I only brought up the Protestant/ Catholic divide because I felt Allan used the fact that there is sectarian infighting in Iraq, within a major religion, during an invasion/occupation a proxy war and under a puppet government to prove the religion is fundamentally flawed compared to his. I could have gone further back in history to find examples of more continuos conflict between Christian cultures and sects which I don’t believe he would consider should engender the same devaluation of his own religion.
The fact of the matter is the world has been fighting forever yet it appears we use any example of Musliom agression to promote our own relgious superiority/moral authority which in turn is used to justify our own agression which is really undertaken for greedy purposes or to stabilize a region that we are to a large part responsable for destabilizing.
“Isn’t there one camp of Bush critics who consider this area as incapable of civility, and therefore not worthy of losing men in battle?”
Probably. I think there is a “camp” for everything.
Now you can apologize for calling my participation here yesterday a rant….Just kidding :).
I respect Allan very much. In the end I found many things that weren’t on the table initially that surprised me about him ,in a good way. I also still don’t agree with him too much on the main points of the discussion. I think he is taking the “spread by the sword thing too far”. There are similiar issues of interpretation of the bible where violent references are concerned. Christendom has found tremendous support for violence from within it’s doctrines and from the holy men, authorities and politicians who are apparently closer to God.
I have no doubt that at times violent passages or religion derived righteousness are used to motivate men to battle including Al Qaida and the U.S marines. That doesn’t mean on a daily basis the majority of Muslims throughout the world are chomping at the bit to spread Islam by the sword, at least not anymore than we are. It is very much fear based and irresponsible and destructive , to propagandize this way.
Like you, I am learning about Islam and the Middle East and how our national agenda and Christian heritage plays into it.
