Is Islam in accordance with rationality and science?

[c0de]

Nobody forces you to read or to reply.

No body forces me to do my laundry either, but it gets done nonetheless.

I certainly don't know what is in your head, or what point you think you are making. We were talking about the difference between shared observation and private revelation as sources of truth,

And we are still talking about the same thing. Only this time, the question has been turned around on its head and your "shared observation" and its validity is what is being questioned.

and I agree that neither is infallible, but certainly trying to find out the truth by taking as our first principle,
"Believe whatever somebody says if he claims to speak for God,"

Somebody? LoLz...

Mr. Elijah, I am not one to follow just anybody. If you knew anything about me, you'd know that already.

Here's my principle: I don't exist, and neither do you. Nothing has any inherent existence except God, as He was the only entity that was not created. I call this reverse existentialism. As it agrees with the proposition: existence before essence, only it does not consider anything created as having properties of fundamental existence.

would only lead to contradiction, since you would have to believe the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita the same as the Bible and the Qur'an.

No contradiction required whatsoever. Faith does not claim a rational motivation or purpose. I believe the Quran is the word of God and the Prophet is the final messenger as a proposition based in faith, not reason. I believe this because it is written in the Quran and resonates with me on a personal level.

At the same time, even though I believe those who do not accept this reality are mistaken, I do not see myself as superior to them because I did not EARN this knowledge. (occasionalism, again).

You would need some prior principle to decide which prophet you were going to rely on. Most people who rely on some spokesman for God make their choice on the principle of believing what their parents told them, but of course we all learn that our parents are just fallible people, not the gods they appear to infants.

I was quite the rebel actually and rejected everything my parents ever told me. And by the way, my parents were never the ones who forced religion on me, I was pulled towards that direction by abstract forces that I have no reason to explain to you.

Your reply, apparently, is that no human reasoning leads to perfect truth: well, who said it did? We are always dealing in greater or lesser probabilities, not in certainties; we are finite beings after all. Do you have anything to say that would defend the Qur'an, make it seem more probable that it is a source of truth?

I would not be "defending" the Quran by claiming any such thing. In fact, I would be going against its own verses. It is stated in the Quran that if God wanted to convert everyone to Islam through the Quran He would have. This verse was revealed at a time when the Prophet was severely distressed that his mission in Makkah was (seemingly) failing. God told him that it was not his job to convert everyone through the Quran.

For Abdullah to claim that the Quran can be empirically verified as the truth goes against this principle. God created vareity in life and set man apart from man so that "we may know each other" and ultimately come to the realization that we are all the same, regardless of everything.

Now, why would I claim that the Quran is empirically the source of objective truth, knowing that? Because that is what I believe, is a separate issue and due to faith, not reason.

Indeed you are, from someone who does not sleep around and does not interfere in the affairs of others. I consider my own conduct more moral than Muhammad's in this respect.

anyways...

What does that have to do with the topic? We were talking about what justification there could be for giving lesser rights to the adopted than to blood kin.

what "rights" ???

The right to marry someone that person has already divorced??

If you're just going to be nasty, why don't you just go away? You seem to have ceased taking any enjoyment in the conversation a long time ago.

Your the one who asked me if I knew what "books" were.

University of Toronto is a perfectly respectable school. So is New York University, which is somewhat larger. I did not disrespect your source, why should you disrespect mine? I did not "pull him out of a hat" for this discussion, it was the book on modern Jewish history that I happened to already have on hand.

We're already past this. We both know your source is not even contradicting mine as he was talking about the 1860s

I do enjoy learning new things, which is my principal motive for engaging in such conversations. I'm not sure what the motive is on your side, since you show zero willingness to learn, and little taste for debate.

figuring out my motivations is beyond your capacities.

I am certainly not arguing that the Palestinian decision to turn to random violence came out of nowhere, with no grievances to drive it. I am simply saying that choosing the path of violence was a poor decision on their part, which has made their situation much worse than it needed to be.

This contradicts your original position on the issue which states that "the Arabs started it"

You just admitted that they had legitimated grievances for their actions. To say that it was strategically a poor decision (in hindsight) means nothing. Their actions were a direct result of the Jewish actions in their homeland. So they didn't "start" anything.

Yes, well, when you spend money and buy a home, one of the things you are supposed to get for your money is the right to live there. They didn't buy "all" the land, only from those who were willing to sell.

I am sure if I do a little digging some dirt will be uncovered on this land grab as well. Maybe when I have a little more time.

Which would have been good for the Arabs as well, if they could have accepted it. Should it have remained an Ottoman province forever?

As if they really had their interest's in mind. If they did, you'd think they would have at least consulted them on it.

Ideally, if I buy the house next to yours, I would hope that you would not try to burn me out just because I am not "your kind" of person (wrong religion, wrong skin-color, wrong sexuality, whatever). If you liked the old neighbors better, fine, you don't have to invite me to your parties, but it's no business of yours who the neighbors chose to sell to.

Ideally, the foreigner who buys the house next to yours, in your birth place, is not planning on separating and forming his own country next door.

Uh... Jews weren't TAKING anything, at that point.

The Arabs certainly thought they were about to... self-fulfilling prophecy? Not if you consider the recent evidence of Hess's influence on the entire movement.

You are claiming that, just by living there, they were committing a crime that justified murdering them.

It's not the "living there" that set off the Arab attacks.

No, succession by the first born was not an automatic thing until quite late;

I gave a quick example of how you were wrong. I never said that the first born rule was ALWAYS prevalent.

But this still does not answer my objection that it doesnt matter how kings become kings or how dynasties start. The end result is a sharp distinction between royalty and the rest.

The kings were not a separate "class" from the knights:

again with this...

it was all one extended family, tied together by blood and intermarriage,

Oh you mean the same blood that was kept "pure" through generations of incest among all the royal blood lines of Europe? Is that the blood your talking about, and how freely it supposedly intermingled with the rest?

No: although the kings were always surrounded by guard units and their chances of getting killed were less than that of lower-ranking soldiers, they often ended up in the thick of it.

Kings wont even be PRESENT on most of the battlefields! And when the were, the idea that they often ended up "in the thick of it" is absurd. Sometimes, yea maybe.

Didn't you even read your own link? It is just a pointer elsewhere: it says, if you find somebody talking about a "warrior monk" this or this is probably what they really mean.

Exactly, like I said, most people use the term in that sense. If you want to get technical to that level, then fine, whatever.

My objection was originally not about the fine semantics, but about your implication that most of the crusaders were monks in origin,

Please show me a quote of myself saying that MOST of the crusaders were the Templars or Teutonics or Hospitallers. If that was the case, the Europeans would have easily won every single crusade.

But defending from invasion by outsiders was not one of their concerns, so the need for a military dominating the governance of Niue as a whole never existed.

Again, this suggests the US requires no (nor did it ever require) as large a military as it possesses. When was the last time the US was threatened by an invasion from the outside?

The fact is that you can not rest the claim that this society was not militaristic based on the fact that it was not expecting to be over run.

Perhaps we are just not using the word "class" in the same way. There was always a sharp distinction of "rank" within the military caste, but I call the whole caste ("caste" in the Indian sense of an extended family with a shared occupation) one "class"; the medieval term was "estate".

hmmmmm,

i am willing to accept this.

The French almost never toe the American line. That rupture has never really healed.

tell that to that poodle sarkozy

in any case, i was talking about the german issue today.

 

[bob x]

No body forces me to do my laundry either, but it gets done nonetheless.

The laws against public nudity and the social disapproval of people who stink badly or show prominent stains on their clothing impel you to do your laundry. What impels you to read and reply to this thread?

And we are still talking about the same thing. Only this time, the question has been turned around on its head and your "shared observation" and its validity is what is being questioned.

I am not arguing against any claim that shared-observation is not infallible; I know that it sometimes leads to falsehood rather than truth. I do maintain it is vastly superior to surrendering your God-given powers of thought to some single source that you think of as "the word of God" based on warm fuzzy feelings.

I am not one to follow just anybody. If you knew anything about me, you'd know that already.

If I know little about you, that is your fault. I have been as honest and revealing about myself as I know how; of course I cannot compel you to return honesty with honesty.

Here's my principle: I don't exist, and neither do you. Nothing has any inherent existence except God, as He was the only entity that was not created. I call this reverse existentialism. As it agrees with the proposition: existence before essence, only it does not consider anything created as having properties of fundamental existence.

Your picture of the universe sounds like nothing but God masturbating.

I believe this because it is written in the Quran and resonates with me on a personal level.

Yes, yes, and the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, and Book of Mormon all have internal claims like that of the Qur'an. Mormon missionaries tell me to pray over their book and see if God doesn't tell me it's all true; if I say to them, "God tells me the book is a fraud and Joseph Smith was a con-artist," they get upset and tell me I must not have prayed sincerely.

At the same time, even though I believe those who do not accept this reality are mistaken, I do not see myself as superior to them because I did not EARN this knowledge. (occasionalism, again).

Oh would some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursel's as others see us! (Robert Burns) Your tone is absolutely dripping with a smug sense of superiority to others: I agree of course that you have not earned any such sense of superiority.

I was pulled towards that direction by abstract forces that I have no reason to explain to you.

If you are not willing to honestly discuss these matters, again I have to ask (with no genuine expectation that you will honestly answer, of course) what you are doing making any responses at all?

"I consider my own conduct more moral than Muhammad's in this respect."


anyways...

Muhammad's horndogging created conflicts among the families to which he was multiply allied, conflicts which tore apart the early Muslim state and still cost lives to this day.

what "rights" ???

The right to marry someone that person has already divorced??

That's not how the Qur'an justifies it. The book is being used as a guideline for massive communities, in which the case of a man wanting another man's woman might arise in many many different circumstances, and you or I or someone else with a moral sense could examine the various circumstances and decide which circumstances would make this-or-that case justifiable and another case abusive. You are going to non-Qur'anic sources for the circumstances in the case of Muhammad and Zaid, and using your own moral judgment to pick out which circumstances make it justifiable in that particular case: but the Qur'an only singles out one of the circumstantial factors as making a difference, that it is OK to take a woman away from an adoptive relative but not a blood relative.

Your the one who asked me if I knew what "books" were.

After you'd asked me to give you online sources instead of books since you had no library, I used a book anyway since it was handy; you said it was not a respectable author, and I told you otherwise; then you accused me of dragging up a no-name website. Apparently I'm damned if I cite to a book, and damned if I cite to something online either.

We're already past this. We both know your source is not even contradicting mine as he was talking about the 1860s

So you admit that your denigration of Goldstein was just gratuitous nastiness.

figuring out my motivations is beyond your capacities.

I do not claim to telepathic powers. Your behavior appears senseless; whether you care about correcting that appearance is of course entirely up to you.

This contradicts your original position on the issue which states that "the Arabs started it"

You just admitted that they had legitimated grievances for their actions.

I said they had grievances, and that this would not justify their actions in any way (although it is helpful to understand that their sick actions did not arise ex vacuo). The "it" that we were talking about in the question "who started it?" was the murders and the forcible dispossessions: you accused the Jews of starting that, but the Arabs started the murders in the late 19th century, culminating with forcible dispossession of two large non-Zionist Jewish communities in 1929, before there was any response in kind from the other side.

To say that it was strategically a poor decision (in hindsight) means nothing. Their actions were a direct result of the Jewish actions in their homeland. So they didn't "start" anything.

A "direct result"? You are speaking as if they could not possibly have done anything else except the stupid course they choose.

I am sure if I do a little digging some dirt will be uncovered on this land grab as well.

Buying is not "grabbing"; you believe there must be something wrong with it, not because you have any evidence of it, but because you are as filled with prejudicial hatred as the Mufti.

Ideally, the foreigner who buys the house next to yours, in your birth place, is not planning on separating and forming his own country next door.

Which the Jews were not planning in the period we were discussing. Such a partition was not even the position of fringe groups until the 1920's, nor discussed among people with actual power to bring it about until the late 1930's; in both cases after outbursts of intransigent Arab violence had cast doubt on the feasibility of a unitary state with equality for all.

The Arabs certainly thought they were about to... self-fulfilling prophecy?

Exactly. If the Arabs had not chosen the path of violence, they would not have been violently dispossessed.

Not if you consider the recent evidence of Hess's influence on the entire movement.

The followers of Hess, according to YOUR source, wanted partnership with the Arabs and did not think any independence was possible without liberation for all the inhabitants of the southern Ottoman provinces.

It's not the "living there" that set off the Arab attacks.

It was the living there with expectations of equal treatment, rejecting the second-class status and ritual gestures of subordination and humiliation which non-Muslims were expected to put up with. Islam, as I said long ago, is fundamentally intolerant; while not generally as persecutory in nature as Christianity has often been, Islam cannot deal with people of other religious beliefs on any basis except dominance and submission.

I gave a quick example of how you were wrong.

No. You were claiming that, while the son of a knight had to go through an apprenticeship and could fail to advance to knighthood if he washed out, the sons of kings were in a different position. This is just untrue. Kings' sons also had to undergo military apprenticeship: the Black Prince was apprenticed to Sir John Chandos, a noteworthy case since Chandos was chosen as the Prince's trainer strictly based on merit, although his family was of no prominence and held no significant land. And kings' sons who "washed out" militarily would fail to advance to kingship, or would be deposed if their incompetence became manifest after they did take the throne. You are persistently trying to depict some "quantum leap" between the "knights" and the "royalty" which just wasn't there in medieval times. The knights were ranked according to the amount of property they held, and the royalty were simply the knights with the largest properties.

tell that to that poodle sarkozy

I did say the French "almost" never toe the line. Sarkozy is certainly not typical of most of the French leaders since 1956, who have been about as deferential to America as Castro or Chavez.

 

[bob x]

Oh you mean the same blood that was kept "pure" through generations of incest among all the royal blood lines of Europe? Is that the blood your talking about, and how freely it supposedly intermingled with the rest?

The extreme incest of the 15th through 18th centuries (early gunpowder era) was not like what happened before or after ("early gunpowder" appears to be the earliest era you know anything about, and you back-project its patterns onto earlier times). Medieval kings, for diplomatic reasons, would often marry "1st-tier" wives (immediate relatives of other kings) but somewhat more often "2nd-tier" (kin of major landholders with titles like "duke" or "count" from their own or a neighboring land), only rarely "3rd-tier" (generally of low-ranking but still "knightly" families; liaisons from outright "commoner" families would be labelled "mistresses" rather than "wives" but the children might, if deemed worthy, be given land-grants so that the descendants would work up to 2nd or even 1st tier) but of course the collateral branches of the royal families (who might come to the throne when the direct line failed to produce heirs, or only produced incompetent heirs) would be 2nd tier, often intermarrying with 3rd tier.

I am about to bore you even more than usual. I actually did a mathematical analysis of the gene-flow, geographic and social, into the royal families, using as "arch" examples of "royalty" the terminally inbred Sebastian the Desirable of Portugal (late 16th century) and Charles II of Spain (end of the 17th century), whose infertilities threatened their countries with absorption by stabler neighbors (Portugal threatened by Spain, Spain by France). Sebastian was a cretin, with a pretty doll-like face and a sweet-hearted simple-minded temperament, who was taken along on a campaign in Morocco, with his presumably useless sword, since that was expected of "kings", and wandered away from his handlers; the Moors couldn't find his body in the aftermath, despite intense search (since Portugal would have paid handsomely for its return), and for 300 years (!) claimants pretending to be the lost Sebastian continued to appear.

In generation B (grandparents of Sebastian), Catherine Habsburg wife of king John III of Portugal was the sister of emperor Charles, and Isabel Avis wife of emperor Charles was the sister of John III, so that the parents (generation A) were double cousins (first cousins two different ways) and generation C contained only four people (not eight): king Phillip the Handsome of Spain and queen Juana the Mad, and king Manuel the Lucky of Portugal and Maria of Aragon, who was Juana's sister (so generation A were second cousins as well as double-first). In generation D (six people), Ferdinand and Isabella make twice the genetic contribution to Sebastian as the other two couples, emperor Maximilian and Mary heiress of Burgundy, and duke Fernando of Viseu and his first cousin Beatriz. This is the absurd incest you are talking about, but it is less extreme as you go to prior generations.

By generation G, 21.9% of the genetic contribution is from "pure" 3rd-tier people (no trace of any fraction of higher-ranked ancestry in them), although it is not until we get to generation K (13th century) that this becomes the majority (by this point, of course many of the branches are not even traceable anymore). There are a couple dozen people in generation G:

King Pedro the Cruel of Portugal (100% of the Y-chromosomal DNA of Sebastian) is definitely 1st-tier (multiple royal families in his ancestry) but his wife Teresa was thoroughly 3rd-tier: daughter of Laurenzo Martines, a knight chosen for Pedro's guard out of military merit not ancestry, and a Senorita Gille whose first name is not even recorded. So he could bully her mercilessly as she had no protection (an opera and some plays have been written about her; she is 7.8% of Sebastian and ancestral to many other prominents).

John of Gaunt is 1st tier (brother of the Black Prince; invited by disgruntled nobles to overthrow his father-in-law and take over the throne of Castile, but he had to settle for marrying two daughters, by his first two wives, into royal families), as was his first wife Constance, daughter of king Pedro the Cruel of Castile (not to be confused with king Pedro the Cruel of Portugal); but his second wife duchess Blanche of Lancaster was an interesting mixture (his third wife Catherine Swynford, ancestress of the Tudors and all subsequent English kings, was 3rd-tier but does not figure in this genealogy). Blanche's grandparents were earl Henry of Lancaster by Maud Chaworth and earl Henry of Beaumont by Alice Comyn: Lancaster was 1st-tier, from Edmund Crossback (often misrendered "Crouchback"-- he wasn't a hunchback, he was a crusader!) given a big chunk of northwest England by his father Edward I for his valor in the Middle East (contrast Robert Longsword's fate), but Beaumont was struggling 2nd-tier, from John Brienne who briefly was "king of Jerusalem" despite little prominence of ancestry, at a time when the royal line had failed and the crusaders needed a competent military man at the helm, but of course that didn't end up leaving the family much. Maud was 3rd-tier, from the respectable but hardly overwhelming Chaworths of Stoke and Beauchamps of Elmley, plus a mercantile family from London and some Fitzgeoffreys I can't track; Alice a little higher, since some ancestors had been earls in Scotland.

King Juan of Castile and his wife princess Leonore of Aragon, and duke Sancho of Albuquerque (son of king Alfonso the Judge) and his wife Beatriz (daughter of the Portuguese Pedro the Cruel by Teresa; the generation-count starts to get messed up here, and "G" means a minimum of seven generations above Sebastian even if also reached another way with a higher number) were 1st-tier, but then there is Inez Pires, the mistress with whom king Juan of Portugal (son of Pedro the Cruel and Teresa) would cheat on his wife Phillipa Lancaster (John the Gaunt's daughter by Blanche). Inez was the mother of Alonso the B-tard (this site won't let me write it), only a collateral ancestor of Sebastian (Inez contributes 3.1% to him) but his male line of descendants became the kings of Portugal after Sebastian's disappearance (all the way until Salazar's 20th-century coup); however, her parents were just Pero Esteves "the Bearded", a soldier of fortune whose ancestry is unknown, and Maria Anes of undistinguished family. And another 6.25% goes back to the parents of Alonso the B-tard's wife Beatriz, constable Nuno Pereira (whose father, prior Alvarez Pereira of Crato, joined a monastery and became a royal bureaucrat after his wife Iria Vicente died) and Leonor Alvim of unknown parentage (who contributes 100% of the mitochondrial DNA in Sebastian).

But I do not call admiral Alfonso Enriquez or his wife Juana la Rica ("the rich lady") de Mendoza pure 3rd-tier, since the admiral had some 1st-tier in him (royal illegitimates) as well as a distinguished Jewess (there are always some Jewish skeletons in the closet) Paloma of Toledo from the "exilarch" family (which claimed to trace back to king David), and while the Mendozas had only recently purchased a "by letter" title of nobility, they had married into some genuine 2nd-tier families. And while Diego Fernandez de Cordova (3.1% of Sebastian) was rather 3rd-tier (a poet named de la Vega was his most distinguished ancestor), his wife Inez of Toledo had some arguably 2nd-tier ancestors (the lines get rather blurry sometimes).

The "Phillip the Handsome" side of the tree is a bunch of 2nd-tier people: duke Leopold III of Austria (go back some generations, and the Habsburgs were just 3rd-tier knights; go forward, and they become great kings; this is the middle period for them) and his wife Viridis Visconti (whose family had seized the duchy of Milan, after an ancestor-- who was really just a soldier of fortune-- granted to himself the title of "viscount" for the size of the lands he'd grabbed; the families they'd intermarried with included a lot of similar upwardly-mobile knights, but there is a doge of Venice and a pope's brother back there); duke Ziemowit IV of Mazovia and his wife Alexandria of Lithuania; duke John the Fearless of Burgundy and his wife Margaret Straubing (from the Straubings of Upper Bavaria and the Briegs of Silesia); and duke John of Bourbon and his wife countess Marie of Montpensier (whom he tried to divorce but the pope wouldn't let him, so he abused her terribly).

Of course if you trace the less upwardly-mobile branches of the descendants from all these generation-G people down to generation D, when this "royals must only marry royals" obsession began (and nearly wiped them out through the ill effects of inbreeding), you can see that the generation-D royals had second cousins who included not just other kings but a whole slew of middling-powerful counts and not a few low-ranking knights (but the royals were not second cousins to any peasants, to be sure). This is what I mean by saying that the whole military caste was one extended family, with "six degrees of separation" or less between any of them.

Kings wont even be PRESENT on most of the battlefields!

They could not be omnipresent, but went out on campaign as often as they could (the history of any king's reign from back then is a tedious repetition of "...and then they besieged this-or-that castle [to put down the rebellion of so-and-so] / [to extend their border against whichever neighboring country]"). Your picture of them sitting at home eating bon-bons all day is just not connected to reality.

Exactly, like I said, most people use the term in that sense.

No, only the ill-informed, which is Wiki has only a re-direct, telling such people to look elsewhere.

Again, this suggests the US requires no (nor did it ever require) as large a military as it possesses.

From Washington to FDR, indeed we tried to avoid large "standing armies", maintaining only the minimal armed forces needed to keep the Natives, the Hispanics, and the Canadians at bay. The large armies we had to raise during the Civil War were quickly demobilized, and our entry into WWI was highly controversial even after the Germans started sinking our shipping (my grandfather volunteered, and was disinherited by his father, a socialist who thought we were being swindled by British bankers); while Wilson wanted us to keep troops in Europe afterwards, to police the world for the new League of Nations, the public decisively repudiated this idea, and we were back to a minimalist military until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. After WWII, the threat of nuclear annihilation by the USSR was used to scare the public into supporting a continuing giant military; we have not the shred of an excuse now, and if you want to argue for a severe contraction of America's military and our self-appointed "world's policeman" role, I am entirely on your side.

The fact is that you can not rest the claim that this society was not militaristic based on the fact that it was not expecting to be over run.

It was not expecting to interact with outsiders AT ALL.

 

[c0de]

Im using the schools computer as the power cut off in our building (erasing my more detailed response). I will be brief.

The laws against public nudity and the social disapproval of people who stink badly or show prominent stains on their clothing impel you to do your laundry.

Wrong. Even if I was the last person in the world, I would be wearing clothes and washing them. In survival situations, it has been known that hygiene has a direct affect on morale, meaning there is an inner drive towards cleanliness (that apparantly mite not be as strong in you).

HINT: This also explains my reasons for replying versus yours.

I am not arguing against any claim that shared-observation is not infallible; I know that it sometimes leads to falsehood rather than truth. I do maintain it is vastly superior to surrendering your God-given powers of thought to some single source that you think of as "the word of God" based on warm fuzzy feelings.

so is yours, u just don't know it (Ivan).

Muhammad's horndogging created conflicts among the families to which he was multiply allied, conflicts which tore apart the early Muslim state and still cost lives to this day.

What conflicts did his marriages create, exactly?

That's not how the Qur'an justifies it. The book is being used as a guideline for massive communities, in which the case of a man wanting another man's woman might arise in many many different circumstances, and you or I or someone else with a moral sense could examine the various circumstances and decide which circumstances would make this-or-that case justifiable and another case abusive. You are going to non-Qur'anic sources for the circumstances in the case of Muhammad and Zaid, and using your own moral judgment to pick out which circumstances make it justifiable in that particular case: but the Qur'an only singles out one of the circumstantial factors as making a difference, that it is OK to take a woman away from an adoptive relative but not a blood relative.

I asked you before, and I will ask you again: what are you smoking???

Who "took" away who ???

He married a woman after she divorced her husband!

Where does the Quran give permission to "take away" anyone's wife???

Buying is not "grabbing"; you believe there must be something wrong with it, not because you have any evidence of it, but because you are as filled with prejudicial hatred as the Mufti.

yea, i guess that's why I usually defend Israelis and Jews when Muslims cite them as the cause of all the problems of the world... cuz I am just so filled with "prejudicial hatred"

Which the Jews were not planning in the period we were discussing. Such a partition was not even the position of fringe groups until the 1920's, nor discussed among people with actual power to bring it about until the late 1930's; in both cases after outbursts of intransigent Arab violence had cast doubt on the feasibility of a unitary state with equality for all.

You have serious memory problems. The whole kibbutzim movement was inspired by Hess, whose sole purpose was independence in Palestine!

The followers of Hess, according to YOUR source, wanted partnership with the Arabs and did not think any independence was possible without liberation for all the inhabitants of the southern Ottoman provinces.

Delusions of yours???

My source said the Jews never considered even consulting the Arabs. You know why? Because they wanted to create an independent land in THEIR territory!

If they wanted partnership with Arabs, why didnt they go start their movement in London and then ask the Arabs for recognition? Im sure they wouldve gotten it then.

A "direct result"? You are speaking as if they could not possibly have done anything else except the stupid course they choose.

The idea was not stupid. Armed action for seditious movements is totally rational especially when you have overwhelming advantage that the Arabs did. The fact that they got their ass kicked was due to stupidity in their disorganization. They didnt take into account the fact that the Jews had their back against the wall, and desperation always unifies fighting units. That is why that dude burned his boats in Gibralter.

It was the living there with expectations of equal treatment, rejecting the second-class status and ritual gestures of subordination and humiliation which non-Muslims were expected to put up with. Islam, as I said long ago, is fundamentally intolerant; while not generally as persecutory in nature as Christianity has often been, Islam cannot deal with people of other religious beliefs on any basis except dominance and submission.

You are repeating old points that have been rebutted. Why did they move to a place which was like that and then start complaining? They could have moved anywhere else, places where there wasn't any discrimination (good luck finding many of those a century ago).

The Arabs weren't the ones who are responsible for the holocaust, yet they paid the price for it. Why didn't they raise the call for independence in Berlin?


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ABOUT THE REST:


The points about the medieval age and the size of the US military are getting off topic. Even if the ancient medieval age was like what you are describing (probably it was) if you admit there was a SHARP distinction between royalty and everyone else, then the rest really doesn't matter. As basically, the same situation existed in Ubaid times. That was my only point.

 

[bob x]

Even if I was the last person in the world, I would be wearing clothes and washing them. In survival situations, it has been known that hygiene has a direct affect on morale, meaning there is an inner drive towards cleanliness (that apparantly mite not be as strong in you).

If I was the last person in the world, I would still bathe, but I would have no use for clothes (not even for weather, since if I had the whole world to myself I wouldn't stay north). One advantage of unemployment is that I can keep laundry runs to a minimum by not wearing anything except to go out. I doubt we differ on inner drive towards cleanliness, but I do lack any inner drive towards modesty, although I know I am unusual that way: I asked earlier whether you would regard the lack of clothing in Ubaidi times (textiles were not available until Uruk) as a severe disadvantage, but I took your dismissive reply "you think he worried about whether he would look better in jeans?" as indicating you didn't care much for clothes either.

HINT: This also explains my reasons for replying versus yours.

You think of me as dirt?

so is yours, u just don't know it (Ivan).

No, it isn't. You really don't understand. I was expecting you to deny that you have no better basis than "warm fuzzy feelings" but apparently you really can't even conceive of what it is like to be open to correction from others.

What conflicts did his marriages create, exactly?

Abu Bakr had expectations based on his daughter's marriage to the prophet, Ali based on his own marriage to the prophet's daughter: now if Abu Bakr had been Fatima's grandfather, they would have had interests in common, but the extended families of polygamous households always have these conflicts among those connected through different wives. Last week it cost 133 dead, not for the first or probably the last time.

Who "took" away who ???

He married a woman after she divorced her husband!

Where does the Quran give permission to "take away" anyone's wife???

Uh, taking away a man's wife does involve them getting divorced first. Now if you argued that this was OK because Muhammad was not responsible for breaking up their marriage, I would agree that is a perfectly defensible moral argument; but again, that's not how the Qur'an draws the distinction between permissible and impermissible cases. It doesn't say, it's OK to marry a woman who used to be married to a relative if you had nothing to do with breaking them up; it says that what makes it OK is if the relative was only through adoption.

yea, i guess that's why I usually defend Israelis and Jews

Yeah, right. Tell me another.

The whole kibbutzim movement was inspired by Hess, whose sole purpose was independence in Palestine!

in partnership with the Arabs according to YOUR source.

My source said the Jews never considered even consulting the Arabs.

Your source said nothing of the kind.

If they wanted partnership with Arabs, why didnt they go start their movement in London and then ask the Arabs for recognition? Im sure they wouldve gotten it then.

Why would they start a movement in London, where few Jews lived? And WHAT Arabs would they ask for "recognition"? Recognition is granted by independent states, which the Arabs had none of, and were never going to get without outsiders making it happen.

The idea was not stupid. Armed action for seditious movements is totally rational especially when you have overwhelming advantage that the Arabs did. The fact that they got their ass kicked was due to stupidity in their disorganization.

They got their asses kicked because they were engaging in pointless random acts of murder, which angered people without lessening their power to fight back. This was really really stupid.

They didnt take into account the fact that the Jews had their back against the wall, and desperation always unifies fighting units. That is why that dude burned his boats in Gibralter.

"Burned his boats in Gibralter"? I will assume you are talking about Cortez burning the conquistadore ships at Veracruz? Anyhow, that is certainly a big part of it, that the random murders of Jews incited a fear that they were going to be wiped out, a fear that was no less powerful and motivating for being a little unrealistic.

You are repeating old points that have been rebutted.

Like what? Rebutted when?

Why did they move to a place which was like that and then start complaining? They could have moved anywhere else, places where there wasn't any discrimination (good luck finding many of those a century ago).

Balfour brought up the Uganda idea with Chaim Weitzmann:

"Mr. Balfour, supposing I was to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?"

He sat up, looked at me, and answered: "But Dr. Weizmann, we have London."

"That is true," I said, "but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh."

He said two things which I remember vividly. The first was: "Are there many Jews who think like you?"

I answered: "I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves."

To this he said: "If that is so you will one day be a force." (from Weizman's memoir, Trial and Error)

The Jews never lost their emotional attachment to that particular place. It looks as if the Palestinians never will either. The two of them, therefore, ought to understand each other perfectly: too bad it doesn't work that way.

The Arabs weren't the ones who are responsible for the holocaust

The Arabs participated in the Holocaust to the best of their abilities. They did not have the same skill in killing large numbers as the Germans did, but they killed as many as they could.

The points about the medieval age and the size of the US military are getting off topic.

I'm not sure what the topic is. A long time ago, it was whether Islam is in accordance with rationality, but we both seem to agree that it is not.

Even if the ancient medieval age was like what you are describing (probably it was) if you admit there was a SHARP distinction between royalty and everyone else, then the rest really doesn't matter.

There was a wide disparity in wealth. The division between the royals and the lower ranks of the military caste had been more of a continuum than a quantum leap in medieval times, but the gunpowder era made the "knights of the sword" rather useless militarily, so kings went off into their own world (until everybody started realizing that the kings had become rather useless too).

As basically, the same situation existed in Ubaid times.

There was no possibility for the same degree of disparity in wealth, since there simply weren't all that many kinds of material goods available at all. The "wealthy" of early Ubaid times had larger, but still rather inadequate, housing (which would improve as the society learned to bake mud into bricks, and how to chimney smoke so that houses did not need large holes all over); and they had a more reliable, but still unhealthy unbalanced, food supply (which would improve as eventually a greater variety of foodstuffs were domesticated); and they had nicer-looking pottery items, and that was all they owned-- oh, I almost forgot the weapons. The big difference, of course, was that there was no such thing as money, no storing up of value for the future, and no way to hire another person to fight for you. The big commonality, of course, is that they could bully and order other people around, evading most of the hard work, and enjoying the sense of power which some people value greatly for its own sake.

 

[c0de]

One advantage of unemployment is that I can keep laundry runs to a minimum by not wearing anything except to go out.

Wait... so, as you're reading this... you're naked??

!!!

*(waaaaaaay too much information dude)

You think of me as dirt?

I do now.

No, it isn't. You really don't understand.

Yes, it is. You really don't understand.

Abu Bakr had expectations based on his daughter's marriage to the prophet, Ali based on his own marriage to the prophet's daughter: now if Abu Bakr had been Fatima's grandfather, they would have had interests in common, but the extended families of polygamous households always have these conflicts among those connected through different wives. Last week it cost 133 dead, not for the first or probably the last time.

That is the dumbest explanation of the shia-sunni split I have ever heard, period.

Uh, taking away a man's wife does involve them getting divorced first. Now if you argued that this was OK because Muhammad was not responsible for breaking up their marriage, I would agree that is a perfectly defensible moral argument; but again, that's not how the Qur'an draws the distinction between permissible and impermissible cases. It doesn't say, it's OK to marry a woman who used to be married to a relative if you had nothing to do with breaking them up; it says that what makes it OK is if the relative was only through adoption.

You are totally out of it dude...

Where does the Quran say the Prophet broke up their marriage?

Yeah, right. Tell me another.

Don't believe me? Go and ask bananabrain if I am an anti-Semite.

But then again, accusing me of defamation just shows your own prejudice against me (your own tutor! tsk tsk)

in partnership with the Arabs according to YOUR source.

Your source said nothing of the kind.

You require serious medication.

...For in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it."

Why would they start a movement in London, where few Jews lived?

Where did more Jews live before the waves of immigration? Palestine, or Europe?

Even today, Israel only has 40% of the total Jewish population. There are more Jews in New York!

They got their asses kicked because they were engaging in pointless random acts of murder, which angered people without lessening their power to fight back. This was really really stupid.

You really are a broken record, aren't you?

In your last post, you admitted they had "grievences", in the post before you admitted that your original argument that they never raised the call for independence was wrong, and the post before that you were not even aware of the fact...

And now, once again, you have reverted to "random and senseless" argument.

Come on dude... what will your precious audience think of you? Gotta pick up your game pal. They probably think you're an idiot now!!

"Burned his boats in Gibralter"? I will assume you are talking about Cortez burning the conquistadore ships at Veracruz?

No, I mean "Gibralter" which in its original Arabic name, means "The Rock of Tariq" i.e. the man (Tariq bib Ziyad) who launched the Muslim conquest of Spain and burned his ships upon landing there.

Like what? Rebutted when?

They had no right to complain about the conditions after moving into their neighborhood.

Balfour brought up the Uganda idea with Chaim Weitzmann:

"Mr. Balfour, supposing I was to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?"

He sat up, looked at me, and answered: "But Dr. Weizmann, we have London."

"That is true," I said, "but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh."

He said two things which I remember vividly. The first was: "Are there many Jews who think like you?"

I answered: "I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves."

To this he said: "If that is so you will one day be a force." (from Weizman's memoir, Trial and Error)

The Jews never lost their emotional attachment to that particular place. It looks as if the Palestinians never will either. The two of them, therefore, ought to understand each other perfectly: too bad it doesn't work that way.

Like I told BB, no one has any right to deny any emotional attachment to anyone else. But this cuts both ways.

The only right the Jews have to Israel today is the right of force. There is no moral high ground on their side.

The Arabs participated in the Holocaust to the best of their abilities. They did not have the same skill in killing large numbers as the Germans did, but they killed as many as they could.

Again with the broken record. By then the situation (which was sparked BY THE JEWS) was already far gone. The Germans provided an ally, and the Arabs cast their lots.

I'm not sure what the topic is.

... and you were asking me why I was reading and replying???

I asked earlier whether you would regard the lack of clothing in Ubaidi times (textiles were not available until Uruk) as a severe disadvantage

So was lack of air conditioning (has nothing to do with my actual point).

There was no possibility for the same degree of disparity in wealth, since there simply weren't all that many kinds of material goods available at all.

That has nothing to do with the point. Fundamentally, the situation was the same. The gaps grow and constrict based on prevailing conditions, humanity has stayed the same.

 

[bob x]

*(waaaaaaay too much information dude)

Sorry, didn't know you had the body-shame cringe; you had given the impression of indifference.

"You think of me as dirt?"
I do now.

It's hardly new. Like most Muslims I have conversed with, you have never bothered to conceal that you feel so vastly superior that you need not treat non-Muslims with respect or even common courtesy. You would, I think, not easily be persuaded to join a campaign of random senseless murders, but have no moral outrage against those who do, and cannot understand that others do or why that is so.

Yes, it is. You really don't understand.

No, it isn't. I'm sure you are capable of understanding, but you are too unwilling, afraid of any responsibility for thoughts and actions.

That is the dumbest explanation of the shia-sunni split I have ever heard, period.

Ideological excuses came later. At first it was just faction-fighting between rival extended families competing for political influence.

Where does the Quran say the Prophet broke up their marriage?

You weren't paying attention. I accepted for the sake of argument your non-Qur'anic sources for the view that the prophet had no responsibility for breaking up the marriage, and said that this would be a sound moral argument for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable cases: but, that is not how the Qur'an draws the line.

Don't believe me? Go and ask bananabrain if I am an anti-Semite.

You feel justified in murdering him if he buys the house next door and expects to vote in your local elections. That's rather extreme.

But then again, accusing me of defamation just shows your own prejudice against me (your own tutor! tsk tsk)

I think I have tutored you rather more, despite how loath you are to confess error.

...For in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it."

Your claim was that your source (professor Avineri) said that Moses Hess and his followers were unwilling to consult the Arabs. How was I to guess that you meant my source (a Wiki on Balfour) said that the British government was unwilling to consult Arabs? Churchill, who ran the Colonial Office at the time, was unwilling to consult Jews either: his decisions to declare Transjordan a Judenrein zone and to restrict Jewish immigration to less than the Arab immigration were not welcome to the Jews, anymore than the 1930's decision to shut off immigration entirely. If you want to lambaste the Brits for imperialistic arrogance, I won't argue, but you are reflexively ascribing all evil to the Jews here.

Where did more Jews live before the waves of immigration? Palestine, or Europe?

England does not entirely consider itself "Europe" even now, and certainly did not then. The Jews were centered in eastern Europe around Poland and the countries around it (Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine, Rumania) which, of course, is where the first Zionist groups were founded-- not in England, of course, since the Jewish population in Palestine was already larger than the Jewish population in England even before any of the modern migration.

In your last post, you admitted they had "grievences", in the post before you admitted that your original argument that they never raised the call for independence was wrong, and the post before that you were not even aware of the fact...

And now, once again, you have reverted to "random and senseless" argument.

I strongly resented George W. Bush's usurpation of the Presidency (I never did regard him as my rightful President) and his dragging us into war in Iraq (especially the lies about Hussein being ready to throw nuclear missiles at us or having anything to do with 9/11). I did not however respond to these totally legitimate grievances by going to Orange County, or some such thick pocket of Republicans, and shooting down kids in a schoolyard or shoppers at a mall. Such murders would have been "random": the victims would have no more particularly to do with it than anyone else in the community. And they would have been "senseless": they would have had no power to make W leave the White House, or to bring troops home from Iraq, or to serve any other purpose. Indeed, if I advertised that I was committing these killings as a protest, that would have been totally counter-productive, strengthening rather than weakening W's political position.

This has been the nature of practically all the Palestinian actions since 1920. Doing no good for themselves, seeking only to inflict pain on others for the pain's own sake, they have made themselves many lifelong enemies, which is why they are in the predicament they are in. I have given up on trying to make you understand how profoundly evil their conduct is, but I thought you might at least understand how stupid it is, since others, with the power to keep them in their cage, do see it as evil. I acknowledged that this campaign of random senseless murder never could have taken hold if it had not had some emotional basis in grievances, but if you think for a moment that I consider any of their grievances to be justification for their conduct, you have understood nothing.

As for Arab independence in general, I pointed out right at the outset that Labor Zionists fought alongside the Arab rebels in WWI to help oust the Ottomans-- but I mistakenly claimed that it was the Arabs who first raised the idea of overthrowing Turkish rule, not knowing Moses Hess, or seeing after you first raised him anything about his continuing influence. Indeed, it appears that the Arabs had scarcely given a second thought to getting rid of the Ottomans until the Jews and the Brits prodded them into seeing it as a good idea: I suppose they were fatalistic like you, grumbling about the government but then shrugging, Ah, must be God's will, so God will deal with it in God's own time, and why should I be arsed to do anything?

They had no right to complain about the conditions after moving into their neighborhood.

So Turks who move to Germany have no right to complain about skinheads beating them up or trying to kill them, and blacks who moved into white neighborhoods in Michigan had no right to complain if the KKK burned crosses on their lawn or burned their whole house down? I will always oppose such people, regardless of which ethnicities are involved.

The only right the Jews have to Israel today is the right of force. There is no moral high ground on their side.

I'm sure we will never see eye to eye on the morals, but at least you should understand that the imbalance of force is not going to change for the foreseeable future. When Sirhan pumped bullets into RFK, he convinced millions of Americans otherwise unattached to Mideastern affairs that we needed to arm Israel to the teeth and squash the Palestinians; and while that is a distant fading memory, the Muslim world keeps giving us fresh memories (I know I am far from the only one who briefly wished, even while knowing it was not a practical solution, that our government would respond to 9/11 by reducing Mecca and Medina to radioactive glass). If the Palestinians want out from under the boot on their throat, they will have to persuade the Israelis that it is consistent with their safety and interests to let them up.

Again with the broken record. By then the situation (which was sparked BY THE JEWS) was already far gone. The Germans provided an ally, and the Arabs cast their lots.

The Arabs had been killing Jews, who "sparked" it by daring to live nearby and not kowtow to the smug Muslim sense of unearned superiority, for a lot longer than the Germans.

"I don't know what the topic is."
... and you were asking me why I was reading and replying???

I still am asking. If you are trying to convey a point, you are not doing very well. If you are trying not to convey the point, so you can pat yourself on the back about how much smarter you are than this dummy who doesn't get it, well you could equally well fail to convey the point by not saying anything.

Fundamentally, the situation was the same. The gaps grow and constrict based on prevailing conditions, humanity has stayed the same.

Well, of course we do not see genetically significant evolution of the species Homo sapiens on a time-span of thousands of years, though over hundreds of thousands of years we do. The original Ubaid argument, if you can remember back what also seems a time-span of hundreds of thousands of years, was over my statement that materially, the elite back then were worse off than most poor today: not the starving in Darfur to be sure, but, say, the peasantry in Waziristan. Look at that Papuan chief: only a codpiece like Mr. Eridu, not a rawhide wrap like Mr. Ubaid; house looking more weatherproof than Mr. Eridu I's mud-hovel, if not as nice as Mr. Ubaid II's brick; steady if not terribly varied diet, no danger of starving but nobody would call him "fat"; multiple wives and other people to boss around, which a lot of people enjoy doing, but he still has to do some work, slopping, herding, and when necessary butchering his own pigs. You argue that he is probably much happier as the big fish in his little pond than he would be at the bottom of the heap elsewhere, but in fact these kinds of villages have trouble keeping their kids: given a choice between being a chief in the "Fourth World" or a menial laborer in the "Third World" they themselves think they would be happier doing the latter.

 

[c0de]

Sorry, didn't know you had the body-shame cringe;

It's called a sense of basic human dignity, the need to clothe oneself. Not to mention standards of hygiene. Does your friend, whose place you are staying in, know that you are walking around naked?

It's hardly new. Like most Muslims I have conversed with, you have never bothered to conceal that you feel so vastly superior that you need not treat non-Muslims with respect or even common courtesy.

Another idiotic and unfair claim that just proves your own biases against your opposition. The first comment I made on this very thread was against Abdullah, who is obviously (an idiot of a) Muslim.

You would, I think, not easily be persuaded to join a campaign of random senseless murders, but have no moral outrage against those who do, and cannot understand that others do or why that is so.

Yea, just throw dirt on the opposition and accuse them of being barbarically inhumane. Great argument!

Are you now insinuating that I support suicide bombings? You keep trying to play freud, but are just as misguided as him. Quit trying to presume you know me dude. You don't even know yourself.

No, it isn't. I'm sure you are capable of understanding, but you are too unwilling, afraid of any responsibility for thoughts and actions.

Yes, it is. I'm sure you are capable of understanding, but you are too unwilling, afraid of any responsibility for thoughts and actions.

Ideological excuses came later. At first it was just faction-fighting between rival extended families competing for political influence.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The intricacies of the sunni-shia split are beyond your idealistic mentality to understand.

You weren't paying attention. I accepted for the sake of argument your non-Qur'anic sources for the view that the prophet had no responsibility for breaking up the marriage, and said that this would be a sound moral argument for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable cases: but, that is not how the Qur'an draws the line.

No, you weren't paying attention. The Quran only allows such marriages, that is all it does. You are the one with the added insinuations.

You feel justified in murdering him if he buys the house next door and expects to vote in your local elections. That's rather extreme.

yea rite, as if that is what the jews actually did. Who do you think you are convincing with this crap? The first riot was in 1920, and this was the verdict of the Palin commision:

The court placed the blame for the riots on the Zionists, 'whose impatience to achieve their ultimate goal and indiscretion are largely responsible for this unhappy state of feeling’[12]

Now why were the Zionists blamed for the riots? The following quote IS FURTHER & CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT SEDITIOUS TALK OF SEPARATION BEGAN BEFORE THE VIOLENCE. These are the words of Lord Curzon:

Now, as regards the facts, they are these. First, Palestine has been conquered by the British, with only very insignificant aid from small French and Italian contingents, and it is now being administered by the British. The Zionist declaration of our Government has been followed by a very considerable immigration of Jews. One of the difficulties of the situation arises from the fact that the Zionists have taken full advantage - and are disposed to take even fuller advantage - of the opportunity which was then offered to them. You have only to read, as probably most of us do, their periodical 'Palestine', and, indeed, their pronouncements in the papers, to see that their programme is expanding from day to day. They now talk about a Jewish State. The Arab portion of the population is well-nigh forgotten and is to be ignored. They not only claim the boundaries of the old Palestine, but they claim to spread across the Jordan into the rich countries lying to the east, and, indeed, there seems to be very small limit to the aspirations which they now form. The Zionist programme, and the energy with which it is being carried out, have not unnaturally had the consequence of arousing the keen suspicions of the Arabs. By 'the Arabs' I do not merely mean Feisal and his followers at Damascus, but the so-called Arabs who inhabit the country. There seems, from the telegrams we receive, to be growing up an increasing friction between the two communities, a feeling by the Arabs that we are really behind the Zionists and not behind the Arabs, and altogether a situation which is becoming rather critical ...'

How was I to guess that you meant my source (a Wiki on Balfour) said that the British government was unwilling to consult Arabs? Churchill, who ran the Colonial Office at the time, was unwilling to consult Jews either: his decisions to declare Transjordan a Judenrein zone and to restrict Jewish immigration to less than the Arab immigration were not welcome to the Jews, anymore than the 1930's decision to shut off immigration entirely. If you want to lambaste the Brits for imperialistic arrogance, I won't argue, but you are reflexively ascribing all evil to the Jews here.

Clearly, I am not the only one who blames the Jews for starting the fire. The quote above clearly demonstrates that. And by 1947, this was the situation, as told by Chomsky:

"The Zionists were by far the more powerful and better organized force, and by May 1948, when the state of Israel was formally established, about 300,000 Palestinians already had been expelled from their homes or had fled the fighting, and the Zionists controlled a region well beyond the area of the original Jewish state that had been proposed by the UN. Now it's then that Israel was attacked by its neighbors - in May 1948; it's then, after the Zionists had taken control of this much larger part of the region and hundreds of thousands of civilians had been forced out, not before."

Your claim was that your source (professor Avineri) said that Moses Hess and his followers were unwilling to consult the Arabs.

I did not mean Hess but Aveneri who you were quoting in that post. That particular quote, I assumed also came from the same page.

England does not entirely consider itself "Europe" even now, and certainly did not then. The Jews were centered in eastern Europe around Poland and the countries around it (Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine, Rumania) which, of course, is where the first Zionist groups were founded-- not in England, of course, since the Jewish population in Palestine was already larger than the Jewish population in England even before any of the modern migration.

So why did they not demand a homeland in Eastern Europe, or Germany? They first moved to the area, and then started seditious activity, which resulted in the local backlash.

So Turks who move to Germany have no right to complain about skinheads beating them up or trying to kill them, and blacks who moved into white neighborhoods in Michigan had no right to complain if the KKK burned crosses on their lawn or burned their whole house down? I will always oppose such people, regardless of which ethnicities are involved.

Are the Turks demanding their own homeland in Germany? Did the African-Americans (not "blacks"!) in Michigan demand to separate from the United States??

I strongly resented George W. Bush's usurpation of the Presidency.... I did not however respond to these totally legitimate grievances by going to Orange County, or some such thick pocket of Republicans, and shooting down kids in a schoolyard or shoppers at a mall.

----

This has been the nature of practically all the Palestinian actions since 1920.

I can't believe you just tried to equate the plight of the Palestinians with that of the loss of Gore in the election...

What the hell is wrong with you ??? Oh the poor helpless americans... (who were dumb enough to elect Bush a SECOND TIME!)

I'm sure we will never see eye to eye on the morals, but at least you should understand that the imbalance of force is not going to change for the foreseeable future.

Maybe not in your lifetime (whatever is left of it)...

There is not going to be any turning of the tables, I know that.

(enjoy the ride by the way, we already had ours)

There will be, on the other hand, a complete destabilization..

(no winners will emerge this time)

I still am asking. If you are trying to convey a point, you are not doing very well.

For the umpteenth time: the idea that human civilization has made any actual progress as a species, towards its genuine betterment, is the assertion I am rejecting. All progress that has been made has been due to oppression and suffering inflicted on the weak and powerless, and their exploitation and at the cost of the environment, which is close to collapse itself.

the elite back then were worse off than most poor today:

Even if that is true, that progress is built on blood and spoils. You might consider that advancement, I do not.

 

[bob x]

It's called a sense of basic human dignity, the need to clothe oneself.

I see it as the opposite of dignity to feel a need to be ashamed of what you are.

Not to mention standards of hygiene.

I shower usually more than once a day; I'm actually rather obsessive about feeling clean. Clothes, which keep the sweat on your skin, made me feel dirtier.

Does your friend, whose place you are staying in, know that you are walking around naked?

Of course he does. He is not nudist by inclination himself, but knows I am. I used to make sure to at least wear a bathrobe when he was here, until it became plain he doesn't care.

Yea, just throw dirt on the opposition and accuse them of being barbarically inhumane. Great argument!

Their conduct IS barbarically inhumane. Maybe if you saw family and neighbors killed in this kind of attack you would start to understand.

Are you now insinuating that I support suicide bombings?

I said you weren't the type to "join" that kind of campaign, by which I was meaning that I don't picture you donating funds or writing propaganda for them let alone participating in murders, but I don't ever see you upset by such activities, which you shrug off or find excuses for.

Yes, it is. I'm sure you are capable of understanding, but you are too unwilling, afraid of any responsibility for thoughts and actions.

Huh? I'm the one who DOES take responsibility. You are the one who never admits error, and thinks nobody's actions are their own, anyway.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The intricacies of the sunni-shia split are beyond your idealistic mentality to understand.

Then inform me.

No, you weren't paying attention. The Quran only allows such marriages, that is all it does. You are the one with the added insinuations.

It doesn't allow ANY marriage to a woman who was once your relative's; it does still make distinctions between the permissible and impermissible cases. It just doesn't draw that line based on whether you had anything to do with the breakup: it draws the line based on whether the relative is by adoption or by blood.

this was the verdict of the Palin commision:

Did you even read through the article or did you just look to quote-mine? And are you really going to claim the behavior described was justified? "The majority of the victims were members of the old Yishuv, non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. About 300 Jews from the Old City were evacuated." That's right: at a time when not a single Palestinian had been forced from his home, the Arabs were forcibly dispossessing, as well as beating bloody and in some cases killing, a community that had been there for over 700 years and had nothing to do with the recent immigration.

The commission was a clique of anti-Semitic officers who were not even well-informed about the players, accusing the Workers of Zion, a moderate Socialist group who had nothing to do with the incident, of being "Bolsheviks" and Jabotinsky, who despised all forms of socialism, of being the head "Bolshevik"; the government did not accept their report and never published it, and in fact sacked the whole military administration in favor of civilians.

by 1947, this was the situation, as told by Chomsky:

Here, Chomsky is outright lying to claim either that the Zionists controlled more than their assigned zone (they did not in fact yet control even all of their own zone) or that "hundreds of thousands" of Palestinians had already fled their homes, before May 1948.

So why did they not demand a homeland in Eastern Europe, or Germany?

The Zionists of the 1870's, according to Goldstein, WERE seeking an enclave in Poland or Rumania. But the Czarist government imprisoned or executed anyone talking openly about greater autonomy anywhere, and nothing came of the Rumanian project. Germany, of course, would not even grant Jews the right to continue to LIVE: the Palestinians have taken the same attitude, but are not as effective in killing as the Germans.

Did the African-Americans (not "blacks"!) in Michigan demand to separate from the United States??

YES, a lot of them did, back in the days when "Afro-American" was the trendy term. (Nowadays "Afro" is no longer used except for a hairstyle; the variant "African-American" which you insist on does still have some usage in windy political platforms, but "black" is what people actually say.)

I can't believe you just tried to equate the plight of the Palestinians with that of the loss of Gore in the election...

The loss of Gore cost us thousands of lives. In 1920, when we are talking about, the Palestinians hadn't lost anybody. Their "plight" would be more accurately compared to the "plight" of the Arizonans who gripe about the government not doing enough to stop all those Mexicans coming in.

Oh the poor helpless americans... (who were dumb enough to elect Bush a SECOND TIME!)

I do not believe that we elected Bush even one time. Florida 2000 was certainly stolen, and Ohio 2004 probably also.

There will be, on the other hand, a complete destabilization..

(no winners will emerge this time)

I asked you this once before: what exactly keeps you from suicide?

For the umpteenth time: the idea that human civilization has made any actual progress as a species, towards its genuine betterment, is the assertion I am rejecting.

The vast improvements in our lives are quite "genuine" betterments, as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, everything comes at a price, and those who suffered to get us where we are cannot be recompensed in this world. But the sufferings were for a limited time while the betterments continue for generations to come.

 

[c0de]

I see it as the opposite of dignity to feel a need to be ashamed of what you are.

Dude, you are seriously twisted, u know that?

By the way, why do you clothe yourself when you are in public? You actually believe people should be walking around butt naked?

Clothes, which keep the sweat on your skin, made me feel dirtier.

As opposed to plastering that sweat all over the furniture? I wouldn't step foot inside a nudist's home even if it was a SHE !

Of course he does. He is not nudist by inclination himself, but knows I am. I used to make sure to at least wear a bathrobe when he was here, until it became plain he doesn't care.

You and your friends are sick.

sick in the head !

Their conduct IS barbarically inhumane. Maybe if you saw family and neighbors killed in this kind of attack you would start to understand.

Silly yank! you are talking to a Pakistani by birth. Are you going to lecture ME on a violent society ?? Tell me, how many bombs have exploded around your childhood neighborhood ??

but I don't ever see you upset by such activities, which you shrug off or find excuses for.

Why are you speaking to me as if you have known me for a long time?

Huh? I'm the one who DOES take responsibility. You are the one who never admits error, and thinks nobody's actions are their own, anyway.

Never admits error? What are you talking about? I admitted you were right about superdeterminism, I just recently admitted you are right about the medieval age.

You are the one who is so blind that you are incapable of seeing yourself as wrong even AFTER being proven wrong. Case in point:

The vast improvements in our lives are quite "genuine" betterments, as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, everything comes at a price, and those who suffered to get us where we are cannot be recompensed in this world. But the sufferings were for a limited time while the betterments continue for generations to come.

That is such complete and utter hypocricy from your end!

You are so quick to blame God for the existence of evil (if there is no free will) yet so willing to partake in its benefits for mankind and forgive this species of everything just so you can have your bowl of mashed potatoes and live to be 80!

Then inform me.

The split was not caused by the personalities themselves. Uthman (ra) refused to even defend himself against his attackers because they were Muslim! Ali (ra) had ordered his sons to protect him, but they were told to stand down by Uthman (ra) himself. Uthman (ra) was the first real martyr in this conflict, proving that it had nothing to do with Ali (ra) and the rest of the Sahaba.

It was due to politics of the vast territories that the Muslims took over and their inhabitants who used the succession issue as an excuse to shake of the central authorities which governed them. They would have taken any reason at that point, however absurd.

The idea that the family ties were responsible is actually what the SHIAS claim. And you are just supporting their biased point of view by your argument.

It doesn't allow ANY marriage to a woman who was once your relative's; it does still make distinctions between the permissible and impermissible cases. It just doesn't draw that line based on whether you had anything to do with the breakup: it draws the line based on whether the relative is by adoption or by blood.

But where is the proof that the Prophet broke up their marriage?? Drawing distinctions by itself doesnt do anything, unless you can prove that he forced him to divorce his wife (which he did NOT!)

Here, Chomsky is outright lying to claim either that the Zionists controlled more than their assigned zone (they did not in fact yet control even all of their own zone) or that "hundreds of thousands" of Palestinians had already fled their homes, before May 1948.

rite... chomsky is lying now... is he?

everyone is lying,

except you elijah...

The commission was a clique of anti-Semitic officers

rite... everyone who says the Arabs are not the ones to blame, is an anti-semite...

But I am sure you accept the Peel commission who sided with the Jews later on, rite?

Did you even read through the article or did you just look to quote-mine? And are you really going to claim the behavior described was justified? "The majority of the victims were members of the old Yishuv, non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. About 300 Jews from the Old City were evacuated."

You just contradicted yourself.

By using the proportionality as a standard to determine blame, how can you possibly be on Israel's side today? How many more Palestinians die as opposed to Israel's attacks?

That's right: at a time when not a single Palestinian had been forced from his home, the Arabs were forcibly dispossessing, as well as beating bloody and in some cases killing, a community that had been there for over 700 years and had nothing to do with the recent immigration.

Since when were the askhekanzi jews part of that community, exactly?

And by the way, the riots were more about the proletariat farmers vs the bourgeousie jewish landowners rather than anything else.

I recently read on a Jewish information site that the first land purchases by the jewish funds garnered no arab hostility. If this was some ethnic or racial or religious issue, at its core, then it would have popped up rite in the beginning. But it wasn't.

I asked you before, why did the Jews live peacefully with the Arabs throughout middle history? Jews thrived in Muslim lands historically. How many holocausts were commited by Muslims???

The Zionists of the 1870's, according to Goldstein, WERE seeking an enclave in Poland or Rumania. But the Czarist government imprisoned or executed anyone talking openly about greater autonomy anywhere, and nothing came of the Rumanian project. Germany, of course, would not even grant Jews the right to continue to LIVE: the Palestinians have taken the same attitude, but are not as effective in killing as the Germans.

So the same happened EVERYWHERE! You know why? Because that is exactly what happens EVERYTIME a separatist movement starts anywhere!

The loss of Gore cost us thousands of lives. In 1920, when we are talking about, the Palestinians hadn't lost anybody.

How many americans were dead by the time Gore lost?

How many Palestinians have been lost since 1920, as opposed to Americans since bush? How are you even comparing???

I do not believe that we elected Bush even one time. Florida 2000 was certainly stolen, and Ohio 2004 probably also.

Oh reeaaaaly?

That certainly has a bearing on your argument about the political process of your "republic" now dont it?

 

[bob x]

Dude, you are seriously twisted, u know that?

I understand that I am in the minority. But there are a lot more like me than you probably think, quite functional and normal-seeming people, and a lot happier than your bitterly twisted self.

By the way, why do you clothe yourself when you are in public?

I do not impose myself on the unwilling. I am me, they are them.

You actually believe people should be walking around butt naked?

Nudists are my favorite people to hang out with. We have nothing to hide from each other, and have the most delightful conversations.

As opposed to plastering that sweat all over the furniture?

I sit on towels.

you are talking to a Pakistani by birth. Are you going to lecture ME on a violent society ?? Tell me, how many bombs have exploded around your childhood neighborhood ??

Anybody who set off bombs in your neighborhood obviously had a grievance of some kind.

So you deserved it, right?

You are so quick to blame God for the existence of evil (if there is no free will)

The person who acts to create the evil is to blame. YOU are the one who puts all the blame on God.

The split was not caused by the personalities themselves. Uthman (ra) refused to even defend himself against his attackers because they were Muslim! Ali (ra) had ordered his sons to protect him, but they were told to stand down by Uthman (ra) himself. Uthman (ra) was the first real martyr in this conflict, proving that it had nothing to do with Ali (ra) and the rest of the Sahaba.

I thought the split started with Abu Bakr. Can you try to tell the story from the beginning, rather than start with Uthman who is nothing but a name to me, and not take for granted that I'm supposed to know the outline?

The idea that the family ties were responsible is actually what the SHIAS claim. And you are just supporting their biased point of view by your argument.

I didn't realize I was making an argument. All I was ever told was that when Muhammad died, Abu Bakr and Ali were claimants to the succession, because of marriage alliances to the prophet, each of them related through blood, marriage, and friendship to a whole bunch of people taking their side.

But where is the proof that the Prophet broke up their marriage?? Drawing distinctions by itself doesnt do anything, unless you can prove that he forced him to divorce his wife (which he did NOT!)

How many times do I have to repeat myself before you stop arguing against something I'm not saying?

I don't believe the prophet broke up their marriage. You fill in details from other sources, and I accept them. And if you make the distinction between permissible and impermissible cases of taking a woman who once was your relative's on this basis, "When you had nothing to do with breaking up their marriage, there's no problem," I would say that you are making a decent moral argument.

But is the Qur'an supposed to be guidance for more than just a handful of people in 7th century Arabia? If that's all it is, just a quaint piece of history about a period long ago and far away that you find more interesting than I do, then there isn't much point in arguing about it. It is reputed to be guidance for a community currently numbering over a billion, which is likely right as we speak to contain several cases of men interested in women currently or recently married to some relative, under a wide variety of circumstances, some of which you or I might approve, some of which are ugly circumstances. What guidance does the Qur'an give? It's OK if the relative is by adoption, not if the relative is by blood. That's what it says, nothing about how the man's responsibility or lack of responsibility for destroying the previous marriage should be a deciding factor.

rite... chomsky is lying now... is he?

VERY blatantly. Find some other source (since I'm sure you would reflexively distrust any source I chose) for the sequence of events, from Partition Plan resolution by the UN to the Declaration of Independence by Israel, and see how the history compares to Chomsky's version.

rite... everyone who says the Arabs are not the ones to blame, is an anti-semite...

The Arabs beat hundreds of people bloody, so that some died, and drove hundreds of others from their homes: and the people they attacked didn't even have anything to do with the situation they were complaining about-- except for also being Jewish. And you don't think the Arabs should be blamed. Well of course: the victims were Jewish, weren't they?

By using the proportionality as a standard to determine blame, how can you possibly be on Israel's side today?

I have frequently (including on this very thread) criticized Israel's indifference to bystander casualties during their strikes. But "proportionality" has nothing to do with 1920, when the Arabs had no excuse for killing ANYBODY.

How many more Palestinians die as opposed to Israel's attacks?

You forget that the Palestinians have a head-start (the violence was quite one-sided in the other direction for a long time) and a propensity for attacking random victims. If we are only counting non-combatants, the Israelis have certainly lost more. Counting combatants, of course, the Palestinians have lost WAY more-- and rightly so.

Since when were the askhekanzi jews part of that community, exactly?

Part of the Jewish community? Since the 13th century BC.
Part of the East Jerusalem Jewish Quarter community? They weren't, not at all, which is why attacking the Quarter, in response to Ashkenazis immigrating, when the residents of the Quarter had not asked the Ashkenazis to immigrate, and did not all think that it was a good idea, is a prime example of the "randomness" so characteristic of Palestinian murders.

And by the way, the riots were more about the proletariat farmers vs the bourgeousie jewish landowners rather than anything else.

I thought you believed the Palin commission, who found that the Jews were all Bolsheviks. So it was the Palestinians who were the Bolsheviks? Which class did the people in the Quarter belong to? Does that matter?

I asked you before, why did the Jews live peacefully with the Arabs throughout middle history?

Because they took off their hats and bowed whenever they met a Muslim, never rode a horse, lest their head be higher than a Muslim's, got off the sidewalk if a Muslim was on it, and let the local shaykh once a year take from them what he wanted, and ritually slap them on the face. It was still better than how Christians treated them, God knows, but if they had ever expected to be treated like equals they would have been stomped quickly.

So the same happened EVERYWHERE! You know why? Because that is exactly what happens EVERYTIME a separatist movement starts anywhere!

The Russians let every one of the SSR's declare independence. Belgium and Luxembourg separated from the Netherlands without a shot fired. Spain recently granted considerable autonomy to Catalonia. It all depends on circumstances: a clear understanding about borders and division of resources helps. When Georgia left the USSR, it thought it would keep control of the "autonomous regions" and when they tried to secede in turn: war. Ethiopia let Eritrea go, under perfectly amicable terms, and then a few years later what should have been a trivially resolvable ambiguity about a little stretch of the border blew up. Even the famous case of the Confederacy seceding from the US might have stayed peaceful (a lot of people in the North said, "We're better off without them," and I'm far from the only one who still feels that way) except that there was no way to draw defensible borders, and the South insisted on seizing communal property without negotiating the matter.

In this particular case, separation from the Ottomans was desired by the Arabs also; separation between the Arabs and Jews was not inevitable, and certainly did not have to go the way that it did. The impossibility of drawing clean boundary lines between the communities made separation a bad idea; a unitary state with equal rights for all members of any religion would have been better.

How many americans were dead by the time Gore lost?

If I waited until Bush's stupidity had cost us a few thousand in the Towers and a few thousand more in Iraq, and then shot down schoolkids, that would be OK?

How many Palestinians have been lost since 1920

Since they CHOSE VIOLENCE, you mean?

That certainly has a bearing on your argument about the political process of your "republic" now dont it?

It was a serious breakdown of the system, and I did not believe at the time that the US would recover, or ever hold an honest election again; I would have emigrated to Canada if they would have had me (they want young immigrants, not old ones; they needed me to put $10,000 in a bank account to prove I wouldn't be a burden, and I couldn't raise the sum).

The Supreme Court, as I kept showing you, does not feel it has to obey the wishes of the majority. Therefore, when a proposal to let the Supreme Court decide disputed Presidential elections was raised in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison, one of the main authors of the Constitution, said "It is unthinkable to allow the Court any such role, for it is the branch designed to be least responsive to the popular will"-- and Justice Breyer, dissenting in Bush v. Gore, quoted this. It was a terrible mistake for Gore to allow the case to go to the federal courts. 2004 compounded the problem: to avoid having any recounts again, many places did things by machines, designed not to keep any paper record of the votes so that the reported totals could not be checked; so the reported results in Ohio have frequently been doubted, and there is no way to know. Such machines have now been outlawed, everywhere.

The United States will never tolerate such abuses of the electoral system again. This is not to say, of course, that something else, something we're not even thinking about now, won't go wrong in the future. I have never claimed that any human system was infallible.

 

[c0de]

I understand that I am in the minority. But there are a lot more like me than you probably think, quite functional and normal-seeming people,

... an almost homeless nudist living in his friends apartment, who used to think he was a prophet and tried to offer himself as a human sacrifice to the Mullah of Iran... is telling me, he is "quite functional and normal-seeming" .... who by the way, typed this post while sitting butt naked in front of a computer....

Yes, quite normal, and functional.

and a lot happier than your bitterly twisted self.

Oh, I am sure you are happy.

(Most delusional people are.)

As for me, I am happy, that I am not happy.

Anybody who set off bombs in your neighborhood obviously had a grievance of some kind.

So you deserved it, right?

My country actually did deserve every single bomb that has gone off in it. If you knew what I know about my country's history, you would know that.

But the innocent people who have died, they did not deserve to die. This included the Pakistanis, Israelis or Palestinians etc. This does not mean their deaths absolve their own sides of their crimes. The nations of Israel, Pakistan etc are all responsible and are paying for their own mistakes. >THERE IS NO MORAL HIGHGROUND HERE< And for the Israelis to pretend like there is, is a joke!

The person who acts to create the evil is to blame. YOU are the one who puts all the blame on God.

God is not a "person". He is not part of the equation.

He is a transcendent entity that created the definitions of good and evil which you are using! He was the one that created the concept of 2+2=4! There was no such concept before He created it, and there was no "good" or "evil" before He decreed so. And He said that we are the ones responsible for "evil" and He will guide us through it.

That is faith.

I thought the split started with Abu Bakr. Can you try to tell the story from the beginning, rather than start with Uthman who is nothing but a name to me, and not take for granted that I'm supposed to know the outline?

You have taken the shia's version of the story and accepted it as fact. They are the ones who claim the split started with Abu Bakr, which is an idiotic claim on the face of it. In fact, it is so incredibly stupid that it is comical to think how the Shia actually live with themselves.

(NOTE: I think the Sunnis are idiots too, but the shias are just like, a whole different level of stupid)

Think about this: first they claim that Ali (ra) went through all this (supposed) humiliation just to keep the Muslims united. Their own sources say that the only reason he accepted Abu Bakr (ra) was because he did not want the Muslims to split. Well, if that is true, then why the hell did you people split!!!??? Your own leader, Ali (ra) went through all that (alleged) humiliation just to keep you morons from splitting, and you went and split anyway??? What kind of retardation is that?

Their own history stands against their own existence! That is how absurd this whole situation has always been.

The actual split happened well after Ali (ra) or Abu Bakr (ra). Uthman (ra) by the way, was the first real martyr of this stupidity, even though there were no Shias at the time. It was during his rule that the politics started to unravel. And it were POLITICS which caused the split. It had NOTHING to do with family.

Both the sunnis and the shias accuse each other of fabricating hadiths and narratives to prove their point. But the fact is that history and logic itself show the real causes of the split had nothing to do with these personalities themselves but were a result of the rapid expansion of Muslim power over vast areas, whose populations wanted a reason to "split" and chose this particular issue above others even when Ali (ra) himself rejected their offers to lead them.

It is a FACT that the first time the seditionists organized, it was under Uthman (ra) rule and these same people approached Ali (ra) and offered him the caliphate if only he would lead a rebellion and he REJECTED their offer and sent his own two sons to guard Uthman (ra), who in turn told them to stand down and let his assasins murder him in front of his own familly, rather than himself being responsible for any shedding of Muslim blood!

I didn't realize I was making an argument. All I was ever told was that when Muhammad died, Abu Bakr and Ali were claimants to the succession, because of marriage alliances to the prophet, each of them related through blood, marriage, and friendship to a whole bunch of people taking their side.

By saying that Ali (ra) was ever a serious contender to Abu Bakr (ra) you are making the Shia's argument for them. The fact is that Abu Bakr (ra) was the Prophet's best friend, the most respected Sahaba after the Prophet, the first after his first wife to convert to Islam, and a man who has been mentioned MULTIPLE times in the Quran itself.

The idea that he "usurped" the caliphate at a time when when all the Sahaba who had lived their lives with the prophet were still alive is retarded! You think they would have just let this man and Umar (ra) just do something like that if the Prophet actually named Ali (ra) as his successor openly??? Think about it, how idiotic a claim is that?

These are the people who fought and died alongside the Prophet. Who left their homes and faced dangers unimanginable for him. If he actually named Ali (ra) as his successor, and then anyone came and usurped his "right", how could this action be tolerated by anyone???

Even the fact that there was a council to elect a leader at all stands against the suggestion that any leader was appointed. All sides unanimously agree that Ali (ra) was disappointed that he was not PRESENT at the council. No one, not even the shias can say that Ali (ra) expected to be made the caliph. His own words indicate that he just felt left out of the proceedings, and this is why he was a little offended.

But this only shows how his status was that of a junior, compared to that of the other Sahaba who preceded him to the caliphate. He was a young man at the time compared to those men who had much more experience under their belts.

What guidance does the Qur'an give? It's OK if the relative is by adoption, not if the relative is by blood. That's what it says, nothing about how the man's responsibility or lack of responsibility for destroying the previous marriage should be a deciding factor.

Why are you assuming the Quran is allowing people to break up marriages !! ?? Where are you getting this idea from ??

VERY blatantly. Find some other source

No, screw you!

I am not gonna "find some other source" just because you don't like Chomsky!

The guy is a respected academic and if you don't like it, go in the corner and cry!

The Arabs beat hundreds of people bloody, so that some died, and drove hundreds of others from their homes: and the people they attacked didn't even have anything to do with the situation they were complaining about-- except for also being Jewish. And you don't think the Arabs should be blamed. Well of course: the victims were Jewish, weren't they?

I never said they shouldn't be blamed! I am not giving the moral high ground to ANYONE!

What I am saying is that the Jews ALSO should be blamed for starting trouble in a land that WAS NOT THEIRS!

The Russians let every one of the SSR's declare independence....

Yea, that example makes a lot of sense considering what I was talking about. Good job

But "proportionality" has nothing to do with 1920, when the Arabs had no excuse for killing ANYBODY.

Yes, THEY DID have an excuse!

They of course killed anyone they could find, which was WRONG. They started rioting which is always a stupid idea. But this doesnt mean they did not have any legitimate grievances, which they did, and you know it!

You forget that the Palestinians have a head-start (the violence was quite one-sided in the other direction for a long time) and a propensity for attacking random victims.

And Israel is doing EXACTLY the same thing. Where is their moral high ground now??? If they really were morally superior, then they would have shown it, but they haven't, have they?

Part of the Jewish community? Since the 13th century BC.

And when was Moses (pbuh) around??

What was that about "his people" having a claim to the land again???

Tell me, how does this affect your Jews are canaanites argument??? What rite do the askenazim have to the land anyway????

I thought you believed the Palin commission, who found that the Jews were all Bolsheviks. So it was the Palestinians who were the Bolsheviks? Which class did the people in the Quarter belong to? Does that matter?

The Jews might have been the proletariat in Europe, but they were obviously the landowners in Palestine... another contradiction in Israel's Zionist existence.

Because they took off their hats and bowed whenever they met a Muslim, never rode a horse, lest their head be higher than a Muslim's, got off the sidewalk if a Muslim was on it, and let the local shaykh once a year take from them what he wanted, and ritually slap them on the face. It was still better than how Christians treated them, God knows, but if they had ever expected to be treated like equals they would have been stomped quickly.

Where exactly are you getting this from?

If I waited until Bush's stupidity had cost us a few thousand in the Towers and a few thousand more in Iraq, and then shot down schoolkids, that would be OK?

Wait... so in this example, what Bush did, is equivalent to what the Jews did ???

(lol, thanks)

Since they CHOSE VIOLENCE, you mean?

Since the Jews chose the seditionist option, I mean.

This is not to say, of course, that something else, something we're not even thinking about now, won't go wrong in the future.

Oh, im counting on it

;-)

 

[bob x]

... is telling me, he is "quite functional and normal-seeming"

No, I wasn't making any claims about my own normality: I was telling you that there are actually a lot of nudists out there, whom you would not suspect (if you did not meet them in a nudist place, which of course you are not likely to do) of being nudist by inclination, since otherwise there is nothing particularly unusual about them. I was responding to your claim that only "twisted" people don't like clothes: actually, lots of people don't.

.... who by the way, typed this post while sitting butt naked in front of a computer....

I don't know if you spend time on other boards as well, but if so you have probably conversed with a lot of people who are naked at the computer. It's not particularly rare (on another board I frequent, largely but not wholly populated with college-age kids, majority American but worldwide, about 30% answered a poll that they were naked at the computer "always", "often", or "sometimes"). While nudity in public is not generally tolerated outside of restricted contexts, most cultures do not have this arch-emotional reaction to private nudity that the Muslim culture has instilled in you.

As for me, I am happy, that I am not happy.

If that works for you.

But the innocent people who have died, they did not deserve to die.

Was it so hard to say that? I do not approve when innocent Palestinians die, either; but our whole argument started over the question of who killed innocents first, and that was the Palestinian side. And the Palestinian policy of intentionally targeting the innocent angers a lot of people: you not only didn't seem to see that anger as justified, you didn't even sound like you understand that such anger exists, and has a lot to do with the motivations.

God is not a "person".

Do you have some definition? Because somewhere a long time ago (probably back on the "Muslim missionary" thread) I explained my private usage of "personal" and when I denied that God was "personal" (in my sense) you seemed to think I was wrong-headed. A "personal" being, as I use the term, has foresight, precalculating possible future outcomes, and will, some preferences among the outcomes, and takes actions which he believes will lead to the outcomes preferred. A "personal" conception of God is a belief is "personal" in that way, except that all his beliefs about future outcomes are correct (unlike ours, which are often mistaken), his will is objectively good (unlike ours, which often prefers evil outcomes), and his actions are sufficient to achieve his will (unlike ourselves, who often have insufficient powers to accomplish what we want).

He is not part of the equation.

I don't even know what you mean by that. It sounds (in isolation) like a denial that God even exists, or has any influence on what happens although (in context) I am sure that is not what you intend to say.

He is a transcendent entity that created the definitions of good and evil which you are using!

Here I profoundly disagree with you, and take rather the position of Socrates that "nothing is good because gods say so; rather, the gods say so because it is good."

He was the one that created the concept of 2+2=4!

That's not even meaningful enough to be true or false.

And He said that we are the ones responsible for "evil"

See now, earlier you and rodger were specifically saying that God and only God is responsible for anything at all.

You have taken the shia's version of the story and accepted it as fact.

I had no idea that multiple versions of the history even existed at all: I thought the basic facts were agreed, and that the issue was which side was in the right. You are doing precisely what I asked you not to do, that is, taking it for granted that I know the outline of your version of the history, making vague allusions to incidents within that story without giving any sense of what the sequence of events was.

They are the ones who claim the split started with Abu Bakr, which is an idiotic claim on the face of it. In fact, it is so incredibly stupid that it is comical to think how the Shia actually live with themselves.

The claim may or may not be true, but "on the face of it" (that is, in isolation, without any further information about what happened) there is nothing nonsensical about it.

Think about this: first they claim that Ali (ra) went through all this (supposed) humiliation just to keep the Muslims united. Their own sources say that the only reason he accepted Abu Bakr (ra) was because he did not want the Muslims to split. Well, if that is true, then why the hell did you people split!!!??? Your own leader, Ali (ra) went through all that (alleged) humiliation just to keep you morons from splitting, and you went and split anyway??? What kind of retardation is that?

Why are you shouting at ME assuming that I am a Shi'ite? I have nothing to do with it, and don't even know what happened. Certainly this would not be the only time in history that someone tried hard to prevent a split, but ultimately could not. Robert E. Lee was vehemently against the splitting of the United States, but in the end had to fight on the side of Virginia.

Uthman (ra) by the way, was the first real martyr of this stupidity, even though there were no Shias at the time. It was during his rule that the politics started to unravel. And it were POLITICS which caused the split.

Who were the political factions? What were the issues?

the real causes of the split had nothing to do with these personalities themselves but were a result of the rapid expansion of Muslim power over vast areas, whose populations wanted a reason to "split" and chose this particular issue above others

Indeed. The state was already too large for a single monarchical head. Local autonomy was a perfectly reasonable request, to my mind. Who is it that decided there was going to be one Caliph at the head of everything? And who decided which person that Caliph was going to be?

even when Ali (ra) himself rejected their offers to lead them.

Who is "they"? When did this happen? What had happened before to lead up to this? Can you try to tell the story from the start instead of jumping all around?

By saying that Ali (ra) was ever a serious contender to Abu Bakr (ra) you are making the Shia's argument for them.

Ordinarily, a monarchical position is preferentially filled by a reasonably young and vigorous candidate with children who might succeed him, to give some prospects for continuity. I don't know why Abu Bakr was chosen instead; there may have been perfectly good reasons; but you are acting as if there was some absurdity about people thinking Ali was suitable.

The fact is that Abu Bakr (ra) was the Prophet's best friend, the most respected Sahaba after the Prophet, the first after his first wife to convert to Islam, and a man who has been mentioned MULTIPLE times in the Quran itself.

Now here, for example, you are using an Arabic word which in your previous post I interpreted to mean the clan that was supporting Ali; but now it looks like this is the word usually translated "Companion" of the prophet? Except that your usage appears to include Muhammad within the ranks of the "Sahaba" so I'm still not sure if I have it right. You are arguing as you would against some other Muslim who, you can take it for granted, already knows your terms.

You think they would have just let this man and Umar (ra) just do something like that if the Prophet actually named Ali (ra) as his successor openly???

Do the Shi'a claim that the prophet actually named a successor? My understanding is that he hadn't said a thing about what was to happen after him, and this was the whole problem.

Even the fact that there was a council to elect a leader at all stands against the suggestion that any leader was appointed. All sides unanimously agree that Ali (ra) was disappointed that he was not PRESENT at the council.

Was he travelling and unable to get back in time? Was he present but not invited? Did he try to attend and get turned away? You are not making this story at all clear. Who convened the council, and decided who would be heard there? Was it already taken for granted that there was going to be a single overall leader, and that the only question was who, or was the form of the new government itself an issue by the council?

Why are you assuming the Quran is allowing people to break up marriages !! ??

The Qur'an allows divorce, which can happen under many circumstances, some amicable but most involving bitter emotional conflicts, with one or the other or both parties either desiring the separation of their own free will, or under significant duress. Tell me, what does the Qur'an have to say about which circumstances are acceptable and which are not?

I am not gonna "find some other source" just because you don't like Chomsky!

Well, I'm certainly not going to believe anything which nobody but Chomsky says.

The guy is a respected academic

Academics generally regard him as dishonest and mentally unbalanced: as I told you, that goes back to when he worked in the linguistics field, before he started these political polemics which have gained him some popularity among non-professionals.

I never said they shouldn't be blamed!

You questioned my saying that anybody who thought they shouldn't be blamed, for murdering people who had nothing to do with the issue except for also being Jewish, must be prejudiced against Jews.

What I am saying is that the Jews ALSO should be blamed for starting trouble in a land that WAS NOT THEIRS!

Exactly what gave the Arabs the right to exclude? They had entered the land when they had the power to force themselves in; the Jews were entering as purchasers, and why should they not have done so, when the land was theirs before they were forcibly dispossessed?

Yes, THEY DID have an excuse!

They of course killed anyone they could find, which was WRONG.

These sentences are mutually contradictory.

And Israel is doing EXACTLY the same thing.

Not exactly. Israelis target combatants, seeking to minimize the ability of Palestinians to do harm to Israelis-- and in the process they show an inexcusable indifference to whether non-combatants are also injured or killed in the process. This is not, however, exactly the same as targeting non-combatants in the first place, as the Palestinians have always done.

And when was Moses (pbuh) around??

What was that about "his people" having a claim to the land again???

If you are going to address Moses with a "praise be upon him", you are accepting the premise.

Tell me, how does this affect your Jews are canaanites argument??? What rite do the askenazim have to the land anyway????

They are largely derived from the same mixture of the followers of Moses with the pre-existing inhabitants of Cana'an as the Sephardim and Mizrahim; of course there is some genetic contribution from eastern Europeans into the Ashkenazim as there is from southern Europeans into the Sephardim and from Arabs and Copts into the Mizrahim, but this turns out to be a distinct minority of the ancestry.

The Jews might have been the proletariat in Europe, but they were obviously the landowners in Palestine...

They were working their own lands, which rather blurs any class distinctions. In Europe, many of them were still in the basically parasitic trades (money-lending and spirits-distilling) to which the medievals had restricted them. Do you think social class makes some moral difference here?

Wait... so in this example, what Bush did, is equivalent to what the Jews did ???

I wasn't trying to make any parallel, just to answer your contention that the existence of a grievance, whatever grievance, is sufficient to excuse random murders. The closest parallel that I could find is, as I said, the Arizonans who are seriously upset at the number of Mexicans coming in. There is indeed a legitimate grievance there, but I would not accept it as an excuse for randomly killing any Mexicans they could find, particularly not if they are going to kill people who are not even recent immigrants but do happen to have a Hispanic surname.

Since the Jews chose the seditionist option, I mean.

The Arabs AND the Jews chose sedition against the Ottomans, if you consider sedition such a capital crime. Here I am not with you about the profound evil of seeking autonomy or independence, having been raised that "It is for these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; whenever a form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is their right, indeed their duty, to alter or abolish it, constituting a new government on such foundations as shall seem to them most conducive to their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed shall dictate that institutions long established not be overturned for light or transient causes, and all experience has shown that men are more inclined to suffer the evils they know, so long as the evils are sufferable, rather than to exchange them for evils they know not. But a long train of usurpations can evidence a design to subject them to utter tyranny."

As in the Shi'a-Sunni discussion above, you seem to take it for granted that government should consist of a unitary dictatorship in which local demands for self-governance are violently suppressed. So it was wrong to rebel against the Ottomans? And what was wrong with the British not consulting with the locals about anything? Nobody had ever consulted the locals before, either, nor do you think they should have: is the only problem that now it was non-Muslims not deferring to the wishes of Muslims?

Oh, im counting on it

You're just a fountain of benevolent wishes for all...

 

[c0de]

I was responding to your claim that only "twisted" people don't like clothes: actually, lots of people don't

Ever heard of the show "dexter" ?? That guy is pretty "normal seeming" and "functional" too... doesn't make him not twisted.

I don't know if you spend time on other boards

I don't.

most cultures do not have this arch-emotional reaction to private nudity that the Muslim culture has instilled in you.

And that's why we're better : P

If that works for you.

it does.

Was it so hard to say that?

???

I have said it many times before, even on this forum.

And the Palestinian policy of intentionally targeting the innocent angers a lot of people:

errr.... yea, including ME !

Do you have some definition?

My definition of God is this: He is the indefinable.

I don't even know what you mean by that. It sounds (in isolation) like a denial that God even exists, or has any influence on what happens although (in context) I am sure that is not what you intend to say.

God is the author of time and space, He is not part of them.

Here I profoundly disagree with you, and take rather the position of Socrates that "nothing is good because gods say so; rather, the gods say so because it is good."

I have respect for Socrates (much more so than Aristotle, actually) but I disagree with him on this issue.

God created good and evil.

See now, earlier you and rodger were specifically saying that God and only God is responsible for anything at all.

I said God was the cause/author of everything. That is the final implication of Omnipotence and Omniscience.

You are the one who said that if He is the author of evil, then that makes him responsible. I told you that position is an emotional one and makes no logical sense if evil is finite and good is infinite.

I had no idea that multiple versions of the history even existed at all: I thought the basic facts were agreed, and that the issue was which side was in the right. You are doing precisely what I asked you not to do, that is, taking it for granted that I know the outline of your version of the history, making vague allusions to incidents within that story without giving any sense of what the sequence of events was.

Well what did you expect??? You started by issuing judgments on the issue. How was I supposed to know you didn't even know who Uthman (ra) was?

If you want me to give you a quick recap, here it is:

There were some problems between the Ansar (the people of Medinah who sheltered the Makkans and the Prophet) and the Muhajirs (the people who came to Medinah from Makkah.) The Ansar felt that they deserved to succeed the Prophet because the first Muslim state (a republic) was formed in Medinah and so they deserved its leadership.

The main problem the Makkans like Abu Bakr and Umar (ra) had with this was a strategic. They knew the situation after the Prophet was going to be very tense and they argued the only way to keep the tribes of Arabia united was to elect a leader who was from the Quraish tribe, which was (and is) the most respected clan in Arabia.

As the funeral was going on, the Makkans learned that a council was already convened by the Ansar and they were electing a leader. They feared they would prematurely elect a Medinite, and rushed away. Now right here the ****e story is falsified, because if Ali (ra) was nominated by the Prophet himself, why was any council convened in the first place?

The Shiite argue that the fact that Fatima (the Prophet's daughter) was mad at Abu Bakr (ra) and refused to see him was due to his usurpation of the Caliphate, but this is better explained by her being mad at him for leaving the funeral, not "usurpation" of the Calipate.

Anyways, so at the council, Abu Bakr (ra) who was the most mild mannered of the Makkans, argued for a Quraish leader and nominated Umar (ra) and another sahaba (companion of the Prophet). Umar (ra) in turn nominated Abu Bakr (ra) and because he was the most respected person there, he was elected.

Ali (ra) was not present at the council because it was an emergency situation and he probably did not hear of it. This is why he was initially annoyed. But of course, he obeyed the Abu Bakr (ra) and all the other Caliphs, so there is NO QUESTION that the shia are unjustified in splitting.

The claim may or may not be true, but "on the face of it" (that is, in isolation, without any further information about what happened) there is nothing nonsensical about it.

It is nonsensical considering the fact that they claim Ali (ra) was nominated to succeed the Prophet. This claim itself is idiotic on so many levels.

First of all, there was no "successor" to the Prophet. Because is was the LAST PROPHET. Secondly, his political leadership was a result of his prophethood. So without prophethood, how was Ali (ra) going to automatically succeed the Prophet? And of course, if he actually was nominated, how could he possibly be sidelined? Also, Ali (ra) chose to obey the the calips, why? If he was nominated, then by obeying the other caliphs, he would be disobeying the prophet! And everyone knows that Ali (ra) would never suffer that.

Ordinarily, a monarchical position is preferentially filled by a reasonably young and vigorous candidate with children who might succeed him, to give some prospects for continuity. I don't know why Abu Bakr was chosen instead; there may have been perfectly good reasons; but you are acting as if there was some absurdity about people thinking Ali was suitable.

The caliphate is NOT a monarchical position, thats the point. The Prophet was not here to start a dynasty, he was a Prophet. Which is exactly why he would not name a successor, because it was not his job.

His job was to be a prophet and deliver the Quran, that job was done and was successful. He would be superseding his divine mandate if he decreed any political leadership for the Muslims after his death.

Who were the political factions? What were the issues?

--

Who is "they"? When did this happen? What had happened before to lead up to this? Can you try to tell

All the major provinces had dissidents by the time of Uthman (ra) who allowed a lot of political freedom. This was part of a deregulation of the economy during his time that brought a lot of wealth to the Muslims, but also allowed for a lot of sedition, unlike Umar's (ra) time when he ruled with a strong hand.

Eventually, the opposing factions joined together and marched on Medinah... You can look at what happened then by reading any biography of Uthman (ra). Check wikipedia...

Indeed. The state was already too large for a single monarchical head. Local autonomy was a perfectly reasonable request, to my mind. Who is it that decided there was going to be one Caliph at the head of everything? And who decided which person that Caliph was going to be?

Local autonomy was a good option. In fact, Uthman (ra) had made steps in that direction by allowing the inhabitants to keep their conquered lands etc. when other arabs had argued that the conquerers take possession of them.

A strong central authority could have worked too, but you would have needed someone like Umar (ra) to pull that off (and he succeeded at that).

The Qur'an allows divorce, which can happen under many circumstances, some amicable but most involving bitter emotional conflicts, with one or the other or both parties either desiring the separation of their own free will, or under significant duress. Tell me, what does the Qur'an have to say about which circumstances are acceptable and which are not?

forcing someone to divorce "under duress" (lolz) ??? If that conduct took place, it would obviously be immoral.

Are you saying that because the Quran does not have EVERY SINGLE IMMORAL CONDUCT THAT CAN BE CONDUCTED BY MAN clearly listed it is somehow incomplete?

Well, I'm certainly not going to believe anything which nobody but Chomsky says.

-


Academics generally regard him as dishonest and mentally unbalanced: as I told you, that goes back to when he worked in the linguistics field, before he started these political polemics which have gained him some popularity among non-professionals.

Actually, I myself regard Chomsky as mentally unbalanced. I don't have a particularly high opinion of him, as I already told you before.

But my issues with him have to do with ideology. I don't accuse him of "blatantly lying". There are a lot of critics of Chomsky (an entire section on wikipedia) and no where is it stated that Chomsky has blatantly lied on this issue. So I feel no need to provide you with further sources.

You questioned my saying that anybody who thought they shouldn't be blamed, for murdering people who had nothing to do with the issue except for also being Jewish, must be prejudiced against Jews.

??? what

Exactly what gave the Arabs the right to exclude? They had entered the land when they had the power to force themselves in; the Jews were entering as purchasers, and why should they not have done so, when the land was theirs before they were forcibly dispossessed?

Exactly, the right of FORCE is all that any side has working for them in the middle east. Therefore, there is no moral highground.

These sentences are mutually contradictory.

No they're not actually. They had an excuse, but they used it to ill affect.

Not exactly. Israelis target combatants, seeking to minimize the ability of Palestinians to do harm to Israelis-- and in the process they show an inexcusable indifference to whether non-combatants are also injured or killed in the process. This is not, however, exactly the same as targeting non-combatants in the first place, as the Palestinians have always done.

Give me a break. Israelis target "combatants" ??

Combatants like 12 year old kids throwing stones at tanks?

If you are going to address Moses with a "praise be upon him", you are accepting the premise.

What premise? That the Askenazim are not Sephardim? Yes, I am accepting that premise.

They are largely derived from the same mixture of the followers of Moses with the pre-existing inhabitants of Cana'an as the Sephardim and Mizrahim; of course there is some genetic contribution from eastern Europeans into the Ashkenazim as there is from southern Europeans into the Sephardim and from Arabs and Copts into the Mizrahim, but this turns out to be a distinct minority of the ancestry.

Are they the direct decendents of the 12 tribes? Those were the people of Moses (pbuh).

They were working their own lands, which rather blurs any class distinctions. In Europe, many of them were still in the basically parasitic trades (money-lending and spirits-distilling) to which the medievals had restricted them. Do you think social class makes some moral difference here?

Actually, the Arabs were working for them (many of them). This is actually why the Arabs initially did not mind the Jews because it was just a replacement of one land owner by another. The wealthy Arabs by then had migrated to Damascus and other Ottoman centers. The Jews filled that vacuum.

Social class makes no moral difference, but it does shift the issue considerably, from an ethnic/religious one to a political one.

The Arabs AND the Jews chose sedition against the Ottomans, if you consider sedition such a capital crime.

There is no "if".

I consider sedition a capital crime, period.

Whether it are the Muslims of China working against the Chinese government or the Jews of Palestine and the Palestinians working against the Ottoman government.

The Quran does not ALLOW any Muslim to be anti-government. Muslims have to live within the state as peaceful productive citizens.

If they do not like the conditions, then like the Prophet and the Muhajirs, they should move elsewhere, not start a guerrilla outfit and start fighting.

This is why I am not arguing for any moral high ground for Palestinians either.

You're just a fountain of benevolent wishes for all...

For people yes... for nation states, no.

 

[bob x]

Ever heard of the show "dexter" ?? That guy is pretty "normal seeming" and "functional" too... doesn't make him not twisted.

You are gratuitously insulting a large number of people that you know nothing about. Is that what your religion teaches you?

And that's why we're better : P

A smug sense of superiority is one of the things non-Muslims find least attractive about Muslims, you know-- just like arrogance by Americans is one of the things non-Americans find least attractive.

I have said it many times before, even on this forum.
"the Palestinian policy of intentionally targeting the innocent angers a lot of people"
errr.... yea, including ME !

Maybe you have said so on other threads I have not seen, but on this thread you have expressed no anger except at those who are angry at the Palestinians; for the Palestinians you have engaged in a lot of excuse-mongering.

I said God was the cause/author of everything.

And apparently you separate "is the cause of" or "is the author of" from "is responsible for" in some way that I don't know: to me, they all mean the same thing.

You are the one who said that if He is the author of evil, then that makes him responsible.

I wasn't making any "if-then": they are not different things in my mind. I was saying that if you and rodger say God is the one who does all the evil, then you are not depicting God as All-Good.

I told you that position is an emotional one and makes no logical sense if evil is finite and good is infinite.

It doesn't matter if your God also does good, of whatever amount: you say that God actively does evil, as well.

Well what did you expect??? You started by issuing judgments on the issue.

What I expected was that everybody agreed on the basic facts. I did not know there were multiple versions of the history.

How was I supposed to know you didn't even know who Uthman (ra) was?

I knew he was the third Caliph, the first to be assassinated, cousin to the Umayyad family who took over the Caliphate after Ali was murdered in turn. However, my impression had been that the fundamental split was between the followers of Ali and the followers of Abu Bakr right at the beginning of the first Caliphate.

If you want me to give you a quick recap, here it is:

Thank you. Much clearer now.

Now right here the ****e story is falsified, because if Ali (ra) was nominated by the Prophet himself, why was any council convened in the first place?

Apparently you left out one of the i's in Shiite. OK, I had not heard the version that Muhammad personally nominated Ali; my impression was that Muhammad had not given any indications about what was to happen after he was gone, which was the whole problem.

The Shiite argue that the fact that Fatima (the Prophet's daughter) was mad at Abu Bakr (ra) and refused to see him was due to his usurpation of the Caliphate, but this is better explained by her being mad at him for leaving the funeral, not "usurpation" of the Calipate.

Well, he was leaving the funeral to go politick. I can see why the family would be a little upset at his motives, as well as at the fact of his leaving.

Ali (ra) was not present at the council because it was an emergency situation and he probably did not hear of it. This is why he was initially annoyed.

I think "annoyed" would be a bit of an understatement. Who decided that his presence was unimportant and that they should not invite him, or could not wait for him, or whatever it is that happened? Who exactly constituted this "council" anyway?

It is nonsensical considering the fact that they claim Ali (ra) was nominated to succeed the Prophet. This claim itself is idiotic on so many levels.

First of all, there was no "successor" to the Prophet.

I thought that is what the word khalif meant?

Secondly, his political leadership was a result of his prophethood. So without prophethood, how was Ali (ra) going to automatically succeed the Prophet? And of course, if he actually was nominated, how could he possibly be sidelined?

You don't think politicians are capable of disregarding a valid claim?

Also, Ali (ra) chose to obey the the calips, why? If he was nominated, then by obeying the other caliphs, he would be disobeying the prophet! And everyone knows that Ali (ra) would never suffer that.

According to you, if he fails to obey whatever government has taken over, no matter how unjust, that too would be a disobedience to the prophet, so he was rather between a rock and a hard place.

The caliphate is NOT a monarchical position, thats the point. The Prophet was not here to start a dynasty, he was a Prophet. Which is exactly why he would not name a successor, because it was not his job.

By "monarchical" I did not mean "hereditary"; pardon my confusing choice of word there. I just mean the original sense of "one-man rule": if there was to be a central leader with very broad powers, and continuity was desired, an obvious choice would be someone who would live a long time and could raise his children to be plausible successors. But I was making that point in response to a misunderstanding of what you had been saying: I thought you were saying that it was "insane on the face of it" for Ali even to be considered as a candidate, where it now appears you were just saying it was crazy to assume that Ali had a lock on the job.

You can look at what happened then by reading any biography of Uthman (ra). Check wikipedia...

What I find is that there were a lot of accusations of corruption, a lack of clarity about the border between public treasury and his private property, and while you say the office was not supposed to be hereditary, of course he promoted a lot of his family.

forcing someone to divorce "under duress" (lolz) ??? If that conduct took place, it would obviously be immoral.

If a man wants to marry a woman who used to be married to a member of the extended family, anciently it was presumed that there had been improper influence and/or pressure. The Qur'an changes this, but not in the direction of saying that the reasons for the divorce should be inquired into (as far as I've been told, the Qur'an allows divorce for any reason or none at all), and the remarriage allowed if the man had nothing to do with it; it just says that if the relationship was adoptive, everything is OK.

Actually, I myself regard Chomsky as mentally unbalanced.

Then why do you go to him first as a source? If I wanted information about Islam, I wouldn't go to Franklin Graham, whom I know to be a little crazy in general, and a lot crazy on that topic in particular.

I don't accuse him of "blatantly lying".

I do, because the sentence you quoted, if that's an accurate quote, is a far more serious departure from the facts (as every other source states them) than what I usually see in Chomsky.

There are a lot of critics of Chomsky (an entire section on wikipedia) and no where is it stated that Chomsky has blatantly lied on this issue.

If wiki wanted to gather EVERY refutation of EVERY insane thing Chomsky had said, that section would have to be much, much longer.

Exactly, the right of FORCE is all that any side has working for them in the middle east.

It's all the Arab side had. In the period we are talking about, however, the Jews had entered peacefully, and it could have remained that way.

They had an excuse, but they used it to ill affect.

They had an excuse to murder innocent people? No, no they didn't. This kind of crap from you is why I don't believe for an instant your claims to be "angry" about random murders.

Give me a break. Israelis target "combatants" ??

Combatants like 12 year old kids throwing stones at tanks?

I haven't seen a case involving throwing rocks at tanks, but I do know they throw rocks at soldiers, which can, and is intended to, cause injuries. At least those kids are attacking combatants unlike the usual Palestinian conduct; but their parents really should teach them not to engage in combat when they are bound to lose.

What premise? That the Askenazim are not Sephardim?

Obviously the premise about "his people having a claim to the land" to which you had just referred.

Are they the direct decendents of the 12 tribes? Those were the people of Moses (pbuh).

That's about 75% of their genetic makeup. Of course there have been inputs from elsewhere, but medieval times kept them relatively isolated.

Actually, the Arabs were working for them (many of them).

Some of them, yes. But ALL the Jews in those collectives were required to work: that was the purpose.

I consider sedition a capital crime, period.

Whether it are the Muslims of China working against the Chinese government or the Jews of Palestine and the Palestinians working against the Ottoman government.

Or Palestinians working against the British or the Israelis? The British became the government the same way the Ottomans did, by preponderance of armed force; and Israel is the government now.

If everybody was like you, we'd all still be ruled by the guys with the obsidian blades-- and yes, all butt-naked, living to our mid-thirties on roots and berries except when we could bring down a pig with a flint spear.

This is why I am not arguing for any moral high ground for Palestinians either.

Israel may not occupy a particularly high ground, but people who constantly murder innocents are in the lowest pit of hell.

For people yes... for nation states, no.

You were wishing a repetition of something like Bush on me. That is wishing injury on the people more than on the state.

 

[c0de]

You are gratuitously insulting a large number of people that you know nothing about. Is that what your religion teaches you?

I know they hate clothes and would rather walk everywhere butt naked... that's about as much as I want to know about them, thank u very much.

A smug sense of superiority is one of the things non-Muslims find least attractive about Muslims, you know-- just like arrogance by Americans is one of the things non-Americans find least attractive.

Guess that's why you and me are getting along so well then, huh?

Maybe you have said so on other threads I have not seen, but on this thread you have expressed no anger except at those who are angry at the Palestinians; for the Palestinians you have engaged in a lot of excuse-mongering.

Maybe thats cuz I am not talking to a Palestinian defending suicide bombing on this thread but a person defending Israel as being morally superior.

And apparently you separate "is the cause of" or "is the author of" from "is responsible for" in some way that I don't know: to me, they all mean the same thing.

If a painter paints a painting of a child dying, is the painter "responsible" for the child's death?

I wasn't making any "if-then": they are not different things in my mind. I was saying that if you and rodger say God is the one who does all the evil, then you are not depicting God as All-Good.

See above.

It doesn't matter if your God also does good, of whatever amount: you say that God actively does evil, as well.

God does not "do" He "allows" it to exist... for now. Like I told you, Ivan, your view is totally rooted in emotion. Not to mention completely hypocritical. Unable and unwilling to accept any pain that God inflicts, but completely ready to accept man's actions as being okay, as long as you get to "eat your mashed potatoes and live to be 80"

Well, he was leaving the funeral to go politick. I can see why the family would be a little upset at his motives, as well as at the fact of his leaving.

Of course, and it is completely understandable why Fatima (ra) would be upset. She had every right. But no one can say that he left without reason. The Medinites might have made a mistake that would have cost the Muslims everything (literally).

I think "annoyed" would be a bit of an understatement. Who decided that his presence was unimportant and that they should not invite him, or could not wait for him, or whatever it is that happened? Who exactly constituted this "council" anyway?

... why do you care? After all, Ali (ra) is just a "name" to you, isn't he?

I thought that is what the word khalif meant?

Khalifa does not mean successor to the Prophet as far as I know.

You don't think politicians are capable of disregarding a valid claim?

since when are you a conspiracy theorist???

According to you, if he fails to obey whatever government has taken over, no matter how unjust, that too would be a disobedience to the prophet, so he was rather between a rock and a hard place.

Even if that was the case, that still does not justify the Shia position of splitting, in that situation Ali (ra) would be seen as choosing the non-sectarian position.

What I find is that there were a lot of accusations of corruption, a lack of clarity about the border between public treasury and his private property, and while you say the office was not supposed to be hereditary, of course he promoted a lot of his family.

Seriously, is that all you could find? The unfair criticism, is all you saw? Get your vision checked dude.

If a man wants to marry a woman who used to be married to a member of the extended family, anciently it was presumed that there had been improper influence and/or pressure. The Qur'an changes this,but not in the direction of saying that the reasons for the divorce should be inquired into (as far as I've been told, the Qur'an allows divorce for any reason or none at all), and the remarriage allowed if the man had nothing to do with it; it just says that if the relationship was adoptive, everything is OK.

I don't even know what the hell you're trying to argue here. in fact, i dont even think i care...

Then why do you go to him first as a source?

Because u don't like him, and you brought him up, out of the blue.

I do, because the sentence you quoted, if that's an accurate quote, is a far more serious departure from the facts (as every other source states them) than what I usually see in Chomsky.

I don't see anyone else accusing Chomsky of lying on that issue. Besides, how many other facts here were you not aware of? This looks like just another one on that list.

It's all the Arab side had. In the period we are talking about, however, the Jews had entered peacefully, and it could have remained that way.

Coulda woulda shoulda

According to Lord Curzon, the Jews were the ones to blame for the first riot, which started the train wreck.

They had an excuse to murder innocent people? No, no they didn't. This kind of crap from you is why I don't believe for an instant your claims to be "angry" about random murders.

that's not what I said! They had an excuse to choose the violent option. They used it to ill affect.

That's about 75% of their genetic makeup. Of course there have been inputs from elsewhere, but medieval times kept them relatively isolated.

Great, so my next question of course is: what happened to the covenant? Why did they get kicked out of the land? ... oh, that's rite... they BROKE IT!

Or Palestinians working against the British or the Israelis?

Yes, duh! When did you hear me supporting Hamas?

If everybody was like you, we'd all still be ruled by the guys with the obsidian blades-- and yes, all butt-naked, living to our mid-thirties on roots and berries except when we could bring down a pig with a flint spear.

What I am suggesting is the exact same option chosen by the Muslims in Makkah, and they ended up on top of the world.

Israel may not occupy a particularly high ground, but people who constantly murder innocents are in the lowest pit of hell.

Yea... and that pit is full of Israeli soldiers as well.

You were wishing a repetition of something like Bush on me. That is wishing injury on the people more than on the state.

Hey, if the people elect Bush, then that is what they asked for. And I wish that they get what they asked for. That's wishing them well, aint it?

anyways.....

check out the song Aenima by Tool.

Sums up my view quite clearly...

 

[bob x]

I know they hate clothes and would rather walk everywhere butt naked... that's about as much as I want to know about them, thank u very much.

You lack any moral sense, and judge based on irrelevancies. What is distressing is that I think you did understand the good at one point, but your religion has killed that understanding.

Maybe thats cuz I am not talking to a Palestinian defending suicide bombing on this thread but a person defending Israel as being morally superior.

I have not defended evil actions by the Israelis, and took action against the worst of them (Sabra/Chatila). What I have done is to condemn the Palestinian evil actions in the strongest of terms, and it is for that that you attack me, and for the actions of the Palestinians that you seek excuses.

If a painter paints a painting of a child dying, is the painter "responsible" for the child's death?

It is one thing if the painter only created / is the author of / is responsible for the painting, quite another if he actually killed the child so he could have a model. The latter appeared to be your concept of God, although now you are walking that back:

God does not "do" He "allows" it to exist... for now.

That was my position in the argument with rodger: God creates an arena in which agents are free to act, for good or ill, and God lets that be; but rodger was saying that God actually does everything, and no-one else is able to do anything, and you took rodger's side then, and have continued to speak in that manner until just now.

Unable and unwilling to accept any pain that God inflicts, but completely ready to accept man's actions as being okay

??? I have never changed my position that the evils of the past were evil, and always will be what they are, evil, regardless of anything good that follows; but I have insisted that they are man's evils, and not "pain that God inflicts": make up your mind here, is it God who killed the child for the sake of the painting or not?

as long as you get to "eat your mashed potatoes and live to be 80"

I am grateful for the good I receive, grateful to God for creating this whole world and to those in the past whose sacrifices I cannot repay. You on the other hand have no gratitude for anything, regarding God's whole creation as just nothing but a misery, but somehow trusting that God will do better next time.

Of course, and it is completely understandable why Fatima (ra) would be upset. She had every right. But no one can say that he left without reason. The Medinites might have made a mistake that would have cost the Muslims everything (literally).

Whereas what he did cost Fatima's children everything, literally.

... why do you care? After all, Ali (ra) is just a "name" to you, isn't he?

I'm not particularly involved, just interested in trying to get the story straight. You put one slant on it, which is different from the slant I have heard before: but when you talk as if there could not be any other side to the story, that does not inspire much confidence that your side has it right.

Khalifa does not mean successor to the Prophet as far as I know.

So Abu Bakr was successor to the Pharaohs, or what?

since when are you a conspiracy theorist???

It is not necessary to "theorize" a conspiracy here. This "council" whoever they were acted quite openly to decide who would get the spoils from Muhammad's conquests and make sure that Muhammad's descendants didn't get any.

Even if that was the case, that still does not justify the Shia position of splitting, in that situation Ali (ra) would be seen as choosing the non-sectarian position.

He put up with it as long as he could. "All experience has shown that men are more inclined to suffer the evils they know, so long as the evils are sufferable, than to exchange them for evils they know not."

Seriously, is that all you could find? The unfair criticism, is all you saw?

I called the accusations of corruption just that: accusations. I have no idea whether they were "unfair" or not; that would depend on what understandings there were about who was entitled to take how much, and that, obviously, was completely unclear. That Uthman promoted his own family to lucrative positions is not denied by anyone.

I don't even know what the hell you're trying to argue here.

Let's go back to the top. Anciently there was a rule that whenever a man takes a woman who used to be a relative's, it is presumed that there was some undue influence or duress responsible for breaking up the original marriage, and so it was completely outlawed, until Muhammad and Zaid. Now, you are making a moral argument from first principles that this was OK because, in fact, there had been no undue influence or duress in that case, and I agree that this is a reasonable argument, assuming that we both believe with Socrates in the existence of a Good In Itself, as opposed to just Whatever God Says. But you claim not to believe in Good In Itself, and so I do not understand how it is that you can be making a moral argument from first principles, rather than just accepting Whatever God Says, which in this case is just: whenever a man takes a woman who used to be a relative's, it is OK if the relationship was by adoption, not OK if by blood, with no mention of what the circumstances, abusive or otherwise, might be from one case to another. That distinction, to me, is as completely irrelevant to the moral issue as judging somebody based solely on whether they are comfortable in their own skin or feel a need for clothes at all times.

Because u don't like him, and you brought him up, out of the blue.

I first mentioned him when you claimed to have a "source" but would not name him, for a position I thought completely off-base, which sounded like Chomsky since you just left it up to me to guess where you were getting it from.

I don't see anyone else accusing Chomsky of lying on that issue.

On whether the whole Israeli War of Independence, or Naqba if you prefer, was fought before or after May 1948? I'm sorry, this is just flatly absurd. It is like, "By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, America was already occupying most of Japan's island territories and was fire-bombing Tokyo every night."

According to Lord Curzon, the Jews were the ones to blame for the first riot, which started the train wreck.

The Arabs engaged in a carefully-prepared pogrom, murdering people who had nothing except their religion to do with the political issues. So, you cite with approval a clique of officers, whose report the British government did not accept, whom in fact the government fired from their jobs, who say the Jews had it coming to them because they were all Bolsheviks anyway, citing the staunchest anti-socialist among them as the head of the Bolshevik Conspiracy; and you get down on me for suggesting that these officers were prejudiced. Meanwhile, you stand the Marxist analysis on its head, presupposing that since the Jews are all just moneybags anyway, the Jews on the kibbutzim must have been just "bourgeois landowners" sitting on their fat and lazy asses eating bon-bons while the Arabs did all the work. You simultaneously believe that the Jews head the Bolshevik Conspiracy and the International Banking Cartel, and I wonder if you think the Elders of Zion were working with the Masonic Illuminati as well.

that's not what I said! They had an excuse to choose the violent option.

No, they did not. All of the Palestinian suffering has come from that inexcusable choice.

Great, so my next question of course is: what happened to the covenant? Why did they get kicked out of the land? ... oh, that's rite... they BROKE IT!

And according to Moses, the people of Israel were to be punished for breaches of the covenant by being driven from the land for a time, but God would never abandon them forever. They lost the land for seventy years in the days of the Babylonians, but were restored to it. They lost the land for much longer in the days of the Romans, but never stopped believing God's promise that they would be restored someday. If you disbelieve that Moses was speaking for God, and think he was simply engaging in sedition against Pharaoh, then it is very strange that you say "praise be upon him".

What I am suggesting is the exact same option chosen by the Muslims in Makkah, and they ended up on top of the world.

By encouraging sedition against the Byzantines and the Persians, who were not very good governments to say the least, but according to you that doesn't matter.

Yea... and that pit is full of Israeli soldiers as well.

Quite a few, and I will not deny it. But the national leadership of the Palestinians has promoted random murder as their policy, with the active support of the majority of that population, for 90 years.

Hey, if the people elect Bush, then that is what they asked for. And I wish that they get what they asked for. That's wishing them well, aint it?

The people did not elect Bush. It was a failure of the system. And you wished that we should get what we did not choose, again.

 

[c0de]

You lack any moral sense, and judge based on irrelevancies. What is distressing is that I think you did understand the good at one point, but your religion has killed that understanding.

your opinions are very important to me.

anything else, elijah?

I have not defended evil actions by the Israelis, and took action against the worst of them (Sabra/Chatila). What I have done is to condemn the Palestinian evil actions in the strongest of terms, and it is for that that you attack me, and for the actions of the Palestinians that you seek excuses.

So do you consider Israelis as morally superior to the Palestinians?

It is one thing if the painter only created / is the author of / is responsible for the painting, quite another if he actually killed the child so he could have a model. The latter appeared to be your concept of God, although now you are walking that back:

Nice try, but you think I would just miss that attempt to screw up my example? Where do you get "created/is the author of/is responsible for" in the same category?

I am not "walking back" you simply missed the point. That example just illustrated that these things are NOT the same.

That was my position in the argument with rodger: God creates an arena in which agents are free to act, for good or ill, and God lets that be; but rodger was saying that God actually does everything, and no-one else is able to do anything, and you took rodger's side then, and have continued to speak in that manner until just now.

First of all, you have clearly misunderstood my position (surprise, surprise). Secondly, I don't care what your position with rodger was or is.

Your position is one in which God is not Omnipotent/Omniscient, and I disagree.

??? I have never changed my position that the evils of the past were evil,

If the evils of the past will always remain evil, then you have just justified my position that no human progress can be called "progress" if it based on evil actions in the past.

and always will be what they are, evil, regardless of anything good that follows;

Wrong. When man commits evil to a person or a generation, he is incapable of righting the wrong.

When God allows evil to take place, He is fully capable of making that up, in fact, in ways that render the initial evil inconsequential.

make up your mind here, is it God who killed the child for the sake of the painting or not?

Try and understand what is written before hitting the reply button, because unlike your replies, mine contain more than just surface matter.

In my example, the child was real, and the painting was LIFE. However, from an infinite perspective, the death of that child is no different than the death of a child in a painting. God has promised that He will pay back to everyone what is owed, and because He is Omnipotent, He is fully capable of doing just that.

I am grateful for the good I receive, grateful to God for creating this whole world and to those in the past whose sacrifices I cannot repay.

That is always the standard hippie response. "Yea, I am grateful too, but I just don't actually care to do anything God tells me to do"

regarding God's whole creation as just nothing but a misery,

How much did you get those rose-tinted shades for, by the way? It is people like you, who prance through life not recognizing the ills, turning a blind eye to everything and think "everything is fine, have another!" that are despicable.

Whereas what he did cost Fatima's children everything, literally.

What did he do? How are you still blaming him?

I'm not particularly involved, just interested in trying to get the story straight. You put one slant on it, which is different from the slant I have heard before: but when you talk as if there could not be any other side to the story, that does not inspire much confidence that your side has it right.

As if I care where your confidence lies.

So Abu Bakr was successor to the Pharaohs, or what?

The word means "successor" OR "representative". The successor part being limited to the POLITICAL leadership, not divine mandate (like with kings).

As I already said, where does Ali (ra) get divine mandate from a prophet to rule, when all divine mandate ended with the Prophet? Thats a MAJOR contradiction in the shiite belief structure.

It is not necessary to "theorize" a conspiracy here. This "council" whoever they were acted quite openly to decide who would get the spoils from Muhammad's conquests and make sure that Muhammad's descendants didn't get any.

Are you still talking about the Shiites?? Cuz those were the Ansar that conveyed the council, without notifying Abu Bakr (ra) and Umar (ra).

He put up with it as long as he could. "All experience has shown that men are more inclined to suffer the evils they know, so long as the evils are sufferable, than to exchange them for evils they know not."

When did he change his position, exactly? His authority was challenged (when he was already Caliph) by Muwaiay, and only on the basis of clan rights within Arab tradition.

I called the accusations of corruption just that: accusations.

whatever

Anciently there was a rule that whenever a man takes a woman who used to be a relative's, it is presumed that there was some undue influence or duress responsible for breaking up the original marriage, and so it was completely outlawed, until Muhammad and Zaid.

????? When any woman divorces and marries a relative of the husband, it is somehow "presumed" that there was some immoral conduct ???

What the hell are you on about?

Now, you are making a moral argument from first principles that this was OK because, in fact, there had been no undue influence or duress in that case, and I agree that this is a reasonable argument, assuming that we both believe with Socrates in the existence of a Good In Itself, as opposed to just Whatever God Says. But you claim not to believe in Good In Itself, and so I do not understand how it is that you can be making a moral argument from first principles, rather than just accepting Whatever God Says, which in this case is just: whenever a man takes a woman who used to be a relative's, it is OK if the relationship was by adoption, not OK if by blood, with no mention of what the circumstances, abusive or otherwise, might be from one case to another. That distinction, to me, is as completely irrelevant to the moral issue as judging somebody based solely on whether they are comfortable in their own skin or feel a need for clothes at all times.

Hold up there Plato... Go back and answer the objection. Where the hell did you get the idea that duress is assumed in such a case???

I first mentioned him when you claimed to have a "source" but would not name him, for a position I thought completely off-base, which sounded like Chomsky since you just left it up to me to guess where you were getting it from.

I did not say "a souce" I said "sources" !!

And I am telling you RIGHT now to go and read the intelligence briefs of STRATFOR or any other similar geopolitical think tank. The point when I brought up that comment was while talking about American policy of controlling resources and denying them to its potential competitors. Chomsky isn't the only one who believes that. It is a geopolitical reality.

On whether the whole Israeli War of Independence, or Naqba if you prefer, was fought before or after May 1948? I'm sorry, this is just flatly absurd. It is like, "By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, America was already occupying most of Japan's island territories and was fire-bombing Tokyo every night."

And like I said... who else besides you accuses Chomsky of lying on this issue? If he is lying, considering all his critics, at least one would have loved to nail him on this. So go ahead, bring it.

So, you cite with approval a clique of officers, whose report the British government did not accept, whom in fact the government fired from their jobs, who say the Jews had it coming to them because they were all Bolsheviks anyway, citing the staunchest anti-socialist among them as the head of the Bolshevik Conspiracy; and you get down on me for suggesting that these officers were prejudiced.

I have asked you before: what are you smoking???

"The Eastern Committee of the British Cabinet met to discuss the future of Palestine. Lord Curzon chaired the meeting. General Smuts, Lord Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, General Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, T. E. Lawrence, and representatives of the Foreign Office, the India Office, the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Treasury were present."


Yea... quite a rag tag bunch, for sure...

The comment that the Jews were responsible was made by Lord Curzon... he went on to be the viceroy of India! Yea, his government must have been really pissed at him, eh?

No, they did not. All of the Palestinian suffering has come from that inexcusable choice.

Not according to Lord Curzon.

And according to Moses, the people of Israel were to be punished for breaches of the covenant by being driven from the land for a time, but God would never abandon them forever. They lost the land for seventy years in the days of the Babylonians, but were restored to it. They lost the land for much longer in the days of the Romans, but never stopped believing God's promise that they would be restored someday. If you disbelieve that Moses was speaking for God, and think he was simply engaging in sedition against Pharaoh, then it is very strange that you say "praise be upon him".

Moses (pbuh) didn't ask for independence in Egypt, did he? He packed up and left (just like the Makkans). And by the way, what happened when Jesus (pbuh) came? To the covenant, I mean.

By encouraging sedition against the Byzantines and the Persians, who were not very good governments to say the least, but according to you that doesn't matter.

Seriously, WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING !!??

The Muslims encouraged sedition??? The Romans and the Persians encouraged sedition in Muslim lands by supporting the revolting clans!! That is why the Muslims attacked in the first place!

Quite a few, and I will not deny it. But the national leadership of the Palestinians has promoted random murder as their policy, with the active support of the majority of that population, for 90 years.

The palestinians are not a nation, first of all, so they dont have a "national leadership". The PLO is a joke, and it doesnt even control all the Palestinians.

And by the way, Israeli military policy is responsible for the actions of all those soldiers rotting in hell. And since a lot more Palestinians have been killed, that just tells you no one is morally superior.

The people did not elect Bush. It was a failure of the system. And you wished that we should get what we did not choose, again.

Yea, it was a failure of the system... ACCORDING TO YOU!

The first election... maybe.

The second term?? yea, i don't think so.

And if you do say so, you are basically a conspiracy theorist.

 

[bob x]

So do you consider Israelis as morally superior to the Palestinians?

If the Israelis behaved as despicably as the Palestinians, there would hardly be any Palestinians left alive by now.

Where do you get "created/is the author of/is responsible for" in the same category?

How was I supposed to know you make any distinction? And what distinction is it that you make? The tilt of the Earth's axis is responsible for the changing seasons. The tilt of the Earth's axis causes the changing seasons. The tilt of the Earth's axis creates the changing seasons. These three sentences all mean the same thing in English; if you are mentally translating some distinction from elsewhere, you have no reason to take it for granted that I know what distinction you are trying to make.

I am not "walking back" you simply missed the point.

You haven't conveyed your point. The failure is on the transmission end, not the reception end.

That example just illustrated that these things are NOT the same.

Huh? The painter creates the painting. The painter is the author of the painting. The painter is responsible for the painting. The painter did not create the dead child, unless the painter stabbed the child to death himself. The painter is not responsible for the dead child, unless the painter stabbed the child to death himself. In your example, they are all the same thing.

Secondly, I don't care what your position with rodger was or is.

You just wanted to make sure and tell me that I was wrong, without caring what I was saying.

Your position is one in which God is not Omnipotent/Omniscient, and I disagree.

First of all, you have clearly misunderstood my position (surprise, surprise). My position is that God allows freedom, and is not responsible for what we do with it.

If the evils of the past will always remain evil, then you have just justified my position that no human progress can be called "progress" if it based on evil actions in the past.

The good remains good, every bit as much as the evil remains evil.

Try and understand what is written before hitting the reply button, because unlike your replies, mine contain more than just surface matter.

Unlike your replies, mine aim to convey my meaning.

In my example, the child was real, and the painting was LIFE. However, from an infinite perspective, the death of that child is no different than the death of a child in a painting.

No wonder you don't care much about murder.

That is always the standard hippie response. "Yea, I am grateful too, but I just don't actually care to do anything God tells me to do"

Muhammad is not God. Neither are you. What God tells me, I listen to.

How much did you get those rose-tinted shades for, by the way? It is people like you, who prance through life not recognizing the ills

I recognize both good and evil. I do not know why you cannot.

The word means "successor" OR "representative". The successor part being limited to the POLITICAL leadership, not divine mandate (like with kings).

Your initial assertion was that no-one was successor to Muhammad at all.

Are you still talking about the Shiites?? Cuz those were the Ansar that conveyed the council, without notifying Abu Bakr (ra) and Umar (ra).

You are saying that the Ansar were the Shiites? I thought you said there were no Shiites back then. And Ali did not get invited to the council either.

????? When any woman divorces and marries a relative of the husband, it is somehow "presumed" that there was some immoral conduct ???

What the hell are you on about?

That was the ancient rule, yes. That's the reason why there was any question about whether Muhammad should have been allowed to marry Zaid's former wife, the reason why a new revelation was needed to declare it OK.

And I am telling you RIGHT now to go and read the intelligence briefs of STRATFOR or any other similar geopolitical think tank.

They don't contain the insanities you find in Chomsky.

The point when I brought up that comment was while talking about American policy of controlling resources and denying them to its potential competitors. Chomsky isn't the only one who believes that.

But he is the only one deluded enough to think our alliance with Israel helped toward that end, when of course, everyone (except Chomsky apparently) knows that allying with Israel cost us two oil embargoes which tanked our economy for a whole decade. Our decision to ally with Israel in spite of the way that it hurt our interests in controlling oil resources has to be explained in terms of other political considerations: the contempt most Americans felt for the Arab actions in the period leading up to the Six-Day War blossomed into an insistence on arming Israel after the Palestinians starting attacking on our own soil; that's all I was trying to explain to you, and it should not be hard to understand, but you refuse to believe that someone who actually lived in America through that period would know what was going on then.

And like I said... who else besides you accuses Chomsky of lying on this issue?

EVERY other source on the war says that the Israeli conquests and the Palestinian refugees happened in mid-to-late 1948 and early 1949. This bizarre claim, that it all happened even before the British pulled out, is so unreal that I have to suspect you misunderstood and garbled the quote from Chomsky (you did not link to where you got it from), but if that is genuine Chomsky then he must have been off his medications that day.

If you want to make a point, try using some source who is not, as you have agreed with me, rather a lunatic.

I have asked you before: what are you smoking???

"The Eastern Committee of the British Cabinet...

I did not know you had switched sources. You started out quoting the Palin Commission, the guys who ranted about the Jewish Bolshevik Conspiracy.

I smoke Camel Lights. Sometimes I treat myself to Djarum cloves.

Moses (pbuh) didn't ask for independence in Egypt, did he?

Cana'an was a province of Egypt at the time.

And by the way, what happened when Jesus (pbuh) came? To the covenant, I mean.

Nothing, as far as the Jews are concerned. Have you mistaken me for a Christian?

The Muslims encouraged sedition??? The Romans and the Persians encouraged sedition in Muslim lands by supporting the revolting clans!! That is why the Muslims attacked in the first place!

Yeah, yeah, and the Poles shot at the Germans first.

The palestinians are not a nation, first of all, so they dont have a "national leadership". The PLO is a joke, and it doesnt even control all the Palestinians.

It is what they have, and not just by accident. Polls among Palestinians have ALWAYS shown majorities in favor of killing civilians; that's the problem.

since a lot more Palestinians have been killed, that just tells you no one is morally superior.

Only if you include combatants. A lot more Jewish civilians have been killed, since that is who the Palestinians generally target.

The first election... maybe.

The second term?? yea, i don't think so.

And if you do say so, you are basically a conspiracy theorist.

What do YOU know about it? Plenty of statisticians have found the deviations between exit polling and the reported totals in the "Diebolt" areas (where votes were counted by untraceable machines) to be significant, although the system intentionally made it impossible to know. I am not as certain that Ohio 2004 was stolen as that Florida 2000 was (that's just a FACT), but I am not inclined to accept either election as honest.

 

[c0de]

And what distinction is it that you make? The tilt of the Earth's axis is responsible for the changing seasons. The tilt of the Earth's axis causes the changing seasons. The tilt of the Earth's axis creates the changing seasons.

--

Huh? The painter creates the painting. The painter is the author of the painting. The painter is responsible for the painting. The painter did not create the dead child, unless the painter stabbed the child to death himself. The painter is not responsible for the dead child, unless the painter stabbed the child to death himself. In your example, they are all the same thing.

--


You haven't conveyed your point. The failure is on the transmission end, not the reception end.

Why do u keep blaming me for your inability to connect the dots?

You have overlooked a crucial detail (again).

According to my position, anything created, does NOT possess inherent existence. Which means that even though that child in that painting is "real" and the painting is "life" neither the painting, nor the child actually exists. There is NO contradiction in this view. God did not kill anyone, because there is no one to kill. This is what i meant by "God created the concept of 2+2=4" which you dismissed as not being relevant. I also told you that I do not believe that neither you nor I actually exist. You still did not understand... and still you are accusing me of failing to convey the point ???

First of all, you have clearly misunderstood my position (surprise, surprise). My position is that God allows freedom, and is not responsible for what we do with it.

"first of all" .... that is not your position. There is nothing original about this view whatsoever. Secondly, in this view, what power does God actually have? He does not even know the future! Which "God" is that? Zeus? Kali? Horus? Or the "god of spinoza"? If you are talking about that "god" then we are not talking about the same entities.

The good remains good, every bit as much as the evil remains evil.

This position justifies UTILITARIANISM and all "ends justifies the means" approaches!

Muhammad is not God. Neither are you. What God tells me, I listen to.

LMAO !!!!!!!

rite...

okay elijah...

whatever u say

by the wayzz, what was that about "warm fuzzy feelings" ???

Your initial assertion was that no-one was successor to Muhammad at all.

Apparently the definition of the word delineates a difference between political succession and divine mandate. I didnt know that, but it doesnt matter. The position does not allow for the shia position still as it requires a divine mandate.

You are saying that the Ansar were the Shiites? I thought you said there were no Shiites back then. And Ali did not get invited to the council either.

No!! ... what ???

That was the ancient rule, yes. That's the reason why there was any question about whether Muhammad should have been allowed to marry Zaid's former wife, the reason why a new revelation was needed to declare it OK.

??? What are you talking about !!!!

What "rule" ??? It was a "rule" that if a woman divorced her husband and married a relative of his that she had to have been forced ???

Yeah, yeah, and the Poles shot at the Germans first.

Take your head out of the sand buddy. The Byzantines and the Persians supported the rebel Arab tribes against the Caliphate.

I did not know you had switched sources. You started out quoting the Palin Commission, the guys who ranted about the Jewish Bolshevik Conspiracy.

Switched sources? I gave you a link didn't I? I even told you it was Lord Curzon who said it.

In any case, clearly, these eminent British leaders accused the Jews for starting the fire. So your argument is nonetheless rendered refuted.

If the Israelis behaved as despicably as the Palestinians, there would hardly be any Palestinians left alive by now.

Actually, they have:

The Zionist groups of Irgun and Lehi reverted to their 1937–1939 strategy of indiscriminate attacks by placing bombs and throwing grenades into crowded places such as bus stops, shopping centres and markets. Their attacks on British forces reduced British troops' ability and willingness to protect Jewish traffic.[25]

If you want to make a point, try using some source who is not, as you have agreed with me, rather a lunatic.

Between December 1947 and March 1948, around 100,000 Palestinian Arabs fled. Among them were many from the higher and middle classes from the cities, who left voluntarily, expecting to return when the Arab states took control of the country.

Benny Morris (2003), pp.138-139.

And that is just what I found listed on wikipedia. Clearly, your claim that no other historian has ever claimed that Arabs even fled before the jewish offensive started is not accurate.

Cana'an was a province of Egypt at the time.

Pharoah controlled Jerusalem at the time of Moses (pbuh) ??? Are you sure?

Nothing, as far as the Jews are concerned. Have you mistaken me for a Christian?

Wait... so you actually thought I was just going to accept the Jewish version of the story and forget everyone elses?? (lolz)

It is what they have, and not just by accident. Polls among Palestinians have ALWAYS shown majorities in favor of killing civilians; that's the problem.

yea... because they see the Israeli army killing their civilians. Doesn't justify it, but doesnt give anyone the moral highground either.

Only if you include combatants. A lot more Jewish civilians have been killed, since that is who the Palestinians generally target.

In what universe are 12 year old kids throwing stones at tanks "combatants" ???

What do YOU know about it? Plenty of statisticians have found the deviations between exit polling and the reported totals in the "Diebolt" areas (where votes were counted by untraceable machines) to be significant, although the system intentionally made it impossible to know. I am not as certain that Ohio 2004 was stolen as that Florida 2000 was (that's just a FACT), but I am not inclined to accept either election as honest.

You are not "certain" it was stolen, then why are you speaking as if you are certain that the people in the US did not elect Bush for a second time??

In any case, there are at least like, ALMOST half the people in the US that willingly voted for Bush (voting machines or not).

... and they wonder why you people can't find the pacific ocean on a map

But he is the only one deluded enough to think our alliance with Israel helped toward that end, when of course, everyone (except Chomsky apparently) knows that allying with Israel cost us two oil embargoes which tanked our economy for a whole decade. Our decision to ally with Israel in spite of the way that it hurt our interests in controlling oil resources has to be explained in terms of other political considerations: the contempt most Americans felt for the Arab actions in the period leading up to the Six-Day War blossomed into an insistence on arming Israel after the Palestinians starting attacking on our own soil; that's all I was trying to explain to you, and it should not be hard to understand, but you refuse to believe that someone who actually lived in America through that period would know what was going on then.

Contradiction:

If that's true, why is the US allied with Saudi Arabia? Since, clearly, the public surely hates that nation as much as it loves Israel.

You are arguing that your government took all those risks and suffered all those losses just because of American sympathies, right? If that were true, then ALL American relations must be views through that paradigm, but CLEARLY this is not the case.

I smoke Camel Lights. Sometimes I treat myself to Djarum cloves.

Follow up:

What are you lacing those camels with?