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[Stroggy]

Originally posted by PrejudiceSucks@Jul 23 2005, 02:47 PM


And Stroggy, Christians, Jews and basically every other religion does not let the others freely worship on their territory. If anyone tried to set up a mosque in France or England, even Holland or Belgium, then they probably would have been hung in public. It's true and to be honest, Muslims were quite tolerant compared to most other religions in that period.

That may be, but Sebatianos acted as if all aagr said were christian lies and that he had to learn his history. Well appearently aagr did learn his history since the Dhimma was not allowed to build his own places of worship or renovate older places of worship.

Judaism doesn't have anything to say about christianity or islam since they didn't exist, so you can't say it preaches intolerance towards other religions.

As for the concept of Islam being tolerant (for example in Spain) that isn't entirely correct. It always depended who was in power, you either had an enlightened dictator, but they would be overthrown once in a while by religious fanatics who followed to laws of the Dhimma to the letter: infidels were not allowed to ride a horse, wear certain colours, hold certain stations...

[omg]

better than being burned or put in jail. or hung. which is what we were doing at the time to non christians.

[Stroggy]

You're not listening, are you?

[Doubler]

Appart from OMG and Stroggy, and not with the intention of reviving something dead, this late reply because I have to get this load of my heart (And wasn't able to do it earlier ).

@aarg:

The problem of Europeans is that they always try to defend rights of other people, and in the end they totally forget about their own countrymen. Liberalism is not so good...

I'd just like to point out that this makes us European. Defending the rights of other people. Why? Because we believe other people shouldn't be denied those rights. I guess you could fault us for forgetting our own countrymen, but I'd like an example of how we do that.

When you say

Why should Europeans who were building their progressive and rich countries for several hundreds of years let immigrants in their countries?

did you consider that Europe was build on the backs of many, many other people and civilizations and that Europe was created not only by the Europeans, but by all the people the Europeans used as well?

During all history Europeans defended their religion - Christianity, from Muslims.
European values are based on Christianity.

Islam is not just "another" religion. If Europeans in near future will become muslims, Europe we all know will disappear.

I won't debate your first point. You can call it defending your own religion, you can call it attacking the other religion because you believe your own is best. It doesn't really matter. And I agree that many modern values have evolved from Christian values (mind my choice of words: evolved).
I do NOT agree that Christianity is the basis of all culture. There's culture everywhere, most of it evolved without Christianity. Even in Europe Christianity was late on the scene. It became part of our culture (the largest part, 'overwriting' much of the old cultures) but many parts of the older cultures remained.
I can partially agree with the second part of your statement. As I think Islam IS 'just' another religion (My guess is that you misplaced your ''s ), however contact with different religions changes cultures. The same happened long ago when Christianity was introduced. This can be for better or for worse, usualy both, and it's what we call progress. (You need it. IMHO stopping it completely would cause problems and tensions worse then we are experiencing now.) As such Europe as we know it will dissappear; Europe how people KNEW it has dissappeared too, many times before. But there's no reason to think Europe would become Muslim. Personally I don't see Europeans mass-converting, but maybe you have reasons for your statement?

If you could clarify some of your statements, it would be nice.

[Microprose Veteran]

What a load of bullshit!

What's all this nonsense about European people being better than the rest of the world?

Europe basically invaded most of the rest of the world during the Age of Imperialism, 19th century. Then they exploited and bled Africa so Europe became exceedingly rich and powerful. So rich and powerful in fact, that Europeans started two World Wars fighting mostly other Europeans.

And christianity being a tolerant religion? I live in Holland and the Dutch think they are the most tolerant people in the world (of course...). What few know is that during the Golden Age (17th century) the only tolerated religion for Dutch people was the Calvinist (Protestant branch) religion. Catholics could only worship in covert churches, buildings that didn't look like churches on the outside.

Foreigners on the other hand, were allowed to keep practising their own religion, like Spanish and Portugese jews.

While European people became more enlightened and liberal, their colonies in Africa were ruled like dictatorships, the exploited African people were only educated if local colonial rule needed lower officials.

What I'm trying to say: Europe has been the most brutal, most agressive power on the planet ever since it started to discover the rest of the world. And of course the Roman Empire was build on the blood of the conquered tribes, including the former populations of France, Britain, Switzerland, Germany...