I'll tell you what, Winston. I am an honest debater so I will acknowledge that the President's comparison between the Crusades and ISIS is a difficult one to defend when it comes to historical fact, with the caveat and understanding that the history we are educated with here in the US is obviously sympathetic to Western and, thus, Christian issues when it comes to the Crusades. We still teach that Christopher Columbus discovered America too, so.... That said, I stand behind what I have said regarding the spirit of what the President said in his speech. Further, his references to the Inquisition, Slavery and Jim Crow are accurate and there is, without doubt, many instances in history when Christianity has been used as a platform for committing atrocities. The right has feigned outrage too many times over trivial things to be taken seriously, and this is just another example of it. They have carefully selected a portion of a larger statement and selectively condemned the entire speech because of it as an attempt to degrade Christianity by the President. Now, Winston, I've addressed the points you made. I've acknowledged that the President's analogy was a weak one. Now it is your turn.....can you deny that the Inquisition, Slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK and the Nazis committed awful atrocities while using tenets of Christianity to justify it? Can you deny the overall theme of what the President was saying that there are an equal number of points in history, and some of them in the not so distant past, where groups used Christianity just the same way that the radical Muslims are today?
Not the fault of Christians, Pride. The fault of a few people who did things in the name of Christianity. No one thinks Christians are responsible for Slavery. I have tried explaining this to you but you just don't get it do you? The terrorists are doing things in the name of Islam but that doesn't make it the fault of all Muslims. The Nazi's did terrible things that were supposedly supported by God's Providence but no one in their right minds think that the killing of 6 million Jews is the fault of all Christians. Why can't you understand this? They are all nuts who are doing things in the name of these religions but they are not representative of all members of those religions. If I showed up at ESPN tomorrow and shot the building up because I felt like they weren't being fair to LSU during football season, does that mean that all LSU fans are wild-eyed terrorists who approve of me shooting up the place? No, it means I'm a crazy fuck who needs to be imprisoned and medicated.
Bullshit. Slavery was in the name of America. Not this notion of a "few" Christians. Back to terrorist, yes it is the fault of their religion stuck in the Stone Age. Why this is taboo for you and others is beyond me. They enslave their women,promote violence and are in fact one of the worst religions on this planet.
Only he did not say that. Obama said that American slavers used Christianity to justify their crimes. Again drawing an obvious parallel with islamist terror groups, with a clear suggestion that we righted our wrongs in a great civil war and that Islam must right it's wrongs. This is the message that must be sent. We are not going to break ourselves trying to solve all the problems in the muslim world, they must do it themselves.
Good points but telling the Muslim world, "it's ok Christians did it too" is the wrong message. Clearly you must agree with that.
Why not compare something closer to home for isis? Why not talk about the over 1 million Christian and Europeans who were enslaved in Algiers? Or even the Armenian Genocide? I just don't get the constant verbal self-flagellation by the POTUS. Call it what it is, don't hesitate to do so, and then don't be afraid to back it up.
Only there is no parallel, well other than the fact that these muslim bastsrds are still stuck in a time long forgotten. They don't grow, evolve, adapt, they will never change and must be exterminated. All of them.
I'll go over your points in reverse order. I agree as I have said before we are not at war with Islam but those who wage war (of all sorts) in its name. I don't castigate the president for saying the same thing W said. I do believe his comparison with the crusades is wrong and not appropriate. Comparison with Hitler is much more accurate though I have a shade of difference. Hitler was much more a Aryan racist than a Christian. He, Himmler and his closest aides hated Christians almost as much as the Jews. Everyone no matter what religion were to be killed unless they had enough "pure" blood. The crusades were a portion of the very real culture war between Islam and Christianity that was in full force from the time the first Islamic warriors burst out of the Arabian peninsula in the 700s till the Crimean war in the 1850s. The Arabs washed over the still strong heart of Christian N Africa and the lower middle east. Egypt and N Africa were the home of many of the Christian fathers including ST Augustine, St Jerome, and many more. They looted, raped and killed as well as forced conversions by the sword more than any crusader. They were only stopped in Spain by Charles Martel in the early 800's and for 600 years by the Byzantine empire. As I noted earlier the took Constantinople after the supposed crusades and the rape, looting and murder orgy there topped anything the crusaders did. The Turks (still Muslim) continued aggression through the 1680s, taking the Balkans and Hungary. They were attacking the walls of Vienna in the 1680s. The Reconquista of Europe took hundreds of years. Spain wasn't freed from the Moors (Muslim) till 1492. This documented aggression by Islamic cultures (Arab, Moorish & Turk) against Christian Europe over a period of 600 years is much greater than the effort to reconquer and hold the Holy Land. More than that it was a struggle between two cultures equal in basic outlook and treatment of enemies. They were both barbarians by today's standards. ISIS is the personification of that barbarism fighting against modernity. This is where the president's analogy fails. In essence he said the crusader were barbarians attacking a civilized peaceful weaker neighbor. That is patently false the people of the Islamic world were no different than the crusaders equally ruthless and violent. To compare ISIS to the crusaders is facile.
Many Muslims express admiration for Hitler. What they a too stupid to realize that if Hitler had achieved world domination that Arabs would have been marched off the the gas chambers just like the Jews they hate so much. It probably would have been blacks and then the Arabs. Arabs in no way resemble the Aryan "Master Race" ideal.
