[kj] OT : those infamous Jyllands-Posten cartoons ...

[culturevirus]

Thank you Pat for providing this brief historical perspective. Many  people are unaware of the chain of event leading up to the Crusades.  It's as if some assume that one day the West woke up and said "yeah!  let's go kill us some A-rabs" which was not the case at all. While the  defence of the Cross was a big part of the Crusades, if I'm not  mistaken there were significant political concerns among the Western  rulers regarding the expansion of some Muslim "kings" into historically  Western territories (i.e. Spain).
  
 On the topic at hand, I  reviewed the cartoons and can appreciate the outrage on the part of  many Muslims. I'm not sure how to interpret some of the cartoons, they  don't seem to be about the Prophet, but rather about Islam itself (not  the same in my mind). It's unfortunate, but I think true, that the  caricatures in the cartoons are the face of Islam as we in the West see  them. Until the peacable, reasonable majority denounce the extremist  portion this is the face we will identify as "Islam". Just as Greg was  quick to call out Creationists in the US, when the truth is the  majority of Xians accept evolution. But the damage is done and the  current face of Xianity is that of Pat Robertson rather than that of  Kenneth Miller (Finding Darwin's God).
  
  I hope the current troubles we see will bring about changes similar to  what the Xian Church went thru with the Reformation and the  Enlightenment. 
  
  iPat <pmdavies at gmail.com> wrote:  Sorry but you were raising the subject. Yes the crusades did involve
violence, but why did they occur? The Crusades were one description of
the activities of the 'western' forces of the time. Now it would
appear from your comments, with your earlier reference to Bush, that
there is a history of western imperialism against the poor innocent
muslim countries. But thats too simplistic a view.
The crusades were in defence of the cross or christianity.
Christianity was born and established in Palestine and the lands of
the area. In response to muslim imperialism, the papal imperialists
certainly made a rallying call but to generalise to support the evil
of western imperialism is dogmatic and blinkered.
What we have here is the flexibility of a secular society, Denmark, in
a clash with the facism of a branch of what is refferred to as Islam.
Yes this is the problem of orthodox religions that have invested
interest in controlling the masses which is no different to many other
systems that have existed whether it be the Russian Empire of the last
century or the stark Poll Pot regime in Cambodia. The hypocracy of the
outcry is that it comes from the media in countries that depict its
targets as pigs whether they Isreali, British or American. The anti
semtisism that is regularly seen in publications in Arab countries
makes me question their demands that they should be respected and no
images should be shown of their prophet, despite the fact that there
is a rich history of imagary in the past.
So the whole subject is far too important to simply be used as a stick
to hit Bush with, this goes to cultural diversity that has existed for
over 2000 years.

On 2/2/06, GregSlawson at aol.com  wrote:
> I'm not sure, but i think the Crusades MAY have involved a little violence.
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--
Pat

For the discovery of truth there is no path

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