call for jihad's overrated

[warchild1/27scout]

i heard saddam call for a jihad today to save his ass.don't these muslims start losing thier credibility if they call for a jihad every time mohammed gets his coffee knocked over or something else happens.it's getting a little old.i think pat robertson needs to call for a jihad for us americans,what do you guys think

[papabear]

Why does Pat Robertson even have an authority to call for a jihad? And secondly, with respect to the use of war as an instrument of religion, there is nothing comparable in the Christian tradition. (And don't even think of calling the Crusades "jihads".)

[Bala ya khumak]

i heard saddam call for a jihad today to save his ass.don't these muslims start losing thier credibility if they call for a jihad every time mohammed gets his coffee knocked over or something else happens.it's getting a little old.i think pat robertson needs to call for a jihad for us americans,what do you guys think

Doesn't Pat Robertson answer to Satan?

[hood]

Unfortunately I'm going to have to go with Saint on this one. Personally I think any God would be sick and tired of people causing death and destruction in the name of a God. You know all those protestors with the "Not in my Name!" signs? I think this applies to all those extremist Mullah's out there too.

[Smoothie104]

Pat Robertson answers to his Financial Advisor

[warchild1/27scout]

hey ,we needed a little humor here with the war going on.i'm not a chistian nazi or something. :D

[dave2]

I don't want to sound stupid or anything but who is Pat Robertson? (Im from the UK)

[hood]

He's a Christian preacher who's on television at various times during the weekend etc...

http://www.700club.com/

Him and others like Jerry Falwell have made statements that are rather extreme like all Islam is violent, and one of them said that Mohammed was a terrorist etc. They all have their own agendas which are ignored by intelligent people.

[...]

Just out of curiousity why would you not call the Crusades "Jihads"? They were holy wars. Bin Laden still calls Christians Crusaders, which by the way I don't mind at all.
Anyways a really intresting book about the subject is Dues Lo Volt it is written in the prespective of a Knight fighting in the Crusades, I highly recomend it. You thought people were brutal today...

[hood]

Well, I don't think crusader applies to us, because we're not doing it for religious reasons.

Definition of crusade
1. often Crusade, Any of the military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.
2. A holy war undertaken with papal sanction.

[papabear]

Just out of curiousity why would you not call the Crusades "Jihads"? They were holy wars. Bin Laden still calls Christians Crusaders, which by the way I don't mind at all.
Anyways a really intresting book about the subject is Dues Lo Volt it is written in the prespective of a Knight fighting in the Crusades, I highly recomend it. You thought people were brutal today...

The Crusades in essence were not religious wars, though they were incidentally connected with religion--insofar as the territory the Crusaders were seeking to recover for the native Christians was considered Holy because Christ had lived there (hence, the Holy Land) and insofar as those who had conquered those lands, the Muslims, did it primarily out of religious zeal. There were several goals of the Crusades including, (1) to make pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land safe and secure for the Christians, who would be harrassed by the Muslims, and (2) as a defensive reaction against Muslim invasions of lands inhabited by Christians. In short, it was a war against an unjust aggressor/invader, though it was delayed by several centuries. Nevertheless, there were still Christians living in those lands, and they were being treated unfairly by the Muslims. The Crusades were not undertaken in order to force non-Christians to convert to Christianity.

Without going into a theological discussion of the nature of indulgences and merit, let this suffice: Christians who went on Crusade were told that under the right conditions, their acts could be meritorious--but this is true of any morally good act performed by a Christian in the state of friendship with God. For example, an act which is unjust in itself would also be sinful, and not help the Christian attain heaven [if he knew it were sinful], even if it were approved by secular or, God forbid, church authority. The Christian Church cannot simply make acts that are evil by their very nature good by a delaration of any sort. There is an objective order which even the Church must respect (and indeed, part of the mission of the Church is to teach what this order is).

If you're interested, when I have some time I could pm or post several books which you can read which present this alternative [and more accurate] view of the Crusades than what you typically find today.

[vryhpyammoadded]

Jihad in Iraq = Roach motel for radical Islam.

[...]

By no means am I trying to say we are on a Crusade or are Crusaders now I was just trying to point out that what we consider ancient history a lot of radical Muslims consider as just happening yesterday, so to speak. I would, however, have to disagree on stating that the Crusades were not a religous war. It was well documented that if a Muslim was given the option to convert to Christianity and refused his or her head would roll. I believe it was the Third Crusade where the Christians finally took
Jerusalem the streets ran with "non-believer's" blood. The Crusaders may not have set out to convert the Muslims but I also do not believe the radical Muslims today are out to convert the Jews in Israel they just want them gone and I would call what is going on in Israel a religous war.

[papabear]

I would, however, have to disagree on stating that the Crusades were not a religous war. It was well documented that if a Muslim was given the option to convert to Christianity and refused his or her head would roll. I believe it was the Third Crusade where the Christians finally took
Jerusalem the streets ran with "non-believer's" blood. The Crusaders may not have set out to convert the Muslims but I also do not believe the radical Muslims today are out to convert the Jews in Israel they just want them gone and I would call what is going on in Israel a religous war.

Sure and I can add to that the sacking of Constantinople--all war atrocities or war crimes NOT sanctioned by the original call to Crusade, just like we have war crimes or atrocities being committed by "good guys" in the 20th century--and yet we don't say the war itself is unjust, unless it really was so to begin with. Similarly, just because some of the crusaders were carried away by wrong religious zeal to try forced prostelytizations does not mean that this was the goal of the crusades. Like I said, forced conversion of the Muslims was NOT sanctioned by the papal bull. Finally, let's not forget that the Muslims were the unjust aggressors in the first instance, who conquered Christian lands precisely as a form of jihad. The violence of war can bring out the worst, as well as the best, in human beings--it's not surprising that the Christians may have forgotten some of the key tenets of their own religion.

[papabear]

By no means am I trying to say we are on a Crusade or are Crusaders now I was just trying to point out that what we consider ancient history a lot of radical Muslims consider as just happening yesterday, so to speak.

As for this point, a lot of Muslims are ignorant of their own history and simply take in whatever is given to them by their leaders--as if they've always inhabited the lands that they now dwell in. (The ignorance of Westerners of the history of the Near and Middle East is even more appalling.)

In response to the first, original post:
Whether Hussein's government will have any credibility calling for a jihad is questionable--perhaps the Sunnis, if they have not been persecuted too much, will be more willing than the Kurds and the Shiites, who are supposed to be co-religionists, despite disagreements about who Mohammed's legimate successors were. Nevertheless, I can see why they would resort to this card--to play on the fear that the Americans have come to impose their [decadent] Western culture and secularism is something abhorrent to most Muslims, I would think. To take a recent example, just look at Afghanistan. It seems to me that the "victors" were willing to accept American aid so long as it was useful for their own ends. I really doubt Afghanistan is going to embrace liberal democrary. It seems to me that the Shiites might decide not to embrace jihad because of their hatred of Saddam, and let the Americans take Saddam out of power--and then when time for reconstruction comes, they may push for a separate state, or perhaps even try to unite with Iran. The U.S. can say we won't let that happen, that we will push for a federation with representative government, but how is it going to look if Shiites and Kurds start protesting against the U.S. forcing them to adopt a form of government they don't want? What then will the U.S. do with its claim of saving the people from tyranny and bringing them democracy and self-sovereignty and so on?