Muslim tolerance

[qiphlow]

if there really is only one god, then everyone must be worshiping the same god, and thus are all of the same religion.
if there is not only one god, then no one's religion is true.

[edededed]

Well, it depends on the opinion of said god, I think. Maybe "oh god" will default in your plea being heard, but "oh Fred" might not work so well (unless he happens to be named "Fred")

Also, if there are many gods, then one of the various polytheistic religions could have a chance at being "the one"

[yusuf]

if there really is only one god, then everyone must be worshiping the same god, and thus are all of the same religion.
if there is not only one god, then no one's religion is true.

and if there is a unity then all religions must also be right ....

[Chris Fleming]

If what's true to me is true for me and what's true to you is true for you; what if my truth says yours is a lie? By this one can quickly see the fallacy of relativism.

[yusuf]

other way round Chris... wholeness has no right or wrong within it.. only by assuming one is an individual, that there is a God external to oneself..in taht point of view is there something that can be right or wrong .. i can disagree with you at the dualisitic level, with full knowledge that both your opinion and mine are false because they are rooted in duality

[Chris Fleming]

"wholeness has no right or wrong within it"

Mental gymnastics. I used to like that eastern mysticism BS but this is exactly where it leads you--confused and in some theosophical la-la land. By your logic the satanist and practitioner of witchcraft is perfectly justified, "whole" and right in their belief. Why? Because God doesn't care and isn't "dualistic" whereas we are? Seriously?

[affa]

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

[Teazer]

Not sure how relevant all that is for this topic...

[Doc Stier]

... wholeness has no right or wrong within it.. only by assuming one is an individual, that there is a God external to oneself.

Nonetheless, there are many who believe that the Ultimate Reality of God is non-dualistic, One, and Omnipresent in All, not separate and "external to oneself".

[Ralteria]

... wholeness has no right or wrong within it.. only by assuming one is an individual, that there is a God external to oneself.

Nonetheless, there are many who believe that the Ultimate Reality of God is non-dualistic, One, and Omnipresent in All, not separate and "external to oneself".

+1

[jonathan.bluestein]

oh and Jonathan.. Israel cried fucking rivers for Mubarak, Netanyahu the liar tried to pressure all and sundry to keep the dictator in power..... hows that sit with Israel's self annointed claims to innocence and saintliness?

I completely agree with you on this.

First, Netanyahu is a fucking liar and a moron. Only reason he was elected again was that we currently lack more credible leaders (sad as it is) - this played a much bigger role than the right-wing leaning of Israelis over the last 15 years.

Secondly, Israel had a very good political agenda and reason to keep Mubarak in power. Mubarak is a bad, corrupt man, and a mass-murderer. So far so good. Every Israeli knows that. Problem is, the large majority in Egypt are Muslim extremists who want to end the peace treaty with Israel, and start a series of wars all over again. Fueled by the Muslim Brotherhood propaganda, the Egyptian masses are on the brink of starting a war with Israel. The only thing that could have stabilized the situation was a dictator like Mubarak.

Were your country threatened by war with a country 8.5 times its population, who is your neighbour - what would you rather do?

A. Support the moderately evil dictator of that country, who's willing to promote trade and peace with your country and other countries friendly to you.

B. Break ties from that dictator because he's a dictator - risking either him opening a war after decades of bloodshed you've previously managed to stop somehow, or his fall and that countries fall into the hands of extremists who constantly and publicly denounce your existence, suggesting you and all your loved ones be thrown into the sea (they've proclaimed this is what ought to be done to Israelis/Jews for decades now).

It's a really ugly choice to make, and Israel chose option A. I'm not sure you'd have taken the other choice. Keep in mind that the nation making the choice is a nation with a majority of people who were almost wiped out by a murderous genocide less than a 100 years ago, and you'll understand why Jews tried to keep in their best interest.

You do see proof however that it was not Mubarak personally that Israeli "liked" - it was just the stability he could provide for the region. Israel could've offered Mubarak refuge, but it didn't. It just wants to keep the peace with the Egyptians going. Let us not forget that when Israel signed the peace treaty with Egypt, it willingly gave up an area that is almost as big as Israel itself, that was rich in resources and worth hundreds of millions a year in Tourism. Israel gave it up so it could make peace and end the bloodshed.

I also think it's funny to claim that Israel actually "kept Mubarak in power". Yes, Israel supported him politically, and somewhat financially by making business with Egyptian companies. But Israel has no such influence as to keep a person like Mubarak in power, and if it had, it would have still kept him in power It was actually the Americans who kept him in power, and the Obama who decided to stop this thing.

[ShortFormMike]

why won't Israel declare it's borders? it's because they have a long term vision for eventually "settling" more and more land.

what sucks is people like me who ask this are told we "deny israel's right to exist". i'm so sick of hearing that red herring in the media. "they deny our right to exist." declare your borders you fuckers.

helen thomas said it quite well.

i also like the line in Paradise Now: "how did the victimize r

[jonathan.bluestein]

why won't Israel declare it's borders? it's because they have a long term vision for eventually "settling" more and more land.

what sucks is people like me who ask this are told we "deny israel's right to exist". i'm so sick of hearing that red herring in the media. "they deny our right to exist." declare your borders you fuckers.

helen thomas said it quite well.

i also like the line in Paradise Now: "how did the victimize r

Here a quick lesson in Middle-Eastern politics:

Israel has only occupied more land through wars forced upon it. As I wrote in my last post (which you probably haven't read), it also gave up most of the land it conquered in these wars to make peace. Nowadays, people talk about a return to the 67' lines. Israel have already returned to much of what it was in 67'. It gave up the Gaza strip and most of the "Palestinian" territories. The argument revolves around giving away East Jerusalem, and the surrounding areas. There are two reasons as to why Israel cannot currently make peace with the Palestinians:

1. The Israeli right-wing government won't give up East-Jerusalem, although it's in our best interest, since most of the people living there are Arabs, who reject Israel's existence, don't take part in civil duties like military service, reject Israel's existence, and are still payed vast amounts of money by our great social security program (the likes of which does not exist in US, BTW). Israel has declared borders for most of its territories, but for the ones surrounding Jerusalem, it won't declare them because the right-winged government is playing a bargain game for the peace treaty.

2. Hamas, being a terrorist organization bent on the killing of all Jews and Israelis (check out their constitution - they openly declare it), does not want to make peace, and heavily influences the Palestinian government.

People just don't know the real history of the region. There were no "Palestinians" up until a few decades ago. We're talking about nomad Arabs who infiltrated Israel gradually in the 20th century. They have nothing to do with the Palestinians from the Bible, who were redheaded people from the general area of Greece, and specifically the Island of Crete. Golda Meir justifiably said a few decades ago: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people". Ben Gurion said the same in a TV interview before her. Both knew their history, and were spot-on. The "Palestinians" are not one people. In different cities, they have different Arabic dialects (and mind you, Israel is a small country). They did not originate from the same place. Jordan is actually the real Palestinian state - 90% of its population is made up of the same mix of Arabic nomad tribes, who consider themselves "Palestinians". This truth is kept quiet by the ruling class of Jordan - the 10% Hashemies, the "direct descendants of prophet Muhammad", who govern the country through a dictatorship monarchy. This is the real home of the "Palestinians", but no one is willing to acknowledge that. This is partly because no one in the Arab world really gives a shit about the Palestinians. Especially not Iran, which is a Shiai state, or Hizb'Alla, who're a Shiai organization. The Palestinians are merely a useful tool for internationally bashing Israel - the modern Arab tactic, since wars didn't quite work out for them. Every day, Arabs kill more other Arabs than Israel kills terrorists in one year. The world remains silent. The grandfather of the current king of Jordan slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinians who revolted against his reign in the 20th century. The world remains silent.

Israel doesn't owe shit to the "Palestinians", which are a made-up nation for the interests of local tribes, and the evil global interests of Arab countries. Still, it gave them most of what they wanted so far, and will eventually make peace with them one they (or so we hope).

Here's a good examination of the "Middle-Eastern problem" (have posted this before):




Report of Hamas Constitution:
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17738.htm

And I quote from the report:

"Regarding peace, its Article 13 is totally negative: “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. (�) There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad (Jonathan: this means a holy war against all infidels). All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavours.” "

"Religious hatred of Jews (not only of Israel) is expressed by a hadith or ‘saying’ that concludes Article 7: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews) when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: O Muslims (�) there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. “Only the gharkad tree [evidently a certain kind of tree] would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (this hadith, quoted from al-Bukhari and Muslim, both considered as highly reliable sources for the hadith or ‘sayings’ of the Prophet Muhammad)"

[yusuf]

intersting twist of thread.. anyway i'm not as verbose as Jonathan but the best illustration of a sensible rebuttal is this:

[jonathan.bluestein]

intersting twist of thread.. anyway i'm not as verbose as Jonathan but the best illustration of a sensible rebuttal is this:

First picture from the left is an utter lie. The Palestinians never occupied such a large territory. Their physical occupied territories were not larger than those of Jews. You also have the Beduin in the desert, which are and have always been nomads, and are not Palestinians (and don't consider themselves to be). They numbered a few thousands at the beginning of the 20th century, and are now a bit over 200 thousand in total. Of the 170 thousand of which who live in the desert, they "occupy" an area more than 10 times the size of were they live, because they constantly move. They currently don't have many land rights, and this thing is currently being sorted out with the Israeli government (with very little violence involved). In any case, what they did in the first pic was to mark SOME of the Israeli settlements in white, and mark the rest in green as "Palestinian territory". Ignoring two facts:

1. As explained, the Palestinian tribes didn't occupy a mass of land larger than the Jews - in fact, most of the country was just empty. Today, most of the land mass of Israel still haven't been settled into.

2. Up until the Ashaf (אש"ף) organization was formed abroad (1964) and started "Palestinian" nationalistic propaganda in the 1970s, no one was talking about a "Palestinian people".

First picture from the right actually represents the areas in which Palestinians live in, and have lived in for at least 80-90 years (more in certain older cities). No one says otherwise - the Israeli right-wing extremest don't deny this - they use biblical claims for the land and just don't give a damn about the Palestinian population. Physically, nowadays the Palestinian authority controls an area of the west bank that is much closer in size to the second picture from the right, than the one seen on the first picture from the right. Bear in mind the last is a picture from 2000, and since then Israel has gradually given them lots of land.
The white area in the Gaza strip seen in the 2000 picture is under Egyptian, not Israeli control. There were never any Palestinians living outside the rage of Gaza as depicted in this picture anyhow. I have been around the Gaza area - there aren't and never were any Arab settlement outside the area marked in this picture. There are some Beduin going about in the desert nearby, but they don't claim these territories.

The two pictures in the middle represent areas in the vicinity of Palestinian cities, town and villages, which they would have loved to have, but are unlikely to get most of. Let us remember the reason Israel is now larger than in the UN partition plan - 7 Arab armies tried to kill all the Israeli the day the state was founded, because they declined the partition plan - the wanted all or nothing... and didn't get much. They got worse. After having done that in 48, 67 and 73, there's no justification for Israel to give any Arab anything, yet it still have given a lot.

Funny thing is, that the so called "Palestinian area" in green you see in the pictures in the middle was never a "Palestinian" territory anyhow between 46-67. It was under Jordanian rule and control. As I said before - Jordan is the true Palestinian state. The Jordanians actually gained a lot from Israel's conquest of the west bank - had this did not happen, the 90% Palestinian population of Jordan could've been over 95% today, and this could have brought about a revolution and overthrow of the Jordanian Hashemi crown. The Palestinians fight to get land from Israel because it's a democracy, who's willing to give away land for peace. Their try with the Jordanians in the past didn't go as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan . So they turned their efforts to a country that doesn't slaughter 20,000 people in one month, and is naively willing to sit and talk with terrorist - something unheard of in other countries - something the US or Jordan would never do. Do you believe a country like England or France would discuss giving away territories with a people ran by two terrorist organizations (Hamas and Fat'h), who regularly kill their civilians in horrific ways? People talk shit about Israel for Operation Cast Lead. This operation was put into action after NINE CONSECUTIVE YEARS of constant rocket shooting from Gaza on Israeli cities (targeting children and schools regularly), and killing civilians in the most inhumane ways possible - namely - suicide bombings in packed public buses (in which the bombs had added iron pellets and nails for a more gruesome effect), kidnapping people and killing them, breaking into people's homes in their sleep and killing them and their children, shooting at passing vehicles with machine-guns, etc. These are the news most of the world didn't here much of, but it happened here every day. The moment the IDF attacked though, every god damn news reporter on the globe was reporting the "suffering of the poor Palestinian population". NEWS FLASH - do you know why so many civilians got killed in operation Cast Lead? It was because Hamas was using kids as human shields!! They hid in schools and kept the children inside with them, and along them while driving through the streets, without the IDF knowing it, so many will die with them. The IDF went out of its way so civilians won't get hurt. They called people over the phone to tell them which building near them was gonna get bombed... WTF?! What army is the world does that??? Yet, again, you didn't hear about such things on the international news.

My dad has a theory about the Europeans identifying with the Palestinians as the "weak side", just as they were recently victims of Nazi occupation only a few decades ago. I agree with him. That's what is really pushed forth by the world media - portraying the Palestinians like the weak nations of Europe in WWII, and the Israeli as the "Nazis". The Europeans aren't making the right comparison, and are generally pretty much obsessed with this conflict because their own politics are so fucking boring. But the selective media "forgets" about the Arabs, Russians, Chinese and Americans killing dozens, hundreds or thousands every day, or about the genocide currently going on in Africa (in Ruwanda if I am not mistaken), and focus on this minor conflict, which takes a lot of knowledge and hands on experience to really understand. Israel is just the easiest thing to bash. US, Russia and China are too powerful to question. No one really gives a shit about a few tribes killing each other in Africa (this is the sad truth). Israel is about a historical religious and ethnic conflict, and both side can't do much to threaten the world media - that's were the action and the potential are. That's where the cameras are.