ISIS

[Rev. Powell]

I don't think you can judge a current religion/movement/ideology by the literal words of its foundational documents. Judaism would be both ridiculous and abhorrent if we used that standard. What matters is what people today think and believe. Some Muslims, like ISIS, are violent and delusional, most are not. Islam clearly has the largest number of dangerous religious fundamentalists today, but I wouldn't judge the average Muslim by that standard. It doesn't describe the Muslims I've met in my own life.

[RCMerchant]

Revs got it-you can twist your beliefs-Muslim,Christian-dont matter-to your own twisted way of thought-IE-Manson,Jim Jones,David Koresh-your religion is ok-the way you twist it to fit your psychopathic mind-well-you know...Hitler. I can twist all sorts of things with the right words.
Its f**ked-and ISIS is EVIL...like Nazi Germany-I DO believe-as a pacifist! -we should go to war with them. We should kill them.
The one time in my life I would ever say war is justified. THEY NEED TO GO!!!

[RCMerchant]

I DO believe that the international community should take this threat as serious as we did Nazi Germany-THIS IS REAL. They need to GO!

[RCMerchant]

Obama sent planes-we need to drop an atom f**king bomb-a small one-on these idiots main home-even if good people die...it has to be done. These idiots need to know they are f**kED. Coming from me-thats serious-cuz Im a very liberal  dove.

[Leah]

It's like having those people in peace riots that starts violence, then everybody is gonna join in on the violence because blood-thirsty people are scared.

[RCMerchant]

It's like having those people in peace riots that starts violence, then everybody is gonna join in on the violence because blood-thirsty people are scared.

No.
These ISIS folks are Nazi's.f**k em. Aint even close to the same thing.ISIS has not connection to anything close to peace.They are evil scumbags.
I know what you are saying-comparing the riots in MO to this? Really? What planet are you on?

[ER]

When people say there are good Moslems, they say it as if it somehow changes the nature of the violence being waged against the west. I don't like singling a religion out for criticism, but I also think when you read the Islamic holy book and see that its own words sanction acts like those going on now in the Middle East, it's not wrong to point that out. All I'm saying is read the Koran and form your own opinion.

Of course there are good Moslems, but that didn't stop 9-11 or 7-7, or the beheadings and burials alive and all else happening in Iraq right now against Christians and even other Moslems who stand in the way of ISIS.

To say there are good Moslems is like saying there were good people in Nazi Germany. Yes there were many good people living under Hitler, and the Holocaust still happened. And terrorism under groups like ISIS is ongoing.

My point is, it doesn't hurt to be educated about what motivates religious zealots like ISIS, and the best way to do that is to do yourself the courtesy of going to the source material of their beliefs, the Koran. I have found most who read it end up shocked, myself included.

Pace!

[Rev. Powell]

I have a rule of only responding twice to any controversial topic to keep it from turning into an unproductive back-and-forth battle, so this will be my last word on the subject. (Not that we aren't being civil here, but we've seen that things can go south fast when politics and/or religion get dragged into the conversation).

There are good Muslims, and that doesn't change the nature of the violence. But as you point out  the violence isn't strictly against the West. Many, if not most, of ISIS' victims are fellow Muslims.  ISIS and the Islamofacists in general want to frame the issue as us versus them, Islam versus the West. I think it's counterproductive to see things that way. I see the conflict as the values of the civilized world versus a desperate, ruthless minority of fundamentalists.

[lester1/2jr]

the Vice video series on ISIS was interesting. they got one of their insane reporters to actually be embedded with them. What struck me was the resignation of the people in the town in Syria that ISIS had taken over. The ISIS morality squad calls over some guy on the street and tells him his wifes veil is the wrong fabric and not to lift her dress when she walks and the guy just takes it. really? you're gonna let some guy you don't know emasculate you like that? Amazing that people would step all over other people and be stepped all over in the name of religion.

Also, most of the Muslims I know or have known have been Shia. They hate wahabi's like ISIS which makes sense because they have been persecuted by them for millenia.

[indianasmith]

I applaud the decision to bomb the crud out of these evil people.
Even Al Qaeda has rejected ISIS for being too indiscriminately violent.

ER does have a point, however.  Alone of all the world's great religions, Islam's holy Scriptures, the Quran, do prescribe ongoing war against all other faiths. Sensible, progressive Muslims realize that the reason for that is that Muhammad was a man of war who spent a good part of his life sword in hand, and that the constant jihad for the expansion of Islam is no longer practical or realistic in a modern, pluralistic world.  Unfortunately, while these type of Muslims are a majority here in America, they are a minority in many other parts of the world, especially the Middle East.  The more literally one reads and interprets the Quran, the more likely one is to become a jihadist.

The moral equivalency game doesn't work here.  Jesus NEVER ordered his followers to make war on anyone, anywhere in the New Testament.  The fact that the Church did so anyway is simply a measure of how far short they fell of Jesus' actual teachings.  The Jews of the Old Testament were a closer parallel, but they were ordered to make war on specific peoples for a specific time in their history.  Unfortunately, Muhammad attached no conditions to the "sword passages" of the Quran.

The problem with Islam, as it is practiced in much of the Middle East, is that it has NEVER had anything parallel to a Reformation or a New Testament.  These folks are still trying to practice the religion as Muhammad defined it 1400 years ago, jihad and all.

But, even among them, ISIS is generally regarded as being on the lunatic fringe.

So, as RC says, NUKE EM.

[Jack]

the Vice video series on ISIS was interesting. they got one of their insane reporters to actually be embedded with them. What struck me was the resignation of the people in the town in Syria that ISIS had taken over. The ISIS morality squad calls over some guy on the street and tells him his wifes veil is the wrong fabric and not to lift her dress when she walks and the guy just takes it. really? you're gonna let some guy you don't know emasculate you like that? Amazing that people would step all over other people and be stepped all over in the name of religion.

Also, most of the Muslims I know or have known have been Shia. They hate wahabi's like ISIS which makes sense because they have been persecuted by them for millenia.

I watched that too.  I think what I found most surprising is the way these guys can go and decapitate people and leave their severed heads propped up on top of their dead bodies, and then in the evening they're in town having a little county fair type thing, showing off their tallest and shortest soldiers to the villagers;  isn't this fun?  What a bunch of wonderful guys we are - don't you want to be one of us too?  Or the way that one guy was asking his son if he was going to be a jihadist or a martyr, with the same happy enthusiasm as an American dad would ask his kid if he was going to be a fireman or an astronaut.

[lester1/2jr]

Indiana- Have you ever read The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane? Islam had a very libertarian era without even much civil law and prospered greatly. They turned away from it kind of like western civilization did as it entered the dark ages.

[Josso]

the Vice video series on ISIS was interesting. they got one of their insane reporters to actually be embedded with them. What struck me was the resignation of the people in the town in Syria that ISIS had taken over. The ISIS morality squad calls over some guy on the street and tells him his wifes veil is the wrong fabric and not to lift her dress when she walks and the guy just takes it. really? you're gonna let some guy you don't know emasculate you like that? Amazing that people would step all over other people and be stepped all over in the name of religion.

Also, most of the Muslims I know or have known have been Shia. They hate wahabi's like ISIS which makes sense because they have been persecuted by them for millenia.

I watched that too.  I think what I found most surprising is the way these guys can go and decapitate people and leave their severed heads propped up on top of their dead bodies, and then in the evening they're in town having a little county fair type thing, showing off their tallest and shortest soldiers to the villagers;  isn't this fun?  What a bunch of wonderful guys we are - don't you want to be one of us too?  Or the way that one guy was asking his son if he was going to be a jihadist or a martyr, with the same happy enthusiasm as an American dad would ask his kid if he was going to be a fireman or an astronaut.

That bit really hit me, I was trying to interpret by little body movements and looks whether the guy genuinely wasn't offended or whether he was just trying to not get into trouble. Really crazy little piece vice did there.

[lester1/2jr]

that guy who was talking about raising the ISIS flag over the White House got killed. By Assad I think

[indianasmith]

Indiana- Have you ever read The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane? Islam had a very libertarian era without even much civil law and prospered greatly. They turned away from it kind of like western civilization did as it entered the dark ages.

That was during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, was it not?  You are right - at one time Jews were better treated in Muslim
Turkey than they were in Christian Spain. But that pattern of enlightened rule is largely gone from the Muslim world, with a few
exceptions, like the King of Jordan and the ruler of Morocco.