Is the religion itself violent or have its leaders over the centuries turned it into a violent one the way the Catholic Church did with the Inquisition?
In a disturbing but thoroughly researched new book, “Religion of Peace? Islam’s War Against the World,” author and filmmaker Gregory M. Davis rebuts the notion that Islam is a great faith in desperate need of a Reformation. Instead, he exposes it as a form of totalitarianism, a belief system that orders its adherents not to baptize all nations, but to conquer and subdue them. Islamic law’s governance of every aspect of religious, political and personal action has far more in common with Nazism than with the tenets of Christianity or Judaism.
#38,
Mike, you are using semantics to obscure the absurdity. A privilege is something you have that other’s may not have. There does not need to be any fairness or equality with a privilege. In the US, the government may not be capricious in who gets to have something. Therefore, they don’t “grant” privileges, they regulate activities.
Your example of patents is a good example. Patents are allowed to monopolize their invention for a set time. This regulating is to encourage inventions and novel new uses of items and technologies. At the end of the patent period, the patent becomes part of the public domain.
Non-profits being tax exempt are also a regulation of the economy. By being done in a fair and equitable manner, society as a whole will benefit. Veteran’s cemeteries would more likely fall under the renumeration of military service, which is a regulated part of government and is done without discrimination to all servicemen and women.
The key here is that the government does not GRANT a privilege. It regulates for the good of society whereas privileges do not. A monarch can usually grant a privilege and most of the 13 colonies were formed in such a manner.
You are correct that when government selectively entitles a segment of society and does not extend the same entitlement to the rest of society they are granting a privilege. When Courts decide that NO, this is inequitable, then we will see the laws change. But inequality is something that has been fought for hundreds of years. Even today, very very few will argue that owning another human being is a “right”, yet it took years and hundreds of thousands of lives to win that battle.
#41, Hahaha, I’m the one using semantics? Shall I go dig up an old post of yours where you called driving a privilege? I’m certain that’s also something which is “regulated” by the government.
More importantly, how does a government regulate a privilege without having first created one? Or are you meaning to refer to the privileges that individual grant to each other outside of the government? And how does that relate to the clause in the 14th Amendment which reads:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;..”
Which privileges are those exactly?
Don’t get me wrong, Fusion, I really enjoy the fact that you and I can stubbornly argue back and forth without getting anywhere or convincing the other of his error, but I don’t even believe, in this case, that you believe the nonsense you have talked yourself into.
#42, OK Mike, you might have me here. It seems to me that I might have indeed referred to driving as a “privilege”.
Maybe if I stressed the word REGULATE where you have used GRANT.
kill them all and let our God sort it out!
#43, Fair enough. Although I would say there is no discernible difference between the two in this context, we really are picking at nits at this point.
I must say, having read the Koran, that many parts of it have language that could be interpreted either way. I think the original Arabic would be necessary to truly understand what it was saying.