You've already asked that Gandalf. I have already answered.

Back to the original topic...

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That topic is the Pew survey. This topic is spineless apologetics.

here is Gandalf making excuses for his fellow Muslims, and insisting they couldn't possible mean what they actually say.

polite_gandalf wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2013 at 1:24pm:


Abu Hurairah narrates that the Prophet said: “One who keeps the faults of a Muslim secret in this world, Allah will keep his faults in the Hereafter

Ian followed it up with this:

ian wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2013 at 1:27pm:

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Yes it is. Very rarely, you will make a vague concession about Islam and the Muslim community having 'problems', then go silent on it. Yet even when hundreds of millions of Muslims say they want to chop the heads of apostates and stone adulterers to death, you are tripping over yourself to make excuses for them.

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Didn't you just finish explaining that most of the population is opposed to it? Apparently there are just enough non-Muslims to tip the balance in favour of civility, at least for this particular issue. There is of course also the problem that Muslims may not agree on which (ex)Muslims get their head chopped off. Obviously if you support chopping people's heads off, but the specific proposal is to put your head on the chopping block, you will withhold your support until they want to chop someone else's head off. This is the wonder of democracy.

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You mean when snobby rich white folk are around? Is this just a slightly more subtle version of "they didn't chop my head off when I was there, therefor they couldn't possibly support death for apostasy or stoning adulterers to death"?

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How do you know this? Making it up again?

Can you explain how voting for a candidate who supports stoning adulterers to death and executing apostates is any less abstract for them than saying they support it on a poll? How is the passage of legislation in some distant capital any less abstract? Do you really think there is no problem for people to support these evil things because they will never end up with these laws unless they go out and chop their neighbour's head off themselves?

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How about sucking it up and being objective?

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Not making excuses or insisting they do not really think what they say they think for them would be a good start. Can you imagine if I started explaining to everyone why you do not think what you say you think?

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It depends what you mean by decent. I think it is possible for them to behave reasonably until they have an opportunity to achieve what they want. Remember, Malaysia also has serious problems with Islamic extremism and terrorism.

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Who is to say there isn't? Do you expect me to take your word for it, after your antics in this thread and the other one? I know I would be very nervous if half of my nieghbours were into stoning people to death. I find it very hard to believe that in a democracy where the population is split nearly 50-50 on an issue that there would be no debate on it.

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How do you know? The same way you know the Muslims don't support stoning people to death?

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That doesn't make sense.

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Yes. If a person supports capital punishment, they are not going to suddenly change their mind because they have a chance to get what they want.

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You are trying to say it is not a problem every time you insist that these people do not actually think what they say they think.

Soren wrote on Dec 9^th, 2013 at 10:09pm:


By Alan Johnson October 4th, 2013


A Christian tomb in formerly Christian Algeria
I was sitting in Rupert Shortt’s kitchen interviewing him for Fathom Journal about his book Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack.  When some leading politicians are asked to protest the persecution of Christians  in the Middle East, he said, they respond with "Well, if Christians are going to march into these Muslim countries and try to convert them then what do you expect?" Rupert looked at me and shook his head in exasperation. "There is absolutely no sense that most of these societies were Christian long before the rise of Islam."

The historical ignorance matters because in a vast belt of land from Morocco to Pakistan there is scarcely a single country in which Christians can worship entirely without harassment. The recent suicide bomb attack on Christian worshippers at the All Saints Church in the old quarter of Peshawar, Pakistan – around 600 people were eating and playing on the grass after a service when they were ripped to pieces by the two Islamist suicide bombers. 78 people Christians were killed, including 34 women and seven children – was only a spectacular expression of the phenomenon.

Westerners of all faiths and none need to plumb the gist of our failure to rouse ourselves in defence of persecuted Christians. Talking to Rupert Shortt, the religion editor of the Times Literary Supplement and an intensely thoughtful man, I heard four big causes of our shameful quietism.

First, “I’m sorry to say there’s a bit of a hierarchy of victimhood here” he told me. “It’s just not very fashionable to be a persecuted Christian.” The New Atheism has played its role here.

Second, and one of the sources of this fashionable indifference, is what Shortt called "a bit of a liberal blind spot". He meant that while we are "very, very sensitised to the perceived sufferings and complaints of Muslims, many of which I will be the first to say are justified," we also tend to swallow whole a "highly questionable victimhood narrative of certain Islamists. The idea that Muslims are targeted and persecuted like no other group is a falsification of history that needs to be resisted." That we often fail to do that is one reason we also struggle to see anti-Christian hatred and persecution plain. It meshes with what Shortt calls the "self-lacerating element in Christian societies, probably born out of guilt over colonialism."

Third, there is that "turn the other cheek" thing. Shortt gave the example of a Christian church bombed in Kathmandu after which the survivors dusted themselves off and carried on. A friend of Shortt’s, a human rights monitor who went out there sometime later, was told by an astonished non-Christian local that, "if this had been a temple, if this had been a synagogue, if this had been a mosque, all hell would have broken loose, but it was a church".

Shortt was at once proud and frustrated about this stoicism: "I want to stress there’s something deeply admirable about that on one level. I think that ‘an eye for an eye’, ‘tit for tat’ mentality is only going to make matters worse and at some point in a conflict, the cycle needs to be broken. It’s a sign that they’re taking the teaching of Jesus seriously. So one level I take that as a source of pride.” But he was also deeply worried by this reaction. “At the same time, I don’t see why news of these sufferings should be muffled."

Fourth, and made possible by this muffling, there is "timidity on the part of Christian governments in the West when it comes to sticking up for their fellow believers". And surely this timidity is found in parts of the Church, too?

It’s a toxic mix: among non-believers there is historical ignorance, hierarchies of oppression, postcolonial guilt, and official timidity. On the part of many stoic Christians there is a forbearance and willingness to see virtue in suffering. Perhaps it is time to take the advice of a Jew instead. Silence, said the Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, only encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Soren wrote on Dec 27^th, 2013 at 2:52pm:


There is no such thing as a "Christian government" in the west as far as I know. Well at least speaking for here, the U.S. divorced itself from God in 1947 through the Everson decision, with the spurious notion and BIG LIE of any original intent, toward a so-called "separation of church and state". Indeed it's absurd to suggest such intent, when our framers recognized that all of our rights are given to us by God. Divorced our schools from God in 1948 through the McCollum decision. Our ill-defined military misadventures ever since, have aptly reflected U.S. government divorce from God.

Thus no surprise whose side a liberal administration with a closet Muslim in the White House would take:
From CNS on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Obama Administration effort:
"'The OIC has hit on a winning strategy to get Western countries to break away from their commitment to free speech by repackaging blasphemy as hate speech and free speech as the manifestation of "intolerance,"' George Washington University professor of public interest law Jonathan Turley warned in a column this week."
"'Although the OIC and the Obama administration claim fealty to free speech, the very premise of the meeting reveals a desire to limit it,' he argued."
"In her address Wednesday, Clinton referred briefly to criticism of the talks.
'Now I know that some in my country and elsewhere have criticized this meeting and our work with all of you. But I want to make clear that I am proud of this work, and I am proud to be working with every one of you.'"

Throwing first amendment free speech under the bus, while being "proud" to work with "every one" of the OIC countries, many of which murder their own citizens for the "crime" of blasphemy, by statute.
falseprophetmuhammad.com/blasphemy_laws.htm

I should have said first amendment hostile, champion of the Muslim Brotherhood, not-so-closet Muslim in the White House:
Barak Obama: ‘The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,’

While the "messenger" of Islam himself, insults - indeed blasphemes - the Son of God and His shed blood, with impunity.
falseprophetmuhammad.com

Soren wrote on Dec 27^th, 2013 at 2:52pm:



Nocommentotherthantosaywhynocommentfromthemuslims.

Adamant wrote on Dec 27^th, 2013 at 11:40pm:


FROM THE SUNNA OF MOHAMMED

Allah's Apostle said,
"I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy)...."
hadith/bukhari #004.052.220

".....I have been given superiority......; I have been helped by terror (in the hearts of enemies):....."
hadithsunnah/muslim/ #004.1062

But the persons who detonated that bomb among Christian worshippers at the All Saints Church in the old quarter of Peshawar, Pakistan, were not real moslems.

Because as we all know, this is real ISLAM;         

How the moslem community [everywhere] seeks to portray their religion [to those who are outside of their own 'camp'];

IMAGE....

A moslem advertising campaign [2007] in the UK.
Which promotes [British] moslems as normal, integrated citizens, who reject all forms of extremism.

Yep....
"PROUD TO BE A BRITISH MOSLEM"

Peace loving moslems - they just make you proud, don't they!!

Empty talk, Stavros. The harassment and murdering in the name of Islam continues.
I condemn the empty talk. And those like you who try to present it as sufficient.