A Culture of Death
In many Muslim nations, children grow up learning to love death as much as we love life. Psychologists have said that there currently exists a “cult or martyrdom” in parts of the Muslim world. Anne Speckhard has written: “From a very young age children are socialized into a group consciousness that honors ‘martyrs,’ including human bombers who have given their lives for the fight against what is perceived by Palestinians to be the unjust occupation of their lands. Young children are told stories of ‘martyrs.’ Many young people wear necklaces venerating particular ‘martyrs,’ posters decorate the walls of towns and rock and music videos extol the virtues of bombers.”
This “cult of martyrdom” even infects children’s cartoons. One popular weekly Hamas TV show called “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” is co-hosted by an 11-year-old girl who aspires to be a homicide bomber. The show encourages children to call in and recite poems with images of hate and violence. And a Mickey Mouse look-alike instructs young viewers to fight the “Zionist Occupation” and even instructs boys and girls how to slay non-Muslims. But the giant mouse, called Farfour, has been written out of the script—killed off by Israeli interrogators.
Given the culture of terror and martyrdom that defines life for many Muslims, it is no wonder that Israeli military reports have detailed hundreds of cases of children involved in violent attacks on Israelis.
It’s the philosophy that causes a Palestinian mother to leap for joy upon hearing of her son or daughter’s death as a homicide bomber, as long as the child killed Jews in the process. Some countries have even offered death benefits for the families of those who become homicide bombers.
Miriam Farahat, a Palestinian mother who has raised three sons to be homicide bombers for Hamas, exemplifies the culture of death in some Muslim nations. Known throughout Gaza as Um Nidal, or “the mother of the struggle,” Farahat is featured in a Hamas recruitment video telling one 17-year-old son to attack Israelis and telling him not to return. And Farahat -- who is an elected member of the Hamas parliament -- says she is willing to sacrifice all her 10 sons to the war against Israel because “Israelis are not civilians and there are no prohibitions on killing them.”
For too many Muslims, Islam’s place in the world is a zero-sum affair: they will impose Islam on the world or die trying.
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Back in the Crusades, the Christian Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, rounded up all the Jews there, put them in the largest synagogue, and burnt it to the ground.
From 1648 to 1649, there was a period known as Tak V'Tak. During that time Hetman Bogdan Chimeilniki (probably spelled incorrectly), a Polish Cossack warlord, killed several hundred thousand Jews and destroyed their towns. That was in the name of Christianity.
Page forward, and we find many good Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
What of Islam? I recommend that you visit www.thereligionofpeace.com for a real eye-opener. I don't CAIR what anyone says. Islam promotes homicide and genocide.
"what is perceived by palestinian's as the unjust occupation of their land". is that to say that a group of people absent from the region in large numbers for millenia has a right to the land that people who trace their roots there before during and after the first left? granted they were for the most part forcibly removed but their descendants had no actual connection to the land. It doesnt matter much though since immigration to israel has slowed as well as their birth rate while the palestinian population living in that country and refugees in other countries continues to explode.
Have we forgotten about the Crusades? The witch hunts? The vicious past of Christianity?
Can we correlate the vicious nature of these events in Western history to the teachings of Christianity, whose god is a god of love and acceptance? No, of course not. Those atrocities were committed by people under the guise of religion, but whose motivation was anything but spiritual.
Likewise with the Islamic faith. You cannot correlate the fanatic martyrs with the teachings of Islam. That is just foolishness.
It is not a religious belief which promotes violence, but rather, it is a cultural ideology, often with political origins. Those in the Western world attributing violence to the Islamic religion should then be expected to be accountable in the same way for the terrible history of the Christians in the Western world.
Sometimes, it seems like people forget the lesson of past human history. It's really sad thing for all of us.
I think we need to think about through the eyes of each counterpart when we face some problems to deal with and to discuss with people who have different opinions and thoughts each other. For example, America sees islamic terrorists as their enemy who U.S says, should be eliminated for America's safety but Islamic people or the terrorists see America killing innocent people in Iraq or somewhere else as the terrorist threatening their daily life and dignity.
There are only two ways that humans can deal with one another: either by the use of reason, or by force. Anytime a people subordinates reason to faith, their culture will descend into violence. Even though Jesus preached pacifism, once his followers discarded reason in favor of faith, they could justify any act of violence in the name of God. It was only with the rediscovery of the value of reason in the Renaissance that Europeans began to pull themselves up out of barbarism.
The difference between Christianity and Islam, is that Christianity is apolitical. It does not require theocracy on principle, even though that is where it will lead to if practiced consistently. As long as Christians are able to compartmentalize their faith--tuck it into the corner of their brain that deals with the existence of God--while making use of reason in the rest of their life, they can support a society in which the initiation of force is outlawed.
This is not easily done under Islam, because the Koran is not just a set of precepts for personal morality, it is a blueprint for theocracy. Faith in God is the law of the land, and dissenters must be put to death. There is no breathing room for the free use of reason. There is no parallel to this in the teachings of Jesus. He explicitly rejected the establishment of an earthly kingdom. That is why reason was able (barely) to establish a foothold in Christian lands.
None of that is meant to excuse the problems of Christianity, but I think it explains why Islam is so much worse as a religion.