factual update on Gaza conflict

[yusuf]

The point is that there is a large and growing number of violent religious extremists in those countries who think that getting young men and women to blow themselves up is a good thing. They try to solve their problems via suicide bombs and harsh religious control. Their rule their men, and even worse, their women, with a code of violence. As the previous point was made: visiting is one thing, living there and actually openly making a stand in saying that you are a Jew or a Christian in one of those countries will bring about more than a little trouble. It may bring death.

Chris

given you are an expert could you tell me what percentage constitute this large and growing number? Is it the same as the percentage in the us who supported the killing of half a million people in Iraq, say?

I do agree on the social control exercised through religious means. Apart from Lebanon and Tunisia all arab countries have some form of repression. Those two are models of relatively open societies, despite the attempts of some to portray them as otherwise.

[Chris Fleming]

No, you're right. None of that shit happens at all. I'm lying.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Yusuf has difficulty with reality. that much is clear.

[dragontigerpalm]

I do agree on the social control exercised through religious means. Apart from Lebanon and Tunisia all arab countries have some form of repression. Those two are models of relatively open societies, despite the attempts of some to portray them as otherwise.

The tens of thousands of Jews who emigrated from Tunisia and Lebanon between 1948 and the present might have a different opinion. The Jewish community of Tunisia which predates Islam by several hundred years shrunk from approximately 100,000 in 1948 to about 1500 at present. Similarly, in Lebanon, where Jews have lived even longer than in Tunisia, the Jewish population went from about 24,000 to 40.

[yusuf]

...

[yusuf]

of course that was the fault of the muslims...and the christians in Lebanon.. who are art of the ruling elite..what about the Christians in tunisia.. ws the jewsish emigration to the newly formed ISrael there fault too? did you ever wonder how muslims, christians and jews lived in relative harmony for centuries before 1948???

see i have this theory that you guys have some sort of false image of hoardes of evil muslims trying to kill anyone who doesnt agree with them.. it is reflected in all of your posts and the more you post, the more apparent it becomes..
when darth posts 'why did muslims build on top of the temple mount', and i provided the explanation, he went silent becuause it doesn;t fit in with the sort of rabid posts he makes here.. because it reflects what muslims feel rather than what he beleives in his fevered imagination

if you guys have a problem with radical islam then good, so do I .. but i will not sit back and take stupid generalisations thrown about becuse of ignorance and hatred... i have relatives who are jewish, muslim . who live in Jerusalem, oman, india .. I have visited the middle east more times than i care to remember. i see how Muslims and Jews live, what they believe ..

yet somehow you accuse me of not accepting reality

whereas you guys what, sit back in armchairs from afar, defending the death of hundreds of innocents, women and children, proclaiming on a situation and ignoring anything which shows your positions for the shallow nonsense it really is.. news source such as reuters, the bbc become hamas propoganda, quotes from Israeli prime ministers and spokesmen which show the brutality in the birth f Israel become 'lies created by muslims', arabs are equated with muslims and are all uncivilised.. if someone condemns both hamas and Israel they become 'hamas supporters'

do you see a patten in the downright predjudice and xenophobia you show?

[Chris Fleming]

"of course that was the fault of the muslims"

Actually it was. Some estimate that over 750,000 Jews, living in various Middle Eastern countries lost their homes due to persecution at the time when Israel was formed. This wasn't "Christian persecution" as you are claiming. It came from Arabs who were pissed that their countries got their asses kicked by a bunch of Jews in Israel so they struck out against the Jews living in their own countries. Those people didn't have anything to do with Israel, but got persecuted just the same. Pretty barbaric and animalistic to me.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

rabid?

really?

again, not much in contact with reality. I don't think I've made any rabid posts, but if that's how you want to spin it.

p.s by building a mosque on Herods temple is an act in and of itself of destruction of a jewish holy site.
You can spin that however you like as well yusuf.

if calling the arab world in dire need of getting it's house in order and coming into teh modern era is rabid, then I guess I'm rabid.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

I guess the new president is also rabid when he calls for the muslim world to get itself in order as well?
Is anybody out there not seeing this?

[dragontigerpalm]

[quote="yusuf"]of course that was the fault of the muslims...and the christians in Lebanon.. who are art of the ruling elite..what about the Christians in tunisia.. ws the jewsish emigration to the newly formed ISrael there fault too? did you ever wonder how muslims, christians and jews lived in relative harmony for centuries before 1948???

Relative harmony was in fact very relative. From Wikipedia:


Jewish settlement all over the Fertile Crescent, which is now divided into several Arab states, is well attested since the Babylonian captivity. After the conquest of these lands by Arab Muslims in the 7th century, Jews, along with Christians and Zoroastrians, were accorded the legal status of dhimmi. As such, they were entitled to limited rights, tolerance, and protection, on the condition they pay a special poll tax (the 'jizya'). In return for the tax, dhimmis were exempted from military service. Dhimmi status brought with its several restrictions, the application and severity of which varied by time and place: residency in segregated quarters, obligation to wear distinctive clothing, public subservience to Muslims, prohibitions against proselytizing and marrying Muslim women (according to Islam, a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man), and limited access to the legal systems. Notwithstanding these provisions, Jews could at times attain high positions in government, notably as viziers and physicians. Jewish communities, like Christian ones, were typically constituted as semi-autonomous entities managed by their own laws and leadership, who bore responsibility for the community towards the Muslim rulers. Taxes and fines levied on them were collective in nature. However, a level of political autonomy and civil courts for resolving community disputes was not rare.

Mass murders of Jews and deaths due to political instability did however occur in North Africa throughout the centuries and especially in Morocco, Libya and Algeria where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos.[7] Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted at various times in the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Instances exist of Jews being forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad.[8]

[Steve James]

I dunno, but I think that Jews have been persecuted all over, and certainly no more than by Christians in Christian countries, and not that long ago. Comparisons to Muslim persecutions are valid, but they can't prove anything about a religion or a people. Christians haven't been nice to each other in the past, either.

[zenshiite]

of course that was the fault of the muslims...and the christians in Lebanon.. who are art of the ruling elite..what about the Christians in tunisia.. ws the jewsish emigration to the newly formed ISrael there fault too? did you ever wonder how muslims, christians and jews lived in relative harmony for centuries before 1948???

Relative harmony was in fact very relative. From Wikipedia:


Jewish settlement all over the Fertile Crescent, which is now divided into several Arab states, is well attested since the Babylonian captivity. After the conquest of these lands by Arab Muslims in the 7th century, Jews, along with Christians and Zoroastrians, were accorded the legal status of dhimmi. As such, they were entitled to limited rights, tolerance, and protection, on the condition they pay a special poll tax (the 'jizya'). In return for the tax, dhimmis were exempted from military service. Dhimmi status brought with its several restrictions, the application and severity of which varied by time and place: residency in segregated quarters, obligation to wear distinctive clothing, public subservience to Muslims, prohibitions against proselytizing and marrying Muslim women (according to Islam, a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man), and limited access to the legal systems. Notwithstanding these provisions, Jews could at times attain high positions in government, notably as viziers and physicians. Jewish communities, like Christian ones, were typically constituted as semi-autonomous entities managed by their own laws and leadership, who bore responsibility for the community towards the Muslim rulers. Taxes and fines levied on them were collective in nature. However, a level of political autonomy and civil courts for resolving community disputes was not rare.

Mass murders of Jews and deaths due to political instability did however occur in North Africa throughout the centuries and especially in Morocco, Libya and Algeria where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos.[7] Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted at various times in the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Instances exist of Jews being forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad.[8]

Listen, no one's saying there's no shady shit that went down. Especially amongst the Arab centers of the Muslim world. Of course, Arabs are actually the minority of Muslims. There was a time in the early period of the Ummayyad caliphate that they actually considered Islam to be an Arab religion despite the fact that many of the companions of Muhammd were not Arabs. Two the most prominent were African and Persian.

That said, there's discussion amongst Muslims of what the jizya and dhimmi actually means and was supposed to mean and how it was practiced by Muhammad. Our hadith literature, traditional sayings and stories of Muhammad, tell us that Jews and Christians were welcomed in the mosque in Medina to celebrate their holidays. The Qur'an is replete with verses reaching out to Jews and Christians and emphasizing the commonalities of our faiths. Besides, you can't go around talking about jizya and not know the Shariah theory of how that's supposed to work and how it apparently worked during Muhammad's day. The jizya would've been quite similar to how you have to pay taxes and pledge loyalty to the state and follow the laws of the land.

Also, all this crap about Ahmedinejad, you keep referencing a misquote. Worse yet, it's a misquote easily checked and native Farsi speakers point out that it was a misquote from the beginning. Furthermore, the dude clarified his position in numerous interviews. Secondly, he has absolutely no power in Iran. He's little more than a figurehead... so stop fetishizing the man simply because he carries the title "president" that has almost no meaning in terms of policy in Iran. The IRI's president =/= the US president. Ayatullah Khamene'i has all the political power to set policy in Iran, and I have my doubts as to the claims that they are pursuing nuclear weapons specifically because Ayatullah Khamene'i has issued fatwas declaring nuclear weapons and WMDs "forbidden" in Islam. So he's either lying and thus revealed as a hypocrite to the entire Shi'a world and thus becomes useless as a jurist that people look to for religious advice... or he's telling the truth and they aren't pursuing nuclear weapons. Evidence, currently, shows they are not pursuing them and definitely do not have them.

Also, Saudi Arabia is NOT a republic by any stretch of the imagination. It's a monarchy and a religious state under Wahhabism. I couldn't practice my religion there openly because I'm Shi'a.

[yusuf]

zenshiite

thats irrelevent... we have both already condemned wahabiism and fundamentalism, but darth and chris decide to keep on ranting, trying again and again to get away from the origin of this thread ..

Darth..

the golden age of islam was a fully integrated society between muslims and jews.. Saladins personal doctor was jewish.. a lot of the Moorish innovations were done by Jewish intellectuals.. the al alqsa mosque was a monument to that one stream with the three abrahamic religions.. even today Muslims revere the prophets of Judaism, jesus is considered holy . you would not find someone in a muslim country using 'jesus christ' as a swear word..

The fact that you don;t knwo about the trinity of judaism, christianity and islam being considered a stream of the same religion by all muslims just shows what level of worth we should apportion to your pronouncements ..


that sort of bias will never be confronted with reason.. so with taht i am out of this thread too.. i commend anyone reading this to actually read the whole thing and decide for yourselves...

yusuf

[Chris Fleming]

"darth and chris decide to keep on ranting, trying again and again to get away from the origin of this thread .."

The origin of this thread was to get people to say "Israel is wrong". That's all you want and if some disagree with you, then they're wrong too.

"trinity of judaism, christianity and islam"

If only one of this "trinity" believes this, then it's not a trinity.

"i commend anyone reading this to actually read the whole thing and decide for yourselves..."

Just as long as in the end you say that Israel is wrong, right?

[yusuf]

Back up from teh depths.. recent reports have been circulating and it's worth reading these in light oif the comments made in this thread..

This is the Times report which I am using for quotes..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6715417.ece

This is the Israeli Haaretz newspaper report, which is interesting because it actually met all the soldiers... it accepts their legitamacy whilst also showing that the group which broke the story are politically biased (the only defence so far proffered by the Israeli authorities)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1100736.html

A group of Israeli soldiers who fought in the recent war in Gaza have testified that the military allowed them to use reckless force.

The 26 soldiers published their anonymous accounts in a booklet compiled by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli soldiers’ organisation.

They describe the Israeli army’s use of human shields and deliberate targeting of civilian structures.

The soldiers’ descriptions confirm information first published by The Times during the offensive that soldiers were given orders to shoot first and ask questions later.

In one typical account, a soldier said that in pre-invasion briefings his officers said it was better to hit an innocent than hesitate to attack an enemy. “If you’re not sure, kill. Fire power was insane.”

“You felt like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants,” another Israeli soldier said. “A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such things to people.”

Several Israeli soldiers adescribed the use of white phosphorus in Gaza. One soldier described walking on the beach in Gaza and discovering an area covered in glazed sand from a white phosphorous bomb.

He said it was upsetting because “in training you learn that white phosphorus is not used, and you’re taught that it’s not humane”.

A soldier from the Golani brigade said: “Sometimes a force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian’s shoulder, advancing into a house and using him as a human shield.”

The most important thing here is not blaming one side only, but realising that both Hamas and Israel are guilty of crimes against civilians...

yusuf