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6 Comments For This Post

1. Backri Says:
   April 15th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

   I love your work,, Thanks and jazak allah khair..

2. eimo Says:
   April 15th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

   Great job,,, Big thank you brothers may Allah bless you>
   thank you againe for your way in saying Christianity may have things could be used against them .So,,this is a wide open gate to enter and read more about Islam and prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).
   ًWe hope the peace for all the world.

3. Mona Says:
   April 17th, 2008 at 4:39 am

   Wa Alykom Al Salam

   very impressing!

   Thanks alot bro.. we Really Appreciate it
   I Think all The Muslims around the world are proud of you, and I wanna say a little message to all Non-Muslim :

   (( Do as you would be done by ))

   Allah be with you and all Muslims

4. Carla Says:
   April 18th, 2008 at 12:26 am

   I found this video very well put-together and effective in making its point. It also does highlight the problem of radical ideology of any sort based upon a holy book. I would just point out that the children you see in the parts of the video drawn from the documentary “Jesus Camp” are part of an extreme, very small element of American fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. The ideas of this woman are not shared by most evangelicals, and they are counter to the ideas and doctrines of mainstream Christian churches such as the Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Orthodox, and many others. They are part of a fringe element of fundamentalist evangelical Christians who read the Bible, without any real education or understanding of its context, and think it means certain things. They are actually quite ignorant.

   Where I think this video becomes disingenuous, meaning that it’s misleading, is that it conflates the beatings administered by a small group of American soldiers with statements by Bush with pictures of the campaign of shock and awe with the Jesus Camp footage. A person unfamiliar with American culture or history would conclude that they are all somehow interrelated, whereas they are not. I know you think the use of the term “crusader” is significant, but over the centuries the word has lost its religious meaning and is now a secular one meaning anyone who embarks on a campaign to achieve an objective. Almost no one thinks of it in a religious sense.

   My second objection has to do with the soldier footage. There is no context offered for the beatings the soldiers are administering. Were they attacked by these youths? Did they think the youths were involved in actions against them? Etc. Without context or the footage preceding the actual detention of these youngsters it looks like the young men were just rounded up for a beating. I think it is extremely dishonest to show just this and not the whole tape, and to fail to provide the context. If your objective is to portray truth, then you can only do so by acting truthfully and providing the full context.

   My next objection has to do with the use of the shock and awe footage. I am opposed to the Iraq war and never thought it was a good idea, but the transposition of the footage with the Jesus Camp footage makes it look like a religious campaign. It’s NOT a religious campaign and never was. It’s true that many right-wing religious extremists in America - the afore-mentioned fundamentalist evangelical Christians - believe that there is a religious purpose behind the war, but that is because they view absolutely everything that goes on in the world from a religious perspective and their concept of “prophecy”. The average American and the vast majority of America’s leaders do not.

   My biggest complaint about the Iraq conflict and the whole jihad mess is that Americans in general do misunderstand the concept of jihad and they do misunderstand Islam, but it seems to me that there is a very great misunderstanding on the part of Islamists about Americans and their culture. Islamic people insist on seeing everything through the framework of their religion and react badly to any criticisms or any disagreement about religion. Throughout the Islamic world, if the polls are to be believed, people think it is acceptable to persecute or even kill those of a different religious faith, and in fact believe that anyone who leaves Islam for another religion or for no religion is an apostate worthy of death. If someone makes a picture portraying the Prophet or criticizes the Muslim faith, there are millions of Muslims who think he deserves to die. It is this extremism which frightens Americans and Europeans. Americans do not think that people who don’t want to be Christians anymore deserve to die, and in fact it is not unusual for someone to grow up in one strain of Christianity and to join another. Sometimes people who grew up Christian join Islam, such as the American Congressman Keith Ellison, but he was not declared an apostate, he was not persecuted, and he was able to become a Congressman representing people of all faiths and no faiths in his district. That’s because the government is secular and not built on adherence to any religious doctrine. Christians and non-Christians of all varieties work and play together, and they often even worship together in ecumenical settings in America. This includes members of America’s small Muslim community. There are no religious tests for public office and no one may be banned from school, from holding public office, from employment, from housing, from medical care, from public services, or from any other public activity due to religion. People who persecute or attack Muslims in America are prosecuted and sent to prison for a long time. Muslims in America are generally left alone and are integrated into the society. They are found behind the counters of our stores, our prosecutors’ offices, our government offices, our business offices, and elsewhere. A lot of people like to hire Muslims because they don’t drink and have good moral concepts. They can be counted on not to show up to work late, hung over from drinking, and with a lot of drama involving boyfriends/girlfriends. Would that we could say the same for your Islamic countries, which think nothing of discriminating against everyone who isn’t of exactly the same faith as you and will persecute anyone who dissents.

   If Muslims want to achieve some credibility with Americans and Europeans they have to stop touting Islam as the perfect solution for every political issue and accept the concept of individual rights, secular government, the system of checks and balances, and the notion that no group is superior to another. Only by embracing the secular notion of government and accountability through the system of checks and balances will the Islamic countries achieve credibility in the eyes of the Western world.

5. Carla Says:
   April 18th, 2008 at 12:31 am

   I should add that the passages quoted in the movie are drawn only from the Old Testament, whereas Christianity is founded upon the New Testament. I would agree that some Christian extremists rely way too much on the Old Testament, but all believe in the New Testament. I saw no effort to distinguish between the two in the movie and think this is also misleading. Of course, the fact is that nothing in the New Testament matches the bloodthirsty passages you quoted from the Old Testament. Jesus preached love, compassion, and forgiveness of sins.

6. BluDev Says:
   April 18th, 2008 at 5:35 am

   Brava, Carla. Your two posts saved me a lot of typing. I concur with all that you said, especially the second one about the Old Testament passages being used exclusively. The Old Testament deals with periods of time centuries before Christianity was founded, whereas the Koran (Quran)alleges to be the “exact” word of God (Allah) through Mohammad. However, I have done some research on the Internet and have found that the Koran was not put into “a book form” until two decades AFTER the death of Mohammed. And, the sources were from many different people from different times in the long life of Mohammad.

   An interesting point that must be made about the “unchanging” of the words of the Quran. When it was first compiled, there were no diacritical marks (those dots under or over the Arabic characters) or vocalizations in written Arabic. However, in present day Qurans, they are there. Who put them there, and when? The placement of diacritical marks and vocalizations make dramatic changes to the meanings of words in Arabic. So, when these were added from the “original” Quran, it opened up the Quran to interpretation by the compilers. Comparative pages of the Quaran from different parts of the Muslim world can be seen on several sites on the Internet and it is obvious, even to non-Arabic readers, that the pages are different. So, when Muslims say that the word of the Quran is the same for all Muslims and is unchanged from its original form, it is not only an improbability, it is a fallacy. IF the original Quran was compiled in Arabic without vocalizations and diacritical marks, and they are in modern Qurans, how can they be “unchanged” from the original?

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