Thoughts on war

[dave]

and add to the fact hes "only" a scholar for one specific group of Shia muslims - none of the Sunni would even equate his opinions with the level of used toilet paper - and you again see its all about power.

dave

[dogchow108]

woa, cool i found an internet connection at this teahouse in houston.

well, anyway dave, so i fuess we both understand basically what each other is saying and thats good. i guess the thing that sticks out for me the most from your last post is this:

But that doesnt mean im going to sit around and let people say my religion is a blood-thirsty crazy entity which turns people in to raving lunatics does it?



obviously i dont expect you to just sit there and let people rip on your religion- i am completely non-theistic but ill still try to defend the religion of my culture just...well...because, and so for you who actually has good reason to defend it i understand that completely. just think about it this way for a sec; islam is still young, and considering where it came from and the nature of its rise, it has a lot of formatting to do (as did/do a lot of other religions) before really being able to adapt to everyone's taste. unfortunately there will always be people who just fundamentally dislike it as part of their creed, and what can you do, you know? you can see your situation in two ways, considering the this time of change and reform for your religion
1- you're screwed because this whole terrorism thing has really put islam in a spotlight position without make-up
2- you're really lucky to be living in this crucial time because the words of few can influence many.

either way you, me and everyone else is stuck in our time for better or worse- you just gotta make the best of it.


anyway i'm off to continue realizing that i have completely forgotten how to find my way around Houston. i'd stop by De Shan or one of the Xing monks' places but i simply havent had time.


cya guys when i get back home.

DC

[dave]

actually i agree with you completely - sounds kinda fatalistic

But the thing i hate is painting everyone with the same brush because they have the same creed or race or nationality or whatever, thats the only thing that pisses me off. Especially when Islam itself has for the most part had quite a lively discourse on this kinda thing.

Enjoy Houston and the coffee lol

dave

[doc]

More madness (from Debka):

Explosive device weighing 7-10 kilos connected to mobile phone discovered by Israeli roadblock in 10-year old Palestinian schoolboy’s book-bag on his way home from school to Nablus village. Child promised large sum to carry bomb loaded with screws and nails, which was rigged to blow up child and roadblock.

I have nothing to say. I'm speechless.

Oh, and Spain demonstrated an tremendous amount of "strength" recently, didn't they.

Terrorists 1, Spain 0

[dave]

sadness

dave

[dogchow108]

you know what, the thing about Spain pisses me off sooooo ****ing much. and i dont really mean the terrorist attacks, i mean what happened after. here you get an attack that kills tens of people and wounds scores more, and what happens? they REWARD this act of war by electing a president who promises to pull soldiers out of Iraq. jesus, dont people get what's going on? they just signed their soul away! they just made al-queida a political party and dont even realize it! how can people be afraid of george bush but not say a damn thing when a terrorist network elects the leader of a country? people are maive on an alarming level when it comes to this stuff. the world has once again shown that it's balls are in the gripping hands of terrorism* and that it does not plan on doing anything about it.

sad, just ****ing sad. i'm just disgusted with the amount of PUSSY that countries, especially the european countries, have shown in regards to this matter.

[dogchow108]

Originally posted by dave
actually i agree with you completely - sounds kinda fatalistic

But the thing i hate is painting everyone with the same brush because they have the same creed or race or nationality or whatever, thats the only thing that pisses me off. Especially when Islam itself has for the most part had quite a lively discourse on this kinda thing.

Enjoy Houston and the coffee lol

dave

dave, you KNOW that people will find an excuse to do that no matter what to any ethnic group they can think to do it. that's something you're just going to have to come to terms with and its a sad reality that in a group where one or more but not all parts is troublesome, everyone gets labeled.

that's just how it goes- DO think about, but dont lose sleep over it.

[shaolinstylee]

7-10 kilos Thats 15-22 lbs.. thats a lot of freekin' explosives.
and there is no shame to there style. It is really quite sad.

[dogchow108]

add to that that the packs contain rat poison-infected shratnel and ball bearings, and in other cases many victims have developed hepatitis and in some cases AIDS.

but hey, you cant criticize "suicide" bombers because theyre just desperately responding to the actions of an oppressive occupation. oh, and they're freedom fighters....arent they? wait...


"whoever thinks of stopping the intifada before it achieves its goal, i will give him 10 bullets in the chest."

Congressional record from the Senate (feb 8, 1989)

[doc]

Rat poison is an effective "additive" to these shrapnel bombs. It's basically warfarin, which is a blood thinner (which is how the rats die, they ingest the stuff, and then bleed to death internally).Blast some poor individual with shrapnel, and then, on top of that, "inject" them with warfarin, and their chances of surviving the multiple wounds decreases.

Nasty. Very nasty.

[RJW]

Maybe Spain is just nostalgic for the Moors…No wait, they hated the Moors, couldn't wait to get rid of them. Go figure.

[dogchow108]

Originally posted by RJW
Maybe Spain is just nostalgic for the Moors…No wait, they hated the Moors, couldn't wait to get rid of them. Go figure.

i'm not familiar with this...what happened, now?

[RJW]

Circa 46 B. C., the Roman army entered West Africa where they encountered black Africans whom they called 'Maures' from the Greek adjective mauros, meaning dark or black. Chandler, Wayne B. "The Moor: Light of Europe's Dark Age." Golden Age of the Moor. Edited by Ivan Van Sertima. New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1992: 151-81.

The Webster's New World Dictionary identifies Moors as "a member of Moslem people of mixed Arab and Berber descent." This deletion of "black" or "Negro" from the term Moor is generally recent. Though the word "Moor" originally seems to have been meant to indicate Blacks, it in time came to be applied to Muslims in general, especially the Berbers. The name Morocco is another reminder of the region's "Moorish" past.

To the Christians of the time, Moor simply meant Muslim barbarian. They didn't care where these 'Moors' came from. Their only interest was to evict every last one of them from Spain.

Spain Under Muslim Rule:

In 711 AD, some Moors invaded Visigoth Christian Spain. Under their leader Tariq ibn-Ziyad they brought most of Spain under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They attempted to move northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. The Moors ruled in Spain, except for small areas in the northwest and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees, and in North Africa for several decades. The Moorish state suffered civil conflict in the 750s.

The country then broke up into a number of mostly Islamic fiefdoms, which were consolidated under the Caliphate of Cordoba. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over Spain. Galicia, León, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia or Marca Hispanica, and eventually Castile became Christian in the next several centuries. This period is known for the tolerant acceptance of Christians, Muslims and Jews living in the same territories. Although, the Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Spain came to be ruled by North African Moors.

In 1212 a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the muslims from Central Spain. However the Moorish Kingdom of Granada thrived for three more centuries. This kingdom is known in modern time for architectural gems such as the Alhambra. On January 2, 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to armies of a recently united Christian Spain. The remaining Muslim were forced to leave Spain or convert to Christianity. These descendants of the Muslims were named moriscos. They were an important portion of the peasants in some territories, like Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia, until their systematic expulsion in the years from 1609 to 1614. Henre Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of a total of 8 million inhabitants at the time.

In the meantime, the tide of Islamic conquest had rolled not just westward to Spain, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia, up to Mindanao, one of the major islands of an archipelago, which the Spanish had reached during their voyages westward from the New World. By 1521, the ships of Magellan had themselves reached that island archipelago, which they named the Philippines, after Philip II of Spain. On Mindanao, the Spanish also named these kris-bearing people as Moros, or 'Moors'.

On the Flip Side:

In his book titled, "Spain In The Modern World," James Cleuge explains the significance of Cordova in Medieval Europe:

"For there was nothing like it, at that epoch, in the rest of Europe. The best minds in that continent looked to Spain for everything which most clearly differentiates a human being from a tiger." (Cleugh, 1953, p. 70)

During the end of the first millennium, Cordova was the intellectual well from which European humanity came to drink. Students from France and England traveled there to sit at the feet of Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars, to learn philosophy, science and medicine (Digest, 1973, p. 622). In the great library of Cordova alone, there were some 600,000 manuscripts (Burke, 1978, p. 122).

This rich and sophisticated society took a tolerant view towards other faiths. Tolerance was unheard of in the rest of Europe. But in Moorish Spain, "thousands of Jews and Christians lived in peace and harmony with their Muslim overlords." (Burke, 1985, p. 38) The society had a literary rather than religious base. Economically their prosperity was unparalleled for centuries. The aristocracy promoted private land ownership and encouraged Jews in banking. There was little or no Muslim prostelyting. Instead, non-believers simply paid an extra tax!

"Their society had become too sophisticated to be fanatical. Christians and Moslems, with Jews as their intermediaries and interpreters, lived side by side and fought, not each other, but other mixed communities." (Cleugh, 1953, p. 71)

[doc]

Looks like Spain is under Muslim rule again.

The actions of the terrorists seem to have greatly influenced the outcome of this recent election. And now, they're offering a "truce" as long as Spain pulls its soldiers out of Iraq.

No way to run a war.

[dogchow108]

wow, thanks RJW...i was not aware of any of this.


doc- yea, pretty much what i was getting a here- spain has made al-quaeda a majority voter in their country. this is why i have always taken anti-american sentiment very seriously. i have a friend ho moved to Spain for educational purposes...he said it was fine until the Iraq thing- he said he was just about ready to go back home because of how many spanish and other Europeans criticize his country. it's okay to criticize, but when you do it so blindly, this is what ends up happening. terrorism does not need to make political decisions and terrorists dont have to vote- they have enough idiots pushing their agenda for them.