Alan Siegrist schrieb: > >From what I understand, the story of "72 virgins" is not from the Koran or > at the very least this is a vile distortion of the Koran used by these > hate-mongers for their own purposes. This distortion of gospel is also a > hallmark of cults and cult leaders. > And again fully agree with you. Whenever people compare Christianity and Islam, I always think about the different "ages" of these religions. Christianity is approximately 2000 years old, Islam approximately 1500 years old. Let's consider how Christianity behaved 500 years ago. Savonarola burned at the stake. Torquemade inquisitor general of Spain Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros introduced forced mass conversions of Moors, leading to a revolt. Burning of books. Persecution of Jews. Witch trials 30 years war in Germany etc. I do hope that Islam will grow up in hte next 500 years. > By the way, as far as I can tell, "madrasa" (also spelled madrasah or > medressa, among other ways) is simply the Arabic word for "school" so it > might be inaccurate to use madrasa to refer only to religious schools that > teach a radicalized version of Islam. > You are right, but I severely doubt that every madrasah preaches the radicalized version, and I see a difference between state schools and religious schools. > For the sake of future peace in the region, I can only hope that the > Palestinian schools that teach such a hateful, cultish version of Islam are > in the minority. But I am not so sanguine. > Schools that teach the three Rs (reading, riting, and rithmatic) and schools teaching the Quran and hardly anything else both are called schools, but they shouldn't be bunched together. The way I see it, the former type is more typical for more modern environments, while the latter ones are typical for poor environments. Destroying the infrastructure reduces the number of the former type and increases the number of the latter type. This applies to Iraq as well as to Palestine. With incresing wealth, religious ardor normally decreases, while poverty always seems to swell the membership in various religions.
>> I actually did not remember Heaven's Gate and initially misunderstood >> your above reference to killing children. >> > > Sorry about that. I suppose Heaven's Gate was only a very local news story > here in California. (But they were really strange and it was a shocking > story. Why do I remember even the name of their supposed deity "Rael"?) > No problem, one Google informed me. > Perhaps a better example would have been the famous French and Quebecois > suicide cult (the name of which escapes me now). > Jim Jones was enough, and I definitely remembered him. When the Aum Shinrikyo gassed the subway, I was driving my mother from Narita to our house. Have fun, Roland --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
