mathematist

#Enter the Mathematist#

May I have permission to contribute to this discussion?

littlejimmy

You don't need permission to contribute, but you need a thick skin in here!

shiva

because at least half the worlds population are ****ing idiots and the other half just believe they aren't

redShark

Ok, Let’s leave the subject of the Biblical teaching aside, if you so wish …

My issue with you is that when I read through your posts I only read doom and gloom when it comes to Arabs or Islam. I am yet to read one single positive thing you can say about Arabs in your posts.

Before addressing your arguments, let me just say this..
No one is suggesting that it has been peace and tranquillity all along in the Muslims history. However, cheery-picking the bad examples and largely ignoring all the other good examples is hardly an impartial approach.

Expansion/colonization is part of the human social evolution. When power, and an ideology are gathered in one nation, the ultimate natural consequences are expansion and conquest (with some exceptions to this rule). But history also tells us that there is no one super power in the history of man kind that has its hands clean of blood. whether it is in India, the Middle East, Algeria, or Ireland, etc. Simply put, if you are an empire, no matter how just and fair you try to be there will always be incidents of blood shed happening right under your nose. When a person makes a little mistake he may lose a few Bucks, but when a super power makes a little mistake it can cost hundreds of human lives.

If I was to agree with you (and I certainly do) that in the 1400 years of the Islamic history there have been many rogue states , that were as bad as many other empires, I would certainly disagree with you that Islam was forced down people’s throat by sword. People simply accepted the new faith because it was the first time they could see a religion that unite both the heart and the mind of the human being, no longer is there a choice between faith and logic.

To refute your allegations, I start with the example of Jerusalem……
-Jerusalem is the most conquered city in the history of the world. Many armies and empires invaded that city, and occupied it. Starting from the first invader the mesopotamian king Nabuchodonosor of Babylon to the Medieval European crusaders. In fact, by invading Jerusalem Nabuchodonosor was the first man to have invented the concept of Invasion as that was the first recorded such action in the history of man (I wish I had the space to talk about mesopotamia and the Iraqis). My point here is that, apart form only one case, every conquer that went into that city sacked it and put the people to the sword. That single exceptional case was the Muslims!, they did not do any thing of that sort. They went into the city without a drop of blood, the rest of the story and the dialogue between the clergy of the city at that time and Kalif Omer, and why that Kalif refused to pray in the Cathedral, etc. are all well documented in the history books. I wonder if you knew about this bit of information before!! or may be you knew it but you chose to tear off and sweep it under the carpet.

-The islands of Indonesia and Malaya represent the largest concentration of Muslims on earth. How many Muslim Knights would you think went there to spread Islam by sword? I suggest you read about the spread of Islam in South East Asia and how by simple honesty and good conducts Arab merchants managed to win over the heart of those nations and converted them to Islam

-When the Jews of Europe were given a choice between converting to Christianity or facing the sword during the Spanish inquisition, they didn’t turn to other Christian or European country for protection, they’d rather chosen a Muslim land to seek safe haven and protection. Those were the ancestors of the present Jewish community in Morocco.

- The people of Afghanistan (which were Indians at that time) are well known for their stubbornness and their resistance against invaders since time immemorial. No army or power in the past (or in the present) has ever managed to subdue those mountain rugged people, let alone force them to change their religion. They are born to die people. Can you then explain how those people converted to Islam in totality? I am sure you are going to say this is an exception, right?
I suggest you read about the activity of Sufi Islam and their role in India and Mid Asia regions. Worth mentioning that the famous El-Rumi, a historical Muslim mystical scholar for mainly non-Muslims was born in that part of the world


-The Arabs who spilt over their boarders during the conquest where in a handful of thousands, they could in no way have killed and displaced the others to form the one billion Muslims in the world, which is 20% of the human population on earth

-In the link that you referred to earlier about white slaves it states, "There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives ...."
So it is all about ROUGH estimation. On this ground, I could easily argue then the following:
One million people is nearly equivalent to 5% of the population of North Africa (not counting the Middle East) at that time. That means we should be able to find in our present time a big community of white people living in North Africa. They would be the direct decadent of those white slaves, just like the black community in North America. Where are they then??

Kix

^^^^

Which is all good but what has it got to do with a father who raped and killed his child?

I must add, that as a 5 year old, how can he even think that his child was not a virgin unless he thinks that pedophilia is accepted?

mathematist

The harshest of penalties to be given to the bloke to set an example to future crimes of this type.

Miss Anne Thrope

This wouldn't be the first thread to wander away from the original topic. In fact, to support redShark's contention, a lot of this kind of behaviour was part of what early Islam and the caliphate sought to stamp out. For example, burying unwanted infant daughters alive was commonplace in Arabia at the time. The prophet (or whomever codified what became Islam) explicitly spoke against this. In fact, at the time, Islamic law was a big step forward for women in this region. The problem is this recent resurgent stream of absolutist theology funded by oil-rich kahleejis seeking to buy their place in paradise, which wants to go back to exactly how (some people believe) things were 1400 years ago in the "holy" time of the prophet. This is giving cover to a lot of pre-islamic tribal nonsense like this incident. In fairness the Saudi authorities have now stepped in to ensure this guy has remained in detention. I certainly don't know any muslim (including fairly fundamentalist khaleejis) who would seek to excuse this guy on religious grounds.

Desert Dubliner

All the people will be brothers, Joseph Stalin our father......

Norm_uk

Indeed, at the time it was quite progressive for many of the Arabian cultures and gave a better deal to women.

That, of course doesn't make it progressive today (at least, not without reformation and different interpretation) - but credit where it was due for it's time and place.

N.

N.

Norm_uk

There are positives but that is not the intention of my polemic. No one accuses people of being all doom and gloom when they launch into an anti-western rant. The fact is Arabs and Islam are not, and should not be, immune to criticism from without or within.
I was not attempting to write the entire history of Muslims - these examples highlight my points that's all...which is that they are not really any better than anyone else, despite what they may believe or think.
I don't disagree. I am simply saying Muslims have a bloody history and present and are no better or worse than anyone else. And I think they are long overdue for the same scathing appraisals we in the West have had over our history.
I suppose the issue here is if you believe the Islamic system to be to blame for the failures of these "rouge states" as you call them, or if the state interpretation of Islam is to blame. Given the number of temples and churches turned into mosques and the way Jizya was taken but some rulers I think, as I said before - some were a lot more benign than others.
Jerusalem has been conquered many times. The first three times were by the Israelites as it was originally a Canaanite city. King Nebuchadnezzar I (I assume you mean him) reigned from 605 BC – 562 BC. He was not the first person to invade Jerusalem by a long shot. It would has been invaded by the Israelites before 1000BC as it's mentioned in records as being under Jewish control by 1100BC (see the Merneptah Stele) - centuries before Babylon invaded and some 1600 years before Muslims invaded it..
Actually the first recorded wars and conquests were happening at least a thousand years prior - Sumer and Elam come to mind - long before Babylon was even a power. Invasion and conquest are older than recorded civillisation...
Jerusalem was laid siege to for four months before it negotiated surrender. Sieges are not pleasant things at the best of times and plenty of people would have died from starvation and illness, not to mention slaves taken and people ransomed off. The Rashidun Caliphate was certainly not a Mongol-like force of utter destruction but they fought and slaughtered many who resisted from Persia to Spain. They took slaves, tribute and looted many cities, including Rome and the Vatican...centuries before any "Crusade".
Already covered. Five or six centuries after Muslims had conquered a third of Christondom, Persia, and parts of Central Asia. It was only the collapse of the Buddhist Empire of Shrivijaya that allowed widespread conversion, which was facilitated by the Muslim conquests of Bengal. Just another Empire really...no better or worse than others.
I think you are referring to the Expulsion of Jews from Spain...yes they did go to Muslim lands and for a time were safe. Most of the greatest scientists of Muslim Spain were Jews. But there are also plenty of examples where Jews were not treated well by Muslims. So like the Christians there is a hot/cold pattern with Jews in their lands over the centuries.
This is like saying that the Vikings were known for their subborness and resistance to invaders. How do you explain their conversion to Christianity? (I think they have fared a lot better than the Afghans too - unless Kabul is better to live in than Oslo and I'm missing something). In any case it took four centuries to convert the Afghans and even up into the 1800s there were pockets of paganism there still resisting the Muslims. So again, it's just another invasion. Í'm sure if Alexander the Great's Empire had lasted for that long they would have conquered the Afghans. If the British had not given back their Empire we'd have similar results, no? Stick around long enough and you can conquer and convert anyone.
Sufis came in the wake of centuries of butchery by other Muslims. It's wonderful that many Muslims were peaceful and englightened...but that doesn't bring back the millions of Hindu dead, it only highlights that the majority at the time were part of a cruel, Imperial system which they believed firmly was their duty as believers. The same mentality as groups like Al Queda today, who tell us they will conquer the West, take back Spain, kill other Muslims they feel aren't 'proper' etc etc.
When the Arabs left Arabia (and they were not tiny in number) they fought the Persians and Byzantine Romans first - who were exhausted from centuries of total war. They kicked a man while he was down and they struct first without provocation. If Persia and Rome were not fighting we may never have heard of the religion of submission. When they came up against equal forces they almost consistantly lost, from Tours to Lepanto to the Gates of Vienna...and when they lost they went home and whined about imperialistic crusaders. Conversion, rape, tribute and polygamy can do wonders for your population over 1400 years...the numbers do add up.
If you wish to content the numbers of peer-reviewed historians you're welcome to do so. They said roughly not exactly - and the numbers are over more than a century not a few months or years. It doesn't change the fact that Muslims were taking Europeans are slaves long before the Crusades or the Colonial period in our history. There are plenty of records from the time by both Muslims and non-Muslims attesting to this. Slaves were not kept in one place but were sold on and spread out around the Empire. Ever wonder why so many Turks look European but Turks originally come from Central Asia and were a Mongolian offshoot?
Keep in mind that the Muslims tended to castrate their male slaves in those times. As for the women, there are plenty of blue eyes and paler skin in North Africa and the Middle East...

Since this is now well off topic and long winded can I suggest if you wish to continue we start a new thread so people can avoid reading our rants

N.

Dumbo

People like this should be tortured every day for the rest of their lives (Not you Kix).

redShark

The same rhetoric, historical inaccuracies, mammoth exaggerations, and ill conclusions, as ever. Far more journalistic in nature than they are academic. In fact, very much similar to what one would read when one looks at the other end of the stick, to the so called the radical Muslims. They reiterate a similar kind of perceptions and talk the same language about the west and the western history.
I was once listening to one of those guys giving a speech about what the Crusaders had done when they went into Jerusalem after laying a long siege to the city, he went:

“According to western sources, in less than one week 30,000 Muslim men, women and children were slayed. But when Saladin retook the city back from the Crusaders 70 years later, he forgave them all and set them free to go home”

So far, what this guy has just said is actually the truth. The problem, however, was when he went on to draw his conclusions when he said:

“Those two different acts do not actually surprise me a bit , because in the Bible the word sword was mentioned 407 times, while in the Quran the word sword was mentioned zero times” (those figures are actually true)

Unfortunately, In such dialogues, where HATE is the order of the day, the main victim is always the objectivity

Though it’s very tempting for me to respond and highlight the errors ( the historical and the otherwise) in your reply, I am not, however, going to do so because this discussion can go on for ever. At the end of the day it all depends on how you wish to view the glass; either half full or half empty.

And, yes this thread has been driven off topic big time, which goes to remind me of the good old technique of politicians: ‘if you are cornered with a question, dodge the issue to get out of trouble’
I am sure there will be more opportunities to catch up in future posts, , but for now its better that I disengage with you and sail away

scrubbedexpat141

My god that looks dull

shiva

Qur’an:9:88 – “The Messenger and those who believe with him, strive hard and fight with their wealth and lives in Allah’s Cause.”

Qur’an:9:5 - “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”

Qur’an:9:112 “The Believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, kill and are killed.”

Qur’an:9:29 “Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender, paying the protective tax in submission.”

Qur’an:8:39 “Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah.”

Qur’an:8:39 “So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world).”

Ishaq:587 “Our onslaught will not be a weak faltering affair. We shall fight as long as we live. We will fight until you turn to Islam, humbly seeking refuge. We will fight not caring whom we meet. We will fight whether we destroy ancient holdings or newly gotten gains. We have mutilated every opponent. We have driven them violently before us at the command of Allah and Islam. We will fight until our religion is established. And we will plunder them, for they must suffer disgrace.”

Qur’an:8:65 “O Prophet, urge the faithful to fight. If there are twenty among you with determination they will vanquish two hundred; if there are a hundred then they will slaughter a thousand unbelievers, for the infidels are a people devoid of understanding.”

Qur’an:9:123 “Fight the unbelievers around you, and let them find harshness in you.”

Ishaq:578 “Crushing the heads of the infidels and splitting their skulls with sharp swords, we continually thrust and cut at the enemy. Blood gushed from their deep wounds as the battle wore them down. We conquered bearing the Prophet’s fluttering war banner. Our cavalry was submerged in rising dust, and our spears quivered, but by us the Prophet gained victory.”

Franklin1961

Wow. Bizarre. frightening.