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PJP said:
Animalman......what I'm about to say is kind of off-topic but I just saw it the other night on the History channel and it surprised me........I had always thought of Hitler as deeply religious.....very fucked in the head but religious nonetheless because I was always reading his quotes about Providence and how Providence has given him the power blah blah you get the point.......but what they were saying on the documentary was that he was not very religious and in fact religion was frowned upon and more or less vanished during Nazi Germany.......he just said that shit because it probably made him feel better.......anyhow It was news to me just thought I'd share it.



I remember seeing advertisements for the Hitler documentary(as well as documentaries of Saddam, Osama, etc), I may have to check that out. That is an interesting theory, but one that directly contradicts what information I've seen him. His speeches, his background, his political manifesto, they all suggest that he was a pretty religious person. I don't see how why religion would be "frowned upon" and then later vanish, when most of what Hitler preached involved it.

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And I know not all Muslims are bad.......but unfortunately right now the bad muslims have the loudest voice.



This I must agree with. It is unfortunate, indeed.

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Dave the Wonder Boy said:
On the contrary, Hitler committed the atrocities he did because he could.



I disagree, I don't think Hitler was a sociopath. I think Josef Mengele was a sociopath, but Hitler was just, quite simply, mad. A psychopath, but a socially adept one. His childhood experiences and time spent as one of society's castouts left him warped and deranged, burning with a scorn and resentment of the world.

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The rest was impassioned but ultimately empty smokescreen rhetoric, to rationalize his actions to the public, to play to their beliefs, NOT his.



I'd say this is half true. I think, for the most part, he was using religion as a political weapon, but, as I've said before, I still think it was proselytizing, in just about every sense of the word. To revise some of what I said before, none of these figures believed religion to be only a political tool. There had to be some sense of belief rooted there.

Hitler didn't need to "rationalize" much of anything, the public had already bought into his ideas of racial dominance, well before Poland was invaded.

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And actions speak louder than words, he sent thousands of Christians to concentration camps.



Yes, he sent those whom he did not feel were fit to be apart of his Arian society. This is where his insanity becomes overwhelming apparent. There is no rationalizing it, because the man was just crazy. A blanket hatred of such a tremendous degree as this is not the sign of a sociopath, it's the "me vs. the world" style of thinking a mentally unstable individual would display.

Osama Bin Laden has sent hundreds of his followers to their deaths, and has murdered even more of his fellow Muslims in his time. He seems believes that all those who do not share his beliefs must die, and that dying while abbeting such a cause is an honorable death(this concept of martyrdom exists both in Islam and in Christianity). Yet, despite this, he hides from enemy forces, electing to selfishly shield himself behind his followers, and occasionally issue a proclamation of his own righteousness.

Now, whether or not the reasoning behind such proclamations stem from his religious beliefs or simply his desire for power is highly debatable(actually, I would argue both, but I think the latter is the dominant factor). What I do not consider debatable, however, is that if Osama Bin Laden was as feverishly in support of his preachings as you have been suggesting, he would have strapped himself to one of his bombs and died while aiding his cause long ago. I think he, like nearly all powerful, religiously militant figures, in the end, values his own life above everything else. It's the reason people like him tend to end up safely tucked away, giving the commands(and then desperately trying to avoid paying the price), rather than on the front lines, taking them.

Interestingly enough, this article briefly makes the same comparison I did between Bin Laden and Hitler. As with Germany in the 1920's, Muslim society had sunk to it's lowest level of humiliation, which Bin Laden gladly used to his advantage(and was surely influenced by, at the same time).

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Hitler's Christian rhetoric is more vaguely in the vein of "God blesses our Cause" and lacks any scriptural basis. As PJP said above, it was a tool



Wait....I thought I was the one saying it was a tool?

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and as evidenced by the thousands of Christians he imprisoned, his deeds speak much louder than his words.



Oh, I agree. Infact, this is the point I've been attempting to make in regards to Islam(and Christianity) all along, though for some reason you seem to reject the argument there.

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Boycotting, in this case, is an endorsement of the violence of other Muslims.



Oh, I disagree completely. I think boycotting, in this case, is a peaceful display of dissaproval towards a nation that appears to be imperialistically bullying the rest of the world into adhering to their own set of rules. Whether or not that view is warranted or accurate is another matter entirely, but it is a pretty popular viewpoint(and one that is shared not only by most of the other countries around the globe, but from a small portion of America, itself).

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And the Muslims in the streets cheer this violence, and are complicit in funding and other support in enabling this violence and eagerly supporting it.



I'm still failing to see why you are attributing this to a group of millions of people around the world, when the only real evidence(i.e evidence that would suggest a massive trend existing, rather than the beliefs of a few individuals) I've seen of it is limited to one specific region where violence and war is commonplace. Unless they've polled Europe, Asia and Africa on "Who liked the outcome of 9/11", I think it's fairly illogical to assume that a great number of people were pleased with the death of thousands of people. You shouldn't take the expressed dissaproval of America as an endorsement of Osama Bin Laden and his cause. There are many issues prevalent in Bush's War on Terrorism; you can't just draw a line in the sand and expect everyone to take a side.

I think this essay states my case best; 4,000 men(Bin Laden's followers) do not represent the entire Islamic people.

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The same way they confirm any other facts in their stories. By interviewing Muslims in the street, and seeing the calanders and screen savers sold, and people interviewed who are shown using them.



They interview Muslims about what screen savers they have? I find it hard to believe that they could really compile enough information on something so trivial and unretracable. Most screen savers aren't "sold" anyway, they're downloaded.

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I don't see that abortion clinic bombing is all that common. Certainly not once a month, more like once a year.



I didn't say bombing, I said violence. Sadly, it is fairly common here. Several clinics had to be shut down last year because of all the protesting(both nonviolent and violent), which just encouraged them even more.

I remember a couple of months ago there was a guy arrested in Florida(in Coconut Creek, actually, which is I believe where Disco Steve lives) who was planning to bomb a series of clinics, but hadn't yet.

I saw a stat from a year or two ago showing that there 15 bombings and 150 attacks(burglary, vandalism, arson, battery) throughout America, and that the number of attacks and bombings were growing each year. I know recently the police have upped their efforts to stop it, though I still seem to hear about an incident every month or so in the news.

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You obviously haven't seen Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Saudis, or even American Muslims interviewed.



I know that the Wahhabis are strongly opposed to Bin Laden's actions, as do Australian Muslims(even the individual interviewed in that article said that, while he supported Bin Laden, he would not if he was shown evidence that linked Laden to the killing of innocents), and countless others. Even Indian Muslims were shocked after first hearing about 9/11, and said that Bin Laden should be captured immediately(though peacefully, if possible).

I also know that, after the attacks, most Muslim scholars were convinced that Bin Laden's call for a Holy War would be ignored(on the grounds that his actions went against what Islam stood for), as discussed here. One such scholar has gone as far as to say that Bin Laden's violence is heresy against Islam.

Yes, I'm sure that here and there you could find people who think what Bin Laden is doing is right. I'm sure that here and there you could find people who believe Elvis is still alive, and that the U.S landing on the moon was actually taped in some Hollywood studio and the whole thing is one big conspiracy, too. However, if you look at the bigger picture, I think you'll discover that such people really are the minority.

Let's just ignore polls, articles, stats and tv spots for a second here.

Would a religion such as Islam really spread so widely if it was so socially exclusive? If what Bin Laden's preaching is so accepted and supported, then where are the other attacks? Why isn't the world in just complete disarray? 1.8 billion Muslims is a lot of people. Even if only half of the Muslim population sided with Bin Laden, that's an army of supporters no-one could contend with. Why, then, is Bin Laden hiding while his country is decimated?

It just doesn't make any sense to me.

MisterJLA is RACKing awesome.