islam

Chris Knight's avatar

Let’s compare some fiction and fact…

– Jabba’s Palace was first built by the B’omarr Monks, who continued to live within it and practice their religion long after after Jabba the Hutt took over and made it his headquarters.

– The Hagia Sophia was a Christian basilica until 1453 when Ottoman Turks forced their way inside, slaughtering thousands of innocent people whose blood poured into the streets of Constantinople. From that time on Christians were forbidden from worshiping within their own building.

Got that? Good. Because it only makes the claim by a group of Turkish Austrians that LEGO’s new Jabba’s Palace set from its Star Wars line is “racist” and an affront to religion all the more ridiculous.

LEGO version of Jabba’s Palace (left) and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (right)
One is a place that has known murder, slavery and intolerance toward others. The other is a children’s toy.
...
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Chris Knight's avatar

Civility is a chosen virtue. It cannot be imposed or expected from those who refuse to accept it and its responsibilities.

Time to get out of the Mid-East until “countries” like Egypt and Libya learn to behave. Pull EVERYTHING out, including all those billions of dollars of aid they get from us one way or another.

If they want to return to barbarism that bad enough, who are we to stop them?...

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I hate to say “I told you so” buuuuuuut…

For quite a long time now and most recently five days ago, I have argued that going to war in Iraq would have disastrous long-term consequences and chief among those is that without a “strongman” to hold that country together, Iraq will tear itself apart into sectarian strife. The classic model for my thesis is Yugoslavia: a “nation” that much like Iraq was cobbled together from leftover realms in the aftermath of World War I. And just as Marshal Tito kept the various factions like the Croats, the Bosnians, the Serbs etc. from killing each other, so did Saddam Hussein put a lid on the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds and everyone else from destroying Iraq from within.

That’s NOT any justification for Saddam Hussein, mind you. The man was an evil bastard. It’s just the peculiar dynamic of ...

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It’s late. Had a way long day. I’m tired. So I’ll make this quick. Or as quick as I’m apt to be with this sort of thing…

In a way Egypt is demonstrating why I was always against the Iraq War that began in 2003. And it’s also demonstrating why the American government is never going to feel safe about pulling out of that country.

Because once we do, Iraq is going to very quickly turn into what Egypt is becoming now.

The uprising in Egypt began in large part to long-festering mistrust of Hosni Mubarak (who has been ruling Egypt since I was knee high to a grasshopper). That’s thirty-some years. Way too long for anyone to be in power. I don’t blame the Egyptian people for wanting to peaceably put an end to his regime.

But increasingly I’m seeing the efforts of the “nice ‘n peaceable” Egyptians ...

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Personally, I find the “mosque at Ground Zero” – the Islamic worship center that is being planned for construction not far away from where the two towers of the World Trade Center once stood – to be as big a “non-issue” as there’s been in recent memory. It, like too many other things, is a distraction from matters that are of more dire priority.

So I honestly haven’t given the issue much thought until someone over the weekend – and a devout Christian, incidentally – remarked that he hadn’t seen one rational argument as to why there shouldn’t be a mosque built at that location.

After spending the past few days ruminating on it, I have to conclude… that my friend has observed accurately. And that there even might be more good reasons to allow the mosque to be constructed than raw emotion might have us believe.

My gray matter ...

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Read the story here.

I don’t know what faith President Barack Obama professes to belong to. And in all honesty… it’s not really my business to be concerned with it anyway. He could be Christian. He could be Muslim. He could be Hindu. He could be a follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for all I care. As has been said before on this blog and I’ll state it again: I believe that every person has the right to seek God as best he or she can understand Him, so long as it’s understood that this right ends where the right of others to have the same begins. Barack Obama certainly enjoys that right as well.

I merely expect Obama to be President and uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, as he swore an oath to do. More than a year and a half into ...

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Many readers know that I have a very strongly held personal belief that each person has an absolute right to seek after and worship God as best he or she understands Him, or even to not believe in God at all. The one caveat is that a person’s right to that ends where another’s right to do likewise begins. I don’t believe that what the South Park guys have done (or have ever done) violates that notion.

The same can not be said of many adherents of the “religion of peace pieces”…

So now it’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone who have drawn the ire of a wacko Islamic website. What’s the sacrilege this time? A depiction of the prophet Muhammad, shown above with South Park characters Stan and Kyle.

In case you can’t see him, Muhammad is hiding inside the bear suit.

From the Fox News story...

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I’m thinkin’ that everyone now has a perfectly valid and legal reason to tell President Barack Obama to take his crummy “health care reform” and shove it up his ass.

(Oh yeah, that’s right: not even Obama and his cronies want Obamacare. They’re exempt from it.)

But within the legislation – which the House just re-approved a short while ago – are provisions for conscientious objection to Obamacare because of religion. The legal language seems tailor-made for the Amish (who use the communal resources of their churches to provide for medical care) and for Muslims, for whom insurance is religious taboo.

Since I’m neither Muslim, or a member of any Christian denomination (I still prefer to call myself a follower of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ), I guess that means that I’m screwed, right? Well, who is anyone in this steaming pile of bullshit (that’s the very first ...

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