[GreenTiger]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Lemmy Lemmy:

Talk to 2nd or 3rd generation Canadians of Muslim origin. They're "getting it".

Oh yes, they are. But not the way you think. Too many of the jihadis leaving Canada and the US to go fight in SWA are the 2nd and 3rd generation kids who've decided they want a 'pure' Islam.

Long story short on this topic, eventually the Muslims will detonate a nuke in a major Western city and when they do all of us non-Muslims will need to make a choice about just how important 'diversity' is to us.

I'm only sorry that the majority of Americans and Canadians are utterly incapable of believing the Muslims when they say that they will conquer us or kill us. So that means we'll have to wait for a few million of our fellow citizens to become a diversity of molecules before we collectively accept that the Muslims really mean what they say.

I love the warning sign. I am not of the PC pursuasion. Militant Islam is a global danger like AIDS and should be treated as such

[commanderkai]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I don't disagree with much there either, but I don't see where it shows that Christians have less propensity for vioence than Muslims.

All people have a propensity for violence. The problem is, and something that people don't really make the distinction is that there are extremist Islamic clerics preaching both hatred of the West, and violence against the West as well, in ways we don't see in modern Christianity. This might partially be due to the decentralized nature of Islam, considering the caliphs are long dead and destroyed, but the fact is, even if there are Christian priests spreading hatred (and there are, no denying this) very rarely does that hatred turn into widespread violence against any who oppose their faith.

For example. Christianity, along with most other faiths, is against abortion. Some Christian sects and denominations probably preach that those who support abortionists are going to hell, yada yada. In the end though, Christian terrorism has been limited to one specific target (abortion clinics/doctors) and not to the general public, like we've seen with Islamic terrorism, and even then, either because of this limited scope, or because they're much more discriminatory about targets, the death toll due to Christian terrorism over abortion is relatively small, not even above 20-30 worldwide over probably 40 years of abortion being in existence in the West.

Another example is anti-government type terrorist groups, like McVeigh, who specifically targeted a government office to carry out his attack. Also with the Austin attack not too long ago. Their scope was limited to "Big Brother" or government infrastructure, when they certainly could have killed a great deal more if they targeted indiscriminately.

Don't get me wrong. Terrorism is bad. Nothing justifies it. All of those individuals I listed before I hope are burning in hell. That being said, not all terrorists are equal either. It's much easier protecting abortion doctors/clinics (which they do) or Federal office buildings (which I assume they do) over protecting everybody from Islamic terrorists.

$1:

I think we did emerge from the Dark Ages to the Age of Reason because of free thinkers--more specifically it emerged from an era of tyranny where you could be burned alive for being Protestant, or Catholic or reformed episcopalean or whatever because people fought back against tyranny. But I also agree that the Catholic Church was the repository of much knowledge, and I'm not trying to paint the Church as pure evil (actually, I hold ot this day that it was the Church, not Galileo, who was corrrect in their famous struggle). I think it's more along the line of "power corrupts."

I agree with you, partially, that we are where we are now because there are some very courageous people in history who stood up to the authority of both the Church, and their respective monarchies. If you're referring to being who and where we are due to free-thinkers and such? I totally agree, but the Dark Ages (the period between the fall of Rome, and maybe the beginning of the Crusades) was due to other factors