zazen

1st vid. Of course terrible for kids to be taught such things. Why do you think whoever’s teaching them have got such distorted views as to teach kids in that way? 2nd vid. Notice he says Israelis goal is to live in their country and chill..then he says we don’t have a problem with the Palestinian in Gaza. The problem is Palestinians also want their own country to live in that they have a UN resolution for. Notice he says Palestinians in Gaza - what is Gaza? Why is it called that and not Palestine? Because it’s not a state..so what is it? Imagine I locked you in your house and lived nicely on your front yard while not letting you out - then you get mad at me and I reply “Jesus why so mad? I just want to live peaceful here and chill”. Do you not see the issue?’ If you were the Palestinians in Gaza what would you do. Sit and read Eckhart Tolle? Those old men you say have kid intellects when responding to that question were the previous head of Shin bet and previous Israeli Prime Minister Ehud who both say they’d take up arms to fight.

Your using Hiroshima as a hallmark of brutality that the Palestinians should be grateful for not having happen to them by a more generous culture - but Hiroshima was a product of Western culture itself! What morality? We just acknowledged who dropped two nukes on a already defeated nation in civilian packed towns. The only country to ever use its nukes not once but twice has come from ''Western civilization''. Don't talk to me about morality or I'll embarrass you with endless examples to the contrary. Zionists have perfected the art of political victimhood by thinking ''we can't be oppressors because we were historically oppressed''. You flip and project everything. Your definition of oppression is only the worst kind - ''if people aren't being holocausted then they are't oppressed''. The West have subjugated and dominated the entire region - what do you mean they gave Muslims everything? Much of the world fought against the West for taking from them in colonial times, and still fight them today to balance the the world order in which the West dominate. That dominance is falling under the systems own contradictions as Western elites hollow out the imperial core for special interests over national interests. That doesn't mean the West didn't give anything at all, but they didn't give everything. There's also a manner in which to give someone something - you don't share your gifts of knowledge, technology and trade through domination and conditioned on them being subordinate to you. You can give through transmission not just with conditions - which is how a lot of knowledge passed from Islamic Cordoba and Sicily up into Europe to kick start the Renaissance. Should we start saying you should be grateful to the Muslims for that? Do you even know that history to begin with? Sorry for sounding harsh - I match the energy someone is commenting in and as you give off a bigoted worldview I feel compelled to respond in kind. Check this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPYTwiUCNrv/ It's independent but not sovereign as any normal state would normally be which is where the issue is. This is why they never come to any conclusion and which is why I also think this next deal will also not end up bringing the peace we think. There's many holes and problems with its implementation that they are going to run into - Trump is prematurely claiming some victory because he dreams of the nobel peace prize. We can still hope though man.

What are they resisting exactly? Iran has been couped by the US/UK in 1953, invaded by US backed Kuwait in 1980's, and continues to be sanctioned and sabotaged till today with Israel being the launchpad from which this Western overreach continues to dominate the entire region. That's what Iran is resisting. Your such a racist bigot with retarded views yourself. I don't care if I get a warning for saying that - worth it in my opinion. They don't want to live independent but yet die fighting for independence don't they? Your logic is sloppy as hell. A religion can't be angry - you mean Muslims are angry lol. Without the Islamic golden age the West would probably still be in the Dark ages. From Chat GPT because I cba to waste energy writing to a bigot: ''When European scholars translated Arabic scientific works in places like Toledo, Sicily, and Córdoba, they rediscovered rationalism, astronomy, algebra, and physics. Figures like Roger Bacon, Copernicus, and Newton all cited Muslim scientists. Without that transmission, Europe wouldn’t have had the mathematical and experimental tools that made discoveries like electricity even conceivable. 1. The “Dark Ages” were a knowledge blackout in Europe. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century), Europe fragmented into feudal kingdoms. Literacy collapsed, libraries burned, and classical learning — from medicine to astronomy — nearly vanished. The Church monopolized knowledge, and scientific inquiry was largely stifled. 2. Meanwhile, the Islamic world became the keeper and innovator of knowledge. From the 8th to 13th centuries, the Islamic Golden Age flourished across Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Córdoba. Muslim scholars translated Greek, Persian, and Indian works into Arabic — preserving them from extinction — and then expanded them dramatically. They pioneered algebra, optics, chemistry, engineering, and medicine, while developing the scientific method centuries before Europe embraced it. 3. Europe “woke up” by rediscovering that knowledge through Islamic Spain and Sicily. When Christians in Europe began expanding southward (the Reconquista) and interacting with Muslim Spain, they encountered libraries, universities, and urban sophistication that dwarfed anything in the north. Cities like Toledo and Córdoba became translation hubs where Arabic texts were rendered into Latin. Scholars such as Gerard of Cremona and Adelard of Bath brought this rediscovered knowledge to Europe’s universities. This influx of ideas kickstarted the Renaissance — literally, rebirth — meaning a rebirth of knowledge Europe had lost and reacquired through the Muslim world. 4. The domino effect: Golden Age → Renaissance → Scientific Revolution → Electricity. Islamic empiricism inspired European scholasticism. That led to Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, who built on Arabic astronomy and philosophy. That opened the path to Newton’s laws, and finally to Faraday and Maxwell, who formalized electricity and electromagnetism.''

Why did they stop them? For the same reason anyone would stop another people from governing over them. Hmm, perhaps Palestinians are human just like everyone else and would resist just like anyone else - as has been the case down history - most evident in anti-colonialist struggles. Why is it hard for you to understand Palestinians resisting the same thing? It's either because you have a Eurocentric bigoted world view, or maybe your just late for your siesta there in Spain papi.

@Breakingthewall That's basically a argument for colonialism though bro. If people are too unwise to govern themselves - then why have Democracy also because people are too unwise to vote properly? Results may vary. Flawed political freedom is still better than none at all - it’s still their right to work through internal issues themselves after solving the bigger issue of ridding themselves of someone else governing them. When Europe was in the Dark ages and the Islamic Golden age was in full swing should they have governed Europe with their more developed hygiene, education, libraries and hospitals? Should the Muslims of Al-Andalus who had street lighting go to literally ''enlighten'' the Europeans in their dark age and dark streets with no lighting at all? This rapper sarcastically mocks this very attitude in the first 2 minutes: ''Whoever's more human, must have the right to do the abusing. I imagine that that means you then, other human just as clueless, foolish fools. For a tortured soul, bought for a quarter of gold. One little slaughter whole, why not? They don't have souls. They love their children less than we do so they are less than equal. They abuse women so we kill them cuz they are bloody villains. That's right, we are the feminists, for the women of the world,(we) kill terrorists. Liberate them from their burkas (head covering) cuz they feel more free with the children murdered.'' Liberal interventionist pushers think blowing up a terrorist includes hijab and burkas flying off in the blast radius to liberate the women and free their hair..a step closer to free the nipple which is obviously the ideal we’re aiming for.

False. Muslims and Jews lived quite peacefully for centuries - fear and bloodshed only came along with settler colonially installed Zionism that's still persisting today. Hamas is a recent blip in the history of their relationship. America and the Western led order has been the system within which that fear has been inspired. Guess who wants to be left alone? Guess who's approached who first? Guess who's built a ring of bases around who first? Guess who's existing in who's imperial architecture and trying to extricate themselves from it? Your providing a laundry list of threats without any causality or entirely flipping the chain of cause and affect. Why is Iran acting through proxies? Why is Russia obsessed with buffer zones? Why is China building parallel systems? Where one chooses to start the causal chain determines who looks like the aggressor. If you start at Russia’s invasion, Russia looks like the aggressor. If you start at NATO’s expansion, Russia looks like reacting in self-defense. If you start at Soviet domination, NATO looks defensive again. We could go as far back and say God started it lol but that wouldn't help. The fairest and most practical cutoff is probably the creation of the new world order which is when power structures reset in a shifting of the guard. For our time that would be post WW2 and post Cold War: After 1945 a US led global system replaced European colonialism. And after 1991, that US system became unipolar and unchallenged. From that point onward, Western hegemony isn’t reactive - it’s structurally dominant. So reactions to it (Russia, Iran, China) are better understood as responses to that order, not random aggressions. Of course not everything is a reaction to the that order and things still happen independent of it. Everyone’s actions have deeper roots to the past which brings us to the chicken or the egg scenario - but the current geopolitical instability traces more directly to how the unipolar order has behaved after it won. The West had the structural power to shape global norms peacefully. It chose expansion and containment instead. The rest of the world is now reacting to that imbalance. The West is reacting to their loss of primacy within an order they used to reign supreme in but no longer do. Their lashing out cos their dying out in relevance and prestige. Sounds kinda Iranic, Sinic and Russophobic to me. Israeli's aren't the problem, the way they are acting upon their survival is - which isn't for survival at all. Jewish trauma was used to justify a state, bombing and dispossession Palestinians was simply designated as their fate, par for the course. Western bombs and violence are policy, anyone else's is pathology. The "maniacs" aren't at the door- they're in the house that used to be theirs before Israel kicked the door in and claimed God owed them the land. Now Israel's mad they won't leave or live in a subjugated peace? And the West's mad at their moral high ground being crumbled by social media that shreds the lies and narrative faster than they can paper over it with more spin. You want to be left alone? Cool. Close the bases, stop the interventions and overthrowing of governments, stop bombing countries back to the stone age claiming they are regressive whilst the bombs you send are progressive - a mentality that itself is of the a stone age. A mentality that can't handle the reality of multi-polarity because it wants to be the only pole other nations bow to and dance around like undignified strippers. Stop extracting wealth through structural adjustment programmes via the IMF, stop vetoing UN resolutions that would end your domination and stop weaponizing the dollar via sanctions that cover third of the world and perpetuate financial hardship for nations trying to develop. Then we can talk about being left alone. Till then - you can't have empire and isolation because that's not how a globalized imperial hegemon operates. So it's human nature to act in accordance to survival but when others do it its what? Authoritarian, regressive, backwards, false, non-understandable or relatable? If survival is beyond morality - then stop moralizing or being in denial of the survival of others. If that law is universal then it applies to them too. The question is whose survival is actually at stake? Is Western survival at stake from Chinese bases around it? Or Russian? Is Israels at stake by the countries around who it is in de-facto peace agreements with? This sea of hate narrative of Israel existing in a cesspit of 100's of millions of barbarians at the gates is an outdated myth. An actual threat assessment would conclude that their only real threat isn't annihilation by a power strong enough to annihilate them - but through exhaustion from proxies and non-state actors who spring up (and will continue to) because of the un-resolved issue of the Palestinian cause they want to turn a blind eye to or keep stalling for their own fetish of settling the land how they wish. Western imperialism and dominance has taught nations to shake in fear and suspicion of breathing too heavy. They then get gaslit as manics who we should panic about because they seem to be a bit shakey and ''unstable'' when they try stand up to us. All of a sudden the Western conscious seems to be aware of their own empire because of a loud mouth Orange man ripping the mask off - but most of the Global South was aware of that empire breathing down its neck for decades, including anyone in the West who actually opened their eyes in between changing of the guards from Bush to Obama to Biden - just bipartisan delusion masking unilateral abuses by the empire state. Simply put - special interests are sold to the demos (the people in ''democracy'') as their own national interest. Those special interests that fake being for your and mine national interest are the cause of the issue including issues plaguing our very own countries. Leo nails what Iran nails, what I nailed with what I just wrote above: A moment of truth:

Sounds noble on the surface but don’t miss the details of how the missing 4% get in the way of a viable state. I don’t think your talking about Oslo but here’s a map on what was offered there: https://www.anera.org/what-are-area-a-area-b-and-area-c-in-the-west-bank/ It’s quite obvious why that would be denied - your being offered a country like Swiss cheese with holes in it or like islands. Maybe not a issue if you were offered Maldives lol But the 96% offer at TABA runs into the same issue due to the settlements scattered everywhere. I found a map showing it: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/final-status-map-presented-by-israel-at-taba-january-2001 This was a joint summary prepared at the end of the talks and published by the EU (the host and observer): “The two sides presented their respective maps. The Palestinian side expressed its concern that the Israeli map did not ensure the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian state, due to the number and location of Israeli settlements and their access roads, which would divide the territory into separate cantons.” Even if only 4% of land is technically Israeli - the way it is spread throughout the land naturally requires settler routes and access to eachother and from IDF for patrol or protection ie occupation. Imagine if Russia said they need to protect Russian settlements scattered all over Ukraine and all they need is 4% of the land and access to the roads connecting to each settlement. Thats not a sovereign state or country. Besides this they still wouldn’t have control over the air, water or borders. It’s like you giving me my house back but controlling the door, satellite and wifi - and giving me a curfew for being naughty from time to time. Imagine me taking your house, then giving it back except the 4% of house space which is the toilet - and I told you to figure out where your going to poop and pee - it's only 4% of the house but what a inconvenience that will cause you constipation your whole life lol.

It also exposes their somewhere they shouldn’t be. Those withdrawals from Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, etc. were cosmetic. Israel carved the West Bank into islands under partial Palestinian control while it kept 60% of the land (area C) and full control of borders, air, water, and movement - basically creating bantustans. If you steal someone’s house and then later give back one room or floor, that shows you stole the house. But then you’ll say it shows goodwill and kindness. You show goodwill by totally leaving the house you shouldn’t be in to begin with. It’s the same with these deals being offered - offer shit deals that get turned down for being shit and then gaslight the other side as ungrateful negotiators - never mind Israel decapitating those negotiators across multiple sovereign countries.

Every “withdrawal” coincided with settlement growth elsewhere - every concession has been coupled with more dispossession. The main point is why were they even there in the first place? Withdrawing from land you have no right to occupy doesn’t prove goodwill, it proves the original sin of taking that land to begin with. “Before 1947, Palestinians made up about 67% of the population and owned around 90% of the land, while Jews were about 33% of the population and held only 6–7% of the land. The 1947 UN Partition Plan flipped that balance, giving Jews 55% of the land and Palestinians 45%, even though Palestinians were the majority. After the 1948 war and the Nakba, Israel expanded to control 78% of historic Palestine, leaving Palestinians with just 22% (the West Bank and Gaza). Following the 1967 war, Israel occupied even that remaining 22%, meaning Palestinians went from 90% of the land to effectively 0% sovereign control in the span of just two decades.” Flexing Israel’s later ‘’withdrawals’’ to somehow absolve them of their crimes and blur the situation as “complex” doesn’t cut it. It’s the same thing I see when Zionists flaunt their LGBT rights to pink wash their crimes. If Iran had a trans clinic would that somehow give them the green light to do bad elsewhere such as chant death to Israel and fly rocket kebabs into Tel Aviv? Lol

Yes! Compare the material conditions which is something you overlook. Religions and how the people of those religions show up can be shaped by those conditions. In Nigeria the South is mainly Christian and much more developed compared to the North which is majority Muslim - why? From a colonial legacy the British invested more in the coastal south where the port and capital (Lagos) is for trade and administration. More urbanization, schools and education etc. The South is also home to oil which makes up most of its exports and 50% of government income. Boko Haram come from Northern Nigeria due to those conditions of rural poverty and grievances against the South which make them ripe for extremism. They are also designated a terrorist group by most Muslim countries including the OIC - Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Clearly that shows you there is a nuance within Islam that needs to be taken into account which you clearly don't because it doesn't fit your bigoted narrative. Uganda is a majority Christian country yet has some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws in the world pushed by evangelicals. Remember this meme: Context (material conditions) explains outcomes - not solely religious text. Evangelicals in US are also talking about stripping women and LGBT rights despite living in a developed country ie better conditions. Indonesia's the largest Muslim majority country in the world with relatively high literacy and women in politics with a female president in the past. Evil Islamic Pakistan and Indonesia have had a female president before the US. Indonesia's on course to be the 4th largest economy in the world in the coming decades with a healthy growth rate. I thought Islam opposes and sabotages all of that? Nah, that's just your bigoted view of it. All religion is spiritual at its core. Christianity was political for over a thousand years also - papal states, inquisition, crusades, divine right of monarchies. The New Testament had less rules and laws compared to the old one but the Church stepped in to make their own political frame work. Christianity looks “flexible” today because it was forced to reform by secular modernity and separation of church and state. Christianity had and still has both fundamentalists and reformists just as Islam has Sufi's and Wahhabists and every shade in between. That's too much nuance for you though lol you default to Black and white thinking rather than 50 shades of grey which is only reserved for Christianity to maintain your Eurocentric view of the world. Muhammad was a statesman involved in wordly affairs - he managed disputes, drafted treaties, encountered and lead in warfare etc so naturally the politics of day to day life were spoken about and built upon. He was straddling the ''other world'' and this world. That doesn't mean there was no faith or spiritual insight involved that inspired him or those that followed him. Today you see Sadhguru being a busy body doing all kinds of things - do we call him just a mystic talking only about the other world? Do we say he's not purely spiritual or mystical because of his dealings in this world of form? Or is it that you view pure spirituality as only when you simply exist in this blob of consciousness feeling all gooey, lovely and enlightened thinking your above the messiness of every day life and survival? And later concluding that anyone speaking on those realities isn't pure enough or is devoid of any form of spirituality? That's some liberal hippie shit son. I'm the bigot buster, the liberal delusionist dismantler, the spiral dynamic supremacist slayer.

Notice you take China, Japan, US and Israel's actions as human flaws that are understandable - but when it comes to Islam or Muslims you drop the nuance and call it a sickness. You essentialize Muslims and Islam as sick but excuse or sympathise with others as flawed human behaviour. That's why I wrote the good, bad and the ugly - you need distinctions and nuance. What China is doing is bad but it's in order to stop the ugly manifestation of fundamentalist Islam - a lot of these Uighurs came to fight with ISIS in Syria for example. That's not justifying China's actions but understanding it from a POV of a state maintaining its national security and territorial integrity from any secessionists - just as any state would do including Spain suppressing Catalonian secession. Bad can sometimes be defensive, ugly is domination dressed as survival, and evil is when you erase people’s humanity entirely. Israel is a mix - some things are defensive, a lot is just domination, and quite some evil has been seen on display also. Settlements, occupation, denial of statehood aren't purely survival but domination. This sea of hatred they exist in is caused by their actions of domination not survival - the way in which Israel is trying to ''survive'' ensures this hatred to exist. The hate is caused by the way in which they tried to settle the land initially, in which they are now fully settled within via a state - but that they now deny any settlement to Palestinians on their periphery. That's the whole issue here. You should know that the region was historically a relatively peaceful place between Jews and Muslims in which they actually sought refuge from persecution in the West - that all changed with the forced establishment of Israel where the fate of one group of people was decided by another (colonialists) - the same way today in which the so called deal is being decided without the input of the group that deal is supposed to be about.

@Ajay0 Nice and informative. I agree - its not totally scriptural but more of a social mechanism - which doesn't mean it doesn't come with its own downsides which it obviously does. Simply saying it's for organizing professional knowledge glosses over the injustices and baked in discrimination that easily would come from it. That's why I wrote linked and reinforced via Hinduism ie not rooted in Hinduism itself per se. Hindu texts such as Manusmritia legitimized caste hierarchy. Hindu society embraced it as religous and as sacred order via their temples, rituals, and priests enforcing untouchability. Ambedkar and Bhakti saints criticized Hinduism precisely because caste had become a lived reality of Hinduism for most people. It being abolished via law doesn't erase the hangover of its discrimination today especially in rural India - similar to how ending the slavery and segregation in America didn't immediately end discrimination which takes time to overcome. My main point as you can see in the comment was that all this doesn't make a religion inherently evil. Religion needs to be contextualized properly rather than just looked at literally - ironically the very thing that fundamentalists do and get called out for being extremists.

I agree - civilizations are a chain, not a hierarchy where one has a monopoly on truth or culture over another. He brings up how Islam built upon Greek works also - very interesting.

I got that lingo from this very forum where tongue in cheek things are called the devil all the time. The term ''Zen Devil'' also for example. It's not saying something is inherently evil but that we are all capable of the good the bad and the ugly - and calling that out for what it is. What the US and Israel are doing is ugly and devilish - and the US does bad things on mass scale whilst underwriting Israel doing more of the ugly things within their own proximity. Whats happening in China (ie Uighurs) is bad. Whats happening in Yemen and Sudan is ugly. There are degrees and scales to all this. Hitler and Stalin were Devils in chief then , today ISIS and Boko Haram take those mantles.

Let me introduce you to right wing populism that scapegoats other cultures being brought into the West via migration that are blamed for causing such decay lol. But the cleric thing definitely is a issue that needs to be watched out for I agree - it's just not the cause of the decay and neither is it representative of most Muslims - but marginalization and ghettoization can lead to radicalization which perverts the religion to more fundamentalist ends. Chat GPT comparing the Bible (Old and New) with the Quran: 1. War & Violence Bible (OT): Commands genocides (Amalekites, Canaanites, Midianites). Kill men, women, children, even infants and animals (1 Samuel 15:3). New Testament: Shifts war into apocalyptic vengeance — Christ returns “to judge and make war” (Revelation 19:11). Qur’an: Allows war in self-defense (2:190), forbids transgression, commands peace if enemy inclines to peace (8:61). 👉 Qur’an is more restrained. 📌 2. Women Bible (NT): Women must be silent in church (1 Cor 14:34), cannot teach men (1 Tim 2:12), must submit to husbands (Eph 5:22). Qur’an: Men have a degree of authority (4:34), but women inherit, own property, and divorce — radical rights for the 7th century. 👉 Both patriarchal, but Qur’an gave more rights in context. 📌 3. Punishments Bible (OT): Death by stoning for adultery (Leviticus 20:10), homosexuality (Lev 20:13), blasphemy (Lev 24:16), working on Sabbath (Exodus 31:15). NT: Focuses less on law, more on eternal damnation (“lake of fire” Rev 21:8). Qur’an: Corporal punishments exist (e.g. flogging for adultery, theft), but also calls for mercy, repentance, and feeding the poor as expiation. 👉 Harsh, but more options for mercy than OT law. 📌 4. Racism / Equality Bible: OT is tribal (“chosen people”); NT universalizes faith but still accepts slavery. Verses used for centuries to justify racism. Qur’an: 49:13: “No Arab over non-Arab, no white over black — only piety.” Last Sermon of the Prophet is explicitly anti-racist. 👉 Qur’an more egalitarian on race. 📌 5. Governance & Power Bible (NT): Romans 13:1–2 tells believers to obey all governing authorities — used to justify monarchy, slavery, colonialism. Qur’an: Emphasizes justice, consultation (shura, 42:38), and condemns tyranny. 👉 Qur’an more resistant to blind obedience. ✅ Overall Judgment Bible: Endorses slavery, genocide, patriarchal subjugation, and obedience to empire. Qur’an: Regulates harsh practices but consistently points toward justice, equality, and mercy, even if within a 7th-century framework. 👉 If you’re asking which text is more just, the Qur’an edges ahead in nearly every category except maybe gender (and even there, it granted women legal rights that the Bible didn’t).

From Chat GPT on the New Testament: Slavery Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.” 1 Peter 2:18: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the harsh.” War Revelation 19:11–16: Christ rides a white horse, “judges and makes war,” his robe dipped in blood, striking down nations with a sword from his mouth. Revelation 19:21: “The rest were killed with the sword that came from the mouth of the rider on the horse.” Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Punishment 2 Thessalonians 1:8–9: Jesus will return “in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God… They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.” Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” John 15:6: “If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Revelation 21:8: “The cowardly, the unbelieving… will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” Authority and submission Romans 13:1–2: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Ephesians 5:22–24: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord… as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” 1 Corinthians 14:34–35: “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission… for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” ____ The full quote of Jesus on the horse: ''Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a [c]sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.'' https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation 19%3A11-16&version=NKJV GPT conclusion: The New Testament doesn’t command genocides like the Old Testament, but it spiritualizes war into eternal damnation for outsiders, calls Christ’s return a war on nations, and contains violent imagery that makes the Qur’an’s contextual battle verses look mild by comparison.'' _____ The point is this doesn't automatically make Christianity inherently evil because of such verses. Firstly there's a difference between descriptions (historical accounts) and prescriptions. For those times if certain norms existed them being spoken about doesn't mean being endorsed outright but regulated rather than not regulated with no rules around such norms (war, slavery etc). Secondly, you are either unaware of or leave out the fact of interpretation and jurisprudence which is a massive field on all religion. If Christians can reinterpret their “perfect scripture” to adapt to different times and contexts Muslims can too, and did. Saying Islam is frozen in time is just a stereotype of your bigoted worldview. The entire Islamic Golden Age - with its law schools, science, philosophy, and pluralism - was built on fiqh and reinterpretation. If Islam really froze in the 7th century that Golden Age wouldn’t exist. They applied jurisprudence, reasoning, and adaptation to new contexts and knowledge they got from the Greeks, Persians, and Indians - rather than simply living by a literal reading of the Quran. Literalism is the issue with fundamentalism and Islamists like ISIS for example - but that doens't represent majority of Muslims world wide.

Agreed. I’ve commented on it before: The issue with many people’s analysis is they give their side endless nuance but don’t extend that same nuance to the other side. I can understand the context in which Jews felt they needed to do what they did to obtain a state - without condoning their actions. Likewise we can understand the actions of extremist groups or of Hamas due to their context and conditions - also without condoning or justifying it. Material conditions can distort human nature and our moral compass to do disgusting things. Some belief systems can definitely interact in better or worse ways with those conditions too. But the primary driver is generally material reality rather than immaterial psychology and belief systems. If we swapped the material conditions of Europe for Africa and the Middle East - we’d see similar outcomes of violence and conflict regardless of religion or ethnicity.

@Breakingthewall Responded to you about the whataboutism before. Your collapsing different fights and wars around the world into the same bucket of Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadism to try paint Islam as the common denominator and thus as inherently evil. Religion is invoked or instrumentalized for political / tribal struggles and bloodshed but that doesn’t make the religion inherently evil. Christians once killed millions under the cross, but nobody says Christianity is inherently genocidal. Likewise what has Democratic United States done its entire existence around the globe - do we now conflate Democracy with evil?

Are any of those countries maintaining a global empire, running a worldwide network of military bases, invading countries on false pretenses every few years, sanctioning a third of the world's population, and backing an active ethnic cleansing / genocide or colonialism if that's what you want to call it? Scale and affect matters. The US isn't just another country on the list of human rights abusers - they're the primary country that maintains the global system in which those abuses flourish, including underwriting Israel and its abuses in its entirety. By your logic, we shouldn’t single out the Holocaust either because '‘humans aren’t saints.'’ We all know that’s ridiculous - some crimes are bigger, systemic and world shaping. We have zero to little influence over what the Iranian, Chinese or Saudi government does - but we possibly do over our own in the West where our taxes oil the gears of the empire. That means we have a different relationship to US and Israeli crimes than we do to anyone else's.

On Israeli deception: One thing that is disingenuous I think is this blame shifting on “da Jews” or Israelis for most of US foreign policy. I see Sachs, Mearsheimer, Tucker and the right wing simply omitting how the US itself benefits from control and forceful domination of the Middle Eastern region to maintain their petro dollar that underpins their entire empires hegemony. Classic scapegoating to make them look squeaky clean. See how they deceptively manage the narrative and flip on Israel rhetorically yet support it in action and materially to aid it in its massacring of Palestinians. Even now with the flotilla - naval ships escorted them towards Israel but not to the coast of Gaza - just wanna look like their doing something to release the pressure of domestic anger - which didn’t work as now protests are happening across Europe. Same thing with the recognition of Palestine. How about recognizing the double game being played and not being taken for a fool. We’re hip to the game now. US is big devil whilst Israel is lil devil. Open challenge to the forum to challenge me on what I say.

Your whole comparison ignores that Palestinians are not a secessionist minority within Israel - they’re native people being dispossessed, occupied, and blockaded. That’s not the same as Chechens in Russia or Uyghurs in China. To say “they’re lucky” they aren’t getting treated more brutally is grotesque after everything we’ve seen with our own eyes. I hope you’re getting your siestas in Spain properly so you can think clearer papi.

How about pretty much the whole world saying and voting in the same manner as seen in UN assembly votes? Are they under some Islamic voodoo spell - maybe Aladdin wished it from the genies lamp to hypnotize the world towards the Palestinian cause? Or perhaps your just a BJP Zio bootlicker waxing apologetics for colonialism, despite your own country of India (if your from there which I assume) being under the same boot of colonialism - ironically shameful of you to do so if that’s the case, but a shame regardless of whether anyone’s from a ex-colonised country or not to hold and justify the colonial perspective.

From the other thread which is more for news. Bro your logic is the same colonial thinking as you’ve outlined to Twentyfirst above. Firstly you have a caricature of Muslims in your head. There’s definitely development needed and some extremist elements that need to be resolved or remedies - but most Muslims renounce those elements. When countries are destabilised and war torn they’re ripe for extremes factions taking control - note your example of Iraq. Same thing with the slave trade now happening after Democracy was delivered to Libya. Hard times create conditions for hardliners to swoop in with their hardline stances. Much of the backwardness in practice is due to socio-economic conditions and extremist factions. Especially in more impoverished rural parts of those countries including India and Pakistan. Most marriages in the Muslim world aren’t forced - introductions happen via family and friends which is then considered “arranged” but all that was arranged was the initial meeting. It’s up to the couple to go forward with things or not. That’s how it is these days. The problem with your thinking is that you think moral imperfection or lower development in some aspects justifies being under the rule of another group more developed in those aspects. You also conflate a religion of over 2 billion people with evil whilst not acknowledging the nuances involved including in the application of that religion or in how people operate their day to day life. By your logic the Nordic’s should govern crazy ass Americans who shoot up schools all the time or Japanese should govern India to enforce proper hygiene standards. India has rampant rape, defecation, forced child marriage and a caste system where Dalits (200million people) are deemed untouchable. Does that justify being governed by a group more advanced in those specific aspects? Does that make Hinduism backwards and inherently evil? Guess India needs to be occupied by a superior people to rid them of these issues?

Guess what happened in 1948 that you omit so you can maintain your own skewed narrative - the Nakba that started this entire shit show. Israel’s entire project has always been about maintaining a Jewish majority state, which is why the Nakba happened in the first place. Zionist militias decided there were too many Arabs on the land they wanted for a Jewish state, and then violently expelled them to create an artificial demographic majority. That was the point then, and it’s the point now. You can't point at cosmetic co-existence of Palestinians within Israel while ignoring that the oppression isn’t primarily about Palestinian citizens inside Israel proper. It's about millions of Palestinians living under military occupation outside Israel proper in disputed territory (internationally recognized as Palestinians) in the West Bank and under siege in Gaza - people Israel don't want to absorb because doing so would undo the Jewish demographic majority they desire. Also - what does it tell you if Palestinians are able to ''co-exist with Jews'' inside Israel? I thought their backward violent and barbaric Muslims? Or are they not related somehow to the Palestinians just across the border from them? Are these the enlightened Palestinians who read eckhart tolle? Millions of Palestinians have been kept in limbo for decades because they won't be absorbed into a single state with equal rights, neither will they be allowed their own state to exist within outside of Israel and recognized by the international community as their inalienable right. You can't have it both ways - you can't deny people coming in to exist as equals in one state, then deny them their own state when they try to exist outside of it. I'm not saying Israel needs to be perfect - your the one pointing at Muslims at not being perfect and deserving less because of it. You afford other religions nuance but deny Islam and Muslims their own with your bigoted commented. Moral perfection isn't a requirement for political liberation that's already acknowledged by the world, but that is simultaneously denied by Western hegemony. You've acknowledged Christians have done plenty of bad - yet you don't conflate Christianity as evil. I've pointed out to you the caste system of India (linked and reinforced via Hinduism) in which a entire group of people are literally seen as untouchable (1 in 5 Indians are Dalits - 200 million approx) - do I then go and conflate Hindusism as evil? Obviously not because I'm not retarded. Child marriage is also pervasive in India - are you gonna now say that that's only because of the 200 million muslims doing it and the Hindus don't? You don't see me or anyone playing conflation Olympics to demean a entire religion do you. Up your nuance game before commenting.