Irving Pleads Guilty To Holocaust Denial

[The Old Git]

Sounds distinctly fishy to me.

 

It was in what I think may be your paper Rog, the Telegraph. I was reading it at someone's house at lunch time and I couldn't believe some of the questions.

[Rog]

Sounds distinctly fishy to me.

 

It was in what I think may be your paper Rog, the Telegraph. I was reading it at someone's house at lunch time and I couldn't believe some of the questions.

 

They may well have been sent in by someone but --- if they were kosher or not, that's another matter.

 

Kosher? Ooops! I mean halal!

[Jacqueline]

Thanks for talking the time to reply Rog.

 

I've read it and read it and I'm sorry but I still don't understand it and I don't think I ever will. You're right I guess - we here in the west take our freedoms for granted - there is little need to fight for what we believe to be ours. I guess, as someone wiser than me said once - maybe you just had to be there.

 

I'll stick with my naive views and hope that at some point in time all you angry men sit down with a nice cup of tea and talk about things in a more friendly way.

 

Naive or not and although fully aware of the sexist comment ahead... I can't help but think that women would have made a far better job of keeping the peace just by sitting by the fire all day and talking things through and you men could have just stuck to going out and bringing home the bacon. (Oh shit - sorry) :-)

[haX0red_Account]

for what it's worth, I'm not religious in any way and have never suffered any sort of persecution and agree with rog 100%

[Chinahand]

We are very rapidly moving very off topic, but this does interest me.

 

I've read Rog's posts and I think I understand where he is coming from. I also fear the continuing rise of ... what ... islama-fascism ... or whatever the word for it is. Todays atrocities in Iraq just fill me with fear ... I'm reasonably certain that that country is fucked and for the next 15 or so years we'll see blood and more blood until the zealots have all killed each other. Algeria seems to show it takes about a generation to work its way through the system ... but Algeria didn't have oil ... oh what a sad world we live in!

 

However I do feel that the Forum does not have a Muslim to respond to Rog's posts and I feel they are highly slanted.

 

I am certain Rog will come back quoting chapter and verse on Koranic exortations to violence. I've read and googled and know they are there. However if you wanted to dig through the Torah, or the New Testament you'd also find lots of xenophobia, violence towards outsiders etc.

 

A total aside, but I can't resist: I still can't get over God's absolute fetish over ordering the Tribes of Israel to go out and collect Philistine foreskins.

 

Rog has previously posted his admiration of Freud ... Having a creator so obsessed with the foreskin to order his followers to harvest it from their enemies is just amazing!

 

A moderate Muslim would quote Sura 2:256 "There is no compulsion in religion"

 

Or al-Nahl 18:29 "The truth is from your Lord, so whosoever wants let him believe and whosoever wants let him deny."

 

I've worked with academic researchers who have spent their lives examining Christain and Jewish Communities under the Ottamans. The idea of conversion by the sword is simply not true. The whole issue was that the Koran allowed these people to be taxed. They were a revenue source and the powers that be didn't want them to convert.

 

Rog's postings concentrate on one minor part of Islamic history, and yes its a part that Bin Laden also concentrates on, but the peaceful Islam that coexisted with other religions and spread via trade throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia represents a far larger proportion of its history than the violence of the crusades or the explosion out of Arabia in the 8th and 9th centuries.

 

Religions change: modern C of E Christianity has totally different attitudes towards determinism or intolerance compared with those of early protestantism, and the Catholic Church that preeched that the soul of the crusader would be cleansed with the blood of the Saracen was a product of a time which doesn't now exist.

 

Rog will come back claiming Islam can't change as the Koran is the exact dictation of God's word, but many Jews believe this is also so with the first 5 books of the Torah dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai.

 

Rog you've posted jokingly about how the proabitions of Leviticus don't "really" apply anymore. My nasty example is that if a virgin is raped in a city, both her and the rapist must be put to death as she could have shouted out ... imagine how date rape would be viewed if Israel became a jewish theocracy as some jews wish!

 

Religions change; you insist Islam cannot do this, but all the evidence of its 1300 year odd history is that it has changed.

 

I say that it is absolutely in the interests of the west and those who wish for peaceful coexistence to emphasis those elements of Islam which are tolerant and accept peoples of other faith. The interpretations of Koranic scholars over the centuries have done this. Bin Laden and Wahabism explicitly reject this and insist on only using interpretations from the first years of Islam, that's their choice and in the war of ideas they're winning, but I totally disagree with you that this interpretation is the only interpretation possible. There is a huge body of text that disagrees with this, written by Muslims.

 

And these Muslims are very strongly saying Bin Laden and his ilk do not represent them. I encourage that; and think your efforts would be better spend educating people about the possibilities of compromise rather than the certainties of rejection.

 

Both attitudes are available from the texts and attitudes of religion and like Jacqueline I wonder why you focus just on one.

[Gladys]

I say that it is absolutely in the interests of the west and those who wish for peaceful coexistence to emphasis those elements of Islam which are tolerant and accept peoples of other faith. The interpretations of Koranic scholars over the centuries have done this. Bin Laden and Wahabism explicitly reject this and insist on only using interpretations from the first years of Islam, that's their choice and in the war of ideas they're winning, but I totally disagree with you that this interpretation is the only interpretation possible. There is a huge body of text that disagrees with this, written by Muslims.

 

And these Muslims are very strongly saying Bin Laden and his ilk do not represent them. I encourage that; and think your efforts would be better spend educating people about the possibilities of compromise rather than the certainties of rejection.

 

Both attitudes are available from the texts and attitudes of religion and like Jacqueline I wonder why you focus just on one.

Great post! Extremism of any form is the real enemy; tolerance and understanding (not necessarily agreement) is the way forward.

[LoneWolf]

Extremism of any form is the real enemy; tolerance and understanding (not necessarily agreement) is the way forward.

 

Totally agree about extremism.

Im less certain about tolerance. Today's Daily Mirror (would you believe?) had a gem of sentence in a column dealing with British Muslims. The general idea was that Brits are being asked to tolerate intolerance

Maybe we need to be selective about what we are prepared to tolerate.

[Gladys]

I'm going to get myself in a real twist here, but if everyone is tolerant that would include the extremists who would then become more tolerant, if you get my drift?

[LoneWolf]

I'm going to get myself in a real twist here, but if everyone is tolerant that would include the extremists who would then become more tolerant, if you get my drift?

 

Thats the trick. Get everyone to be tolerant not just the Brits.

[haX0red_Account]

exactly- but they won't will they? and this was rog's point- there's no such thing as a moderate muslim and it's almost impossible for them (in practice) to contradict the bin laden types. the whole religion would need some sort of iconclastic shift like luther or something to permit that to happen. you can't combat extremism by tolerating it. Take even things like 'KICK racism out of football' - my emphasis but you get the point, while non-violent, it takes a certain amount of force.

[LoneWolf]

exactly- but they won't will they? and this was rog's point- there's no such thing as a moderate muslim and it's almost impossible for them (in practice) to contradict the bin laden types. the whole religion would need some sort of iconclastic shift like luther or something to permit that to happen. you can't combat extremism by tolerating it. Take even things like 'KICK racism out of football' - my emphasis but you get the point, while non-violent, it takes a certain amount of force.

 

I dont think so either. I suspect a lot of Muslims will not be happy until we tolerate women being stoned

for adultery. i.e. until our tolerance has transformed Britain and similar countries into Muslim States.

Whether that school of thought represents a majority of Muslims is another question.

In the meantime, and back on thread, I was gladdened to learn Austrian prosecutors are to appeal against the leniency of our friend Mr Irving's sentence.

[Gladys]

Perhaps a bit of an idealist, but if the moderates of any persuasion ignored the extremists, wouldn't the extremists eventually run out of audience?

 

I also disagree that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim; they have been operating fine kebab shops up and down the country for at least 20 years!

 

But seriously, of course there are moderate Muslims. There have been some very thoughtful (and erudite) Muslims recently entering the debate on extremist Islam. They are the people that the Jews and the Gentiles (I use those phrases to show that everyone is categorised) need to engage to set in motion a proper dialogue and, hopefully, marginalise the extremists of any persuasion. If you marginalise the whole, then you marginalise the majority, fair minded tolerants and, then, there really will be no solution.

[LoneWolf]

Its highly questionable that the Muslims who are pushing for Brits to accept some of their more interesting practices (eg stoning women to death, forcing women to cover up, etc, etc) represent a majority of muslims living in the UK.

Extremists, by definition, have to be a minority.

I just think we need to set boundaries as to what will be tolerated in Britain.

[Gladys]

In my own kack-handed way, surely it is tolerate the tolerant and ignore, and thereby marginalise, the intolerant.

[LoneWolf]

In my own kack-handed way, surely it is tolerate the tolerant and ignore, and thereby marginalise, the intolerant.

 

I think you and I have similar views on this. I would go a little further and say regulate the intolerant by means of the law. Other than that we are on the same wave length.