I would like to raise one point that I did not in earlier posts regarding the Christian versus Islam debate, and that is the issue of modernity.
If you look at world history solely from the Renaissance forward, and you were to graph the progress of the Western (or so-called “Christian”) world on one line and the Middle East and Near East (comprised of Turkey, down through the Levant, across the Saudi peninsula and into/including Afghanistan)on another line, you see an interesting (albeit simple) graph emerge. The Middle Eastern world has remained stagnant economically, socially and politically and the Western world (especially America, England and Central Europe) have made tremendous strides in terms of economic, social, scientific, political and religious progress.
I say this not to offer some scathing indictment of Islam and the Middle/Near East, but to ask the question: What factor or factors contribute(d) to the progress on one hand and the stagnation on the other?
CardiffBaseball made an admittedly ham handed reference to Islam and the issue of genital mutiliation, but his point was valid. I also agree with the idea that this made his blood boil. It should.
Rustico, you said that the West has been propangandized when it came to the subject of Islam and Mid East. I agree, but to the extent that we have been told to turn a blind eye to the depredations of a culture that espouses a chauvinistic, misogynistic, and xenophobic world view.
Martyrs for Islam claim a heavenly reward of 72 virgins. Is it just me, or does that strike anyone else here as remarkably childish and infantile? You are part of a religious and social culture that is so sexually repressed and backward that any hope you have of true and unfettered sexual fulfillment has to come with your martyrdom in the cause of Islam and for Allah? Huh?
I mention the Renaissance for another reason. The Roman Catholic Church has been castigated for its transgressions in the period leading to the Protestant Schism (and in point of fact, this was the reason behind the Schism) and justifiably so. As Rustico pointed out, Catholicism was a faith that converted at sword point as well. However, and this is key: Catholicism and Christianity have moved forward and by tremendous leaps and bounds since that time. Islam, arguably, has not. Has not to the point that Osama bin Laden and his ilk wish fervently for a return to this medieval type faith and a world ruled by a unified Islamic caliphate subject to and bound by Islamic law (Shar’ia).
If my choice is between modern Catholicism (which still has a ways to go in modernizing) or modern Islam (which has not modernized in any sense), I think I’ll stay Catholic.
