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| 'Mired in a religious war' |
| 2004-12-09 |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 Peggy, I believe Jesus was referring to paying Roman taxes with Roman coins, but your point still holds true. ;-) Well stated, too. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2004-12-09 10:09:41 PM |
| #2 Yes, we are at war with all of Islam. I disagree that we are at war with some sects and not others. Why, because general Islam is the soil from which this particular form or terrorism and islamism grew. What we need to make clear is a distinction between the sanctity of the lives of law abiding muslims and their ideas. This is a war which on the one hand requires that we physically combat those who intend to kill us and one which on the other hand is a war of ideas. While we must be clear of our opposition to the islamic concept that all spheres of life must be governed strictly and directly by a state religion, we must also make it clear that we will not wage that war on the persons or livelihoods of law abiding muslims. We combat lies by telling the truth without reservation or apology and the truth is that the only way to success and happiness for mankind is a principled separation of church and state and a principled application of Western style capitalism. You'll note my use of principled. As a Christian, I believe that as individuals we must apply our Christian ethics to all that we do. Morality is the province of individual conscience and the state as a entity needs to stay the hell out of that province. We have the Christian faiths hard won wisdom to thank for this wall between an individuals application of a religious code and the state's power. And we have Jesus directly to thank when he instructed his disciples to "render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's and render unto God what is God's" |
| Posted by: peggy 2004-12-09 3:38:25 PM |
| #1 For "mired" write "involved." Better. "It is time we admitted that we are not at war with 'terrorism.'" OK. "We are at war with Islam." No-: just some sects of Islam. Get it right or you don't have a chance of getting anybody to help clean the Muslim house. We need a good propaganda campaign, and it has to go beyond "Americans are fine people." Somewhere there are Muslim scholars who can counter Qtub and Wahhab and Khomeini: is there some quiet way of getting their voices widely heard in the Muslim world? Strangling Saudi funding of the extremist teachers would be a good start, but I don't think it would be enough: they've got too much of a head start. |
| Posted by: James 2004-12-09 1:32:34 PM |