That’s exactly my point. The deformities in Islam as it exists today are the product of social conditions, not any intrinsic tendency for violence. Mind you, Islam in the Arab world has not merely failed to progress; it has regressed. In the past, the Islamic world was relatively tolerant of other religions- the Ottoman empire, for example, welcomed Jews fleeing Spanish persecution. Modern day terrorism, however, is only distantly related to this degeneration. Not all modern day Muslim countries are intolerant and backward nowadays, anyway: Malaysia and Turkey, while they have their problems, are quite pluralistic, despite experiencing a few bumps along the way.

Also, Jesus said “He who is without sin should caste out the first stone.” The Catholic Church is totally oppossed to capital punishment. But the Muslims love capital punishment and use it all the time, especially in Iran. The New Testament is filled with love and peace. The Quran, despite having some loving and good things in it, is overwhelmingly violent and bigoted.

Overwhelmingly? Tim, you’ve produced precious little evidence to this effect. The Old Testament, which Christians and Jews both view as canonical (indeed, it forms the core of the Talmud), is full of violence and bloodshed. You are simply insisting Islam, and, by extension, all more most Muslims, are uniquely violent on the basis of irrelevant characteristics (the current backwardness of the Muslim world vis-a-vis the west, a state that Christendom was in several centuries ago), a fallacy in logic known as “special pleading” (might want to jot that down for law school). At any rate, your continued theological exertions have only served to divert attention from the prior points in my argument that you could not refute; namely, the roots of modern terrorism and America’s penchant for wantonly killing innocent people around the globe.

Also, Jesus said “He who is without sin should caste out the first stone.” The Catholic Church is totally oppossed to capital punishment. But the Muslims love capital punishment and use it all the time, especially in Iran. The New Testament is filled with love and peace. The Quran, despite having some loving and good things in it, is overwhelmingly violent and bigoted.

You’re correct: we can’t say that men are inherently more violent than women, as this argument implies, since men are socialized very differently. Likewise, Muslims exist in a very different social climate than Hindus: they happen to be astride large oil reserves, have both their holy cities occupied by American forces, and they are squarely in Israel’s cross-hairs. In the past, various nationalist movements, such as the Tamil Tigers, employed suicide bombings; Islamism has risen to replace them because secular nationalism has failed to achieve its objectives, and such attacks have geopolitical, rather than ideological, motivations. I suggest you read Robert Pape’s Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism as well as Michael Scheuer. Specifically, the vast majority are conducted to compel the West to withdraw its troops from their homelands. Observe that Muslim states like Bangladesh and Malaysia (home to the two largest Muslim communities in the world) which aren’t subject to American occupation haven’t produced any suicide bombers.

Kenneth, you have already made up your mind and you don’t care about the facts, so I am probably wasting my time trying to reason with you.

And don’t bother me with your quotes from the Quran because I could site you many more that are bloodthirsty and violent (8:12, 47:4, among others) Why don’t you go back to the University of Southern California Muslims Students link you sent to me. Go read how they make lame excuses for the violence, sexism and racism and hompophobia in their religion.

You cannot have had more than a cursory glance at the University of Michigan page. They aren’t making “lame excuses” for homophobia, sexism, and racism in the Qu’ran: they’re showing clearly that the Qu’ran does not support them (or at least the latter two), and cannot be construed as such. On racism:

All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over a white - except by piety and good action. (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/prophet/lastsermon.html)

On sexism:

O you who believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should you treat them with harshness, that you may take away part of the dowry you have given them - except when they have become guilty of open lewdness. On the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If you take a dislike to them, it may be that you dislike something and Allah will bring about through it a great deal of good. (4:19) (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/humanrelations/womeninislam/womenquransunnah.html)

I’m not disputing that there are distasteful passages in the Qu’ran: there probably are. You, however, are making a much stronger argument; namely, that the Qu’ran is exceptional in this regard, a contention which you have, thus far, been unable to prove. It isn’t. It may very well condone homophobia, but so does the Bible. Meanwhile, I’d like you to make excuses for this list of what constitute “capital crimes” in the Old Testament:

Murder, applies to Noachides as well (Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12-14, Leviticus 24:17-23, Numbers 35:9-34)
Disobedience to parents (Exodus 21:15, 21:17, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Kidnapping (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7)
Negligent homicide, specifically by ox-goring (Exodus 21:28-32)
Sorcery and Augury (Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 20:27)
Bestiality (Exodus 22:19, Leviticus 20:15-16)
Sacrificing to gods other than God alone (Exodus 22:20, Leviticus 27:29)
Sabbath breaking (Exodus 31:12-17, 35:2, Numbers 15:32-36)
offering Human sacrifice to Molech (Leviticus 20:1-5)
Adultery (Leviticus 20:10)
Incest (Leviticus 20:11-12)
Sodomy (Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22, see also Leviticus 18)
Marrying your wife’s mother (Leviticus 20:14)
Prostitution by the daughter of a priest (Leviticus 21:9)
Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:10-16)
Worshipping Baal Peor (Numbers 25:1-9)
False prophecy (Deuteronomy 13:1-10, 17:2-7, 18:20-22)
Contempt of court (Deuteronomy 17:8-13)
False witness in a capital crime (Deuteronomy 19:15-21)
Unchastity among those engaged to marry (Deuteronomy 22:13-29)

Examine the relatively trivial nature of some of the “crimes” listed here: disobeying one’s parents, failing to maintain chastity, false prophecy, blasphemy (effectively circumscribing the range of free speech), etc. A primitive and violent sounding code, no? Clearly, however, the vast majority of modern day Christians and Jews don’t kill their offspring when they disobey them, nor homosexuals, nor adulterers. What is clear from all this is that we cannot compartmentalize theology and sociology; the latter begets the former. To similarly seek out a theological explanation for political acts is a hopelessly glib characterization of modern day terrorism.

I’m not wasting any more of my time. You are beyond the reach of reason.

Then stop coming to antiwar.com, idiot.

you do know why the Zionist regime was so keen to capture and silence Eichmann, don’t you?

There was collaberation going on by all sides, the British Royals and the Bank of England spring to mind (not to mention IBM, Standard Oil etc) but the most distasteful of all, given the context today, was the arrangements between the zionists and the nazis.

Did you know that statistically over 95% of all violent crimes in the United States are committed by men. But you can’t say that men are more violent than women right? Just because men commit the overwhelming amount of violent crimes, how can we make the logical leap of faith that men are more violent in general? Same thing with Muslims, just because the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks are committed by them we can’t dare say that they are more violent than bhuddists, or Hindus for example.

Kenneth, you have already made up your mind and you don’t care about the facts, so I am probably wasting my time trying to reason with you.

And don’t bother me with your quotes from the Quran because I could site you many more that are bloodthirsty and violent (8:12, 47:4, among others) Why don’t you go back to the University of Southern California Muslims Students link you sent to me. Go read how they make lame excuses for the violence, sexism and racism and hompophobia in their religion.

I’m not wasting any more of my time. You are beyond the reach of reason.

This is a superficial and fallacious conclusion to draw from such an ambiguous pool of evidence. It hardly follows from the data you have presented that Islam is a violent religion, or even that the attacks are aimed at “Western civilization” in general rather than its policies in particular. It is a post hoc fallacy to conclude Islam is violent because some of its followers are involved. What you have given me is a list of decontextualized incidents that doesn’t suffice to prove that Islam is an inherently violent doctrine rather than one distorted by existing social conditions. Indeed, such a notion cannot explain the violence, as the fact remains that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists, demonstrating that Islam is not a sufficient condition for the creation of terrorists. All religions, Buddhism included, have histories fraught with violence; we can’t really draw conclusions about their theologies from this. Moreover, you promised me a list of foiled terrorist attacks; what you’ve presented is a list of successful ones. The total number of attacks that have been prevented by the heroic actions of the manifold American intelligence agencies currently in existence is, in fact, zero. It turns out that most such attacks are motivated by the policies of the west, including, among other things, the occupation of the Muslim holy lands and the continuing blank check support for Israel. The 9/11 Commission Report concluded as much, as did Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit. At most, what we have is the kind of run-of-the-mill violence that usually accompanies underdevelopment. Nor do I believe, as you imply, that Islam is “peaceful”, anymore than it is violent. Islam is Islam; whether it is used for violent or peaceful purposes depend on the social and political conditions prevailing in its homelands. Since, however, you insist on pushing such a one-dimensional account of Islamist terrorism, I feel obliged to respond with actual quotations from the Qu’ran (which I see you have avoided addressing).

Secondly, my use of the term “IslamoFascism:” I use the term most deliberatly. As you know, language is important. I understand that the term is controversial and inflammatory and raises a lot of eyebrows and that is exactly why I use it. The point that I want to remind people of is that terrorism is just a tactic, it is the prefered tactic of radical Muslims. Radical Islamic ideaology is what we are fighting. Terrorism and radical Islam are inextricably intertwined. So use whatever term you want, take your pick” IslamoFascism, Islamic terrorism, Jihadists(Thomas L. Friedman’s prefered term), Muslim Nazi’s, I don’t care what term you use so long as you don’t use the generic “terrorism.” It is not just terrorism, it is ISLAMIC terrorism. We are fighting a radical idealogy.
Lastly, the term “IslamoFascism” for your information was not coined by neo conservatives or any other kind of conservatives.

The whole point here is that “fascism” has become a nebulous political label bereft of theoretical content. It derogatory, not descriptive. Since Islamism is transnational and regards the state as a means, rather than an end in itself as fascism does, it can hardly be compared to fascism or even to conventional forms of totalitarianism. There is little functional or ideological congruence between Bin Laden and Benito Mussolini, apart from their penchant for killing innocents (a trait they both share with the past several American heads of state). Freely appending the “fascist” epithet to whatever evokes your ire empties the term of meaning; we might as well label certain extreme ideological tendencies in both the United States and Israel as “Christofascist” or “Judeofascist”, since they have a much greater structural similarity with the old Italian doctrine than do Islamist ideologies. Islamism isn’t an existential threat, and it is only a nuisance because the west insists on foisting its will upon the Islamic world.

You say I am all bluster? Well the facts speak loud and clear. Here are some links you can use to enlighten yourself on this “peaceful” religion. Here you can see for yourself that the vast and overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks against western civilization are committed by Muslims. You can also see for yourself what percentages of Muslims support radical Islamic ideaology. I hope you will read these figures with an open mind and process them reasonably and in a manner detached from emotional sentiment.

1)http://ballyblog.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/terrorists-are-muslims-list-of-islamic-terrorist-attacks/

2)http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/TheList.htm

3) http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/5902.htm

4)http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=257

Thank you for your comments and your suggestion that I read Moshe Dayan’s memoir. I must admit that I have not read his memoir, but if your description is indeed true, I shall have to re-evaluate some of my positions regarding the six day war. I look foward to reading it.

Secondly, my use of the term “IslamoFascism:” I use the term most deliberatly. As you know, language is important. I understand that the term is controversial and inflammatory and raises a lot of eyebrows and that is exactly why I use it. The point that I want to remind people of is that terrorism is just a tactic, it is the prefered tactic of radical Muslims. Radical Islamic ideaology is what we are fighting. Terrorism and radical Islam are inextricably intertwined. So use whatever term you want, take your pick” IslamoFascism, Islamic terrorism, Jihadists(Thomas L. Friedman’s prefered term), Muslim Nazi’s, I don’t care what term you use so long as you don’t use the generic “terrorism.” It is not just terrorism, it is ISLAMIC terrorism. We are fighting a radical idealogy.
Lastly, the term “IslamoFascism” for your information was not coined by neo conservatives or any other kind of conservatives.

Or is your point of view that Russians “really were” a subhuman Asiatic horde that “threatened” Germany’s “Aryan purity” and Germany needed to wipe them all out? Is that correct Herr Schickelgruber? The Russian’s (rightful) resistance to the Axis invasion was something to support. Because Hitler had only one goal in Russia, to wipe out all Slavs.

I believe Russians and Americans should work together. We can build a worldwide Space Agency, the goal of which would be to travel beyond our planet, to unify Humanity and to reduce conflict around the globe.

In reading the many comments posted on anti-war, it is difficult not to notice your manic obsession with this most despicable linguistic deformation invented by the so-called neocons: “Islamofascism”. Over and over you argue with posters like Kenneth about the history of modern day Israel. You seem to think that they, perhaps not being Jewish, have a deep-rooted bias against that state when they tell you that it is guilty of unadulterated naked aggression. When Jews like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein point out the same, then they are accused of being self-haters, another linguistic aberration.

So let me refer you to a historian which in your extremely tunneled intellect should be above any reproach! He describes the 1956 unprovoked Israeli attack on Egypt as a well planned Zionist scheme to employ British and French imperialist nostalgia as a means to acquire territory and strategic control of the Red Sea.
Then he goes on to describe the 1967 war as the result of intentional provocations by Israel. He describes how the myth of Syrian shelling of the Kibbutz’s on their border was created. He details his and Levi Eshkol’s greed for the Golan Plateau and how they manipulated to commit naked aggression to seize it.

When he dictated his memoir, it was so incredibly damning of Israel that he instructed that it not be published for fifteen years after his death. Those fifteen years have come and gone and you can read it anytime. The historian in question is Moshe Dayan.