Sorry to interject myself into the midst of your argument with NS, but methinks you're splitting hairs here. Religion, ideology... really what's the difference? It's more an issue of semantics and/or degrees and it sounds like you'd disagree with anything he said no matter what. Like if he said "the sky is blue" you'd say "technically it's more of an azure color." And to be fair, the reverse is probably also true.
And also to be fair, the Christians (or more specifically, the Catholic church) certainly don't have an unblemished record in the area of human rights. But really you've got to go back hundreds of years to cite examples.
You've got to admit, the Christians haven't beheaded anybody recently or declared a fatwah on any authors of controversial books. They've kinda moved on from that. Whereas... well, you know what I'm saying.
No, not really. I've already told Nordic that I agree with some of the stuff he says. I mean, we agree on the fact that religions ought to be abolished. Period.
Now, on the fact that the differences are of the semantic kind... I have to disagree with you on that. A religion is a well organized body, with its own parallel institutions and books of faith. An ideology is not cohesively organized at all, and the majority of its actions are made ad hoc, not premeditatedly as with a religion. So if your argument is that, in this case, the difference between an ideology and a religion is not valid I obviously disagree.
All these discussions about Islam are terribly one sided. People have real difficulty in realising that ALL religions are fucked up. And I'm sorry, but many deaths have been caused by Christians just 60 years ago (look at the Jasenovac concentration camp or the protagonism of Spanish priesthood during the Spanish civil war,
for example) for anyone to refute Christianity's supposed good intentions. So the entire argument, from the Christian side has been "see, we haven't killed anyone in the past 50 years. We are good. You Muslims are evil because you killed 50 (or 100 thousand) non-muslims in the past 10 years". What kind of stupid argument is that?
Not to say that Muslims are spring chickens, but I do see a certain tendency to act on the defensive on their part, which has, as of very recently turned to an offensive one due, in part, to our invasion of two Muslim countries (for whatever reason). Take the
Moro Crater massacre, which may have not even taken place due to religious reasons, but multiply it by 10 and you will see plenty of motives for Muslims to be pissed. Add to it the fact that their opinions are NOTICEABLY absent from Western opinion and you have the situation we have now. Imagine a rich Muslim country invaded two Christian countries? All Christians would be up in arms putting together a Christian force to fight them. It's this level of hypocrisy that I can't stand and hence what motivates me to politely disagree with everything every Islamophobe has to say. I don't just disagree for the heck of it (which is what you are insinuating) I disagree because I know otherwise.
Ciao.
