Comment by sremani
11 years ago
Of course, but you are not entitled to personal facts. Islamic extremism is a 7th century phenomenon and it never went away.
11 years ago
Of course, but you are not entitled to personal facts. Islamic extremism is a 7th century phenomenon and it never went away.
7th century? This is pretty immediately after the inception of Islam. What happened during that time frame?
Rome wasn't a world power anymore and nothing had replaced it yet in Europe. Because of that, if you look at the 7th century on world scale, it is surprising for modern westerners how few European conflicts are worth mentioning. See for example http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:7th-century_conflict..., http://www.fsmitha.com/time/ce07.htm
The earlier Romans and later Europeans, starting with Charlemagne and the Vikings in the 8th century, make up for that, though.
Muslims were cruel in those times, but I don't think they were anything special (read that section about Constantinople in 602 in that first link, and think of Rome, the crusades, and the colonization of Africa, centuries later). They just happened to have the overhand for a while.
No questions about what you say. But I was specifically referring to what we now call Islamic terrorism with its hate for the western world and other religions. This seems to be new and kind of a response to the conduct of the western world.
It seems the QuRan (like the Communist manifesto etc) provided an ideology that drove people to conquer and feel good about it. There have been many reasons to expand and conquer in the past, and they were all usually driven by some ideology. Hellenism, Communism, are two examples.
The political idea that a society should be run according to the principles of Islam is sometimes called "Islamism". A huge reason there isn't much "Christianism" today is that the New Testament was written by people who didn't have much power and so focused on peaceful proselytizing. That is not to say that the Church and other institutions didn't at times wield great political power and seek to maintain it. But rather that the WRITINGS advocate for more like anarchism than a philosophy that encourages converting others by the sword.
Judaism has never placed emphasis on proselytizing - whether by the sword or not. It had a much more exclusive character so there is no sense that Jews living in a democratic country would dream of converting that country's structure to one that follows the rules laid out in the Torah.
So Islam in a political and cultural sense is closer to Communism than Judaism and Christianity. And we see much of the same dynamics. McCarthyism in the USA and the Red Scare are now replaced with fear of radical Islam.
> It seems the QuRan (like the Communist manifesto etc) provided an ideology that drove people to conquer and feel good about it.
It seems like the Bible did that, too.
I mean, have you even casually glanced at the history of the West?
> The political idea that a society should be run according to the principles of Islam is sometimes called "Islamism". A huge reason there isn't much "Christianism" today is that the New Testament was written by people who didn't have much power and so focused on peaceful proselytizing.
"Christianism" is one of the solid bases of support for the political Right in the USA. To say that there isn't much of it in the world is, well, completely misguided.
> But rather that the WRITINGS advocate for more like anarchism than a philosophy that encourages converting others by the sword.
If you view the "writings of Christianity" as the New Testament only, that might be defensible, but actual Christians generally don't, and much Christianism -- which is nowhere near as elusive as you make it out to be -- is based very strongly on particular interpretations of the Old Testament (and particular interpretations of the New Testament that make those interpretations of the Old Testament valid for Christians.)
> It had a much more exclusive character so there is no sense that Jews living in a democratic country would dream of converting that country's structure to one that follows the rules laid out in the Torah.
Yeah, I mean, its inconceivable that, for instance, a Jewish-majority democracy would, for instance, prohibit grocery stores from remaining open on Saturday's because of the importance of maintaining the Sabbath [0].
[0] http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.601972
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