Why is that regarded as a negative thing to say? This website is all about how humanity has considered the words of those who claim that something higher communicated with them! And Islam is no exception!
Is Islam in accordance with rationality and science?
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Why is that regarded as a negative thing to say? This website is all about how humanity has considered the words of those who claim that something higher communicated with them! And Islam is no exception!
It should be noted that the totalitarianism of the Republic is "young Plato". At the end of his life, he reversed a great deal of his attitudes when writing "The Laws".
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
No it is clear fact .. military law in Israel states the crime of stone throwing, even at the wall, is subject to up to 20 years in prison. Yes it is a maximum sentence but what sort of regime sets a 20 year sentence for chucking stones at a wall?
How do we explain the 600 children arrested each year, 300 of which are imprisoned (usually for throwing stones)?
Doesn't it make your mind flip to read that a child throwing a stone at a concrete wall can get longer in prison than a murderer in this country ... can you seriously try to justify that and say it is proportional punishment?
The boy got off lightly: he spent 28 days in prison and was fined 500 shekels (approximately $120). Under Israeli military law, which prevails in the Palestinian territories, the crime of throwing a stone at an Israeli solider or even at the monolithic 20-ft.-high "security barrier" enclosing much of the West Bank can carry a maximum 20-year-prison sentence. Since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoner Affairs, more than 6,500 children have been arrested, mostly for hurling rocks.
Israeli Prisons: Are Palestinian Children Abused? - TIME
This article is an interesting read and makes a very important point at the end:
The PRC's tactics may not be a legitimate way to highlight these abuses, but that doesn't mean that the demands themselves lack merit, not least in highlighting the systemic abuses and mistreatment that feed into ongoing Palestinian resistance and violence. If Israel, as a paid-up member of the international community, can hold international humanitarian law in such light regard even for 13-year olds, what hope that those Palestinian minors will grow up with any respect for those same principles?
All that shows is you have spent a lot of time on this forum answering my posts without actually reading them.
c0de
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if The Republic = Lenin
then The Laws = Leo Strauss
stepping out from one cave; and into another,
isn't progress (not much anyway)
I have come to a conclusion. The Palestinians are right. The Isrealis are right. Therefore, the only way to assure justice for both sides is to seal the whole area off and nuke 'em all until Paris can read newspapers at midnight from the glow.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
I agree with you thus far ... both sides have right and wrong to their name but I think we need to find a better solution than nuke em. We have to find a way to work toward peace but that means both sides must be willing to negotiate and compromise.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
How strange then that they offered a 100 year peace treaty and were turned down!!!
It is of course true that this happens ... on both sides ... and no there is no simple solution to this problem but there IS a solution, it happened in Northern Ireland (where the would also dance in the street when a bomb attack occured) and can happen in Palestine too.
bob x
Well-Known Member
Yes. THAT real world. The one in which freedom lives.
God does not "tell" me things by speaking in voices in my head: I know that now. Muhammad never figured that out.
Yes-- but they refused to stop it, anyway. I agree with you that it is utterly stupid to keep the killing going on and on when your side is unambiguously defeated, but maybe you should try explaining that to the Palestinians.
AND for Japanese soldiers, and civilians. Instead of a couple hundred thousand being killed, we would have lost one million (it was estimated; and that was the low-ball estimate) of our own soldiers, PLUS the Japanese would have lost MORE than a million (the losers always take more casualties than the winners, of course), of soldiers and civilians. This is not to claim that Truman worried much about the prospective Japanese corpse-count: his job was to protect American lives; however, from the Japanese perspective, forcing the war to a quick end saved a lot of them, also.
I am not saying that hundreds of thousands of deaths were a good thing, but it was the better than the alternative: no good choices were on offer; and that, I repeat, was not our decision, it was theirs.
Coming from YOU, a consistent supporter of murdering civilians, this is a severe instance of "projection".
I never used any word like "precedes" (nor did Socrates, nor did Plato). The two are simply not connected: the meaning of "good" is not "DOING WHATEVER THE MORE POWERFUL BEING TELLS YOU TO."
What it has promoted is a state of constant peace over a large portion of the world, for an entire human lifespan, something which has never been recorded before in all the history of our species. You think that is of no importance, but it is.
"Essence"?????? As I tried to explain to you, "four" is just a word. Words have meanings. The meaning of "four" is "one more than three." The meaning of "three" is "one more than two." So "four" is more than "two" by "one more than one", which happens to be the meaning of "two".
I really am at a loss to fathom why you have such difficulty understanding something that is well within the comprehension of the average five-year-old.
This is a totally unreal reading. The offense of "stone-throwing" can include a lot of things, from pelting to the wall up to splitting someone's skull open, which is why the penalty for it includes a wide range of possible sentences; in reality, multi-year sentences are only for cases of death or severe injury. The boy in question got one month, for throwing at live people not an inanimate object, and that sounds quite fair. The sentence should have been more, if he actually hit somebody, but that charge was dropped. The absence of any legal counsel, and failure to notify his parents of the arrest, are both improprieties in my view-- but there seems to be no effort to claim that this boy was innocent in fact.
Because the Palestinians have this sick culture of encouraging thousands of their children to go out and throw rocks. Most of them don't even get arrested. In other places, this kind of behavior is rare and strongly discouraged: Detroit has some kids who like to throw rocks, and I got an expensive chip in my windshield from one as I drove away from there never to return (knock wood!); the last such to get arrested drew, I believe, six months, and I would rather it had been a couple of years.
The point which leaped off the page for me was that some Palestinians hanged to death one of their own children for talking to the soldiers; even a lot of Palestinians, according to the article, were dismayed by that-- but not you.
I have read every post that you have addressed to me. I have never seen you express any upset about Palestinians murdering random Israelis. No, the only thing that gets you emotional is that violent thugs are treated oh so unfairly when they are caught.
Ten-year "truce" (the term "treaty" was avoided), explicitly stated to be for the purpose of arming themselves so they could fight more when the truce expired.
Support for random violence in Northern Ireland was by a shrinking minority, not an overwhelming majority.
Things began to cool down in Northern Ireland when the larger groups of Catholics and Protestants outside that area started isolating the extremists within the area. So long as the two sides could count on outside support, they had no incentive to abandon extremism.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Sorry my knowledge of the US is very limited ... when did Detriot become an open prison on occupied land?
Which other places in the world are in the situation of the Palestinians?
Of course, because of one bizarre case, which the article states many Palestinians were shocked about, I should ignore all the hundreds of children arrested and abused by Israel.
I have stated many times my sympathy for victims on both sides. I have stated many times that we must find a solution to stop this violence from both sides, which is why I was so horrorfied when Obama said he would not meet with Hamas ... that was our opportunity to really begin peace talks.
However, unlike you, I do not see one side as innocent victims while the other side are just "violent thugs". The Palestinians have a genuine grievance, supported by International Law, but they have had decades of UN resolutions with zero action to help them.
What you will note in my posts is that my sympathy for the civilian victims of Israel diminished after the "collective punishment" of Palestine in Jan 2009. For me Israel sunk to an all time low at that point. It is simply wrong to introduce or support the murder of a civilian population and when you do so it is totally hypocritical to then complain that the other side murders your civilians.
I was talking about Yassin's offer of truce which was reported as either a 30 year or 100 year offer. While Israels supporters claim this was a way to rearm because Yassin said they would only get 20% of the land so would be an interim solution, it's only fair to look at the words of Israeli political figures Ben-Gurion said, "The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them." Begin said, "The partition of the homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people... Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever."
Surely if peace was maintained for 30 or 100 years both sides would build their economic state and even a fragile peace would be better than the murder we have now.
However, since you mention the 2008 offer ... "Carter also said Hamas would disarm its military wing in Gaza if a non-political security force was established in the Strip." and if the first wave of political prisoners was released Gilad Shalit would be handed over to Egypt until the remianing agreed prisoners were freed.
Disarming a military wing could be overseen by the UN or NATO, to ensure it wasn't just a ruse.
We are now in 2010 .. Gilad is still being held, the Palestinian prisons are still rotting in jail and people are still dying. How many lives have needlessly been lost in the past 12 years?
When? Toward the end of the troubles yes I agree, because they had been offered talks and a way out. During the height of the troubles the support was from an overwhelming majority.
The isolation of extremists could and would not have come about had we not finally seen sense and begun talks with what for us was a terrorist organisation.
There are so many parallels between the Irish/UK and Palestine/Israel struggles that is simply beggars belief that we are not prepared to learn lessons from one and find a similar solution for the other. Yes peace in Ireland is still fragile with sporadic calls for a re-emergence of the military wing but these can be controlled without the support of the public at large ... this is where we need to look in Palestine, what issues are causing the Palestinians to so avidly support the military side of Hamas?
bob x
Well-Known Member
America became a closed prison for the blacks in the 1600's, and became more of an open prison in 1863.
Obviously there are a lot of differences from the Palestinian situation. For one, the blacks' story of oppression is much more genuine and severe. For another, the oppression began a long long time before any violence from their side, the reverse of the Palestinian case. And, while it would be more analogous to the Palestinian case if the punks threw their rocks at police instead of at any white driver who goes by, they are neither that brave nor that stupid. And, while their popular culture contains many deplorable examples of glorifying "gangsta" behavior, stupid and pointless thuggishness like the rock-throwing is pretty much universally deplored.
It is not "bizarre" for Palestinians to kill suspected "collaborators"; it is perfectly routine, nor is it rare for family members to be the executioners: only the age makes this case even slightly unusual. Your selective attention is what strikes me as "bizarre": you were outraged about, and expected me to share your outrage about, an imaginary case of a kid sentenced to 20 years for pelting an inanimate object (I would agree that was way out of line, if any such thing had ever happened); the reality in the story was about a kid receiving a sentence which could only be described as "appropriate", or even "lenient". But you have no concern that all these hundreds of kids are behaving this way; you are only concerned that they get caught. Of course, in your mind their behavior is anybody's fault except their own.
No, not audibly. I have frequently seen you make the claim that you have expressed such sympathy; but I have never seen you do so. Instead, you are always concerned to make excuses for the perpetrators, and deplore how unfairly they are treated.
No, that would be the equivalent of England meeting with the Real IRA, which has never happened and never will. Dignifying a group of that kind with such a status would encourage escalation of the violence.
Certainly there are innocent Palestinian victims (and Israelis who had it coming), but it is the Palestinian side which has a DELIBERATE POLICY of seeking out innocents to kill, and this has been their policy for 90 years now, with no sign that they intend to change.
In this case the "International Law" in question was an invention of day-before-yesterday. From the beginning of history through the end of World War Two, it was of course always universally understood that the side which starts a war and loses it will lose territory in consequence. Now the Arabs want that reversed for their benefit, "OK, the new rule is that we can launch wars as often as we like, and even if we lose, everything should be given to us just as if we'd won." Well, that isn't how the world works. The General Assembly is dominated by poor and weak nations, which find venting envy against the rich and powerful nations a cheap way to score domestic political points, and another resolution condemning Israel has become a cliche'd way of doing that-- but if Israelis and Palestinians themselves do not agree to a peace, imposing any peace would cost a huge amount of money and force, which only a rich and powerful nation (presumably us) would have to come up with, and so, whether you like it or not, the poor and weak nations really have nothing to say about it, and General Assembly resolutions are just so much meaningless noise.
That would be impossible.
It was "ten" years in Yassin's statement. Whatever "reporters" you are listening to are confabulators.
No, that's how YASSIN'S SPOKESMAN described it.
A. YOU brought it up, not me
B. Carter's statement was immediately repudiated by Hamas, which had no intention of offering any disarmament.
Keeping them disarmed would require a large occupation force for an indefinite duration, which would cost a lot of soldiers' lives; no nation is volunteering for such a job.
I was only in Northern Ireland briefly in 1976, so I cannot call myself an expert, but that certainly was not the impression I got. I talked to various people, including a former IRA man (he picked me up hitch-hiking: I thought it was strange that he wore a glove on one hand, Michael Jackson style, and that his gaze was askew, until I realized one hand and one eye were prosthetic, from a bomb-making accident) who was sick and tired of all the nonsense, as just about everybody seemed to be.
You did not talk to the Real IRA. Dealing with Fatah, despite its past, could be considered analogous to talking to Sinn Fein, but Hamas is something else.
But there is a big difference in terms of the history. If your history had STARTED with a long period of Irish randomly murdering English just for being around, BEFORE any English troops had occupied any Irish territory, it might have been more difficult for you to believe that the Irish would ever ever stop it. I keep hearing from you this lie (there isn't a politer word for it) that the Palestinian violence is caused by the occupation, when I am old enough to remember that the cause-and-effect is exactly the opposite of that. The Israelis are not going to return to the pre-1967 situation, of missiles raining down on all their farms and raiders sneaking in to kill children in their beds, because that situation was utterly intolerable; they need to believe that the Palestinians would not behave the same way, and for Palestinian supporters like yourself to keep up the line, "Oh, they only behave that way because they are under occupation", really does not help, because we know that Palestinians have behaved that way with or without occupation: at least with the occupation (however bad its consequences in several ways) their behavior is somewhat controlled.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
You are trying to compare modern day gansta groups in Detroit with the Palestinian situation and rather randomly pointing at slavery as the cause of the former .... I have spoken to racist scum who are less biggoted in their views than you are on this subject.
So the world insists that Palestine holds democratic elections but when they do and we don't like their choice we simply reject them ... yep that looks like democracy in action. The real IRA was never an elected government and nor was the IRA and yet to find peace we still had to talk to them ... it seems you don't want peace at any cost, unless it's on your terms.
and yet you have always failed to answer my questions about why you think the numbers of dead children in Ireland over 3 decades (7) was so disproportional to the numbers killed in Palestine in any given year (hundreds). This I would suggest is sufficient evidence to support that Israel also has such a deliberate policy, particularly when you look at some of the words of certain Israeli ministers past and present.
What a very blinkered view of history you have. These laws, which were already established but not written in stone, were developed through the Hague Convenstions (1907), the UN Charter (1945) and the Forth Geneva Conventions (1949) ... you can't see any correlation between the end of WWII and the UN Charter or Forth Geneva?
Probably not, it doesn't support Israel or blame Palestine.
The fact that you simply keep repeating yourself means you are so closed minded you haven't even bothered to look it up and see if perhaps, by some strange quirk of fate, you might actually be wrong about something.
The 2004 offer was 10 years but in 1994, in a letter from prison, Yassin offered a 30 year truce (some reports suggested 100 years but 30 appears to be more accurate).
indymedia beirut | Ex-Mossad agent: Yassin Offered Israel a Truce | 24.03.2004 08:47
This article exists mainly in the blogosphere now but can be found on over 90 websites, with links to such sites as ABC news no longer active but as you can see Haaretz accepts that Yassin made a 20 year offer at that time.
Hamas: No room to implement long-term truce with Israel - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
Going to just repeat yourself again or can you finally accept that more than one offer has been made?
Gosh I wonder how we managed it in Ireland then!! All those ships of weapons that used to come across from the USA ... hmmm wonder where they have gone?
I imagine I would be sick of the fighting if I blew myself up making bombs. Talk to soldiers who served there in the 60's and early 70's and watch old news reports .. they tell a very different story.
Indeed the people did get sick of the fighting, hence the talks and the peace process but we would still be bogged down in tit for tat murder if we had not started to talk to a terrorist organisation.
Oh dear.
Do you know who the Real IRA are?
Do you now who Sinn Fein are? The Provisional IRA was the military wing of Sinn Fein. One hand talks while the other hand fights ... sound familiar? We did talk to them right through the peace process, because they were members of the Provisional IRA. When the peace deal was agreed the Provisional IRA split into those who would accept the deal (majority) and those who would not. Those who woud not created the splinter group the Real IRA.
The same would happen with Hamas if a peace deal was negotiated, the loonies would still go on ranting and fighting but the majority would be sick of fighting and settle for peace. In over a decade in Ireland there have been only 2 British soldiers killed by the Real IRA. That is a dreadful situation under control, compared to the old days and one peaceful Israeli's and Palestinians would, I feel sure, prefer to what they have now.
Now you're talking testicles. As I have stated many times I blame a number of groups for the problem we see in Palestine/Israel.
Let's start with the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman Land Code of 1858. The Muslims, Jews and Christians who had lived on the land for generations and generations were in this way legally deprived of their land. So let's find those people, give them back their land and tell everyone else to sod off.
Then we have the Zionists (as I understand the term) who plotted and planned in Europe from the 1880's or possibly before, who's aim was "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people"
Next we have Britain and France, the iconic colonialist powers, and after they made a mess of it the UN. With this group we have the Arab countries who stood by and allowed this land to be carved up and handed out like smarties at a kids birthday party.
In 1919 Balfour wrote "The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant (the Anglo French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have their independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country...The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land"
Then I blame Israel and Palestine (governments and leaders) for the tit for tat killing and unwillingness of both sides to accept the situation, as it is now and work toward peace.
Yes I believe the reason we see 12 year old Palestinians in the streets throwing rocks today is because of the occupation of their land and the treatment they receive from Israel. We see Jewish children writing messages on bombs with big smiles on their faces because of the rocket attacks.
War is dehumanising and we have to find some way to bring some humanity to the region ... however I am quite happy to spread the blame around, Lord knows there's enough to go around!!
Of course the problem we have is neither side will relinquish right to the land and it's my belief that Palestinians (Muslims, Jews and Christians) have a much stronger moral right to it.
Left this until last, as I found it STAGGERING.
You belong to a minority group in society. A group who were once politically weak and poor (in terms of rights). That group have been fighting tooth and nail for their right of equality. By and large the general public have backed this fight and a number of our laws have now been changed to provide specific rights for this minority group.
This year, in a town about 15 miles from me, a female Baptist preacher was arrested for standing in the street and saying "homosexuality is sinful".
Then you have the audacity to sit there in your birthday suit and type that the "weak and poor" have nothing to say about it. I wonder what your life would be like now had the response to the gay rights movement been "you have nothing to say about it".
It appears you are not only a bigot but a hypocrite as well.
What sort of enforcement should be implemented upon a return to the 19XX borders? What punishments are to be explicitly promised beforehand and meted out for violating these borders? Who will do the punishing? Arab states cannot be trusted, for they have a dog in this fight. The USA cannot be trusted for the same reason. In addition, China, Russia, the UK, France, et al., cannot be trusted, either.
c0de
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I'm a supporter of murdeing civillians??? What??!
Hey, old man, are you going senile or something???
You really are going senile... because that last sentence translates EXACTLY to the sentence "good precedes God."
And by the way, Plato (and according to him, Socrates) held exactly the same absurd position as you, that he was ridiculed and humiliated for even by other (smarter) Greeks like Diogenes in his own time. And you (whether you believe it or not) are saying exactly the same thing when you say good precedes God.
So, basically, you're source for deriving deep philosophical truths, is the comprehension of a 5 year old. (lol)
This is like talking philosophy with a 5 year old (figures...) What is that "meaning" based on? Something arbitrary, or something eternal? Goedel (invalidly) believed it was based on something eternal. Do you agree with him, or don't you?
And that world is just as real as your 5-year old's understanding of the nature of reality.
All you have done is swap one form of self-assurance for another. You still consider yourself the final authority on morality. Case in point:
Using nuclear weapons was the "best alternative"?? See, this is where thinking like a 5 year old gets you.
You have accepted all the actions of the fighting powers as justified without even questioning how the war was being fought at all. You have disregarded morality altogether, because it is inconvenient. (yet, a "4", seems to have its own eternal essence that can never be questioned
)Actually, it wasn't "utterly stupid" (it was completely rational and it did the job). My position is that it was plain WRONG.
According to your argument, Israel would be just as justified in nuking the palestinians as the US was to nuke Japan!
What "large portion of the world" are you talking about? Europe? (genocides, wars, sepratism). The Americas? (revolutions and counter-revolutions). Asia? Middle East? Africa?
But that isn't even the point! As even if it did promote what you think it did, it would still be WRONG! Nuking civillians and firebombing their homes is WRONG!
I guess the word God meant differently back then. IN Islamic vocablary, God is the ultimate existence. But in many cultures, there is an ultimate existence, & then a creator deity lies below it, like Brahma lies below Brahmaan. Since both Vedic & Greek cultures originated from the same IE roots, I guess there must be similarities in their metaphysics. Greeks had Zeus & other gods, but they arnt really perfect. So there had to be another level of perfection above them.... labelled goodness.
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
I wouldn't trust any of those countries either, which is why in such a discussion I always think of countries which have remained neutral throughout this problem. There are plenty of them if you look.
How many of those countries have the power and logistics to destroy ten or fifty cities on a moment's notice, because the belligerents in the Middle East will listen to nothing less?
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Ah yes of course and we can see how this policy of collective punishment, which Israel has used for decades, has brought peace and stability to the region. Also this policy has really boosted Israel's standing in world opinion.
Hmmm, perhaps it's time to find a better way forward!!
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