Israel is officially an apartheid state

But what basis do you have for judging that literature against anything else? What basis do you have for deciding what is right and good vs. what is wrong and evil? Are you religious?

It can be judged by what is written in it. What other basis would I need?

Well, e.g. I was looking up whether Muslims recognize the same commandments that Christians do, and what I found on the internet is that indeed Islam is more liberal where it comes to killing. So obviously you have a problem with killing, but is that because you also honor the commandments, or because you believe in some other doctrine? If you are a Christian, I would ask whether you can forgive Muslims for killing infidels, but I don't think you are - so I'm wondering what approach you take to dealing with your negative judgment toward this Islamic liberalization of killing.

There is nothing to deal with. I told you what the religion says and some Muslims do. There is no other approach. Islam teaches hate for everything that is not Islamic. That is a fact I accept. It has nothing to do with any approach by me.

Ok, but the question is whether to give people the benefit of the doubt and include them in some form of democracy, or whether to simply create a Jewish nation-state and exclude them from it and fight wars with them when necessary.

There is also the possibility of trying to actively convert people to a different religion. This is not popular as an option in this day and age, but there is nothing unethical about it if you do it respectfully. Certainly most of the powerful regimes of the world try to manipulate concessions out of other governments and people by altering trade relations on the basis of certain conditions, etc.

Do you favor the idea of converting Muslims to some other religion or secular beliefs or just excluding them until they do so on their own? Or would you distrust them the way nazis distrusted Jews who had converted to Christianity?

There is no question in my mind. Islam is the motivation, the source of the hatred for the Jews and the real problem here. And, again, Israel can do what they wish to do in their own country.

What about the other governments that disagree with Israel? Do they have the right to boycott Israel? Make war with Israel? Or do you only defend sovereignty within national borders?

Isn't that what sovereignty is?

I don't think it's fair to exercise arbitrary sovereignty within a territory and expect other sovereigns to respect your sovereign borders unconditionally. Sovereigns used to fight over territory so there is no reason they shouldn't continue to do that. It is no different than a sovereign authority subjugating people within the territory of the sovereign, is it?

Think of it another way: if you claim to be king of your house and you beat and enslave your family members or otherwise treat them wrong, and you expect me to respect your sovereignty unconditionally, then what ethic should restrain me from subjugating you to my power? Do you believe in the divine right of sovereignty, or do you think it is something that can be altered by force/war?

You can under Sharia. You do have to be a male though.

And what is stopping anyone from intervening? Sharia?

Exactly. Where Sharia is enforced. Take a look at "Reliance of the Traveler" it is the go to source on Sharia. Here is a link.

Remember jihad?
http://mappingsharia.com/?page_id=79

I understand Jihad and war against non-Muslims, but to me it just means struggle to convert liars and apostates to honest people. To someone else it might mean physically slaughtering Christians and Jews, but that is as corrupt an interpretation, imo, as someone who thinks that they are supposed to go around killing sinners because the bible says that "the wages of sin are death."

Still, I put effort into understanding why people fall to the temptation of levying violence against sinners, because it happens. As Christians, we can have all this faith in the power of forgiveness and salvation, but there are going to be people who reject it and continue to sin, and the sins of pride in religion and killing to stop sin are very difficult ones to speak against because people have the natural inclination to use violence to combat evil. Forgiveness and turning the other cheek are very counter-intuitive when you are vigilant against evil, and even people like you who reject violent expressions of religion won't necessarily see the sin in failing to forgive it. You might even think it is a sin to forgive violence, idk.

That depends on what time period you are referring - this would have been explained, for example, in such a way after the period after the Peace of Westphalia (and actually was the basis of that peace). [See Westphalian Sovereignty @ wikipedia]

What it means to you means nothing. I have said before jihad is responsible for 270 million deaths.

Then why does the holy literature and Islamic jurists agree on the definition of jihad? Islam is very clear on the subject.

What it means to each individual determines how they act on or react to it.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of culture. 'Jihad' doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, and it doesn't mean the same thing in every situation. It is the same as the word 'crusade.' In one situation, crusades meant killing Muslims in the middle ages. In another situation, someone is on a crusade against drunk driving.

Learn to understand the nuances of culture and that you can't blame Christianity for people waging war on Muslims in the middle ages because a pope and his followers happened to claim Christianity as their religion and ideological justification for waging war.


You haven't read everything and you haven't talked to everyone. You have cherry picked your sources to only focus on the interpretation you want to focus on for the reasons you want, which is demonizing an entire religion.

No I don't. And I have Islam's words to back it up. You have excuses and rationalizations.

First, they are not cherry picked. Secondly, the Koran and Hadith are full of hateful and violent verses and examples of that hate and violence from Muhammad. Muhammad's interpretation is the only interpretation of Islam, and that is also stated in their literature. You have no argument.

The bible is also full of violence, but there are nuances in the relationship between inward and outward vigilance, which I have tried to explain to you but I don't think you're capable of understanding the deeper reality.

There is no deeper reality. This is not a philosophy we are talking about. There is no great mystery in Islam. The reality of Islam is right there for everyone to see. The death it causes and the intolerance it spreads are facts, not ideas to muse about.


Do you see how Islam works now?
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=26146

I don't think that Islam is biased against people converting to Islam by recognizing that there is only one God and Mohamed is His prophet. What you are saying is that if a Muslim kills someone for rejecting God, there is nothing deeper to understand in that. You have clearly not fully analyzed how much higher discernment it takes to accept someone who is true believer, regardless of ethnicity, and reject liars and fakes regardless of theirs as well. From a Christian standpoint, killing infidels seems unforgiving to me, but I have listened to Muslims explain the logic of killing infidels in a way that makes sense. That doesn't mean I support it, but it is similar to understanding how Duterte, an avid atheist, would become so frustrated with drug problems to resort to killing drug dealers and users to stop that culture from destroying the fabric of society.

Morality is not as simple as condemning these acts of war. You have to understand that fighting escalates for real reasons. It's not wonderful that it happens, but sometimes the alternative wouldn't be any better. E.g. if Duterte wasn't killing drug people, the drug culture would destroy just as many lives or more. So if you asymmetrically condemn Duterte, you're failing to evaluate the drug side of the war. Likewise, if you're only judging Muslims who kill, you're not looking at the specifics that led up to the conflict and the failures to address it in more peaceful ways.

I can't defend every single situation in which a Muslim kills a non-believer in this way, because I don't know all the individual circumstance, just like I can't defend every killing perpetrated in the war on drugs without looking at the specifics of the situation. I can just say that I know there is more going on than what we read in the news or what statistics can tell us. If you were able to look at all the true facts about each case, you might find people to be right or wrong in various ways in each.

The moment someone breaks down and attacks and/or kills someone else doesn't erase everything that happened up to that point. If that was the case, you would never have an abused person break down and kill their abuser without blaming the killer and viewing the abuser as an innocent victim. So you shouldn't make assumptions about specific instances of killing and/or Muslims or Islam in general.

Finally, you talk about people getting paid/rewarded after such a killing. You don't know that the reward payment is based on religious belief or politics. If a mafia hitman kills a rival gang member and dies in the process, the mafia boss might take care of the dead hitman's family. They mafia boss and the hitman might both be Catholics and wear crucifixes on chains, but that doesn't mean Catholicism is the cause of the killing or that the Pope would advocate it in any way.