Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
If you interpret any holy text literally it can be used to promote some pretty awful stuff.
It seems like any religion can arbitrarily pick passages that can be used to oppress others.
For instance there are many jews and christians who might use the bible as proof that gay marriage shouldn't be illegal but then totally ignore other laws on the grounds they are obscure or outdated.
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This is the evolution of the 3 major religions, Islam is still in the dark ages, they are ripe for Jihad; their modern crusades if you will.
While most of Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism have moved mostly away from literalism and much of the strong dogma of those faiths has eroded to whats called moderate religion of what we see today. That move to moderate belief is probably a big reason why you see so many splinter groups and why the literalists are so loud today because they see the moderates as traitors to their religion.
Where as the crusades were fully justified from the same book that people follow today, the Islamic world is now using their fear of the west and the propaganda from their own leaders and priests to create this feeling of the west and Christianity are out to get us Muslims.
Their TV/Radio, Newspapers, Schools, Mosques, social discussions are all ruled by this perpetuated idea that the west is in Arab lands in order to push down Islam, to spread Christianity and/or to destroy Islam and rule the world.
That fear/belief they have is then used nicely to give a lot of power to the extremists and cause the moderates to keep quiet for fear of being labeled or even charged/murdered for being heretics to Islam.
It doesn't help that much of the Islamic world is a Theocracy and people live without freedoms we would never accept.
Its really the sad fact that Arab culture used to be the modern culture in Science, Music, Art, Literature while they looked down upon Europe as a backwards place. Then Islam took a turn for the worse, and now as we see it today its a backwards, Science illiterate, socially repressed, dictatorial and theocraticly run societies.