you'll forgive me if I let you have the last word above and leave the argument at that. The problem with internet arguments, even civil ones, is that the answers become gradually bigger blobs and I have to call it an evening early and get up pretty early tomorrow. Again, not saying terrible things about you as a person, but I do have to go. Thank you for talking to me, hopefully next time we'll have a longer chat.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - xparasite9 - 2016-03-23
VerrKol Wrote:It really makes no sense to me that some Religious Conservatives can simultaneously believe that all Americans should be Christian, that there should be no social services or wealth redistribution,
It's not that there should not be social services or wealth redistribution, it's that it should be voluntary rather than compulsory, and not done through a government entity.
Terrorist attacks in Brussels - VerrKol - 2016-03-24
[MENTION=159]Derimed[/MENTION]; All good, I think we've pretty much covered it and it's getting exhausting for me as well. Not sure I want an even longer one next time though
