[ExI] Religions and violence [Was Re: Sarah Palin]

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2010, max at maxmore.com wrote:

> Gosh, I?m glad we?re discussing the fine details of Catholic theology here.
> :-)
> 
[...]
> The main point is: Do you agree with the Muslims who claim that their highest
> religious authorities and texts do *not* tell them to fight the infidel?
> 
> Max

I think it's a bit hard to agree or disagree, unless one reads "the text" 
in original, i.e. in Arabic language. From what I've heard so far, reading 
a translation "does not count", whatever this really means (not sure yet). 
As of authorities, I guess it is same as the case with Catholic religious 
authorities, they tend to disagree (more or less) even with their previous 
manifestations. So it's like a megamarket, which sells books, condoms and 
pistols (and many more items). Nowadays they sell, say, books, but they 
still have full stores of things being sold 50 and 200 years ago, they 
have never been invalidated, they've just became dusted and forgotten. 
Still, any willing client can go to the back of the shop and find some 
toys for himself and bunch of his comrades.

So, the subject is wide and deep, and I guess proponents of quite 
different points of view can find something to support themselves. Before 
(dis)agreeing with "the text" I would have to learn Arabic. And since 
there are at least two major interpretations of "the text" (one is 
peaceful and the other is not), I would have to read the source myself, 
anyway.

Having said all this, I must add that I believe majority of Muslims is 
peacefull and ok. At least in a sense that they don't want to fight 
religious wars, which of course means they can still fight for some other 
reason. Religious wars, anyway, killing the infidels, well, heh, if they 
are rich... I suspect every religion has a small text somewhere, which 
says that God does not love rich infidels.

Maybe I am not clear enough, so we can reverse the situation and question. 
I know there are "doves" and "hawks" in US, both have their "sacred texts" 
(some shared) and authorities - now, question is, do American "texts" and 
"authorities" tell their citizens to go to war or the other way? And the 
answer is a bit complicated, isn't it?

:-)

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **