In Reply to: Re: Unfortunate Truths posted by Mr. Don on March 29, 2006 at 21:04:50:
It's kind of pointless, Don, to give you examples of present Christian horrors because no matter what examples I give you will simply declare that they are not Christians (according to your narrow definition.) Anyway, in these various posts I've been speaking in historical and cultural terms. I will give you an example of what I mean by that.
So called civilized, Christian nations/cultures arrived in North America and immediately began to exploit, abuse and murder the indigenous populations, whom they considered to be inferior, heathen, etc. They did this sometimes through direct action, other times indirectly (eg, by making injust laws). These injustices against the first inhabitants of the continent became systemic, that is, they became ingrained in the dominant Christian settler culture. That meant that well into the 20th century indigenous people were denied the practice of their religious traditions, language and culture. They were denied the right to vote. Their children were taken away from them in order to assimilate them into the dominant culture. Those same children suffered horrendous abuse, most often at the hands of religious authority figures. All of these indignities and abuses have had lasting effects on the present day survivors. And to this day, the governments of that dominant Christian culture refuse to do the right thing for those survivors, forcing them to try to find redress through the courts.
That is the sort of thing I've been talking about in these conversations about Islam, trying to point out to the Christian apologists that their own recent history is filled with examples of religious horror so they shouldn't be so quick to throw a blanket of condemnation against all Muslims.