catapult magazine

Ever wondered why we don’t see more of this??

Also, some interesting points regarding the Spain attacks and our earlier discussions.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/printdp20040406.shtml

“i’m better than you are, i’m better than you are …”

this article and the attitudes expressed in it do as much damage to the situation in israel/palestine as suicide bombings. the inability to view the world from an adversary’s perspective, as displayed here, is perhaps [i:aa0b806c31]the[/i:aa0b806c31] most destructive element in any conflict.

why don’t we see more of this? i have no idea, but i’m not lamenting it.

Wow, what hateful garbage that is.

….the article that is. I thought the bit at the end where he excludes Christians in history from guilt in attrocities was just the icing on the cake. Just because Christians right now don’t seem to be blowing themselves up doesn’t mean Christianity hasn’t been responsible for the same sort of attrocities as other major religions. Call it false Christianity if you want, but then you have to allow for the possiblity that violent and genocidal Islam is false Islam too.

christian terrorists: northern ireland, kosovo, bosnia, south africa. just a start …

but that’s not really the point (yes, i’m arguing with myself). the point is that each side is pointing to the other, blaming the other for all of the problems without fully recognizing or acknowledging their own culpabiltily. i think Jesus said something about that: “take the log out of your own eye before trying to take the speck out of someone else’s.”

there’s a lot more, but i’m in the middle of writing a million papers. if you’d like an amazingly complex theological explanation, read miroslav volf’s [i:db695cb328]exclusion & embrace[/i:db695cb328].

it seems that one of the biggest errors in this article (aside from its overuse of rhetorical questions) is condemning Palestinian suicide bombers while blindly accepting the right of Israel to take over Palestine. the author assumes that Israel has acted nobly, whereas both sides have different faults to different degrees.

Israel’s brand of terrorism, backed by the world’s superpowers, has been more systemic and “sanitary,” so quiet and polite and legal compared to blowing people to pieces that it doesn’t make interesting headlines. “Local Israeli authorities lose Palestinian family’s building permit request for the third time in one year” just doesn’t have the same punch as “Islamic suicide bomber kills young mother and child, injures twelve others.”

as believers, we should be concerned with condemning all that is life-taking, as opposed to life-giving, regardless of political affiliations.

i’m curious in what spirit Dave posted the link to this article…Dave? not that such strong reactions against it will encourage you to say you agree with the author…

Wow! I can’t believe I missed this – I never thought I would have gotten such great emotional response to this. I love all the randomness of the replies! And the follow up postings on members own posts. I guess I’ll just try to respond to everyone!

LAURENCER – Prager doesn’t identify himself as a Christian – you’re reading into it.
– How does the world and suicide bombing look “from our enemy’s perspective”?

DAN – PLEASE cut and paste the “hate” – I missed it. I’m being serious.

DAN – He doesn’t exclude Christians from atrocities, he says that Christianity has suffered unfairly
– Christianity has not been responsible for atrocities. Christianity is saving faith in Jesus Christ.
– “Call it false Christianity if you want”??? What would you call it, Dan? Don’t you call yourself a Christian?
– A serious study of the Koran like Reformed Christians would do with the Bible will show that the remaining command to muslims (unlike the Bible) is to “kill the infadel.”

LAURENCER – He is talking specifically about the situation with Paliestinians in Israel, “Are Christian Palestinians less occupied?”
– there is a curious difference between what you have mentioned of terrorists and suicide bombers. While both are heinous, suicide bombings, as relate to this discussion are unique to Islam.

KIRSTIN – I believe you have addressed this in a fairly objective way and have brought up some interesting points that I had not thought about.
Three things though:
– you started with “one of the biggest errors in this article.” This assumes a multitude of errors, yet you don’t expound. The one you mentioned parenthetically I would argue is a stylistic preference. Paul uses the rhetorical quite a bit in the New Testament. Your main point I appreciate and want to address in the days to come. Good food for thought. It’s definitely a complicated issue
- in regards to your question about my motivations in posting, I believe the author has a valid thesis and follows through with it. I think the title is decieving, but if someone follows his argument through the article, it makes sense, even if (as you pointed out) he does not address the frustrations Palestinians undergo.
- saying I agree or disagree with the author will not be affected by negative “knee jerk” reactions of other CINO members

The author seems to be arguing that Islam automatically, naturally, and inevitably leads its adherents to violence—in particular, self-destructive violence. This argument leads no room for diplomacy between, for example, the US and Islamic countries, because you can’t negotiate with those people. Their religion makes them violent and irrational. Using such an argument there can also be no trust between individuals of different faiths. For example, I would not be friends with Moslems if I believed they planned to blow me up. The only options in working toward world peace then are annihilation of all Moslems because they are inherently intent on killing us (I hope nobody would advocate this here) or conversion of all Moslems to Christianity, or at least to a belief in liberal democratic values. Bush has chosen the latter course—conversion of a society by force, a track supposedly favoured by Moslems.

Not only does such a strategy not work, it actually backfires. Because, funny enough, people don’t like being converted by force. If liberal democratic values (and I’ll add Christian values) are as good as we think they are, then why not let people become convinced of that rather than forcing it on them?

The author makes a case for the peculiarity of Islam as a violent religion. But all religious scriptures including the Bible have been used to support unjust causes and extreme violence toward other human beings. A thousand years ago the Muslim world was the center of civilization and the Christian world was the cultural backwater that produced the crusades. Today the roles are reversed. Today the Christian and post-Christian world is the most advanced world and the Muslim extremists are the barbarian crusaders. Just as crusaders and inquisitors don’t represent true Christianity, so al Qaida doesn’t represent true Islam. Or maybe both extremes merely represent unfortunate anomalies with each.

What bothers me about Prager is his smugness. It’s true that Muslims and Arabs are often unfairly associated with terror and violence, but he doesn’t understand that the same can be said for us. Muslims in the Middle East see the themselves as a culture under siege with “Christians” as the aggressors. In many ways, such a view is warrented and understandable, but Prager shows no sympathy for perspectives other than his own.

On a side note I find Prager’s assumption that Muslims are taking over Europe just completely and utterly laughable. Perhaps if he made a visit there or read some European newspapers he would know that Europeans are just as xenophobic as he is.

And to answer your question: No I don’t call myself a Christian. I have started calling myself a non-practicing Christian as a non-practicing Jew would do.

i really want to spend some time replying to this, but i’ll be in class for about 15 hours over the next two days talking about interfaith peacemaking with a muslim (which might affect my post). so i’ll wait until thursday to write.

Prager doesn’t identify himself as a Christian – you’re reading into it.
– How does the world and suicide bombing look “from our enemy’s perspective”?

i never suggested he was a christian; i was referring to his arrogance. additionally, he’s obviously arguing from a pro-israel position (hence the children’s taunt i posted—it immediately came to mind).

and to answer the question, i’ll ask you a question: why are the palestinians resorting to suicide bombing?