Saturday, September 02, 2006

koranAfter an outrageous statement like this I'm now convinced Pat Robertson's favorite snack is his own foot. What he said was violence is the rule and not the exception for Muslims worldwide and "Islam is not a religion of peace". Interesting sentiment, Pat, seeing how the Bible seems to say the following:


Matthew 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Micah 5:6 And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.
Obadiah 1:8-9 Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau? And thy mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter.

And that's just for starters.

Let me take this one step further with this verse:

Ezekiel 5:10 Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.

Should we say that Christianity is the religion of cannibalism? Of course not, that's absurd. Islam, one must bare in mind, is a relatively young religion struggling to come to grips with its reactionary minority. But it hasn't always been like that. Not many people remember how everyone, including Jews, practiced their faith freely under Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula, most historians credit this era as the Jewish "Golden Age". Let's not even mentioned what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition.

While Christianity once interpreted the above passages literally it underwent a reformation and emerged with a shiny coat of civility. It is my feeling that Islam is experiencing just such a transformation, it's the unavoidable direction of human progress. Something Pat Robertson conveniently omitted.

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