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Man alive......these folks have so many people, big and small on their "hit list" it's incredible?
Remember old Rushdi or Rushti.....probably mispelled the authors name, who as a Muslim wrote a book that was critical of his faith...........?
He was on the run for years..........
.....
Muslim Ayatolahs mantras.......follow the same old theme for anyone who doesn't agree with them..."Our way, or no way!".
......
Why do we have to walk on egg shells around these folks......do they do the same for us and our religion, culture and values?
Who was it that said something about "drawing a line in the sand"?
We are walking on eggshells because they're to be fully included in the modern world, zealotry and all, as long as they submit to the authority of israel. We are heading towards a global dark age.
They always turn onto the street after the Friday sermons. Truth is, 'the Arab street' knows what they are told to know by those in the mosques. [Saturday, September 16, 2006
Infantilizing Muslim "rage"
By TigerHawk at 9/16/2006 09:35:00 AM
Just about the entire world knows that that Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech on Tuesday condemning religious conversion by violence. The Muslim "street" did not respond until Friday, when the leaders of the Muslim religion called for their faithful to surge into the streets in an orgy of rage and violence.
Not content only to burn Christian churches (neither of which follow the Catholic pope), they turned on themselves. Never in the history of Christianity has a pope been proven correct so quickly and demonstrably. :shocked:
Predictably, the greatest beneficiaries of the Western enlightenment blamed reason, the true victim of Muslim rage through the ages. The editors of The New York Times said this morning, to the eternal discredit of that once great paper, that
[t]he world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.
This is obscene. Apart from its factual inaccuracy -- there is no evidence that any of the enraged Muslims "listened carefully" to the words of the pope -- this is like blaming a beaten wife for provoking the bastard who throttles her. It is the leaders of prayers in the mosques of the Muslim world who call on their faithful to riot in the streets. It is they who sow pain and incite violence, and anybody unburdened by a loathing of Western civilization knows it. Pope Benedict has nothing to apologize for. The leading clerics of the Muslim world have a great deal to apologize for.
Neither the pope nor the Muslim clerics are the only actors here. Tens of thousands of Muslims chose to act in violence or condone violence yesterday. Millions more supported them in this, the evidence being that Muslim politicians jumped on the bandwagon. These millions of Muslims are hardly candles in the wind, helplessly manipulated by the imams. They chose their religion. They chose their mosque. They chose not to "listen carefully" to the words of the pope. They chose to take to the streets in rage, and they chose to burn and attack and kill perfectly innocent people, all on the say-so of one or another demagogue in a turbin. They are not children, however much the cultural relativists who absolve the rioters and their sympathizers infantalize them. I condemn these people for making bad choices; liberals, such as the editors of the New York Times, refuse to condemn them because they believe that Muslims are incapable of choices. I may deplore the choices of these rioting Muslims, but the New York Times holds them in contempt, regarding them as nothing more than wild animals. Just as we all blame humans who antagonize an animal into a violent response, the New York Times blames Westerners who "sow pain," as if Muslims have the free will of a cornered wolf.
For my part, I am sick of "Muslim rage." Whether inspired by the pope or Danish cartoonists or the clumsy use of the word "crusade" by a Western politician, there is simply no defense for the behavior of these imams and their followers. It is barbaric, and everybody who is not barbaric or an unreconstructed apologist for barbarians knows it. The Muslims who commit arson and mayhem in response to some Westerner speaking his opinion -- and the pope, as leader of the Roman church, is exactly that -- have chosen to act as enemies of reason, peace, and everything that is good in the world.
Now, perhaps this behavior is not inherent in Islam, but in other aspects of the culture in which these violent people live. Ralph Peters blames the milieu of the Middle East, by which I believe he means Arab culture, as opposed to Islamic tradition:
Islamist terror is a deadly threat we have barely begun to address. Yet religion-fueled fanaticism in the Middle East shouldn't surprise us: The tradition pre-dates the Prophet's birth by thousands of years.I'm not sure that I agree with Peters. Islam "got away" too, to the Balkans and Iberia. The Balkans have been a mess since at least the fall of Byzantine empire to the Muslims. The Muslim culture in Spain produced some of the umma's greatest accomplishments, but removal to Spain did not stop Muslims from devouring Averroes, who might have been the Islamic Aquinus. Both men tried to reconcile science and faith. The Christians canonized Aquinus, Iberian Muslims banished Averroes.
Terrorists just have better tools these days.
What should amaze us isn't the terrorists' strength, which has limits, but the comprehensive failure of Middle Eastern civilization. Given all the wealth that's poured into the region, its vast human resources and all of its opportunities for change, the mess the Middle East has made of itself is stunning.
Beyond Israel, the region hasn't produced a single first-rate government, army, economy, university or industry. It hasn't even produced convincing second-raters.
Culturally, the region is utterly noncompetitive. Societies stagnate as populations seethe. To the extent it exists, development benefits the wealthy and powerful. The common people are either ignored or miserably oppressed - and not just the women.
Operation Iraqi Freedom wasn't so much an invasion as a last-minute rescue mission - an attempt to give one major Middle Eastern state a two-minutes-to-midnight chance to develop a humane, democratic government.
It may not work. But we'd better hope it does.
The Middle East's failure on every front enabled the rise of the terrorists - as well as the empowerment of other religious extremists, secular dictators and political parties willing to poison electorates with hatred.
The popular culprit for the mess is Islam. And there can be no doubt that the faith's local degeneration has been catastrophic for the region. By far the most numerous victims of "Islam Gone Wild" have been Middle Eastern Muslims.
But we can't be content with a single explanation for a civilization's failure, as powerful as the answer may appear. Yes, Islamist governments fail miserably. But so do secular Arab, Persian and Pakistani governments (whose leaders belatedly play the Islamic card).
Yes, the culture is Islamic, even in nominally secular states. But we have to ask some very politically incorrect questions that cut even deeper.
Many of the social, governmental and psychological structures at the core of Middle Eastern societies pre-date Islam. Authoritarian government; a slave-like status for women; pervasive corruption; labor viewed as an evil to be avoided; the relegation of learning to narrow castes; economies that rely on trade rather than productivity to generate wealth, even the grandiose rhetoric - all were in place long before Islam appeared.
The repeated failures we've witnessed go far beyond a religion on its sickbed. Instead of Islam being the Middle East's problem, what if Islam's problem is the Middle East?
Were Christianity and Judaism "saved" because they escaped the Middle East? Were these other two great monotheist religions able to master the power of knowledge and human potential because they were driven from their stultifying cultural and geographic origins? Did the Diaspora and the subsequent Muslim destruction of the cradle of Christianity ultimately save these two faiths?
The Middle East is a straitjacket that turns religions mad. We got away.
Whether Islam or pre-Islamic cultural institutions are the source of the problem, there is no escaping the fact that a huge proportion of the Muslim world is economically, scientifically, culturally and politically incompetent by the standards of the world. It has chosen to invent nothing since the Middle Ages, preferring to stew in the juices of decline than solve its own problems. It is so insecure in its faith that the slightest criticism from a non-believer propels thousands of clerics and millions of followers into paroxysms of rage. Yet Islam needs jihad, which I understand means "struggle." It needs a jihad against illiteracy. It needs a jihad against ignorance. It needs a jihad against sloth. It needs a jihad against corruption. It needs a jihad in support of women, without whom it cannot succeed in the modern world. It needs a jihad against the clerics who have -- allegedly, according to "moderates" -- perverted the truth of its religion. It needs a jihad against its governments -- secular and Islamic -- who have destroyed the future for more than a billion people. It needs a jihad against despair.
Until I see the arsonists and rioters among Muslims embracing these jihads, I will hold them responsible for the bad choices that they make, including the choice to reject secular education, the choice to destroy rather than construct, the choice to dwell in the past instead of dream about the future, the choice to obsess about Jews rather than wonder how they might emulate the Jews, and the choice to have so little confidence in the power of their own religion that they oppress and condemn and kill those who choose otherwise.
If Pope Benedict apologizes, I will resent him for the rest of his reign.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds rounds up more links on this topic, including to this post. In particular see John Hinderaker's post, in which he reminds us that Muslim extremists have designated this pope's predecessor for assassination. Michelle Malkin also has more this morning. All Things Beautiful examines the controversy from an artist's eye view.
We are walking on eggshells because they're to be fully included in the modern world, zealotry and all, as long as they submit to the authority of israel. We are heading towards a global dark age.
Al-Qaeda planned to assassinate Pope: report
November 11 2002
Al-Qaeda planned to assassinate Pope John Paul II on two occasions during visits made or planned by the Pontiff to the Philippines in 1995 and 1999, The Times of London reported today.
Masterminding the assassination attempts was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also accused of plotting the September 11 attacks on the US, who was in the Philippines during both papal visits, the newspaper reported.
Although the 1995 plot had been publicised and attributed to local terrorists, the 1999 attempt had been kept secret, the newspaper reported.
Months were spent planning the attacks, the first of which involved planting a bomb in a park where the Pope was due to speak. However the bomb exploded prematurely in a Manila apartment.
The bomb was reportedly constructed by Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a life sentence in the US for his role in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, a car bomb that exploded in an underground parking garage in 1993.
A police search of the Manila apartment yielded additional bomb-making equipment and a laser-guided sniper rifle, the newspaper reported.
Cancellation of the Pope's 1999 visit thwarted the second attempt, the newspaper reported.
Sheikh Mohammed, 38, has evaded capture since the World Trade Centre towers were struck by terrorist-flown passenger planes in 2001, despite the US having offered a bounty of $US25 million ($A44.29 million) for his capture. Mohammed is the head of the al-Qaeda military committee, The Times reported.
Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna told The Times: "One thing you should remember about al-Qaeda - when they didn't destroy the World Trade Centre first time around, they came back to finish it off. That is how it was with the Pope in the Philippines."
churches, the Protestants can join us!
I may not have maxed English 101...however this thread should be incorporated(merged) with Inseins thread dated 9/15/06 12.03pm vs Screaming Eagles thread of the 'same' dated 9/15/06 3:30 pm...What is with this favortism in here as of late?..I like Insein as well as Screaming Eagle..but hey 'Fair is Fair' no?:coffee3:
You know Earp, I went looking for that thread when you first posted your English 101 post, I didn't find it. Since you are so all fired up about it, how about a link instead of date? Funny thing, Insein hasn't a problem pm'ing me, yet he hasn't bothered. Seems it's more about you, but never mind that, send me the link and I'll merge them...
Just like fair and just practice...so: "War on Terrorism" Thread "This is just in:Muslims are violent people" 7 down from the top!...LOL:coffee3:
Post-Christian Europe
In discussing Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech, I've argued that it must be understood as a shot across the bow not only of Islam but also of post-Christian Europe. Nothing better illustrates my point than the take given the speech by France AFR news agency, which opined that:
By unwittingly angering Muslims with his comments on Islam, Pope Benedict XVI has shown that he has yet to shake off his academic theological roots and master the global media machine with the same deftness as his predecessor.
In clinging to theology and orthodoxy, the bookish Benedict has shown little regard for media management in getting his message across, unlike the communications-savvy John Paul II.
Implicit in that critique is precisely the sort of moral relativism this Pope intends to take head on. This Pope is not a politician trying to manipulate the media, but a theologian trying to preach what he believes to be the truth, which is exactly what the Vicar of Christ ought to do. After all, how communications-savvy was Jesus?
September 15, 2006 in Religion |
09.15.06
THOSE WHO TAKE THEIR THEOLOGY SERIOUSLY CONTINUED:
by Jacob T. Levy
Sandy drew our attention to John Nehaus' reflections on whether Mormonism is a form of Christianity or not. Insofar as that's a discussion within and between two theological traditions that center on the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, I lack either a stake in the discussion or, in some sense, the right knowledge base with which to comment on it. I can tell you something about the intellectual history of the Nicene Creed and what it meant to the development of Christianity; but what do I know about whether subscribing to it is a necessary mark of being a "true" Christian?
But I confess to often having some sympathy for non-ecumenicists and those who draw distinctions. I don't expect Catholics to take their theology any less seriously than Mormons take theirs; and one theology excludes the other. It seems to me that if religion is meaningful it's serious business; if one is committed to divine truths then one is committed to the falsehood of rival claims. By my human standards "No man comes unto the father but through Me" is a terrible way to run a universe; but if there is a God I have no reason to think that His rules will conform to my contingent, twenty-first-century Western liberal human standards. And so I don't expect religious believers to softpedal the exclusionary implications of their beliefs. I don't think Unitarian Universalism is somehow a better religion than Catholicism or Mormonism or Orthodox Judaism just because its god seems to be so nice and inclusive; indeed, my sympathies for the aesthetic and moral-psychological experience of religious belief tends to run the other way. This is a bit like the stance of many American lapsed Catholcic or many Israeli secular Jews, I incline to say, "I don't believe in God, but the God in whom I don't believe is a serious one!" But I don't quite mean that. Rather, I want to say that if there is a point to religion and theology, then that point is undermined by the reluctance to draw distinctions and take them seriously.
And so: Pope Benedict XVI and Islam. Now Benedict is a drawer of distinctions par excellence, and the views I expressed above have always left me a bit sympathetic to him despite the protestations of some fine and theologically serious Jesuit-educated friends of mine. For a religious leader to want a smaller, purer church rather than a larger one that gets watered down so as to not effectively constrain its believers seems to me, well, like what religious leaders ought to want. That as may be, surely religious believers are in the business of drawing distinctions with, and denying the truth of, other religions. When Benedict said, in a lecture on the relationship between faith and reason,
He did not endorse Paleologus' statement. And the lecture as a whole is not about violence, the subject of the second paragraph quoted, but rather about the dispute in the last paragraph quoted: the relationship between reason and man's understanding of God.* When he quoted Paleologus, it was only after noting one of the key countervailing sources in Islamic thought. So there is something absurd about the outrage being stoked--more absurd, I think, than the outrage over the Danish editorial cartoons. That those paragraphs make Benedict someone who "is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini" is hardly to be credited. No matter how politically serious the responses from the Muslim world, there is something morally unserious about many of them--a demand to unsay what was not said, an expectation to be immunce from criticism, and (again) an insistence that non-Muslims act with the same reverence toward Mohammed that is religiously demanded of Muslims themselves.I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the three Laws: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself - which, in the context of the issue of faith and reason, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation ["controversy"] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threaten. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed 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." The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
Still if those paragraphs had been spoken by, say, President Bush (hard as it is to imagine him reading fourteenth-century theological dialogues!) I'd say: this was impolitic and stupid and ought to be apologized for; the world can't afford for the leaders of western states to venture anywhere near the line of criticizing Mohammed, linking Islam's religious content (as opposed to the political manifestations of Islamism) with violence, or characterizing Islam as such as evil. No "Operation Infinite Justice," no offhand references to crusades, no "evil and inhuman," no "our god is bigger than their god" talk--none of it. Western political leaders now have an obligation born of prudence to go far, far beyond what's required as a matter of civility.
But, surely, the same is not true of a religious leader.
I don't expect Catholics to take their theology less seriously than Muslims do; I certainly don't expect the Pope to take his theology anything less than wholly seriously. And what is a Catholic, committed to the truth of Catholicism, to think of Mohammed's additions to and transformations of the Christian bible? What is a theologically serious Catholic to think about "what Mohammed brought that was new"? At a minimum he or she will think it false--and, because false, evil in distracting religious believers from an all-important truth. And, since Mohammed's additions were not limited to a different understanding of Jesus and Mary but also included different understandings of conduct on earth, of government and laws and codes of behavior, the theologically-serious believing Catholic can be expected to think that the additions are morally bad for persons on earth, independent of the falsehood of the claims about God. And, since Christians (and Jews) are theologically committed to seeing Mohammed as a false prophet, they're hardly likely to feel themselves obliged to offer him the same respect and reverence as those for whom Mohammed's status as a prophet is central to their declaration of faith do.
Neither do I expect Muslim clerics to take their theology less than seriously, or to pay those who stand in the apostolic succession the same respect that believing Catholics do! And I would find it very odd, a category mistake, for the Pope to insist on apologies from every Muslim cleric who describes Christianity or Catholicism as false, evil, or likely to lead humans into sin.
'"The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam," said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper in the kingdom.' Isn't this backward? It should be (must be!) controversial to think that Israel or America is "against" Islam as such; it should not be controversial to think that the Pope is. If the governments of the US and Israel were "against Islam," then it would be the case that they should stop being so--it would be the case that they'd mistaken their obligations for those of a Pope or rabbi. But that a Pope is "against Islam" is no more to be apologized for than that he is "against Judaism"--and, while it's very important and desirable that the Church has renounced the doctrine of eternal collective guilt of "the Jews" for Jesus' death, Catholicism is certainly committed to the view that Judaism gets things theologically wrong. ("Incomplete" is the euphemism, but the Christian view of the transformative importance of the incarnation, death, and resurrection makes that an inadequate word.)
In the post-Reformation west we've come to the view that religious argument ought to be conducted with words, not swords. But that is very different from supposing that the words in which religious argument is conducted ought to be nice touchy-feely ones--much less from supposing that religious argument ought not to take place at all. We ought to expect governments--the American government and the Israeli government, but also the Turkish government and the Pakistani government--to stay out of religious argument proper. But we ought to expect a religious leader to be willing (pace Frost on liberals) to take his or her own side in that argument.
*(And therefore, in religious substance, the speech is a much more serious attack on various kinds of Protestantism, including the President's, than it is on Islam; the status of reason and philosophy in Islam is complicated and contested, whereas in the personal-revelation brands of Protestantism it's pretty much dismissed.)
posted 1:28 p.m.
West Bank churches attacked after Pope remarks
Reuters
Saturday, September 16, 2006 13:20 IST
NABLUS: Unknown assailants threw fire bombs on Saturday at two churches in the West Bank city of Nablus, following a day of Palestinian protests against comments Pope Benedict made about Islam. No one was hurt.
Jabi Saadeh, a member of the Anglican Church in the city, said about four or five masked men in a white car threw several fire bombs at the wall of the church, without causing damage.
A similar attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Nablus set ablaze one of its walls, leaving part of it charred. George Awad, head of the Greek Orthodox church, denounced what he called "a childish act".
In a speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence. It was unclear whether the church attacks were connected to his remarks.
The Pontiff's words sparked protests across the Arab world. Thousands of Palestinians marched in the Gaza Strip on Friday to protest his remarks as local leaders condemned the Pope and called on him to apologise to all Muslims.
"We have nothing to do with the Pope's remarks about Islam," Awad said. "We condemn these remarks. We are brothers and sisters during good and bad times in Palestine and tolerance is the common oxygen for people here -- Christians and Muslims."
Senior officials from the Palestinian government, which has been led by the Islamic Hamas group after it won a January parliamentary election, and other local leaders gathered at the scene and offered words of condolence.
"We condemn this irresponsible attack and we believe that these acts will not affect the eternal unity of the Palestinian community," said Adli Yaaish, the mayor of Nablus and a Hamas leader.
On Friday, a youth centre run by the Greek Orthodox church in the Gaza Strip was slightly damaged by a small explosion, witnesses said.
Most of the some 3.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip identify themselves as Muslim, while up to 2 percent are Christian. Attacks between members of the communities are rare.
"Mr. Pope be with in your limits"
Look at that sign. "Mr. Pope be with in your limits." What limits? Classic Islamic law stipulates that Christians may live in peace in Islamic societies as long as they accept second-class status as dhimmis, which involves living within certain limits: not holding authority over Muslims, paying the jizya tax, not building new churches or repairing old ones, and...not insulting Allah or Muhammad. If they believe that a Christian has insulted them in some way, even inadvertently, his contract of protection -- dhimma -- is voided.
So are these protestors warning the Pope to behave like a dhimmi, or else? I expect so. After all, so many Christians and post-Christians in the West in recent years have been willing, even eager, to accept such limits -- witness the chastened reaction to the Cartoon Rage riots, in which Church officials, government leaders, and others solemnly pontificated against "insults to religious figures." But it wasn't really a question of blasphemy then, and it isn't a question of insult now. It is a question of whether non-Muslims will submit to Muslim standards and restrictions on their speech, thought, and behavior.
And I hope that the Pope, for one, is not willing to do so.
Posted by Robert at September 15, 2006 07:52 PM
You can find good and bad people and sects within practically any mainline religion. You can select particular sentences, translate and interpret them to suit your own prejudices, and misapply them in modern times. See the following passages:
You who believe! Enter absolutely into peace (Islam). Do not follow in the footsteps of Satan. He is an outright enemy to you.
But as for those who break God's contract after it has been agreed and sever what God has commanded to be joined, and cause corruption in the earth, the curse will be upon them. They will have the Evil Abode. (Surat ar-Ra'd: 25)
Seek the abode of the hereafter with what God has given you, without forgetting your portion of the world. And do good as God has been good to you. And do not seek to cause mischief on earth. God does not love mischief makers.' (Surat al-Qasas: 77)
There is no compulsion in religion. Right guidance has become clearly distinct from error. Anyone who rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped the Firmest Handhold, which will never give way. God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. (Surat al-Baqara: 256)
So remind, you need only to remind. You cannot compel them to believe. (Surat al-Ghashiyah: 22)
...If someone kills another person - unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the earth - it is as if he had murdered all mankind. And if anyone gives life to another person, it is as if he had given life to all mankind. Our Messengers came to them with Clear Signs but even after that many of them committed outrages in the earth. (Surat al-Ma'ida: 32)
Those who do not call on any other deity together with God and do not kill anyone God has made inviolate, except with the right to do so, and do not fornicate; anyone who does that will receive an evil punishment. (Surat al-Furqan: 68)
...To be one of those who believe and urge each other to steadfastness and urge each other to compassion. Those are the Companions of the Right. (Surat al-Balad: 17-18)
A good action and a bad action are not the same. Repel the bad with something better and, if there is enmity between you and someone else, he will be like a bosom friend. (Surat al-Fussilat: 34)
http://www.islamdenouncesterrorism.com/the_true_islamic_morals.html
Ok. Cherry picked Islam lesson for the day.
Im just saying that practically everyone does it to suit his agenda. Militant Islamic terrorists would probably choose different passages. Christian activists would carefully select those passages from their Bible to suit their preferences. Christian activists would pick other sentences. It is practically the same all over and varies by degrees. It is the same old same old.
